stevecrox
@stevecrox@kbin.social
- Comment on What's up with Epic Games? 11 months ago:
As someone who bought Half Life 2 when it was released ..
I only remember people being excited about Steam, Web stores weren't a thing back then and they were the future! (It was the following years of audio and ebook stores locking stuff down and evapourating that taught us to hate it).
Game/Audio CD DRM hacking the kernel and breaking/massively slowing down your PC was pretty common back then and Steam' s DRM didn't do that.
The HL2 disc installer didn't require you to install Steam, once installed it asked you to setup Steam and there was a sticker under the DVD with the Steam code for you to enter.
You were then rewarded with a copy of HL2 Deathmatch and Counterstrike Source.
Steam wasn't always on DRM, back then ADSL/DSL was relatively new and alot of people were still stuck on Dial Up modems.
Steam let you sign in and authorize your games for 30 days at which point you would need to log into Steam again. This was incredibly helpful feature for young me.
- Comment on What's up with Epic Games? 11 months ago:
Basically Epic like every other publisher has created their own launcher/store.
They aren't trying to compete on features and instead using profits from their franchise to buy market share (e.g. buying store exclusives).
The tone and strategy often comes off as aggressive and hostile.
For example Valve was concerned Microsoft were going to leverage their store to kill Steam. Valve has invested alot in adding windows operability to Linux and ensuring Linux is a good gaming platform. To them this is the hedge against agressive Microsoft business practices.
The Epic CEO thinks Windows is the only operating system and actively prevents Linux support and revoked Linux support from properties they bought.
As a linux user, Valve will keep getting my money and I literally can't give it to Epic because they don't want it.
- Comment on Do the people in Reniassance festivals pccurring in Brotain also speak with faked British accents, or do they ise faked French/Iralian accents? 1 year ago:
Thats two hundred years and would cover the end of Plantagenet reign and the Tudor era.
Henry VIII reign happened during that period, at the beginning of your time period everyone would be catholic and at the end Queen Mary of Scotts was executed because the idea of a Catholic on the throne was unthinkable.
The UK is littered with castles and estates, normally they focus on specific historic events which happened at that location.
- Comment on Teach primary pupils real-world maths - Labour 1 year ago:
Using real world applications is changing the problem (what are you trying to solve).
My issue is teaching how you solve the problem.
As an example the indian method to teach multiplication is to draw lines equal to the first number, then perpendicular lines equal to the second and then count the points they bisect (e.g. draw 3 horizontal and 3 vertical lines and they cross 9 times).
Lastly I coach people in Agile (its a way of delivering stuff). An Agile team is brought together because a Product Owner has a problem and a vision on how to solve it.
The biggest factor in motivating a team and getting high performance is the product owners passion for their vision. You can have the most interesting problem in the world, if the product owner doesn't care neither does the team.
I suspect the same is true of teaching
- Comment on Windows: we noticed that you kept the useless search bar disabled since 2015, so we sent an update that re-enabled it without your permission 1 year ago:
Mint was a reaction to Gnome 3, the unique workflow upset a lot of people and the people behind Mint decided to build Cinnamon desktop (its Gnome 3 made to look/work like Gnome 2). They needed a distribution to build/test their work and so based a distribution off of Ubuntu and called it Mint.
As a bit of explanation, there are only a few projects which attempt to build an entire linux distribution from scratch. This involves finding code from thousands of sources, work out packaging, etc.. We call these 'base' distributions, Debian is the base distribution for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is the base distribution for Mint.
Ubuntu tends to be slightly ahead of Debian in the software versions it uses and automatically enables the 'non-free' repositories. Ubuntu tends to push some Canonical specific things like Snaps (which everyone hates)
I believe Mate rolls the Canonical specific things out of Ubuntu and you get the latest version of Cinnamon.
Its all a bit...
