This is probably my favorite article I've read on here all year. User experience is so important and so hard and so iterative (and requires so many new sets of eyeballs) that far too many people and organizations call it quits at the 10% mark without ever realizing it -- this is as true in web design as it is in game design. It's great how spending time learning lessons in one can translate into improved performance at the other.
Mark Rosewater, lead designer for Magic: The Gathering, likes to talk about how he looks for designers with experience doing things other than designing games because they can bring new perspectives and approaches that can help redefine their game design problems in new ways. I completely agree, and again feel like that same lesson can be applied in reverse—hire great game designers to work on your UX, assuming you can pull them away from their game designing long enough! It'll be good for them and good for you.
I think in this case "biggest swing for the house" should be interpreted as "biggest edge in favor of the house," not anything to do with variance. Everyone knows the house always wins in the long run (that's why "the house" is so much nicer looking [well, bigger, anyway] than your house).
That's why you build a personal brand while you're riding the coattails of a popular game. See Day9, who plays whatever game he feels like playing on his scheduled "day off" and streams it. He definitely has fun, even if it doesn't make him money (he recently streamed Mario, for example, which Nintendo [probably] claimed the revenue for) he's still building his personal brand and personal audience. His fans will follow him no matter what game he starts playing, because they're following him. But you're right that it's a hit-based system and if you don't become a hit (which requires a lot of effort and a lot of luck) then you're going to starve trying to "play video games for a living."
I have no faith that a Snow Crash movie would live up to the novel, as much as I want it to exist anyway. A series would be better, especially one with a planned ending.
I found the Runelords series by David Farland really enjoyable and cinematic. Great exploration of a fascinating magic system, with some very memorable characters to boot.
For Sci Fi, Netflix is currently making a series based on Altered Carbon which I'm very excited for - I love that series to death (Richard K Morgan, author).
Hopefully they're incentivized to pour a huge budget into these given the "competition" of the movies (and GoT) and they make it worth the Prime subscription. (Personally Prime has so much value add these days for me I can't imagine not being subscribed anyway.)
"Van Gogh used a type of red pigment that gradually faded over time. That suggests the painting looks slightly different today than when it was completed."
There's something kind of cool about older art changing over time and the process of trying to determine what it might have originally looked like. Reminds me of Philip Mould's work removing a yellowed varnish to uncover a painting (more) as it would have looked 500 years ago: https://twitter.com/philipmould
I have more of a general aversion to the actions of the (Core) people who support SegWit, including false promises, censorship, and other shenanigans like the 2x trojan horse which we've just seen play out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/duplicates/6iecx7/if_segwit_act...
The Segwit2x effort began in May with a simple purpose: to increase the
blocksize and improve Bitcoin scalability. At the time, the Bitcoin
community was in crisis after nearly 3 years of heavy debate, and consensus
for Segwit seemed like a distant mirage with only 30% support among miners.
Segwit2x found its first success in August, as it broke the deadlock and
quickly led to Segwit’s successful activation. Since that time, the team
shifted its efforts to phase two of the project - a 2MB blocksize increase.
Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we
strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we
believe is even more important: keeping the community together.
Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for
a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path
could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was
never the goal of Segwit2x.
As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become
obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens,
we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with
a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the
upcoming 2MB upgrade.
We want to thank everyone that contributed constructively to Segwit2x,
whether you were in favor or against. Your efforts are what makes Bitcoin
great. Bitcoin remains the greatest form of money mankind has ever seen,
and we remain dedicated to protecting and fostering its growth worldwide.
Mike Belshe, Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik
Voorhees
I don't understand this desire to immediately assume bad faith in these situations. It's a complicated situation, involving a lot of actors. Yeah, probably some of them are acting in bad faith. But probably most of them are just trying to develop a functional cryptocurrency. This stuff is very hard, and having it all so decentralized only makes it harder.
Personally I was hoping for the 2x fork to succeed, or, barring that, for some kind of miracle switch over to Bitcoin Cash, which has the 8x capacity without the baggage of Segwit. But realistically this is probably the best outcome for Bitcoin for the reasons outlined in the message.
I never understood why you would ever write-protect a floppy. Then again, I had a Mac 512k with a single floppy drive. (Insert Disk A; CRANK WHIRR GRIND SPIT; Insert Disk B; WHIRR WHIRR CRANK GRIND SPIT; Insert Disk A...)
As I understand it, Apple committed to X years of the lightning port to certain MFi vendors, which (if true) is just another checkmark in the "why have ports" column.