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Going back to the OP though that talked about settling on the WIMP model, you're not really contradicting their point.

If you take a hammer from 1920 and lay it next to the most jazzed up hammer from 2020, they would be recognised as the same tool/having the same general purpose. A carpenter from 1920 wouldn't need to change the way he used a hammer if he picked up the 2020 model, even if the 2020 model might enable new ways of actually using it (or improve old ways of using it).

So while there is evolution and development going on, we're not replacing the hammer metaphor as it were.

The WIMP model has also seen evolution and refinement, but it's still recognisable as the same model. I think the analogy holds.


One thing that's important for Linux gaming is that games played under Proton on Steam are counted as Linux sales, so publishers and developers get accurate statistics on how many Linux gamers there are.

If the market is big enough, cross platform development is viable from the start.


On the other hand, if the Windows version works fine with Vulcan, why go through the trouble of making a Linux version?


Precisely, and developing for Windows is much easier than Linux anyway because it doesn't suffer from the same "lets break userspace every 2 years" problem.


I know that games are hectic and everything but I am still genuinely confused that porting a game is this complicated.

The main meat and potatoes of the game is either nearly platform agnostic (Vk, OpenGL, or emulation) or usually similar in principle (audio).

Maybe I've been spoilt by only working on open source projects where people try to write good code because it's public.


We didn't port our game Void Bastards to Linux because the sales are _so_ low we won't see a return on investment. Yes its easy these days, but there is still a few days messing around with builds and a few days testing. There is a good chance we won't see a week of salary as a return.


If you see how hard of a time publishers have to get their games running on the wide range of Windows PCs, especially at release, it's easy how they don't want to add a second operating system to the requirements as well.


Yeah, there's never any issues keeping games working on Windows...


There are sometimes problems, sure, but compared to Linux, where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version, it's pretty damned good at compatibility.


Age of empires 2 works out of the box on windows 10 ... The game was compiled with Visual Studio 6.0 ... Even that still runs on Win10. So yeah, it's pretty damn good.


> where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version

Ship non-system libraries with your application instead of assuming they will be in /usr/lib* and that's a solved problem. Valve even does that for you with the Steam runtime.

This isn't any different on Windows - if you don't bundle your dependencies (including MSVCRT / .NET / whatever) then you will run into problems.


True. I've heard some devs are spending at least some time to optimize their games to work better with Proton.


Wine/proton team could provide tech support service to firms trying to make their application wine compatible.


As long as the game runs fine and it is supported, that's perfectly fine for me. Most ports use ad hoc emulation layers anyway that never see updates once released, while proton see continuous improvements (but of course it can also regress).

The better ports use the native APIs of course, but are few and far between.


It's probably easier to develop proton support for a Windows than to port the entire game to Linux.


Sure, but my point was that this shows the value in making a game that's easily portable to begin with. This is more for future games rather than converting existing ones.


How so? At the time of sale it's not clear how the user will play the game, especially considering only a few titles are available officially for Proton.


Hm? All titles on Steam when played with Proton are registered as being played on Linux, not just the ones available officially, and if you do this with something you just purchased it will show up in Steam's statistics as a Linux sale.

This lets the publishers and developers know that there's a market of Linux gamers because they can see that X thousand players play their game on Linux. So when they make their next game, hopefully they'll pick technologies that lets them release with proper Linux support and not "hope it runs under Proton"-support.


Do you have a source for this? I don't doubt that's how it works but it doesn't sound likely.


Here in Europe they're experimenting with using EVs to deliver goods to restaurants and shops at night, since they're so quiet they can operate at night without disturbing anyone. This massively cuts down on the hours needed to get everything out since there's no traffic to worry about, which cuts costs too.

It also alleviates traffic during the day by removing those trucks.

It would be easy for governments to subsidize parts of this for the good of society.


Roughly 1/3 of the operating costs of trucking is the fuel, another 1/3 is wages, and then the remaining 1/3 covers everything else (facilities, maintenance, repairs, purchase cost of vehicles, insurance, etc. etc.).

So ~33% of a truck's cost is spent on fuel.


One point to consider there is how poorly managed our elderly care is, well before this crisis. It's hard to determine for sure but I can't imagine that it didn't factor into our high mortality among the elderly.

Staff went to work without PPE, and some were ordered to go to work despite showing symptoms.

The effects of COVID19 are not tied solely to the immediate actions in March and April but are affected by systemic issues too.


Maybe we should, as a society, invest in taxis equipped with medical facilities and trained personnel so that they can provide first response medical treatment while on the way to the ER.

I'm sure that would save a lot of lives. An ambulatory medical service, if you will.


Sometimes ambulances are occupied and taking a taxi goes faster. Especially if it's something which isn't immediately life threatening.

I once dislocated my shoulder while on a large trampoline and was unable to get up from my hands and knees due to the intense pain whenever the trampoline wobbled. The ambulance was redirected to more serious injuries three times. I was stuck in that position waiting for two hours before it arrived.


That’s a problem with the ambulance service. Not with people being able to drive while drunk.


Yes. I was answering a comment suggesting the use of an ambulance (instead of a regular taxi). Simply pointing out that, in practice, there are times when a taxi can get you there faster.


Fair enough :)


Sure, that's true.

In that scenario it would also be appropriate to wait for a driver to sober up before driving you to the hospital if neither ambulance nor taxi were available (or delayed). One glass of wine would be out of most people's systems after two hours.

Thus poking hole in the "drunk drive someone to the hospital" argument, which is what this was all about in the first place.


I did argue, in my original comment, that drunk driving should not be an option. I certainly stand by that. My original comment also mentioned a taxi, to which you replied about ambulances.

