News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

rayalez

Tried asking Claude to do that, ended up with something pretty beautiful:

Everything is made of atoms & energy, life evolves, math describes reality, knowledge builds on itself, humans need each other & Earth to survive – test ideas, learn from mistakes, be kind, stay curious.

Thanks!

Yeah, no good comes from taking things personally, or getting offended at things, or arguing about who's getting treated more unfairly. I'm just not my best self today.

> It's a complaint about inequality towards women, and also the inequality that men face due to misguided masculinity encouraging them not to seek medical advice (and instead rely on DIY nonsense).

It's a generalization that paints men in a negative light, which I took personally.

Anyhow, I don't usually pick fights online, I'm just particularly miserable today because my stupid health keeps hurting me for no reason.

To say something on topic - I've been talking to Claude about my health problems, and, while I still can't figure out what's wrong with me, I find it extremely helpful. It teaches me all sorts of things about health and medicine that no doctor would have the time or patience to explain, and helps out a lot, both with helpful information, and emotional support. I realize that it's kinda bleak to be receiving those things from an LLM instead of a person, but here we are.

I've been to dozens of doctors, spent a lot of money, they all were extremely unhelpful. Claude does offer a lot of advice and information that no doctor ever shared with me.

As a guy struggling with a confusing health issue for close to a decade, and having the exact same experience, I'll ask you to keep your stereotypes to yourself.

It's weird how people who complain about inequality and lack of empathy towards one group, are completely incapable or unwilling to offer any of that to other people.

Re:Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com on Thursday September 17, 2020 @07:17PM (#24511127)
I have switched to Namecheap from GoDaddy, and it's been great. I've been using Namecheap for a few years now, and never had an issue.

Just wanted to add my opinion to the thread and thank you guys for a very good service.

This is a little hobby project I'm working on, and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Mirage is a lighthearted, social, easy to learn roleplaying game, focused on storytelling, improvisation, imagination and creativity. Your goal is to make up and play out a fun story. You will go on adventures, complete quests, find treasure, slay dragons, and gain awesome powers.

Mirage is made for the people who, like me, enjoy the social/creative aspects of Dungeons and Dragons, but don’t like the countless arguments over the intricate rules, the painfully slow combat encounters, and all the tedious arithmetics.

It’s perfect for people who want to get started with roleplaying but have no experience, and it’s great for getting your non-gamer friends or kids into RPGs. It’s great for improvisers and storytellers who want to focus on playing a fun long-form improv game, without the complicated rules getting in the way.

The rules are very simple, but deep and interesting enough for the experienced players to play over a long period of time.

Players can create a character and begin playing in 15 minutes. For GMs we have a collection of adventures that are easy to prepare and run: https://rpgadventures.io

You can play it in-person or over discord. It's super fun, and I hope you guys enjoy it!

Thanks for replying!

You can see the playtests of some of our adventures here:

https://youtube.com/channel/UC0TtjWQpHurgQMpLxMrWUsQ/videos

This is a little hobby project I'm working on, and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Mirage is a lighthearted, social, easy to learn roleplaying game, focused on storytelling, improvisation, imagination and creativity. Your goal is to make up and play out a fun story. You will go on adventures, complete quests, find treasure, slay dragons, and gain awesome powers.

Mirage is made for the people who, like me, enjoy the social/creative aspects of Dungeons and Dragons, but don’t like the countless arguments over the intricate rules, the painfully slow combat encounters, and all the tedious arithmetics.

It’s perfect for people who want to get started with roleplaying but have no experience, and it’s great for getting your non-gamer friends or kids into RPGs. It’s great for improvisers and storytellers who want to focus on playing a fun long-form improv game, without the rules getting in the way.

It’s rules are very simple, but deep and interesting enough for the experienced players to play over a long period of time.

You can play it in-person or over discord. It's super fun, and I hope you guys enjoy it!

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:48AM (#24362040)
Do you have any ideas on how you would change reddit to fix all these issues?

Specifically the community moderation and voting system?

