Turniper
5mo ago
I think people don't actually know what they want, until you give it to them. Baldurs Gate adopted a lighter version of this philosophy to smashing success, I think if you made it both possible to save-scum at lower difficulties, and difficult to perfectly recreate a path (Lots of small random chances that shape outcomes leading up to specific choices) it would be wildly successful. It's not gonna be my next project, but I have some notes in this regard for the game after the one I'm working on where I plan to add some elements like this to a Fire Emblem style tactical base game.
Turniper
5mo ago
Hey, as long as you're fed and free and your heart is still hungry, you've got another chance to take a shot at the goal. Make sure that you document what you achieve at this job so you can show what you've done with your time if it falls through. It's terrifying to step out on your own for the first time, especially with an unsupportive family and no resources, but you've got smarts and grit on your side, as long as you make good decisions you'll build something from the ether. Best of luck!
Turniper
5mo ago
I'mma be real with you, I find your plan kinda terrifying. I'm about to leave my job to embark on a startup-esque project, but I've got a decade of work experience under my belt, a cash runway of between 1-2 years, and both substantial passive income and lucrative part time contracting opportunities with the employer I'm leaving. You don't need that to start a startup, there's a middle ground to be found, but were I in your shoes, I'd be looking to move out to a place where I'd nabbed a stable 9-5, and I would grind it out no matter much I hated it until I had more security. Your living situation is intolerable, but it's very likely that your startup will fail, most do, be sure you have an income to fall back on if it does. Good luck though. I've been following your updates for what feels like years now and while I may disagree with a lot of your thought processes and decisions, I think you're a bright guy and I'm rooting for you.
Turniper
6mo ago
Yes, but the law as it stands today is also that if you commit a crime, the local DA may at their discretion simply ignore it if they don't think it's moral or feasible to convict you.
Turniper
6mo ago
You're gonna be publicizing your idea as much as you possibly can in four weeks. Not even disclosing what the idea is now is silly. Far more startups die because nobody cares about them than because their idea was scooped.
Some basic stuff: Have a marketing flow for people who don't wanna pay now. Even if they're not buying, if they got on your page they might later, so try to at least get them to enter an email or something so you can send them marketting or discount offers later.
For B2C stuff, quality of service will determine your retention, but actually getting people in to try it is the most important part. Consider a free trial, discounts for inviting friends, etc.
Finally, you wanna iterate fast. Don't think of this as a big event like a game launch. You're more likely to get zero hits day 1 than too many, even if you're launching on the app store or something. Have analytics for your sales funnel, know where your traffic is coming from, and how far they get into the process of signing up for a subscription. If you get good traffic but low conversion, fix that. If your traffic itself is low, change up your advertising strategy. Building a web audience is a long term process.
Turniper
6mo ago
My synthesis take is that the ideal game has actual narrative consequences for gameplay events. You fail a fight? Someone dies saving your ass. It's the total divorce of choice from consequence that so many modern games favor that makes the design space feel stale, everyone is afraid to actually make choices matter.
Turniper
6mo ago
I'm leaving my job in a month to focus on game dev and writing fiction, but if the idea was cool enough and the team was right I wouldn't be opposed to derailing that. I'm primarily a react/C# backend guy with ~10 years experience but I've worked with a dozen front end frameworks over the years. Feel free to shoot me a DM now, or reach out in July, I'll be done with work and back from vacations by then and fully settling back in to my new schedule.
Description is kinda vague, but I assume you're something like Naval's Airchat? A new modality/system of interaction to make large scale web interactions less inhuman?
Turniper
7mo ago
I'd just chalk it up to a learning experience. The only leverage you have against a shady contractor is the money you haven't paid them yet, the know you aren't gonna wait long enough to get some form of actual judgement against them to complete the job, and they'll just leave town if you try to get a financial judgement afterwards.
It sucks, but if you actually try to enforce that balance reduction term he's just gonna split.
Turniper
7mo ago
Hyperinflation isn't a obvious and necessary conclusion of inflating away obligations. It's what happens when the government effectively goes utterly bankrupt, and can't pay any of their obligations in real terms. If your governmental shortfall is only 30-50% you can print enough to have massive sustained inflation without turning into Weimar or Argentina. It's still bad for everyone, and reduces 90% of citizen's living standards drastically, but plenty of nations have survived running double digit inflation for a decade.
Turniper
9mo ago
If you peg your payments to an inaccurate inflation measure, that means you can reduce them over time without actually needing to directly say you're cutting payments.
Turniper
9mo ago
I don't get this take at all. If we're in a world where we're basically fully labor-post scarce, that applies to defense too. If nobody needs people to operate factories, nobody needs people to fight wars either. The relevant question will be where exactly did all the power accrue? A government? A single corporation? Many corporations?
Turniper
9mo ago
Nope, probably still a few years from completion, but we're getting towards the end of the story.
