How will this not be nausea-inducing if the wi-fi connection alone adds a 20-30ms delay, plus whatever additional delay from protocol, encoding/decoding, etc.?

Nearly 1/3 of Sony's total revenue comes from the Game & Network Services division as of 2022. About 1/6 of their game sales revenue from the same period came from first-party exclusives.

Right, it's not like they have a critically acclaimed, hit prestige TV show based on one of their first-party properties, or an exclusive super hero franchise that's moved over 33 million units with a highly anticipated sequel on the way this fall, or an instantly recognizable character who's been burning up the sales charts since his PS2 debut and has an Amazon Prime TV show in the works.

There's more, of course, but I think that's already enough to show that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Yep. Microsoft and Activision are both wretched hives of scum and villainy, but if you didn't buy a load of ATVI in the $60s or low $70s in anticipation of this merger going through at $95, *you're* the one losing out.

Oh great, youâ(TM)ve just given us the plot for Terminator 7 â" the real Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be sent back in time to kill James Cameron before he can make the Terminator movies in the first place, to prevent the rise of an actual Skynet. (Echoes of Wes Cravenâ(TM)s New Nightmareâ¦)

Machine learning is, by its very nature, unreliable and ethically ignorant. It is the apotheosis of increasing laziness and impatience in software development circles, where people have literally thrown their hands up, tossed all the data at the machine, and said they donâ(TM)t care HOW a problem gets solved, as long as the machine can do SOMETHING to the data to make it pass a very limited set of tests. As long as it can step over that extremely low bar, it will be considered good enough. When edge cases are inevitably found, theyâ(TM)ll just get added to the test case set, the model will be retrained, and entirely new ways for the ML algorithm to fuck up will be created, continuing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole that can literally never perfect itself over any decently sized problem space.

In practice, this means that ML should never be the determining factor when the potential consequences of an incorrect decision are high, because incorrect decisions are GUARANTEED, and its decision making process is almost completely opaque. It shouldnâ(TM)t drive a car or fly a plane, control a military device, perform surgery, design potentially dangerous chemicals or viruses, or try to teach people important things. It shouldnâ(TM)t process crime scene evidence, decide court cases, or filter which resumes are considered for a job. Itâ(TM)s perfectly fine for low-stakes applications where no one gets hurt when it fucks up, but we all know it will get used for everything else anyway.

Imagine what happens once you have dozens of layers of ML bullshit making bad decisions with life-altering or life-ending consequences. Depending on how far we allow the rabbit hole to go down, that could very well lead to an apocalyptic result, and it could come from almost any angle. A auto-deployed water purification chemical with unintended side effects. Incorrect treatment for a new pandemic pathogen. Autonomous military devices going rogue. All things are possible with the institutionalization of artificial stupidity by people who donâ(TM)t understand its limitations.

Of course we should start regulating the shit out of this right now. And, of course, we will obviously NOT do that until the first hugely damaging ML fuckup happens.

Despite all wish-fulfillment reporting to the contrary, this deal is going through. The regulatory bodies have already left large holes for Microsoft to drive through to obtain approval, and Nintendo's willingness to sign a 10-year deal to keep Call Of Duty on their platforms is the nail in the coffin of Sony's counterargument.

Is this deal bad for gamers? Yes. Is it monopolistic? No. Is it anti-competitive? Sort of, but not outrageously so.

If you want to drown your sorrows, buy Activision stock in the $70s and enjoy your $95/share acquisition price when the deal inevitably closes. Then spend your $15+/share profit on games from other companies if it makes you feel better.

Just because the PS5 wonâ(TM)t automatically support PS4 PSVR games on the PSVR2, that doesnâ(TM)t preclude developers from offering free updates to PS5 versions of their game that do support PSVR2, while simultaneously making the game available for sale to new PSVR2 owners. Weâ(TM)ve already seen a half step toward this with games like âoeThe Persistenceâ, which got a free PS5 update (minus PSVR support, since PS5 native games canâ(TM)t use PSVR). I would expect the more significant PSVR sellers to get free PS5 updates with PSVR2 support.

"Everybody knows the burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground. Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?"

...

"You know what, Stuart? I like you. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park."

Yes, I like functional programming. But like most other things, it depends on the problem you're trying to solve. If you mosty deal with nails, you'll want to use a hammer. If you mostly deal with screws, you'll want to use a screwdriver. Hammers make lousy screwdrivers and vice-versa.

Functional languages are great for highly parallelized computation because well-behaved functions don't have side effects, and that eliminates entire classes of race condition and locking issues. Functional languages are also good for abstracting higher-order patterns, since you can manipulate data and other functions without having to care about their lower-level details. Specific functional languages like Scheme, where code and data share the same form, are great for creating custom syntactic structures and writing self-modifying code.

If you aren't doing any of those types of things, then functional programming may seem pointless to you, and that's OK. But every developer should be aware of the tools available to them in case the day comes when they might benefit from using them.

If you're a developer, work for companies that build complete hardware/software systems rather than just software. Typically if they design and manufacture in-house, the bulk of the software work requires close collaboration with hardware, FPGA, and systems engineers, and this works best keeping everyone local. Attempts to outsource in these environments usually end in failure, and the companies that try often learn their lesson and don't try again.

Nonconformism is always viewed with suspicion by the masses. Either you have the courage of your convictions or you don't. Any company that's going to judge me based on the lack of a Facebook account isn't someplace I'd want to work.

The story that I've heard repeated often is that developer salaries tend to flatline in a person's 50s and even retreat a bit as they close out their careers, while managerial salaries continue to increase throughout the later years of a career. Whether this is supported by actual data or not, I don't know. I can certainly see the potential for this to happen with developers who get complacent in a long-term job where they've maxed out their career path and then get laid off, which could force them to take a significantly lower-paying job elsewhere. I've transitioned from development into management over the past few years, largely because I'd endured a string of awful managers and was confident I could do a better job. Management is definitely not for everyone, though -- it requires a different set of skills from development, and many developers lack the patience and people skills needed to do the job well. But developers with an interest in and aptitude for management clearly make the best managers for development groups, because they have a deep understanding of the issues their teams face, and they have a much easier time building trust and credibility with the group. In the end, it's really about where your skills and interests lie. Do you have the patience to deal with petty office politics, hand-holding MBAs through repeated explanations of the mythical man month, fielding complaints from your team that you're too focused on schedule and complaints from above that you're not focused enough on schedule? Do you get gratification out of identifying and building on your developers' strengths and helping them earn their way to a promotion? Do you enjoy solving problems related to scoping, sequencing, and balancing of other people's work to define and meet milestones? Do you mind dealing with software licenses, office supply purchases, and other mundane "care & feeding" tasks? Can you be content relegating coding to a hobby activity, rather than your main pursuit? If you answered "yes" to all of the above, then it may be worth considering a management path. If not, then you should stay sharp, stay current, and keep your skills valuable and marketable, regardless of your age.

Same thing here. Our project has been using git for years, much to the chagrin of the least common denominator middle managers in our department. They've been pushing hard to get rid of useful work tools with "funny names" under the guise of a common tools initiative that was always in the bag for Microsoft. This will really stick in their craw. I love it.

This is exactly what I do. It also has the advantage of letting you do the lossy compression on your own terms, so the resulting files don't automatically sound like shit.

Lambda expressions are in fact cool, but anyone who thinks they're new must have been in a coma since the 1930s.