- Comment on Windows: we noticed that you kept the useless search bar disabled since 2015, so we sent an update that re-enabled it without your permission 1 year ago:
I would suggest looking at Crossover Linux by Codeweavers.
Linux has something called WINE, its an attempt to implement the Windows 95 - 11 API's so windows applications can run on linux.
WINE is how the Steam Deck/Linux is able to play Windows games. Valve embedded it into Steam and called it "Proton".
WINE is primarily developed by Codeweavers and they provide the Crossover application that makes setting up and running a Windows application really easy.
People will mention other wrappers (PlayOnLinux, Lutris, etc..) but Crossover makes it really easy.
There is an application database so you can see in advance if your applications would work: https://appdb.winehq.org/
- Comment on Teach primary pupils real-world maths - Labour 1 year ago:
Not really.
There are multiple ways to approach and conceptualise multiplication, division, simultaneous equations, binomial distribution, probability, etc..
I have met a few maths geniuses and we teach Maths the way they think and conceptualise Maths.
In my last job I was viewed as a superstar because I could take the algorithms the data scientists produced and explain them to non data scientists.
I didn't change the underlying maths, I tailored what to explain and examples to use based on my audience. This tended to get people really excited at what the data scientists had done.
Its the same with teaching, people need to understand and conceptualise a problem in a way that makes sense to them.
- Comment on Teach primary pupils real-world maths - Labour 1 year ago:
The issue is we only teach one method for approaching Maths so if you don't get it, tough.
In primary and secondary school I always struggled with Maths. During university I spent most of my energy reverse engineering the maths lessons so I could understand them.
Years later my sister was struggling with her Maths GCSE, I spent one evening explaining how I solve each type of problem. She went from a projected D to getting an A.
I was explaining this to an ex maths teacher who started asking how I approached things. Apparently I used the Indian method for one type of problem, the asian for anouther, etc..
The idea a student was struggling with one way of solving the problem and teaching them alternative methods never occurred because it was "outside the curriculum".
These days I quite like Maths puzzles.
- Comment on Wolf 359: The Massacre (part 1) 1 year ago:
I have always had 1 question.
In voyager we see the Borg have thousands of ships of varying sizes and control a vast area of space. Voyager is able to take down spheres and small cubes.
Yet in Wolf 359 a single cube attacks and destroys hundreds of star fleet vessels. If a single cube is able to have that level of effect why didn't the borg commit a larger fleet?
You have the same issue in First Contact, they only commit 1 cube.
Considering how difficult the federation finds holding them back, attacking with 3-6 cubes would seemto assure victory
- Comment on Brexit: Labour will seek re-write of deal, Starmer says 1 year ago:
Because the Tories have upset everyone internationally, so it isn't really an option. If you've been paying attention the EU has been playing a bunch of jobsworth type games with the UK.
Notice how he will do this in 2025, when the current agreement is up for renewel rather than immediately.
You also have the fact rejoin isn't winding the clock back to 2016, firstly we would loose all of our opt outs, things like the rebate, the euro, etc.. I don't think the reality would actually be popular.
Secondly the UK blocked a number of things like the EU Army (personally I think its a terrible idea, countries that don't spend enough looking to conbine to "save" money) so it isn't the same EU.
Lastly see above mentioned jobsworth behaviour, I would not be surprised if the EU demanded the UK to complete all the paperwork and drag the process out as long as possible (it takes 10 years for most countries).
- Comment on Baby boomers are sitting pretty – as millennials foot the bill for high inflation 1 year ago:
The issue is the state pension was raided in the 1980's to allow for reduced taxes and so now an increasingly large chunk of the national budget goes on state pensions.
If you factor in the majority of the NHS budget goes on geriatric care or elder social care you end up with more than 50% of the annual budget is to support the elderly.
Its not sustainable.
I think the easiest approach would be to means test the state pension by using tax thresholds. If your household income (excluding state pension) exceeds the free tax threshold (£12,500) then you don't qualify for a state pension.
