Reddit Knows Programmers

I “use” Reddit to look at subs for ESO and Fallout 76. That’s it. When I’m bored, I sometimes click over to the “popular” tab, and just have a look. It’s more of an anthropological experiment than an interest in reading what’s there. Sometimes, I can’t get past the front page, because, most of the time, Reddit is just a living monument to people being awful to each other. Sometimes, I make it to the next page. Sometimes, I make it to a gem. Most of the time, I see Reddit’s twenty-something, white, middle-class, male, under-sexed, under-employed hive mind on full display, like this.

“He,” here, refers to Elon Musk.

Reddit. ‘Nuff said.

This guy thinks “backend and fullstack” programmers “know shit about OSes and PC in general.” And, as of 13 hours of being posted, deep in the thread, has 84 upvotes. (On a post with 2200+ votes.)

I’ve been programming since I was 12, on a Vic-20. I’ve been doing it professionally my entire career, for about 30 years now. Even the people who I would consider “casual” programmers know how operating systems and PC’s work. I’ve met some posers, but they wash out. To blithely say “most” programmers “don’t understand computers” is utter nonsense, and, frankly, weapons-grade cope.

Welcome to Reddit, I guess. “Enjoy” your stay.

Reddit just made a deal to sell their “content” to Google, to train AI. Good luck with that. With what we’ve seen over the past few days with their AI product, using Reddit seems like a really good fit.

I weep for the future.

AI can now master your music—and it does shockingly well | Ars Technica

A few weeks after our conversation, Apple released version 10.8 of Logic Pro, its flagship digital audio workstation (DAW) and the big sibling to GarageBand. Stuffed inside the update was Mastering Assistant, Apple’s own take on AI-powered mastering. If you were a Logic user, you suddenly got this capability for free—and you could run it right inside your laptop, desktop, or iPad.

Source: AI can now master your music—and it does shockingly well | Ars Technica

Keep in mind, they’re not talking about mixing, but mastering, which are two very different things. I’ve tried a service that did this a few years ago, and, it did really well, even back then. If you’re not semi-knowledgable about this space, it might scare you, but there have been hardware versions of this sort of thing for decades. It’s more science than art. There’s just no amount of listening on various speakers and in different rooms that can dial in whole-mix EQ so that it sounds right on everything these days. The process is, in fact, very mathematical, and can be automated. In short, “nothing to see here; move along.” This is just the next logical step.

EXCLUSIVE | Microsoft plans Starfield launch for PlayStation 5

According to sources, we understand that currently Microsoft are planning a launch for Starfield on PlayStation 5 post the release of the already announced “Shattered Space” expansion for Xbox and PC, which is on target to arrive at some point later this year. We’ve also been informed that Microsoft have made additional investment into PlayStation 5 dev kits to support ongoing development efforts – adding further fuel to the fire.

Source: EXCLUSIVE | Microsoft plans Starfield launch for PlayStation 5

During COVID, I and several friends started playing Elder Scrolls Online together on PC. It’s a long story, but we all eventually drifted away from it. Eventually, I literally threw away the 12-year-old potato that I used to play it, and had moved all my gaming to a Playstation (except Civ V on my Mac). Then I suddenly developed serious health issues, and started playing ESO again, on the PlayStation. I was rather enjoying the simplicity of NOT having mods, and liked using a controller for combat much better than a keyboard and mouse.

A year and a half ago, Microsoft was saying that Starfield would be an PC/Xbox exclusive. I was kind of ticked. I had long since made my bed with Playstation, but I expected that the game would be Skyrim-level good, and I got sucked into the hype. So I bought an Xbox in anticipation, months ahead of time. I was replaying Fallout New Vegas in glorious 4K at 60 FPS, but I got the bug to go back to PC for ESO, where I could get mods again, mainly for inventory management. So I sold the Xbox and bought a low-spec gaming PC just for ESO.

Microsoft’s stance on making Starfield an exclusive was heralded by the head of the Xbox decision as a serious business strategy, and something on which they were going to build a new era of gaming competitiveness. When they bought Bethesda, they also made a promise not to touch pre-acquisition IP. Hold this thought.

I bought the digital deluxe pre-release of Starfield on Steam. I played over the weekend before the general release, and thought it sucked. After a dozen hours or so, you will hit a wall with inventory management, and you will naturally build a base to try to fix the problem, and find that bases do not solve anything. Unlike Skyrim or Fallout, there simply is no concept of a bottomless container that keeps a game like this from being insane. Being a pre-release copy, I found that I could refund the purchase before the actual release, so, after 13 hours, I did.

