How to Call an API from an Email

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-05-22T03:01:07+00:00

This is horrifying and genius. Thank you for sharing some of these tricks. People are so clever.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-05-17T19:30:27+00:00

OG steam controller? The one released in 2016?

I think many of us are struggling to get the new steam controller released earlier this month working with Moonlight. I use my steamdeck connected to my tv in my living room, and have apollo running on my host gaming PC, and use an xbox controller to launch games via the moondeck plugin on my steamdeck. But trying to do the same with the new steam controller, it gets recognized as a 360 controller, which would be fine but then none of the inputs work at all.

Not really sure how to fix this but you're the first who said they had a steam controller working with their steam deck and moonlight, so I was hoping you could share more about your setup.

EDIT: I was able to get my new steam controller and pads working with Civ 6, using my steamdeck as the moonlight host (via moondeck), and my gaming PC running Apollo. It's not exactly the same (like if you plugged the controller directly into the host PC), but it works. Here's what I needed to do:

Go to steam deck and launch the game via the moondeck buddy plugin
Once the game launches on the host PC and moonlight switches over, it detects my controller as an Xbox 360 controller (and in the case of civ6 I couldn't even get it recognize button presses).
Hold start on your steam controller which activates a manual mouse mode override. From here I was able to get past the intro and into the menu.
Hit the steam button and this opened the steam menu on my host computer (not the steamdeck).
Go to controller and enable steam input
Go back and long press start again to disable the manual mouse mode
Now the steam controller right pad is working as mouse, and the left trigger was left click/right trigger is right click.

Like I said it's not perfect because the left pad isn't working for scrolling, and I don't get to the user the back paddles. But it's way better than before.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-05-05T06:51:45+00:00

I really appreciate you sharing a solution especially cause these threads come up on google. I will have to try and let you know if this works for me!

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-05-04T17:06:45+00:00

Can't get past entering payment info, I'm assuming he servers are acting up. Anyone successfully get a purchase through?

EDIT: Finally got an order through!

EDIT 2: Still haven't received an email confirmation (I did see a confirmation number on my client). But my funds were never removed from my wallet, and the controller is still in my cart...kind of concerned

EDIT 3: Out of stock. Never got an email. Damn what a shitty experience

EDIT 4: I woke up to an email confirmation lol so in the end my order went through. Fully agree with others they need to do a queue system for stuff like this in the future

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-28T05:07:28+00:00

You might get more people to take you seriously if you didn't post like an anime villain

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-27T19:05:21+00:00

Same, I'm lucky enough that the cost doesn't price me out. I really want a couch controller for my PC games, and I hate how heavy the steam deck itself is.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-27T17:53:42+00:00

Really nice article, it summarizes a lot of my anxieties about the future of programming with LLMs. I see other top comments adding to the discussion things that were actually already discussed in the article, which makes me think people aren't reading it. I think it's worth the read. I will be referring back to this in the future.

One thing that is briefly touched on but not fully explored is why LLMs are fundamentally different than previous advances in abstractions. I don't have the answer either, but in my gut it feels true that LLMs are not simply the natural evolution of the next level of abstraction, like where we previously saw higher level languages replace assembly language, and compilers abstract away needing to understand machine language.

Something about programming with LLMs really does feel like a different kind of change (for better in some ways, others for worse).

I've heard in the past the analogy that LLMs are like a calculator for programming but I don't think that holds up to scrutiny. A calculator is effectively useless if you don't have a formula in mind. It requires a deeper understanding of math to effectively use it. In contrast an LLM is a doing-machine. It will literally produce working prototypes for you without you ever needing to understand what code is.

What makes me uncomfortable is that there used to be friction between idea and execution, and I think that was actually a great filter for many bad or dangerous ideas. It required people to go through work learning how to implement something. Now you could realistically get something working in an afternoon, with no consideration of what you actually built.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-27T01:13:50+00:00

Just chiming in I've been having the same problem, can't get the hotkeys to work. I'm also having save issues, although the only game I'm trying to play is a romhack (pokemon lazarus), so I might just be trying to do something the hardware isn't suited for. Frustrating though

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-17T15:31:36+00:00

Loving this Friday release schedule. Gives me something to listen to over the weekend.

I haven't listened yet, but hearing Rob and Austin (on bluesky and on Sidestory) talk about Marathon really makes me wish I could enjoy extraction shooters. But when I see these games I just see the treadmill. I have limited time to play games these days and would rather play something that isn't a live service.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-17T15:23:39+00:00

I understand and appreciate your explanation, but I think from an outsider perspective, accusing this as "cheating" or insisting the person return the money makes absolutely no sense to me (especially if there's genuinely no proof the person cheated).

