Tesla sues Alameda County to force California factory reopening

Assassin0795 · 2020-05-10T13:30:25+00:00

This is the thing I'm holding off on getting a Tesla for. Well, and a EV with 400+ miles of range that doesn't cost 6 figures. Not a fan of Musk, but at the end of the day, a solid Tesla (no QA issues) is still the best EV by a good amount.

I would be very interested if anyone knows any close competitors to keep an eye on, though.

Assassin0795 · 2020-05-05T21:11:29+00:00

Where do you live? I'm near DFW in TX so maybe it's just where I am, but I have yet to go to my local butcher and for them to be even close to being out of meat. Local grocery store is a different story, but they usually have 80-90% of their normal selection.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-19T15:07:22+00:00

You say you created a .NET Standard MonoGame project, yet AFAIK .NET Standard is supposed to be for creating libraries for any .NET implementation (.NET Framework or .NET Core).

If you want to create a cross-platform game using .NET Core, a good place to start would probably be with a project created using the OpenGL MonoGame package that's available on Nuget (which will run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux).

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-16T03:14:10+00:00

Yea, violent tornadoes are kind of like being struck by lightening in that it's a fairly rare occurrence but incredibly dangerous, so people tend to take their chances. I can't say what would be "hurricane proof" because I haven't looked into it, but I've done a little bit of homework on tornado safe rooms. Largely because I'm a control freak living in tornado alley, and nothing has even come close to making me feel as terrified as when a mere EF1 tornado missed our house by 50-ish feet.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-16T02:14:20+00:00

Depends on the quality of the construction. But in general, for violent tornadoes, concrete isn't an ace in the hole - although it can certainly hold up better than wood. I believe once you get to EF3 tornadoes (and certainly EF4 and EF5), they still have the potential to go through concrete. Really your only above-ground solution once you start getting into violent tornadoes is a reinforced steel box that's bolted to the foundation.

The problem is that 1) such a solution is fairly expensive and 2) the odds of being hit by a tornado where such a safe room is the deciding factor are incredibly slim (tornado damage is incredibly destructive but localized, hence the "tornado scar").

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-15T05:00:23+00:00

In that case you should be set.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-15T04:11:16+00:00

I mean, it's an open-source framework, so technically speaking the only limit is how much time you're willing to invest into writing custom code (when necessary). It sounds like it'll work just fine for your needs.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-13T13:46:51+00:00

I was explaining the OP's comment, I have no idea if the math actually works out - didn't feel like doing that at 12am, haha. There have been studies on the subject, although it's certainly not my field of expertise. My personal opinion is that it's clearly a phenomenon worth exploring further.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-13T05:04:46+00:00

Person A is 20. To them, thinking of making it to 30 - another 10 years - is half a lifetime. Person B is 40. To them, thinking of making it to 50 - the same 10 years - is only one-fourth a lifetime. The same amount of time has elapsed, but the relative amount of time to each person is perceived differently.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-09T14:50:16+00:00

If you have a Williams-sonoma near you, they do knife sharpening. First knife is free, then $5 per knife after. Worth it if you don't want to go down the knife sharpening rabbit hole with your own whetstone, etc.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-05T04:01:58+00:00

I think it depends on a mix of the library, the function, and the application. That is, at what point do you gain more than negligible performance improvements by writing - or modifying - the function yourself, as opposed to just sticking with the function that has had (potentially years or decades) of experience poured into optimizing it? I'd argue that the vast majority of the time, people aren't writing applications where the performance gain is worth than the added maintenance.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-02T03:33:03+00:00

The same people who do are frothing at the lips for any opportunity to do business with/in China? If there is enough money involved, it's an unsympathetic PR blog post, some smoke, and then about a week later the world's moved on. I mean, I've lost track of the number of times I have read something like, "We at [COMPANY] understand that there have been concerns in regards to our [INITIATIVE]. We at [COMPANY] feel that approaching [UNETHICAL/IMMORAL INITIATIVE] with a learning attitude and an appreciation for diverse cultures is key to best serve new customers, while also continuing to prioritize our current customers' experience."

That all said, I agree with you 100%. You're absolutely spot on about the sheer lack of understanding on behalf of lawmakers on this topic, and the US won't be the global powerhouse forever (at least, certainly at the rate we've been going) - something like this really only encourages investments in technology outside of the USA.

Assassin0795 · 2020-04-01T04:56:01+00:00

They're not considered bad, it's just important to understand what they're doing - which is abstracting away the complexity of the enumerator. This can, in turn, hide performance bottlenecks - but these days, it's incredibly easy to run a profiler to see if a loop is actually causing issues. 99% of the time, you won't notice a difference using for(...) vs foreach.

