News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

kosei

Re:Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf] on Thursday June 15, 2023 @09:22PM (#36349664)
It was a different time: “Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person”

So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are paid much more now as well. People pretend it’s the same industry but it’s evolved dramatically.

Re:Google doesn’t want employees working remotely anymore on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @09:58PM (#36236210)
I wonder how long it takes to go from “those who live near Google offices” to “all employees”. Once 80-90% of employees are back at work regularly it’s not a stretch to believe that those few people who are always remote will be seen as less effective and less connected to their peers going into the office everyday. This is likely one step of many.
Re:Introducing Age Verification on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @04:03PM (#28609259)
Though I applaud the effort to get age right and protect players, I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable having me or my child scan our photo ID and selfie to upload it as part of a login flow to an application.
Re:AppLovin Said to Acquire Berlin’s Adjust in $1B Deal on Thursday February 04, 2021 @02:16AM (#26023335)
Pretty wild. May be buying Adjust for a low price here, but the vertical integration of Applovin (a game developer/ad tech platform) owning Adjust (the biggest mobile attribution platform) and its data and all the data of its game developer partners seems... pretty questionable.
I love this letter. This is exactly the type of direction and freedom to come up with solutions that I would expect from a strong CEO or leader. Not prescriptive, but clear on which problems are critical to solve.
Holy cow, if that doesn’t come off as biased, I don’t know what does.
As someone who works in the video games industry, I can guarantee it is the lockdown. Stay at home orders align really closely with significant lifts in new players, increased hours played, and many other core metrics across the industry. And many games have seen significant lifts in their existing live service performance (not just new games).
Re:Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:01AM (#20131218)
> "Dougherty said that despite rain, Maker Faire’s big Bay Area event last week met its ticket sales target."

Why would you set a target so low that meeting it still results in bankruptcy?

Re:This week’s dead Google product is Google Trips on Thursday June 06, 2019 @11:53AM (#20115727)
And this is happening the same day they show off their brand new Stadia product? Oops.
Re:The Long and Lucrative Mirage of the Driverless Car on Thursday May 16, 2019 @11:22AM (#19929832)
Curious whether VC funding anticipated this long a timeline for autonomous driving and VR or if they all got swept along with the hype too. Countless billions invested with a very long time horizon.
Re:I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion on Saturday April 27, 2019 @02:28PM (#19766907)
True. The comment I responded to specifically referred to Senior Data Analyst.
Re:I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion on Saturday April 27, 2019 @12:21PM (#19766269)
Really? $125k doesn't seem low to me based on experience. Also, just looked on Payscale and it says Senior Data Analyst (with 6 years experience) salary range was $63-113k.
Re:I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion on Saturday April 27, 2019 @12:17PM (#19766242)
Title seems pretty click baity. She acknowledges that her side passions (creative/design/art) may not be what will pay the bills and that she is happy in the role for now.
Is this really more slimy than targeted ads? At least this is based on the content, not the person's information who is browsing it.
Re:How Diapers Work (1996) on Sunday April 14, 2019 @11:39AM (#19660001)
As a parent, this was always fascinating to me. Cool to see the science behind diapers.

> Given the strong chemical attraction of sodium for water and the strong molecular structure of the polymer, you can no more squeeze the urine out of a diaper gel than squeeze the water out of Jell-O.

Only read part of the article because I got sucked into reading about Mike Myers and his comeback...
Re:Defeating Feature Fatigue (2006) on Monday April 01, 2019 @01:50AM (#19540854)
Love this line:

> Put simply, what looks attractive in prospect does not necessarily look good in practice. Consumers often become frustrated and dissatisfied with the very cornucopia of features they originally desired and chose. This explains a recent nationwide survey that found that after buying a high-tech product, 56% of consumers feel overwhelmed by its complexity.

Some of the writing here came out really petty. Made it difficult to read and take the article seriously.

> It seems the socially-awkward Low had a thing for rich, mildly attractive, blonde daughters of famous American families.

> [Low would] be photographed with his sweaty, alcohol-flushed face on her shoulder.

Sort of reminds me of the website SpinSpotter. Great idea, but had trouble finding a real audience for its product.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinSpotter

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