Turniper
9mo ago
Democratic federal authority hangs by a thread atm and they don't currently have anywhere near the mandate Kennedy did when putting down segregationists. If Biden arrests Abbot, my current read of the situation is he would basically be certain to lose the presidency as a result. You might disagree on how the votes shake out, but it's pretty clear Abbot thinks the same. It's precisely because Biden is extremely unpopular and this is an election year that he's being so bold.
Which is a lot LESS than ordering troops to defy Federal authority, which is just about where we are.
Abbot is very carefully not doing that. The recent court ruling does not forbid Abbot from continuing to place razor wire blockades.
Personally, I think that the way this ends is with Biden doing nothing substantial until he gets an actual court victory or wins the election, and Abbot then backing down.
Turniper
9mo ago
As a Texan who has been a lifelong democrat voter, arresting and charging Abbot with treason over this would force me to swallow my dislike and vote straight ticket republican for a decade until he gets pardoned. I tend to thing I'm not alone in this, and that Biden's pollsters know it. Is Abbot in the wrong? Yeah, probably. But arresting a sitting governor who is toeing the line of the letter of the law is not the appropriate escalation for this. Charging him with treason is beyond the pale. It's a huge escalation and a violation of the principles that allow us to maintain a civil society. We didn't execute governors when they were fighting for segregation, and I really doubt we're about to start now. I'm already iffy on what's going on with Trump, and he did blatantly attempt to abuse his authority to convince his subordinates to subvert state certifications.
The appropriate escalation here is judicial and administrative remedies, what Biden is currently pursuing. It might be slow and cumbersome, but it avoids tearing our society apart, which is the whole reason we have a federal government in the first place.
Turniper
9mo ago
Biden is old, not senile. I would think arresting the governor is probably the single biggest win condition Abbot has in all of this, people gaming out crazy stuff like him shutting off the grid nonwithstanding. If he gets arrested, he has an incredibly clear shot at becoming president before 2032. Unlike Trump, Abbot hasn't actually done things that would make charges against him stick, and would be able to beat the drum of political persecution/abuse of power far more effectively.
Turniper
9mo ago
Uh... Biden most certainly does not? The mere pondering of such a plan would be handling every single federal employee involved the power to singlehandedly return Trump to the presidency by leaking it. Now, cutting off the grid is also an insane move and if Abbot actually did that Biden would be able to consider having him killed, but he certainly cannot beforehand.
Turniper
9mo ago
That's really interesting but considering the sheer number of crossings we saw in the first 3 years of Biden's administration and the way they very publicly undid as many of the previous administration's immigration restrictions as they could, I'm not sure it moves the needle much for me. It's simply too little too late for any under the table actions Biden takes to change my opinion of his record on immigration as a voter, if he wanted to go that direction, it should have been done earlier in his tenure. If he'd undone most of Trump's restrictions but actually kept immigration numbers similar, I would be much more inclined to vote for him.
Turniper
11mo ago
So, my insane baking hot take that drives people nuts, is that the phrase cooking is an art, baking is a science, is dead wrong. I can tell you exactly what a adding or removing a little of any ingredient will do to a given cookie dough by eye alone. It's just practice, reading up on the chemistry of food, and experimentation. Really getting skilled at cooking and baking takes 10-20 years. You can't really grind it unless you're running your own restaraunt or something and can feed your food to people, you just have to slowly learn over time. But if you keep at it, apply a critical eye to your own work, consume good food related content that expands your understanding of things like the maillard effect and how gluten effects dough, you will eventually get good at baking.
Turniper
1yr ago
I mean, it's SF. Probably more like weekly than annual. Considering Austin has a twice weekly meetup, I'd be shocked if SF doesn't.
Turniper
1yr ago
Is that actually what happened in Ireland? Or did support for the pro side grow over time, and then continue to grow even after they won the referendum, making campaigning for a reversal pointless? Considering the 2019 referendum to further reduce divorce requirements was a blowout with over 80% approval, I somehow don't see a reversal of the 1995 referendum as likely to win more than 10% of the vote.
Turniper
1yr ago
100% There's a already lot of good evidence already backing the idea that gambling in a convenience store, or even worse, on a phone, is uniquely addicting in a way destination gambling is not. I actually turned down a job with DraftKings earlier this year because I think their business model is hugely predatory.
Turniper
1yr ago
It's never been a spark for me, more of a slow steady fire that never goes out. I've been with my girlfriend for about 8 years now, and she's bare none my favorite person, there's nobody I'd rather be stuck on a 20 hour plane journey with, or spend a quiet evening alone with. Everything is just better when she's around. Spark or no spark, if you don't look at them at least once a day and think, dang, I'm glad they're here with me, they might not be the one.
Turniper
1yr ago
30232 . Git gudder. Curious why these scores are so variable at the top end, pretty sure I didn't miss any, unless it's timed or something?
Turniper
2yr ago
Also 82 years old. If I were worth that much, I'd definitely start seriously considering opting for at least 1 bodyguard once I got past 70, between the loss of reflexes and strength I would feel much less confident about my ability to protect myself in a violent situation.
I'm definitely down for a weekly standup session. I actually write a moderately popular xianxia story, and have been trying hard to break the habit of leaving all my work until Sunday mornings.
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