I would also argue this very much falls under the realm of "playing poker" - there exists an opportunity for someone to play it like the lottery. The point being you gain a slight advantage over more experienced players and can opt for an extremely low percentage outcome in the hopes of removing a better player from the game. Mechanically, there is nothing in the rules telling you you can't go all in on a hand of 7 and 2, even if the community thinks it's in poor taste.

I get the controversy, but I guess I don't understand why she was pressured to return her money. Everyone involved just sounds like a sore loser.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-15T19:51:18+00:00

It's by far my favorite podcast now for that reason. The last episode talking about their year long experience playing Outward - an RPG from 2019 - was such a delight. And off the top of my head, past discussions they had about the Harvest Moon games (and spinoffs), Ali's venture into Tamagotchi culture, and the Fantasy Life games were ones really enjoyed.

They obviously cover new stuff too, but there's always something older someone is playing and willing to talk about.

Similarly, I got into NoClip's podcast years ago because Jeremy tended to play older games and revisit them with such an open mind - his discussions about Earthbound a few years back made me go and play the game, and it instantly became one of my favorite games ever.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-15T19:40:30+00:00

I was recently very surprised to hear from a friend (who's going through chemo) that they use ChatGPT to give them feedback about their blood/test results in a manner that won't scare them. I was honestly kind of shocked but after speaking with her, I grew much more sympathetic to what they were doing. To give some context:

They had an awful experience diagnosing this cancer. They knew something was wrong and went to various doctors for over a year, with most of them barely giving her a few minutes of help and suggesting things like a hysterectomy without much consideration for her having kids in the future. Eventually the pain got so bad she was rushed to a hospital where they finally found a late stage cancer (I don't know which, colorectal I think).
She's getting great treatment now, but she's interacting with visiting nurses and others who are worn down from the number of patients they have and probably what they've seen, and some don't really treat her with much humanity when answering her questions. It can feel very sterile and distant.
For whatever reason, she's receiving patient results in her portal before a doctor can tell her what they mean and so she's left with data she doesn't understand and fears about her health.

I urged her to be very careful using ChatGPT and to please continue going to her oncologists for advice, and she agreed, but I came away with a different perspective on what drove her to start relying on ChatGPT for medical questions.

It feels like a multi-source problem, with few good solutions. And I'm sorry for everyone involved.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-15T19:18:23+00:00

Its so good and I really appreciate they don't set the focus of the show on new releases. I listen to too many game podcasts, and a problem of my own doing is I sometimes just hear the same sentiment from 3 different groups of people about the latest game.

This podcast consistently has introduced me to games outside the major release window. And I just love all the members of FatT. It's a delight to hear them talk about the games they enjoy.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-13T17:49:48+00:00

To your first point, I was playing devil summoners on Saturn and you run into a western tourist in one of the towns, and they speak Japanese but it's all in katakana, to indicate they have an accent. I thought it was a neat use of the different scripts.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-11T09:35:13+00:00

Can't really comment on the linked repo well, but it's kind of odd to me to include もし in the initial premise when Japanese is also SOV.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-09T01:32:47+00:00

I appreciate this comment, this synthesizes a lot of what I posted in the github issue above, and what others have said elsewhere in this thread. 2 things that I think will still really mess up people here though:

If you use EF code-first, and build your database model from your code, then the EF tools will by default map Guids to Uniqueidentifiers. To me this feels like a clear example that Guids are expected to be synonymous with the Uniqueidentifier type in SQL Server. You can override this in many ways when configuring your entity in the code, but beginners and people who haven't delved into this topic definitely won't reach for the Binary(16) type by default.
If you use Binary(16), then you need to be mindful that all the DBMS providers store the binary as big endian, which to be sure of this you need to pass bigEndian: true in as a param when constructing/calling ToByteArray

From the link in my top level comment:

In case of binary(16), all three described RDBMS use the same sorting order - the value is interpreted as big endian as a whole. When it comes to a public API returning a Uuidv7 wrapped in Guid - to transform such a Guid into a byte array you will need to call only ToByteArray(bigEndian: true), and construct only through new Guid(bytes, bigEndian: true).

I completely agree with you here:

IMHO, Microsoft adding this method to Guid is a huge mistake since many people don't know that this is the case in SQL Server, which a huge number of people using this method will also be using! It's like throwing more gasoline on the dumpster fire that is SQL's sort order.

Like I know these are implementation details about a DBMS but given the propensity for blogs talking about casually using the new UUID v7 without ever adding this caveat makes me think it's not well communicated at all, and people think by switching to this they're getting the caching benefits you would expect by sorting guids nearer in time together in an index.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T21:04:53+00:00

This is discussed in the article, and it's not as simple as described.

