If the upcoming folding iPhone supports the Apple Pencil Pro, that'll be the first tempting phone feature in years. It would be fun to have a digital sketchbook in my pocket. Of course the price tag will probably cancel the temptation.

Part of me is sad to see so little innovation in new phones, but another part of me enjoys keeping my money.

I never got paid for that work, but the campaign is out there: Twin Dragon[1]. I built Level 11: the Fortress.

[1] https://www.moddb.com/games/shadow-warrior/downloads/twin-dr...

Here are mine currently:

Tiled Words: https://tiledwords.com/puzzles/daily

4x3: https://www.hankgreen.com/fourbythree/

Ribbit: https://www.puzzmo.com/puzzle/today/ribbit

Uncrossy: https://uncrossy.com/

(Wordle used to be on the list, but I grew tired of it, coinciding with the recent puzzle solution 'PSHAW')

Disclaimer: I have built such a game myself, and I do play it daily for testing purposes, but I'm omitting it here to avoid appearance of shameless self-promotion.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212848

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

I still remember hours-long marathons of Doom2 deathmatch at my cousin's Novell cubicle farm after office hours, ca. 1994. Then Duke Nukem 3D (using Build to make custom maps [anybody here play NukeCity 1 and/or 2? That was me!]), then eventually Quake. Oh nostalgia, you rickety tower of mixed emotions.

"A.I." == "Artificially Inexpensive"

So far, the GoFundMe has raised almost 50% of the $40k goal, so I'm cautiously optimistic. $40k doesn't seem like such a large amount of money until you need it.

In short, the universe could be teeming with intelligent, radio-communicating species, but we will never know it unless we a) build an enormous radio telescope larger than the Earth; b) get lucky enough to pass through a direct hit from a narrow radio signal such as radar; or c) a civilization detects us and points a tight message in our direction.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/space-radio-more-static-less...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49070014

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

But maybe it's different for me, since I write nonfiction?

So they're interchangable in a specific context (no search in progress), but once the page search begins, their roles are different.

I get through about 2 books per month this way. I haven't noticed eye strain issues, but I tend to keep the brightness low and the font size reasonable. If you struggle with eye strain, you might benefit from an e-book phone case (e.g., https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/) if you don't want to carry a separate device.

My employer has been encouraging us to use LLMs in our coding work, and I've been resisting, but their encouragement is rapidly converting into requirement. We have to start submitting reports from Claude showing how much we utilized it. I've been desperately wanting to return more of my time to writing, and this LLM push has been the last psychological shove I needed to start moving away from the industry[1].

I'm sure I'll still code for fun, and for my own projects, but I think I'm going to be done with day-job coding unless AI turns out to be a bubble and/or the upcoming unsubsidized price tags throw cold water on the whole enterprise. If I can't make a living with writing, I may have to open a Cajun food truck or something.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48847511

The larger reason is just that I personally despise ads. I take great measures to eliminate them from my life--paying for YouTube Premium, using the SponsorBlock plugin, running aggressive ad blockers on every device, piHole, etc. It would be quite hypocritical for me to add ads to my own content, I don't think I could live with myself.

I know that some podcast providers wrap ads around everything anyway, but that's between the listener and their provider, there are absolutely ad-free alternatives.

Blog spam origins are murky at best, but I don't recall it being a prevalent thing until nearer to 2010. But of course recollection is an unreliable narrator. I'm also assuming you are using "predates" as in "preceding" rather than "preys upon", heh.

So, while inevitable, I think it's still a good example of why one mustn't trust big corporations with one's work.

There's also the fact that the 'Give a Damn' system is supporting the site, to the benefit of all of its contributors, not just me. Changing that dynamic could be detrimental to morale.

There are lots of other small things making it very difficult to just update the existing system, not least of which being the same time shortage this fundraiser is trying to relieve. I'd need to make a bunch of changes to a very sensitive money-handling chunk of code, which requires careful coding and testing.

> What will happen if this experiment fails?

I have a series of decreasingly appealing follow-up plans if this one falls too short. But it's already earned enough to get me through at least a few months, so I'll have a chunk of time to take some positive action. Maybe that means I only get 6 months off before I'll have to resume full-time work, but I'll take what I can get.

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/

Originally, in 2008, it was 100% Javascript, but a few years later I updated it to use CSS transitions for a much smoother animation.

That cycler simulator actually led to a very cool life experience. An administrator at NASA contacted me wanting to use it for a presentation. Of course I said yes! Then he invited me to be his guest to watch an early test of the SLS rocket that was happening about 90 minutes from my home. Of course I said yes!

I got to meet a bunch of astronauts, see a big rocket engine fire horizontally in the desert, and got a NASA SLS pin. The fellow ended up not using the animation, as that part of his talk got edited out, but nevertheless niftiness.

Hmm, the danger there is that one is putting a lot of one's eggs into a fickle basket. In the early days of Facebook we had a page with 20k+ followers, and we got a lot of engagement there, people followed us to be informed of when we published anything new. Then one day Facebook introduced 'boosting,' and overnight our posts were hidden from all but a fraction of our audience. Paying to boost each post would convert them into ads, which is not how we wanted to reach our readers. Our site traffic plummeted. I would have happily just paid FB a flat rate to retain access to our audience, but that option was not on offer.

I was already a proponent of the "own your platform" philosophy[1] (aka "Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms"[2]), but that misguided reliance on Facebook really cemented it. It's nigh impossible to own everything we rely on, but I'm reluctant to give any company that much power over my project again.

[1] https://www.chuck.is/platform/

[2] https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-cast...