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:45AM (#24362023)
In addition to that google's AMP made reddit totally unusable, after clicking on a link it kept taking me to logged out version which hides most of the comments, and sorts them by "best".

Remember that there's an https://old.reddit.com, it still works great, I use only this version now. There are browser extensions that automatically redirect you to the old version (not on mobile, unfortunately).

Re:Game Design Curriculum on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:37AM (#24314417)
There might not be a deep philosophical answer. Making games is fun, playing games is fun, that's all there is to it. If you can make money doing something you enjoy - why wouldn't you?

To try to go for a philosophical answer - why do we do anything? Cooking, writing, building shelter, sending spaceships to mars. I think generally, the purpose is to make human brains feel good. Ultimately, we all are going to die and nothing we do will have a lasting impact, but as long as we're here - we spend our time making ourselves and each other feel good. Games are one of the ways to make people feel good.

A more cynical answer - we make games for no good reason. Games feel good in the moment, but feel like a waste of time and energy afterwards, making a net negative impact on people's lives, like junk food or addiction. People play them against their best interests, because it feels good in the moment, and because people aren't rational creatures. People make games because making games is fun and makes them money.

One more answer - making games is art. Art is cool. Making games is an art that can be beautiful, interactive, engaging. It's a combination of multiple art forms (painting, sculpting, storytelling, music, etc). It's also way more fun than most kinds of art, people don't get addicted to paintings or books the way they get addicted to video games. I doubt that people got as much joy out of looking at Mona Lisa as they did out of playing Minecraft.

One more related thought - the real world is overrated. We have the power to make imaginary worlds that are far more engaging and satisfying than the one where we live. Better ones. So we make them.

These are different possible perspectives, pick yours. There can be a bunch more I'm not considering.

Re:Emacs 27.1 on Tuesday August 11, 2020 @08:32AM (#24119611)
Did anyone manage to make a good Emacs config for effective React webdev?

I'm really missing graphql and styled components syntax highlighting and generally a bugless properly working webdev mode. Currently it keeps messing up indentation and losing syntax highlighting.

I tried moving to VS code, and I saw how amazing an editor designed for webdev can be. But despite all the issues, I'm still much more productive in emacs, so I went back.

I really wish it was possible to setup emacs for modern webdev, but I haven't found a way yet.

Any tips/advice?

Re:Making Advanced GUI Applications with Godot on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:15AM (#24047511)
Houdini/Nuke nodes and vex. It's for a very specific application (computer graphics), but it's incredibly powerful and works amazingly well.

Ask HN: Did anyone manage to create a good Emacs config for React webdev?

Hi! I love emacs, but the deeper I go into react programming, the harder it gets to use.No indentation or syntax highlighting for GraphQL and Styled Components, web-mode constantly loses syntax highlighting and must be reloaded, unhelpful quotes being added for me where they shouldn't be.I tried VSCode and it has so many slick and convenient features, but feels way slower and more sluggish than...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )

Ask HN: What are some good online CS Master's programs?

Hi! I'm trying to find a good online program to get a Master's degree in CS. I'm a competent self-taught web developer, but I have a non-technical Bachelor's degree, which procludes me from getting the work visa and makes job search more difficult.So I'm looking for a high quality program that will teach me some solid fundamentals of CS I may have missed (algorithms, data structures, etc), and...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
It seems like their admission requirements demand a technical (math/CS) bachelors, and my diploma is from completely unrelated field.

Ask HN: What are some good online CS Master's programs?

Hi! I'm trying to find a good online program to get a Master's degree in CS.I'm a competent self-taught web developer, but I have a non-technical Bachelor's degree, which procludes me from getting the work visa and makes job search more difficult.So I'm looking for a high quality program that will teach me some solid fundamentals of CS I may have missed (algorithms, data structures, etc), and...

( Read More... | 3 comments | 2 points | on HN )
- Take an improv class. It's excellent for building confidence, meeting new people, learning social skills, practicing creativity, being funnier, and generally having a really fun evening once or twice per week.