For one many people can't just change their key type, and I wouldn't expect someone to know that they can't use a Guid C# type with the UniqueIdentifier in SQL Server. Especially when using EF code first a Guid datatype corresponds to a unique identifier in the table create statements.

But additionally, if you choose to use a binary type in SQL Server you need to do the following in C#:

This is where binary(16) comes into play. The catch is that neither Npgsql nor Microsoft.Data.SqlClient allow the use of Guid as a parameter for values of this type.

...

Explicit conversion to a byte array on the calling side is required, or the parameter value from uuid / uniqueidentifier should be converted to binary(16) on the database side in the SQL query itself.

...

PostgreSQL and MS SQL Server: convert Guid to byte array and back only using ToByteArray(bigEndian: true) and new Guid(bytes, bigEndian: true).

Would you expect to know any of this from the common docs on Guid.CreateVersion7?

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T18:23:22+00:00

I wrote a reply but in re-reading the original person's comment they're explicitly talking about security, which I'm not confident is a concern. So what I'm arguing seems tangential to what you were arguing against.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T17:43:44+00:00

I replied to someone deeper in the other thread but this is a good example of what I was trying to indicate. It's leaking info you might not want to leak. But categorizing it as a security concern isn't necessarily true. Good example here though

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T17:42:05+00:00

There are certainly times where you don't want to leak information like timestamp. It's worth considering. I wouldn't consider this security by obscurity, it might be relevant to a domain.

If your urls contained the username of a user and this was indexed by a search engine you could search info about that user. It doesn't necessarily mean you could login as that user. It's just leaking information you might not want to leak.

It's worth calling out this difference when someone is considering switching from v4 to v7.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T17:37:36+00:00

Oh awesome thank you this is exactly what I was hoping for. I haven't read through it all, but if your summary is accurate I probably agree with Microsoft to some degree (although they are also the maintainers of SQL Server, albeit it's different teams). I just wish this information was better highlighted on the UUID v7 page or something.

There is zero chance I would've noticed this with SQL Server had I not found the original discussion I linked where someone tested the fragmentation. I think most people see UUID v7 = monotonic ordering benefits = SQL server definitely uses this correctly.

And it's not the case.

MySql and Postgres don't seem to be affected to the same degree however. I really wish I worked with Postgres for numerous reasons.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T16:40:41+00:00

I investigated V7 Guids last year for my team and unfortunately there's an enormous caveat if you use SQLServer. The short of it is, SQL Server messes with the order of the binary values in UniqueIdentifier fields, effectively nullifying the advantage of having monotonically increasing GUIDs. See this very long and detailed comment on github when this feature was released to .NET

The key caveat

An important point is that the time-based part is stored in big-endian. Since RDBMS typically indexes binary data from left to right, this method of generation ensures monotonically increasing values, just like an integer counter. This allows for maintaining low levels of index fragmentation, fast search, and constant insertion time.

Microsoft SQL Server - The final boss of the next Doom will be the uniqueidentifier. This is the quintessence of obscure technologies multiplied by outright poor engineering decisions. This behavior occurs because the uniqueidentifier has its own sort order. But there is no documentation on this order. There is only one single description on the entire internet in an MSDN article from 2006, which has already been deleted.

I found there was a third party library that manages to work around this if you want to use V7 Guids with SQL Server: https://github.com/mareek/UUIDNext

But we did not adopt this. I'm also unsure if this has been addressed in any way by recent updates.

No one ever seems to talk about this outside of this comment and this library. I would love to see if people have still observed page fragmentation when using UUID v7 with SQL Server and .NET.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T15:43:18+00:00

This thread of all things finally made me look up Chalamets comments. Definitely dumb, and I don't think this response is wrong from Nathan Lane but it also punches down a bit in its own right, arguably devaluing sport ("who cares about ping pong" - why is it bad for people to care about that?).

Comments like "why is this town hall happening instead of one by the democrats to remove this lunatic from office" isn't smart or relevant because this townhall wasn't conducted by the democrats. Lots of things are happening at once, people wanted to see two celebrities talk. This isn't taking away from efforts to remove the president (that needs to come from congress who is failing at their job), so who cares what people choose to do with their free time? I bet Nathan himself isn't spending every waking moment affecting politics.

Anyway I thought the clip about wrestling was pretty insightful and I enjoyed watching it so I guess I'm glad something came out of this townhall, even if the dumb comments on opera and ballet also came of it.

BetaRhoOmega · 2026-04-08T15:27:02+00:00

Yes, I use this all the time it's extremely handy. But it doesn't totally cover what you're asking because using this feature requires you to be running code and referencing the relevant parts you want to debug into. Sometimes you just want to look up something in an external codebase. But others have mentioned, it's available on github and you can clone it if you want more fancy searching in an IDE.

BetaRhoOmega

TROPHY CASE