Ideally we would increase minimum wage, the tax thresholds and state pension to align with the living wage foundation recommendations.
- Comment on 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport 1 year ago:
That is how you kill people.
The design of the road, the street furniture, things like pedestrian traffic, parking, etc.. will all affect how people drive along the road.
If you just drop the speed limit people will have to actively concentrate on their speed. If you don't actively enforce the speed limit people will concentrate on driving over speed adherence.
Adding chicanes, speed bumps, etc.. will slow people down but change how people drive a roads and can introduce new hazards.
I know of roads with no deaths that added speed bumps which now kill a person each year, a road that added chicanes that immediately suffered multiple crashes per day until they were removed.
Heck traffic calming where I currently live, was perfectly safe and brilliant until a new housing estate opened. The housing estate has increased traffic which has slowed the road but the traffic calming now suffers alot of near misses and emergency breaking because of the increased traffic. The road would now be safer without it and a speed camera placed at a key point.
Road Safety isn't something you can magically solve by dropping the speed limit or just adding chicanes. You need to think about alot.
- Comment on Why US tech giants are threatening to quit the UK 1 year ago:
From a business perspective, you need to assess the impact of the regulation on your profitabiity and then consider if investing business funds elsewhere would lead to greater profitability.
WhatsApp have a single product and have market dominance due to first mover advantage (e.g. everyone is on WhatsApp, so everyone uses WhatsApp). Due to the nature of the business pulling out doesn't make sense unless they only have a limited development team and having them work on UK legal requirements prevents them working on EU requirements, however they are largely similar...
Many 'BigTech' products were developed by small teams, the biggest barrier for entering the market isn't technology but user adoption (KBin, Mastodon, PeerTube & Lemmy demonstrate this, all were developed by 1-2 people in their spare time).
So a 'BigTech' company exiting would be giving up the market in that country and any profit and creating an opportunity for a new small company to grow and eventually compete with them. For example is Facebook pulled out, I'm guessing people would switch to NextDoor.
The US Technology sector is filled with Libretarians who get upset at the idea of regulation. I'm not sure Shareholders/Venture Capitalists would react well to them being irrational.
- Comment on Wilko collapses into administration putting 12,000 jobs at risk 1 year ago:
I think they mean Woolworths.
Fun story...
Plymouth's Woolworths was the largest in the country with the largest revenue (and profit). For 5 years it had no regional manager because no one from head office wanted to trek that far. As a result it was completely ignored and not refitted or supported.
During that period head office made us all do an employee survey. One of the questions was "Do you think Woolworths will still be here in 5 years". The store manager got shouted at because our store of 100 all said "no".
After much consideration we were all made to redo the questionaire, this time without the question.
Just as I left a regional manager was appointed who dictated floor layout changes. Being months from finishing university I told him his changes defied how shoppers acted and would cost the store thousands. He told me I was just a shop worker and knew nothing.
A week later on daily revenue of £10k-£20k (Saturday was £100k) the store was down £50k for the week. Apparently he forced more changes and it got worse.
Everyone I talk to in retail has similar stories, all of it is terribly managed.
- Comment on Government ignored its own experts over wildlife protection 1 year ago:
Politicians usually don't know anything about the domains they are put in charge of.
Their role is to provide leadership and direction based on the views of the people they represent.
When dealing with domain specific decisions they should refer to subject matter experts to seek advice and understanding of the available options. The ministries/departments exist to provide that advice and support its implementation.
A ministers job is to use the advice provided by their ministry/department to select a path forward that aligns with the direction the minister has set.
A minister ignoring advice of the ministry/department tells the department the leader doesn't respect or value it. This is really bad leadership.
It also means the minister isn't operating from a position of strength or knowledge. This means your more likely to make poor decisions which move you away from your goal.
I am not saying that aren't wider factors, but you expect the ministry/department to account for that as the minister should explain those.