On older versions of DirectX (maybe even in some modern Windows APIs?) there were cases where it would internally change the FPU mode, causing chaos for callers trying to use floats deterministically[1].

[1] https://gafferongames.com/post/floating_point_determinism/ (see the Elijah quote, especially)

Another aspect for me is documentation. I've been disheartened recently by how some faster-paced changes to the FreeBSD ports system aren't well-documented, so 'man ports' and the handbook are a bit out-of-sync with reality. Being able to read the handbook and the manpages to get an accurate education on the OS has always felt right to me, and the Linux ecosystem doesn't do it nearly as well, I feel.

I think generally it's a cathedral-vs-bazaar sort of difference. I hope FreeBSD stays more cathedral-y than Linux.

I broadly agree, even as a FreeBSD fan myself; things have converged a lot over the decades. But still, I generally feel that while you can get the same work done in both, FreeBSD does things better (and/or cleaner, more elegant, etc) in many cases.

The overall feeling of system cohesion makes me happier to use it, from small things like Ctrl-T producing meaningful output for all the base OS tools, to larger and more amorphous things like having greater confidence core systems won't change too quickly over time (eg: FreeBSD's relatively stable sound support, versus Linux's alsa/pulse/pipewire/..., similar for event APIs, and more).

Though I totally feel your pain about latest-and-greatest hardware driver support. Has gotten better since the '90s, but that gap will probably always be there due to the different development philosophies.

I hope FreeBSD never gets too "Linux-y"; it occupies it's own nice spot in the spectrum of available options.

I'm curious to know where he takes the gameplay. He mentions it being digging-focused, and also mentions the digging/terrain deformation aspects in other games like No Man's Sky are relatively low-fidelity. I wonder what a "high-fidelity digging game" looks like (:

Aside, if I may self-plug: I wrote a small series on SDFs, for those who might be interested[1]. I'm also using them in my game engine (though it's 2D, for me).

[1]

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-1/

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-2/

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-3/

* Slides (good notes): https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/AlexEvans_SIGGR...

* video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI

So it is with internal demons sometimes, I find. You learn to recognize them, rather than expunge them.

Below is a series of writings on this topic that I enjoyed, by James Blinn, of "Blinn-Phong reflection" fame (and more). Not state-of-the-art, but an interesting read. It's just for cubics, which is what you need to solve the distance formula for quadratic bezier curves (my particular case), rather than the harder cubic curves of the linked article.

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

So on that tangent ... you can measure that value for ordinary objects using the "box counting" method[2], to get a notion of objects being "1.3 D" and such.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension

[2]https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ergreen/honors_thesis/dimension.h...

For instance, I've noticed a distinct difference in how sarcasm is received in the Northeast US vs the West Coast. What you described feels more Northeast-y to me (I'm sure it varies by other segments and sub-sub-cultures, too).

There's the saying: "If an Irish person calls you 'asshole,' it means they think you're a friend. If they call you 'friend' it means they think you're an asshole."

Not just for the Irish though, I don't think (:

Seems like a pretty high bang-for-the-buck for versatility and capability with only a few cables controlling it.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.09861

But part of the thing that attracted me to the game I'm making is that it would be hard to make in a standard cookie-cutter way. The novelty of the systems involved is part of the appeal, both to me and (ideally) to my customers. If/when I get some of those (:

It's open-source, self-hosted, has various good plugins (eg: I have some Pandora stations I listen to, as well as my own music collection). You can synchronize music across multiple devices in your home (I just have 2).

Even though the physical devices (Squeezebox Touch, etc) are no longer sold, it's pretty easy to build one yourself with a raspberry pi.

It's one of those cases where a company created something great, and strongly-open-sourced it enough that the project can't die even though the new owners are not giving it the love it deserves.

So, I hope to keep using it for the rest of my days (:

[1] https://lyrion.org/

Why stop there? Go full Perl (:

I think Python needs more quoting operators, too. Maybe qq{} qq() q// ...

[I say this as someone who actually likes Perl and chuckles from afar at such Python developments. May you get there one day!]

I've recently switched my FreeBSD setups to use that scheme, and it's been nice. Would be interested to hear if it's similarly straightforward on Debian (my second-favorite OS :)

Obviously requires support in the bootcode; I'm not sure of the state of that for Linux.

But yes, my understanding is it was quite expensive and the publisher was none too pleased (:

[1] There was, however, one game I worked on where they had to pull the boxes from stores (delivered, but not yet for sale) and swap out the disk in order to release a critical fix that was discovered too late. Fun times (:

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