- Writing posts or making video tutorials is really great. Can be profitable, lead to professional growth, but also it's a great hobby and a fun way to create some value. Even if you don't become a successful/professional blogger/youtuber, it feels awesome to record a tutorial, see the views go up, and receive comments from people who found your video helpful. Also it develops writing/speaking skills, motivates you to learn the topic in more depth, clarifies your thoughts and understanding, gives you valuable feedback from more experienced people, grows your audience.

- Gamedev and Computer Graphics are REALLY fun to do. For people here I recommend Godot and Houdini, it's incredibly interesting, entertaining, and satisfying.

Here's a quick tutorial that I've made on procedurally generating a pretty landscape with Houdini:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o3mbIRZhv20

Tell HN: iBooks has deleted all my downloaded books

So apparently when your iPad is getting low on space, it just deletes all the books from your iBooks library. Without asking for permission or notifying you in any way. It "offloads" them to the iCloud, so you have to re-download them manually.Which is a very unpleasant thing to find out after you went on a summer vacation to the area without the internet, hoping to plug off, having downloaded...

( Read More... | 38 comments | 55 points | on HN )
Re:Greatest Java apps on Monday June 29, 2020 @10:17AM (#23677806)
I'm planning to get a Masters degree in CS, and it bothers me that the program I chose uses Java as the primary language. They have an awesome theoretical curriculum, but it looks like I'll have to use Java to complete all the practical tasks.

I'm a Node/React web developer, I want to build a SaaS startup, and I'm not really interested in writing Java apps, I doubt I'll ever want to use it for something.

Do you guys know if Java would be really painful to learn? It's hard to get motivated about learning a thing I'll probably never use in practice.

Speaking of improv - we have a fun little community doing improv over discord voice chat. We have a few experienced improvisers running sessions and sharing their experience, and a bunch of novice people eager to learn and to play some games. Come join us, it's really fun!

https://discord.gg/XHwFXQs

No experience necessary, if you want to learn and play some games - you're welcome!

Ask HN: A way to adblock “we're using cookies” popups?

Whatever the intent of the GDPR was, the practical result is that now I have to click away the annoying "we're using cookies" popup on every website.Is there any way to do this automatically? If there isn't - there should be. Maybe people should use some special tag for them, so that it would be easy for users to block them on all the websites, if they want to.

( Read More... | 339 comments | 668 points | on HN )
Re:Simplifying Board Games on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:48AM (#23392332)
For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to do something like that for DnD. Come up with a system that doesn't have countless intricate rules and tedious arithmetics, but instead focuses on the social/creative aspects of the game, encourages creativity, improvisation, and storytelling. Keeping the rules fun, simple, accessible, yet flexible and powerful. Something you can play with your kids, or introduce to non-gamer friends to have a fun evening or two (but also is capable of supporting longer campaigns if you get into it). You can learn everything you need to play the game by reading a couple of pages, or teach it in 10-15 minutes.

The project is still in the very early stages, basically a draft, but I'd love to know what you think:

https://playmirage.io/

(For people who have some good ideas about the rules, or want to contribute ideas for spells, magic items, and adventures - project is open source and available on github: https://github.com/raymestalez/mirage)

Re:I trick my well-developed procrastination skills on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @03:51AM (#23232386)
> When I want to go to bed, I have to write down the first thing I will do the next day.

Wow, this is excellent. Thank you for sharing, I'll try to implement this one.

Although my problem is that I break this type of unbreakable rules regularly, I have upsettingly little control over what the future me is going to do.

Re:I trick my well-developed procrastination skills on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @03:42AM (#23232317)
"I am not afraid. I am not afraid because if I let myself get too scared I might not be able to do what needs to be done. And I'm not the type of person who backs down. I am the type of person who does the right thing, even if it's hard. Right now, the right thing is to [x]. And even if it doesn't work, I'll just do the next right thing, and the next, and the next. I'll keep on trying until I figure out a way."

Older »