Now that the Microsoft purchase of Activision has “gone through,” they now own Blizzard, which runs World of Warcraft. It is, superficially, very similar to ESO, but has over ten times the number of players. You can just smell that someone high up in Microsoft is asking the question: Why are we paying to develop ESO when we could kill it, and most of the player base would probably move over to WoW? The “synergies” from these two acquisitions must be frighteningly tempting.

They’re reversing course on keeping Starfield exclusive, and now I worry that the other “half” of their promises at the time of the acquisition are similarly precarious. Will they, in fact, start messing with pre-merger games? Will they somehow change the offerings or their monetization to better fit within a corporate strategy which now must be conducive to other franchises that were previously competitors? Microsoft breaks a lot of promises. A lot. Just search on it for yourself.

I’m worried for the future of ESO.

And, while I want a vibrant, competitive landscape in gaming and consoles, and this announcement does not bode well for that, the saltiness of the tears of the fanboys in the Xbox subreddit over this announcement — as Microsoft pulls off their mask, and shows them the face of the monster that hasn’t changed since the 90’s — is just too delicious.

Salty Tears

We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences | Ars Technica

Spreadsheets represent unknown risks in the form of errors, privacy violations, trade secrets, and compliance violations. Yet they are also critical for the way many organizations make their decisions. For this reason, they have been described by experts as the “dark matter” of corporate IT.

Source: We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences | Ars Technica

As I often say, making real applications out of these Frankenstein monsters of data has been my bread and butter throughout my career. The function that the central IT departments in blue chip manufacturing companies could never quite wrap its arms around keeps getting bigger and bigger, and making larger and larger gaps to fill by people in the trenches. So… too right, mate, and keep it up.

Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds | Ars Technica

Single-vehicle, single-pedestrian crash data for 2016-2021 finds hoods a problem.

When Tyndall controlled the data for vehicle body type, the effect of vehicle hood heights became more clear, actually increasing “the partial effect of front-end vehicle height, suggesting high-front-end designs are specifically culpable for higher pedestrian death rates, and this is not driven by other characteristics that are correlated with front-end height,” he writes. In fact, the study estimates that a 4-inch (100-mm) increase in front end height translates to a 28 percent increase in pedestrian death.

Source: Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds | Ars Technica

I’m glad that more people are starting to fuss about this. What I really want to know is how and why it seems that everyone in the automotive industry pivoted in this direction at once. Back when I worked in the market, the tier-1’s worked fairly diligently to disguise and, at least, nominally, not telegraph their design moves, and yet all the US makers have done this, and at basically the same time. It feels conspiratorial, but I can’t imagine a motivation that would account for it.

Same Truck Models, 40 Years Apart

Dell/Windows Display Malfeasance

Apparently, no power in Heaven or Earth can make a Dell Windows “mobile workstation” display 4K@60Hz on an external monitor, using any of its ports, cables, connectors, or adapters, despite every piece in the chain assuring me that it can.

Who do I bill for the last half hour?

Bonus points for Windows losing its patience through the process, and not allowing me to resize the graphics options window after some point.

UPDATE: In desperation, I dug around in all my storage, and found the tiny USB-C-to-USB-A/HDMI adapter that came with the laptop. BEHOLD! That one works. I guess my “certified” Anker converter was not, in fact, up to spec.

2024 Cummins Inc. Vehicle Emission Control Violations Settlement | US EPA

“Today’s landmark settlement is another example of the Biden-Harris administration working to ensure communities across the United States, especially those that have long been overburdened by pollution, are breathing cleaner air.” “Today we’ve reaffirmed that EPA’s enforcement program will hold companies accountable for cheating to evade laws that protect public health.” – EPA Administrator Michael Regan

Source: 2024 Cummins Inc. Vehicle Emission Control Violations Settlement | US EPA

In case it wasn’t clear before, this is being trotted out by the Biden administration as some sort of moral victory against fossil fuels. The real problem here — and I said this about the Volkswagen “dieselgate” — is that squeamish liberals in Congress passed diesel emissions restrictions that are so restrictive that they are almost impossible to meet, and still produce a vehicle that’s worth driving. It doesn’t help that Cummins was part of the process, and nodded along with the effort, just as they’re now doing with the most recent, proposed, further California restrictions. Now they’re paying $2 BILLION dollars because they didn’t have the spine to tell Congress that their standards were absurd. I know people involved in documenting our emissions compliance, and there’s no question that they were NOT INVOLVED in some sort of conspiracy here. Whatever details come to light about this — and there was a lot after the Volkswagen scandal — they may as well just go ahead and make personal on-highway diesel vehicles illegal. The increase in the price over a similar gas-powered vehicle because of all the emissions equipment and engineering required to actually meet the emissions certification requirements will just make them unviable.