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Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by AdmiralAsshat on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:01PM (#17067165)
Some great anecdotes in there.

As an aside, surely a person of Carmack's stature and knowledge would have a dedicated blog. I have to wonder if his decision to post so many of these wonderful stories on Facebook might be due to some "pressure" from his employer.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by JohnCarmack on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:28PM (#17068101)
Years ago, I felt burned when I wrote several articles for #AltDevBlogADay, and they vanished. I have much more confidence that what I write on FB won't vanish. I agree it isn't a great platform for writing, but I only write public long-form things a few times year, so I don't feel like going to another platform for it.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by jackewiehose on Monday May 14, 2018 @04:45PM (#17069291)
> I have much more confidence that what I write on FB won't vanish

But it's already not very accessible (almost vanished) without a facebook account. I couldn't find an index to other writings (in fact I didn't come up with a google query to find any of your other writings). I like these stories. Thank you.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by dgritsko on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:30PM (#17068659)
I specifically remember your quote "It is always better to not have a problem than to mitigate it" from the "Latency Mitigation Strategies" post on #AltDevBlogADay. It was so poignant to me that I wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to my monitor, where it remained for several years thereafter. Bummer that that content is no longer available (although I found a mirror of that particular post here: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigati...)
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by newscracker on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @04:24AM (#17072467)
I sincerely wish you would put also this outside of Facebook. Anyone who doesn't have a Facebook account or is not logged in would have a really terrible experience viewing this page and reading it. Facebook is very hostile to user experience on this matter, occupying a large amount of screen space for its own banner and making it difficult to read, unlike any other large platform I have seen. I urge you to check this out for yourself. I believe that history and heritage like this shouldn't be subjected to such obnoxious schemes and experiences.

If longevity is your only concern, you could create a blog on Wordpress.com (which has been around longer) and pay about $20 or so a year to have your own domain as well.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by baud147258 on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @07:41AM (#17073207)
I've read this article without being logged in and it looked very good and was more easy to read since there wasn't any distraction.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by newscracker on Thursday May 17, 2018 @11:58PM (#17098581)
Looks like the m.facebook.com link is a bit less annoying, though it also has the Login/Join popover. On a desktop browser, reading public posts (and pages) is very painful, with nearly one third of the screen always occupied by the Login/Join popover that also makes navigation difficult.

[This is easier to understand through direct experience.]

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by baud147258 on Friday May 18, 2018 @04:47AM (#17099730)
Right, I was on desktop, but I missed that the link above was to the mobile version (m.facebook), which did not had the login popover, which is very annoying on the desktop version.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by baud147258 on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @12:28PM (#17075170)
Of course I still think the lock-in of those articles in FB is a bad idea.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by 0xfeba on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:07PM (#17068459)
Maybe someone will write a metablogging platform that posts to WordPress, Facebook, Twitter (in multiple tweets!), Instagram, etc. all with one button. RAIC, redundant array of inexpensive content.

Actually, I'd be surprised if this didn't already exist.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by gowld on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:44PM (#17068781)
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by praneshp on Friday May 18, 2018 @03:09PM (#17104107)
Ha, I cannot resist pointing you to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVskziCc4w
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by EdSharkey on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:57PM (#17068373)
Hey John, thanks for Doom and Quake. I had lots of fun, and you and Abrash introduced me to 3D rendering techniques and advanced assembly programming techniques for which I am grateful since those skills put a little bread on the table long, long ago.

Would you ever team up with Romero to make another game? I'd love to see your guys' take on a battle royale game. I'm having lots of fun with PUBG, but a game like that needs your engine optimization-fu.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by kodisha on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:43PM (#17068776)
Today RAGE2 got announced on twitter.com/bethesda

I immediately remembered John's stories about porting RAGE to iOS.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by db48x on Monday May 14, 2018 @11:27PM (#17071431)
Do you at keep a backup copy of your articles?
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by nabla9 on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:16PM (#17067295)

    sudo apt install finger
    finger [email protected]
    finger [email protected]
sigh. his old ones have been archived https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive

Finger was really great microblogging platform.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by mattdeboard on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:01PM (#17067820)
Interesting link. Thanks.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by mseebach on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:22PM (#17067357)
Several of the anecdotes are about not doing what Jobs wanted him to. Zuck doesn't hold a candle to Jobs' force of personality. I don't know if Carmack has FU money, but if he decides to part with Facebook, he'll have three job offers before he's out of the building.

The only plausible explanation is that Carmack writes on Facebook out of his own free will.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by mpweiher on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:47PM (#17067634)
> I don't know if Carmack has FU money

He most definitely has. Heck, spent some of that on founding a rocket company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by craigsmansion on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:35PM (#17068173)
From the 2013 Quakecon keynote (The somewhat famous "Carmack uses Haskell" one):

"The rocketry has always been a negotiation with my wife, understandably so, where. She has always insisted I not be one of those celebrities that squanders all of their fortune being high on the hill and then being penniless some day, so, rocketry has always had this carved out area, where, "this is John's crazy money" while "All of this is to make sure the family is well taken care of and John's not going to be begging for work some time." But I basically expended my crazy money on Armadillo. So I don't expect to see any rockets in the real near future."

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by gnode on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:15PM (#17067958)
I'm not sure that's evidence that he still has that kind of wealth. To quote Elon Musk: "If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one."

