tertle950

WOOO TITLE DROP

If I had any faith in American school systems, I would suggest bringing back computer classes instead of just trusting "digital natives" to run into every toll booth unhindered. But they will be taught by old people who are even more computer-illiterate than the students...

What do we do about this? How do we teach people computer literacy? What would the lesson plan even look like? I'd really like to hear some suggestions from someone more experienced with computers than myself.

Would the final exam be installing Arch Linux? ... I mean, knowing the software stack of a computer in-and-out is kinda useful, perhaps, and the nitty-gritty of all the packages does that well... But the average person never has to worry about partitions, and there's nothing about an Arch install that tests your knowledge of browser cookies and adblockers.

Are you commenting only for the sake of commenting?

This is not a very substantive addition; I'd say it's pedantic to say a divide that is "not [just] between smart and stupid people" does, in fact, divide smart and stupid people at SOME point.

Your other comment [1] is only slightly better, but I can't help but feel that you're presenting it as a contradiction where there is none. Yeah, us Americans are concerningly illiterate, but we're concerned in the first place because we all agree that we believe reading and writing is not a useless skill.

So ultimately, in both cases, the article is correct, and you're... also correct, but not actually adding anything to the conversation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48042684

LuaJIT was originally made with some x86 assembly wizardry so I'm not surprised to hear that the ARM version is worse.

Since we've stepped from interpreted language (Lua) to compiled-to-VM language (C#), let's go all the way down to compiled, low-level language (C) with Raylib!

https://www.raylib.com/

I'm curious as to how you came to that conclusion. Did you run any tests, or is it just a general observation? What's your computer hardware like? This isn't an accusation of anything, I promise I'm genuinely curious.

Is this about Master of Blocks?

There are a lot of free-as-in-freedom alternatives to (and clones of) PICO-8, but TIC-80 is indeed the most popular one, by far. And popularity is important for any software ecosystem. I really like that it supports other languages, even if that kinda inhibits its ability to be embedded into small hardware.

Apparently the nightly release supports DCPM samples now. Dunno why.

The fantasy computer by 100 rabbits? I love their philosophy, I'm glad Varvara exists, but I'm personally not up to program assembly for a 4-color screen, and I'm sure many others are the same.

For a small while I've had the idea of a [game engine/fantasy console/Scratch clone?] that comes packed with a bunch of example games. The example games should be good enough that people download it just to play them, but they are also encouraged to peek into their source code. I'd hope for it to be a sneaky gateway into programming.

For that, I'll keep this in mind: "Unlucky players may look at the source code of a chance-based effect to check if the odds are actually as stated."

The problem I'm pointing out is that it's a work based on a Valve property that fundamentally cannot be tied to the DRM because it's "just" a ROM.

I believe this came up when the creator was talking about libdragon-- Valve has been more forgiving of other games like Hunt Down the Freeman and whatnot because they're native executables with the Steam DRM, which video games based on Valve properties necessarily must have. Portal 64 simply cannot do this, because Steam is not a Nintendo 64 application.

If I recall correctly, there was also the issue that a Nintendo 64 ROM of their game would be fundamentally incompatible with Steam, which (as many forget) is technically their DRM solution. I could be wrong, of course.

I can feel my advertiser data being siphoned from my body already!

Yeah, it seems to only be a problem when you're a human being remixing the culture you grew up with.

Meta can admit to soullessly scraping books they don't own for their for-profit AI datasets [1], and it's not a problem because they're Meta. But if you're an artist? Nope. Sampling in hip hop songs, for example, is in a "complex legal gray area" (translation: "it's illegal but we don't want to admit that out loud") [2].

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-trained-ai-pirated-bo...

[2] https://urbanspook.com/copyright-laws-2025-impact-on-hip-hop...

Huh, didn't think I'd ever see anything related to Uxn/Varvara [1] make the front page for myself, though it has been discussed before. Neato.

Haven't yet experimented with it myself, but I like the idea; a runtime that is trivial to implement, especially for low-spec systems.

If you make anything in Uxntal, you can run it on your DS, a GBA, or any other machine that can run a Varvara emulator [2]. So if you want a program to last, that's one way to do it!

[1] https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html

[2] https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn#emulators

never knew I wanted this until I saw it! this looks very fully featured and awesome, will keep in mind for the future

Please explain how a set of instructions for a computer can "wear out" and "require maintenance", Word 2007 still writes documents fine enough for me

Remember when the web was just for displaying documents? Yeah, me neither

My favorite use of this toy is making something for one scale, and changing the scale. I end up getting these unique ... I'll call them "harmonic textures" each time, even though they're using the same "note pixel" layout. Very intuitive way to experiment with music, and I guess you can make art with it too.

Flower Garden: https://draw.audio/s/hngnldoov

I'm not a fantastic artist, admittedly. And it doesn't help when you're trying to balance that with music! But this is supposed to be a grassy flower garden.

wAIT WHAT HOW

Was there anything that pushed you forward? Some jank hitbox for the goal? I only got to 0.58 and I was sure it was the lowest possible time without maybe getting pushed by those rotating obstacles: https://youtu.be/s5bJMINot14

0.58 brute forced runs of the game until I got lucky

https://youtu.be/s5bJMINot14

This is actually my second 0.58 run, I think that's the fastest possible time (without obstacles pushing you forward?? oh no is that the new meta)

Most of my better times were achieved entirely with a combination of lucky obstacle placements and an ability to hold W. It's not a good game, but it's definitely meant more as a tech demo, so I just say "oh well".

On the plus side, the timer starts only when you begin moving the ball. Thank you for this quality of life feature!!

0.58

Make a plugin that interfaces with a CLI tool! Best of both worlds, I think!

I'd invest

The "license to rent a game" deal is a general grievance about Steam that is not related to the article.

Also it is one that can be extended to many other services offering digital goods for """purchase""", like iTunes

Piracy is the one true frontier for games preservation. If it's not on Steam or GOG, it may be the only feasible way to experience a game.

I believe "abandonware" is the correct term