In my previous comment I just meant that sometimes ambulances can take a good while and a taxi might not.

In the unfortunate case of the trampoline there were several sober people with driver's license and cars available and a taxi would have been there immediately.

Unfortunately,they failed to get me out of there, meaning I still had to wait until an ambulance was available. It was beyond painful and exhausting both physically and mentally. But it was still technically not an emergency.


Note that ambulance ride (depending on insurance) may cost an order or 2 of magnitude more than the taxi. Well worth it in some circumstances - but not always the best option.


This didn't spring to my mind as I'm Swedish and here it's less than a taxi and any medical costs beyond the first USD $130 per year is covered by the free health insurance.


Uber Meds.


Common housecats that are allowed outside are some of the bloodthirstiest predators on the planet.

They can kill up to 200 animals per year, despite being well fed and cared for. They're doing it for sport essentially.

They will hunt and kill common shrew for example despite not eating them. They'll eat mice and birds, but shrews they kill just for the hell of it.


> some of the bloodthirstiest predators on the planet

Present company excluded, of course. A typical human "sports hunter" can easily kill a lot more than 200 animals. And if you count all the animals that die to feed us or are simply accidental casualties of our infrastructure and resource extraction... well, the mind boggles.


Animals who die to feed us aren't really relevant, are they? These 200-ish animals killed by housecats are on top of the food they're already receiving at home, which is made from slaughtered animals.

A sports hunter who doesn't eat their kills but only hunts for fun is an apt comparison, but do they really kill 200 animals per year? That's more than one every two days. Typically that would be a weekend hobby and even if they went hunting 52 weeks of the year that's almost 4 kills per hunting weekend. You really think that's plausible (or even legal, given restrictions on hunting)?


Plus, hunters tend to eat their quarry.

The main exception is probably people who hunt feral pigs in Texas, but those are just an ecological menace to be exterminated.


Isn't this what we wanted from cats historically?


Yeah, but this behaviour is not really bred into cats the way we've bred behaviour into dogs. Cats and humans is more of a mutually beneficial arrangement where we get pest control and they get shelter and a steady food supply.

They kind of just moved in with us several thousand years ago and stuck around because it worked out well for them.


I think a lot of the time people think they have performance issues when they in fact don't, likewise with stability and flexibility.

In most cases, writing the readable and straightforward version first and only moving to the less readable but more X version (for any given value of X) after it's evident that you need to is the optimal solution.

It's the programming equivalent to buying cheap tools first and only buying the expensive version once the cheap one breaks: If it breaks you used it enough to warrant the expensive and more durable one, and if it didn't break you didn't have to spend more money than necessary.


I do see your point but let me say a bit about performance, performance matters a whole lot if your software is being used seriously all day long for getting things done in the real world.

If your software is going to be someone's day job it can't afford to be slow because users would take note and complain loud and clear because it's wasting their time. Just imagine git taking 15mins for showing diffs, would you accept that for an improvement in code readability and straightforwardness.

So for different industries there are different X's that matter a whole lot more than mere readability and developer convenience.


I absolutely agree that performance matters a whole lot, it's one of the most important considerations in software.

It's also true that many developers are not very good at spotting where and how to improve performance, and what trade-offs are appropriate, and that's what I meant.

Write the straightforward version first that's easy to read so that when you need to improve performance, it's easy to use a profiler to go in and rewrite the non-performant parts in a less readable but faster way.


This kind of ties back in to the point of the article.

For people who have used $EDITOR for 20+ years there's little incentive to change to something else, but if you want to bring in fresh eyes to your project so that there'll be enough people around in another 20 years to maintain the whole thing it behoves you to think about attracting those people.

Sane defaults and being more approachable is a good way to do that.

Does emacs even offer anything like `vimtutor`?


>Does emacs even offer anything like `vimtutor`?

https://i.stack.imgur.com/egD8V.jpg

That is the splash page that hasn't changed much since 2000. Reading the helpfully highlighted first menu entry do you think that Emacs has a tutorial?

Users who can't even be bothered to read the text in front of them are not an asset to a project that doesn't charge them, they are a liability since they force the project in stupid directions. The death of firefox is a perfect example.

The thing that Emacs should focus on the future is true concurrency. Nice to haves would be a non-gtk gui, adding scheme scripting support and releasing a space cadet mechanical keyboard.


I don't follow this stuff closely, but I do have it in my RSS reader.

Here's someone recreating the Space Cadet keyboard key caps -- i.e. the plastic covers for the keys, not the actual keyboard. This is a more modern profile (key shape), rectangular/cylindrical similar to modern keyboards rather than the spherical top of the key like in the 1970s and 1980s.

It might give you an idea how expensive a custom keyboard would be.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechGroupBuys/comments/j3pmmn/gb_gm...


> releasing a space cadet mechanical keyboard

The mechanical keyboard community will probably get there first.

From a quick search, I've found this [1], which goes a bit beyond the original Space Cadet keyboard.

[1] https://yiancar-designs.com/portfolio/hyper7/


> Does emacs even offer anything like `vimtutor`?

Yup. And iirc it's more discoverable than vimtutor because it's on the first page of the vanilla Emacs


Take a look at Jurassic Park sometime, the Spielberg one from 1993. They used animatronics for most of the dinos and they look almost real still, almost 30 years on.

The same with the original Star Wars trilogy, they're all models lit by actual lights so there's a depth and "realness" to the lighting that makes it look so much more authentic than even modern CGI.


Indiana Jones special effects were pretty interesting too in that regard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN4weKvqmb8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceegyOXzh0


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