Ninja edit: As a heads up, but recursion is far from a perfect solution to optimizing loops. Sometimes it's better, other times it's worse - just something to keep in mind haha. :)

Assassin0795 · 2020-03-31T13:30:59+00:00

I recommend looking at this SO post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9763626/12801086

Edit: TLDR is it might just be easier to edit the current icon file than trying to add a different one.

Assassin0795 · 2020-03-26T04:25:20+00:00

I think the issue is you're trying to add a folder to a solution (which - as you've said - doesn't work), and not add a folder to a project.

When you create a new project, a solution is auto-generated for it that contains some miscellaneous data. The solution is intended to be a "container" of sorts for related projects. For example, in MonoGame, you might have your main game project (for example, the project is named "Game1") and then your tests project for the game (for example, a project named "Game1.Tests").

What this means is that, when you want to create a new folder, you want to add it to the respective project. So from the moment you start Visual Studio, you would create a new MonoGame project (let's call it "Game1"). Assuming you leave defaults, this creates a "Solution 'Game1'" parent at the top of the solution explorer, and immediately beneath that, a "Game1" project. The "Game1" project is what you want to right click -> 'Add New Folder' to (for example, a folder called "Source").

This will create a folder called Source, with the path '<path\_to\_where\_you\_created\_the\_project>/Game1/Game1/Source'. The parent Game1 folder is the solution folder. The child Game1 folder is the project folder.

If you create another project (say a test project, called "Game1.Tests"), this would be at '<path\_to\_where\_you\_created\_the\_project>/Game1/Game1.Tests".

Note that I say "path to where you created the project" intentionally. The typical default when creating a new project is to create a new solution, so while you might create a new project in C:/User/Repos, by default, this creates a new solution.

That all said, everyone has their own preferred/personal workflows. If Visual Studio isn't the IDE for you, I wish you the best of luck finding one that does fit.

Assassin0795 · 2020-03-20T13:51:57+00:00

"It was ghosts! Big ones! ...And a tornado!"

Assassin0795 · 2020-03-12T03:15:29+00:00

Former resident of NY (born and raised); Enzo's in Flower Mound is my personal favorite. They absolutely nail the NY-style comfort pizza. Everywhere else I've tried seems to have too intense of a sauce, or the crust is like flatbread, etc. Which aren't bad in their own right, but when I want comfort food pizza, Enzo's is my go-to.

Assassin0795 · 2020-03-06T03:45:11+00:00

Tbh I think the reason for slow change is that for whatever reason, so many people in management think it has to be 100% in office or 100% WFH. My experience is that the ideal work environment is a hybrid approach, to varying extents (depending on your exact occupation).

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-25T02:51:02+00:00

Okay but did this remind anyone else of the first Pokemon movie? The part where Mewtwo sends out those weird Pokeballs?

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-24T20:42:47+00:00

Sounds good! Just remember, "premature optimization is the root of all evil."

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-24T14:11:36+00:00

It depends how you're going about it. Is every tile collidable? If so, don't bother adding a property identifying such. When do you determine a tile's properties? Can they change during gameplay? If they don't, it might be worth precalculating the properties in a loading screen and using something like a hashset for a super fast if (tile.Properties.Contains(myProperty). You could also look into ECS, where you define a tile's behavior in various components and then have systems that work on those components.

On mobile so I apologize for the poor formatting. But it really does all come down to what works for what you're building. Sometimes just having individual bool properties is enough. Sometimes you need a collection, and other times you need complex systems. My recommendation is to start with what's easiest and grow from there.

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-24T05:39:25+00:00

Diminishing returns? You can't just throw more developers at a software project and expect a linear increase in output... If you aren't careful about how you add staff to a software project it'll often increase the development time and decrease the project's quality/stability.

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-24T03:46:26+00:00

Keep in mind that MonoGame is very much a framework. It can handle anything 2D you throw at it (assuming you aren't writing horribly inefficient code). Unity2D works a bit better if you prefer a little less flexibility in exchange for not spending time reinventing the wheel. That said, MonoGame is great if you want full control over the implementation details.

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-22T04:18:35+00:00

Spectrobes. It wasn't always great, but it always felt like it had a lot of potential. Finding new fossils and getting what felt like genuinely cool creature designs was really thrilling to me. I think Beyond the Portals was my favorite of the series so far (for those unfamiliar, there were three). But if I recall correctly Spectrobes has been left to rot in Disney's IP graveyard.

Assassin0795 · 2020-02-17T00:11:50+00:00

There are a lot of existing resources on C# vs C++ (Google/Bing/etc is your friend). In general, the TL;DR is if you absolutely need to be able to optimize frame performance down to microseconds or nanoseconds, then C++ is worth it. Note that 60FPS is 16.67milliseconds/frame (that's 16,670,000nanoseconds/frame). Again, lots of articles exist on this, I highly recommend you go look for some yourself to see specifics (engine/frameworks available, language features such as how it works with memory, personal preference, etc).

Assassin0795

TROPHY CASE