ugo

ugo, 1 day ago

Use uBlock Origin. Not AdBlock, not AdBlock Plus, not any other crapware. Looking at AdBlock website they have a blurb about only keeping anonymised data and never selling it and yada yada yada, because it goes against their company ethics.

Company ethics. AdBlock is owned by a company. A for-profit entity. How do you think they make their money? Either they sell the data they have gathered (why does an ad blocking extension need to gather user data?) or they have agreements with ad companies.

Compare the websites of AdBlock and uBlock Origin. The first thing on uBlock Origin website is a link to the publicly available source code. That’s trustworthy. AdBlock’s website has a handpicked list of 5 star reviews.

TL; DR: please switch to uBlock Origin and ditch AdBlock, they (the company behind AdBlock) likely have agreements with advertisers (including Google and YouTube) to make money. Your data is being harvested by using AdBlock. You cannot look at the code for AdBlock. AdBlock is not trustworthy.

ugo, 7 days ago

if you’re using windows and expect any privacy at all […] throw that notion out the window

Correct. And the same is true even if you are using linux, macOS, android, or a butterfly to manipulate bits to send a message through the internet.

Because if your message ends up on the screen of a windows user, it’s also going to be eaten by AI.

And forget the notion of “anything you post on the internet is forever”, this is also true for private and encrypted comms now. At least as long as they can be decrypted by your recipient, if they use windows.

You want privacy and use linux? Well, that’s no longer enough. You now also need to make sure that none of your communications include a (current or future) windows user as they get spyware by default in their system.

Well maybe not quite by default, yet

ugo, 14 days ago

Reread the OP. They say:

not on GNOME, because you have a panel at the top

And

when usign GTK apps on those [non-GNOME] desktops

So you would not “access the controls above the app”, because having controls above the app is not covered by this scenario.

The scenario is:

1. You don’t have a top panel
2. You have a maximized GTK app

Which makes the close button be in the corner of the screen, but without actually extending to it.

On topic: never knew this was a problem, guess I got spoiled by the Qt environment

ugo, 13 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

They are yeah, but in that scenario you would also not have a window decoration with a close button, so I assumed the OP meant maximized :P

ugo, 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

I thought Life by You was trying to fill that gap.

With both that and Sims 5 (edit: oh an Paralives of course, was forgetting about that) on the horizon will this new studio be able to find its space in the market?

Guess more competition is always good, hopefully it doesn’t flop immediately.

ugo, 14 days ago

I remember playing lots of sims 2 as a kid. Could not play sims 3 due to not having a pc that could run it, and I found sims 4 extremely disappointing.

Been keeping an eye on Life by You and Paralives for modern takes at the genre.

I wonder if EA will try to innovate with sims 5 and if they’ll try to optimize the unbelievable loading times (talking about sims 4 here) due to the competition or if they hope to coast on reputation alone.

ugo, 14 days ago

I thought mint was switching to a debian base but it looks like I am mistaken. While LMDE exists, it’s still not the default.

Got the feeling that’s probably gonna change soonish, we’ll see.

ugo, 17 days ago

I don’t know about color profile data, but I can vouch for the EDID potentially being totally wrong sometimes on even basic data like physical size or even logical size (number of pixels).

As for the why, I don’t know, but following Occam’s razor I would guess that it’s cheaper when you just don’t care and leave it as somebody else’s problem.

ugo, 19 days ago

Bad advice. Early return is way easier to parse and comprehend.

<span style="color:#323232;">if (p1)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    if(!p2)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        if(p3 || !p4)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            *pOut = 10;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

vs

<span style="color:#323232;">if(!p1) return;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(p2) return;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(!p3 && p4) return;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">*pOut = 10;
</span>

Early out makes the error conditions explicit, which is what one is interested in 90% of the time. After the last if you know that all of the above conditions are false, so you don’t need to keep them in your head.

And this is just a silly example with 3 predicates, imagine how a full function with lots of state looks. You would need to keep the entire decision tree in your head at all times. That’s the opposite of maintainable.

ugo, 19 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Since my previous example didn’t really have return value, I am changing it slightly. So if I’m reading your suggestion of “rewriting that in 3 lines and a single nested scope followed by a single return”, I think you mean it like this?

<span style="color:#323232;">int retval = 0;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// precondition checks:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (!p1) retval = -ERROR1;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (p2) retval = -ERROR2;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (!p3 && p4) retval = -ERROR3;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// business logic:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (p1 && !p2 && (p3 || !p4))
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    retval = 42;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// or perhaps would you prefer the business logic check be like this?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (retval != -ERROR1 && retval != -ERROR2 && retval != -ERROR3)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    retval = 42;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// or perhaps you'd split the business logic predicate like this? (Assuming the predicates only have a value of 0 or 1)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">int ok = p1;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ok &= !p2;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ok &= p3 || !p4;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if (ok)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    retval = 42;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return retval;
</span>

as opposed to this?

<span style="color:#323232;">// precondition checks:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(!p1) return -ERROR1;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(p2) return -ERROR2;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(!p3 && p4) return -ERROR3;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// business logic:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return 42;
</span>

Using a retval has the exact problem that you want to avoid: at the point where we do return retval, we have no idea how retval was manipulated, or if it was set multiple times by different branches. It’s mutable state inside the function, so any line from when the variable is defined to when return retval is hit must now be examined to know why retval has the value that it has.

Not to mention that the business logic then needs to be guarded with some predicate, because we can’t early return. And if you need to add another precondition check, you need to add another (but inverted) predicate to the business logic check.