Armadillo Aerospace went into "hibernation" in 2013 and sold off its assets.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by adventured on Monday May 14, 2018 @07:43PM (#17070419)
Three strong counter points to that.

1) id Software sold to Zenimax for $150 million. [1] John Carmack was a large shareholder at the time and claimed a year ago that Zenimax still owes him another $22.5 million. Adrian Carmack owned 41% of id when he was fired & bought out of the company in 2005. From that ownership consolidation, it's very likely John had 1/3 or more of the company when it was sold to Zenimax.

2) Oculus was purchased for $2 billion. $400m in cash and 23 million shares of Facebook. Those shares would now be worth $4.2 billion. Carmack owned a position in Oculus pre the Andreessen Horowitz investment. A 1% stake would have been a substantial windfall.

3) He earned a large amount of money from being an owner of id Software from the Wolfenstein days forward.

According to Wired, he put $8m into Armadillo before closing it down. The id sale alone covers that cost at least twice over after taxes.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zen...

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by seanp2k2 on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:15PM (#17068526)
FWIW that phrase has been around for a long time. It’s fairly common in the aviation industry, but it’s used in others as well: https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by mseebach on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:08PM (#17067892)
I have a vague recollection that he lost his shirt at some point, possibly building rockets. Possibly there was something in Masters of Doom[1]? I don't have it near me, so can't check.

1: Biography of id software, obviously heavily featuring Carmack. Highly recommended.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by gameswithgo on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:08PM (#17067893)
One of Carmack's driving visions is creating the metaverase. VR and huge scale computing networks are part of that, and Facebook has some expertise as both.

This is not me inferring Carmack's wish to work there are much as it is just assembling things he has tweeted in the past.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by estebank on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:25PM (#17068075)
> I don't know if Carmack has FU money

He famously bought a Ferrari and turbocharged it[1]. He doesn't _need_ to work for a living, he's doing what he wants to do.

[1]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/transportation/advanced-...

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by craigsmansion on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:20PM (#17068003)
I doubt Carmack could be pressured into using a particular platform, but either way it's a bit of a disappointment to see a living legend use common FB as a platform for blogging.

Imagine getting the latest fascicle of TAOCP from a popular social platform instead of http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/

It reminds me of a joke comic that praises "Don Knuth's Big Dummies Guide to Visual Basic", "All practical examples you can use! No theoretical stuff! --Don"

It's not quite "DOOM's John Carmack's latest l33test Farmville hacks and tricks," but it's a little closer than I'd like it to be.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by copperx on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:28PM (#17068631)
Linus Torvalds blogs (or at least used to) on G+.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @05:23AM (#17072701)
From a great height the differences between things at the lower height become insubstantial and meaningless.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by MattSteelblade on Monday May 14, 2018 @11:06PM (#17071352)
While it's a disappointment, it's understandable. Oculus is a subsidiary of Facebook.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by chickenfries on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:14PM (#17067274)
That seems like a HUGE reach to me. Not every technical person is a FOSS warrior. Would you say the same thing if he posted on Medium?
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by aetherson on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:16PM (#17067303)
He doesn't work for Medium.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by chickenfries on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:18PM (#17067315)
Ok, well, if this is really some big ploy by Facebook to now allow their employees to have personal blogs, then why do so many exist?

https://medium.com/facebook-design

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by ovao on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:54PM (#17067722)
I don't believe it's a ploy. I think John's just doing what he feels to be the right thing given that he is — at least to the audience he writes to — a high-ranking employee of Facebook.

I couldn't even tell you if he even thought that deeply about it. He possibly just thought "I can just write what I need to here, this works" and immediately considered it a solved problem.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by astrodust on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:52PM (#17067686)
It's probably because as a designer Facebook is fucking ugly and at least Medium has decent typography.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by rhizome on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:57PM (#17067756)
I suspect the function of design at FB is oriented more toward consistency than beauty.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by astrodust on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:59PM (#17067798)
If by "consistency" you mean "function over form" then sure. It's basically brutalist.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by peterwwillis on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:40PM (#17068218)
If a website's aesthetics were important to Facebook's users they never would have joined. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-li...
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by astrodust on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:45PM (#17068793)
Like Craigslist, people don't really have a choice with Facebook. You either use it, as ugly as it is, or don't.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by peterwwillis on Monday May 14, 2018 @04:27PM (#17069154)
I'm not sure what you mean. You mean they don't have a choice in the design? Because there were plenty of alternatives (MySpace). Facebook just provided a better experience.
Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by astrodust on Monday May 14, 2018 @06:25PM (#17069992)
Facebook's software might be better, their uptake was better, but that doesn't mean their site is more visually appealing. It just means it's more effective.

Function over form.

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by rhizome on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @12:37PM (#17075236)
By "consistency" I mean that its design is evolutionary and hasn't radically changed since the beginning.

http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interface...

Re:John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories by hinkley on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:38PM (#17068728)
nabla9 kinda sidles up to this, but some will argue that John Carmack was one of, if not the, original bloggers.

He used his .plan file on his unix account to post long musings on things he was concerned about in an era when running your own website was scary, or at least too trendy for people.

The problem with maintaining a blog indefinitely is the same problem I see with musicians. The really profound stuff you come up with shows up at a slow rate. After ten years of obscurity you have years of material stored up. But you write what you know for a while and you don't know that much more than you did when you started. What goes on your 2nd or 3rd album? New good stuff, or the things that weren't good enough for your debut? If you're smart you stop for a while until you have enough good stuff again.