You also mentioned resource leaks, and I find that a more compelling argument for having only a single return. Readability and understandability (both of which directly correlate to maintainability) are undeniably better with early returns. But if you hit an early return after you have allocated resources, you have a resource leak.

Still, there are better solutions to the resource leak problem than to clobber your functions into an unreadable mess. Here’s a couple options I can think of.

1. Don’t: allow early returns only before allocating resources via a code standard. Allows many of the benfits of early returns, but could be confusing due to using both early returns and a retval in the business logic
2. If your language supports it, use RAII
3. If your language supports it, use defer
4. You can always write a cleanup function

Example of option 1

<span style="color:#323232;">// precondition checks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(!p1) return -ERROR1;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(p2) return -ERROR2;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if(!p3 && p4) return -ERROR3;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">void* pResource = allocResource();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">int retval = 0;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// some business logic, no return allowed
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">freeResource(pResource);
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return retval; // no leaks
</span>

Example of option 2

<span style="color:#323232;">// same precondition checks with early returns, won't repeat them for brevity
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">auto Resource = allocResource();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// some business logic, return allowed, the destructor of Resource will be called when it goes out of scope, freeing the resources. No leaks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return 42;
</span>

Example of option 3

<span style="color:#323232;">// precondition checks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">void* pResource = allocResource();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">defer freeResource(pResource);
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// some business logic, return allowed, deferred statements will be executed before return. No leaks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return 42;
</span>

Example of option 4

<span style="color:#323232;">int freeAndReturn(void* pResource, const int retval)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    freeResource(pResource);
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    return retval;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">int doWork()
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    // precondition checks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    void* pResource = allocResource();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    // ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    // some business logic, return allowed only in the same form as the following line
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    // ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    return freeAndReturn(pResource, 42);
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

ugo, 20 days ago

Does Israel have a free press?

ugo, 3 months ago

Maybe Eidos would love to get another Deus Ex out there but there’s no publisher interest

You know, they could just… Say this, and placate everyone. I’m honestly sick and tired of companies in general, and game companies specifically, being afforded this stupid level of opaqueness.

If you were to talk to someone that would exclusively stonewall you, you’d be quick to stop talking to this person. When it’s game companies though, everyone bends over backwards to try to find justifications for their behavior on their behalf.

ugo, 3 months ago

TAA has become so common because its’s “free”. Temporal data is required by DLSS and FSR, so if you are implementing those technologies you already have the necessary data to implement TAA, making it a no brainier to include.

ugo, 4 months ago

Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows

ugo, 4 months ago

Dude what about four?

ugo, 5 months ago

If this was cpp, clang-tidy would tell you “do not use else after return”

I don’t know how null works in swift, but assuming it coerces to bool I’d write

<span style="color:#323232;">if (a) return a;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">return b;
</span>

ugo, 5 months ago

I don’t know how to help you directly, but you could write a script that turns vibration on, then sleeps for an appropriate amount of time, and loops indefinitely.

As for vibration strength, I have no clue. SDL has controller APIs, maybe it’s able to control vibration intensity. In which case, one could write a CLI SDL-based program for this.

ugo, 5 months ago

And once you’re done with Diablo 2 check out Median XL, a lore-accurate fan made mod that is still actively developed

ugo, 5 months ago

Except it is? Instead of cramming 22 new features, 198 bug fixes, and 3 usage changes in the next version, taking 24 months of dev time, one could release the next version with 1 new feature and however many bug fixes fit in the time frame, and release it in 4 to 6 weeks

ugo, 6 months ago

Would you still pay for it if at some point google were to decide to add ads, even if less intrusive than in the free version?

ugo, 6 months ago

In my somewhat limited but relevant experience, the amount of platform specific bugs is indeed that low. I mean, there’s of course a layer of platform-specific low level stuff which is highly subject to platform specific issues, but once you go above that layer and into game code proper, most bugs are just bugs.

I didn’t fix 400 “Linux-only” bugs, but I did fix dozens of “seems Linux specific” and “only happened when at least one Linux client was connected” bugs, and a grand total of 2 were caused by platform differences. And of those two, zero were Linux specific. The platform difference in this case was about how different compilers optimise non-crashy types of UB.

Of course, we don’t want UB at all so the fix is to remove it.

ugo, 7 months ago

I was dining out once and ordered a spicy pizza. Had this tiny red chili pepper in the center, maybe the size of the tip of my pinky. I thought nothing of it and popped it whole in my mouth.

I was sweating and crying for 10 minutes, 10/10 would do it again.

Op’s description is legit mouth watering, and now I want a slow-cooked spicy stew with roasted whole chilies.

ugo, 7 months ago

Interesting. I have more than 1500 hours on it and I think the last few DLCs are way way better than usual. A lot more content, a lot more creativity. However, I also stopped playing after — IIRC — version 1.30. That version made the game something like 3 times less performant (or rather, things took 3 times the time they took previously), and it was already slow to begin with.

That completely killed the game for me.

ugo, 7 months ago

SDL provides a way to override the lib even if it’s statically linked github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/…/README-dynapi.md

ugo, 7 months ago

Are we reading the same article? I read it when it came out, and read it a second time now. The article:

• is not a bitchfit
• nowhere states CVE is bad or useless (it even links a list of CVEs directly hosted on curl’s website)

The article is about missing checks in the CVE ecosystem that allows useless fearmongering perpetrated by badly filed CVEs to spread, citing one particular CVE as exemplary of all the faults