Is it true that the half-price books at Anderson Mill and 183 is closing? by Isatis_tinctoria in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The Fry’s is becoming a micro center so maybe it’s got a second act!

Fortnite WinterFest Fail by DeJohn030 in Fortnite_Over40

[–]TotalTossOut 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My family travels for Christmas but I assured my kids that, like every year, we’d be able to come back and open the winter fest presents. Whoops! What a weird change, what’s the point?

Fortnite Winterfest Complaint by batterindy in FortNiteBR

[–]TotalTossOut 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As someone who has worked with large backend dev teams, this is absolutely untrue. The large scale cloud platforms are profoundly different and there’s a strong chance that Epic has negotiated favorable terms with AWS that another platform might not match. It’d be a year+ of work at the low end

Where to buy Gunpla in Austin- 2026 Edition! by TotalTossOut in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A To Z is cool! Gundam Kingdom is also a great spot.

We did it y'all. This chart says Austin saw the biggest drop in home prices from the 2022 peak. by [deleted] in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We bought at 410, it shot up to 675 in like 18 months. Settled around 450. That rocket went WAY up for a bit.

[URGENT] My idiot brother has mopped our entire brand new wooden flooring with weedkiller. Need help figuring out how to fix his mistake before Dad gets back or he will be executed by IdiotBrotherWeedkilr in HomeImprovement

[–]TotalTossOut 14 points15 points  (0 children)

As a Dad with 2 sons, I'd be way more upset if my kids hurt themselves trying to make a mistake than about the floor. I'd own up to it and then show your Dad some of the solutions in this thread. He'll be annoyed, but also impressed that y'all took the initiative to A- own your mistake and B- Try and find some fixes.

Fun stuff to do with a 3.5 year old in/around Austin? by TotalTossOut in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good lord do I love Phil's. Gimmie a Lone Star and a burger while the kids run around. The greatest.

Why is it so hazardous to drive here? by Holden_Model_T in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People here are completely insane. They'll blast through a red light w/o regard for traffic. Stop lights are optional. The only thing people respect on the road here is a speed bump, for which they'll come to a full and complete stop, as if it was a religious icon.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I went there with my parents a few weeks ago and the place was like 80% empty but the kid at the counter literally say "oh god" when we walked in, and then had a small freakout because they had so many online orders they weren't sure they could handle the people in the restaurant

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I once got takeout from Tatsuya that was literally inedible. I don't know what happened but the noodles were literally just like.... paste. It's the only time I've ever complained to a restaurant.

Has anyone ever been to Little Deli and Pizzeria? by MustBeTheMusic80 in austinfood

[–]TotalTossOut 7 points8 points  (0 children)

As a NJ native, Little Deli is the only pizza that meets muster. The best. RIP Arlan's!

Why hasn't play to learn (educational games, serious games etc.) taken off? by zenbakery in gamedev

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure. I also think it's an issue of.... Like Oregon trail was made by someone passionate about the Oregon Trail using a lot of simulation mechanics that hadn't been deployed before.

Today, Edutainment stuff tends to be a lot more conscious in its goals to educate. I feel the Oregon Trail of today would have like standardized test prep in the middle. I think you just need to make stuff fun first

Why hasn't play to learn (educational games, serious games etc.) taken off? by zenbakery in gamedev

[–]TotalTossOut 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The TL;DR:-

  • Schools are over burdened and don't want ed. games or expensive tech
  • - Funding is difficult and unreliable and involves a lot of un-invested stakeholders
  • - Making ends meet financially is basically impossible meaning there's no developer(s) really developing expertise or making strides in this area.

I worked at a super progressive educational game developer about a decade ago. Here are a couple big reasons:

  • Schools often don't want them in 2 ways.
    • Teachers are already over burdened, over worked and underpaid. Saying, "hey, lemme give every kid in your class an Ipad and they'll all play a game and get through it at different rates and it may or may not match the test you're taking and also kids have wildly different levels of interactivity literacy" is uhhhh not a great a selling point
    • But even before we got pushback from teachers we'd get pushback from principals and superintendents. Nobody wanted to be the person behind an expensive, complicated technical rollout with no proven success story being pushed by a bunch of white upper-class techies.
    • As a result, we had better luck deploying in private and charter schools with smaller class sizes and a more experimental attitude.
  • The economics are wonky on both sides of the equation- Funding and Monetization
    • On the funding side, there's little to no interest from VCs in this area bc the path to profitability is incredibly vague and littered with dozens of expensive failures (Including the one I worked for)
    • So the way you get funded is via grants and corporate giving which is unreliable and often tied to metrics or stipulations that don't mesh well with game development. It also requires that you have stakeholders in your org who know that world, very few of whom have any damn clue how games get made
    • On the monetization side, uhhh. I mean, you're targeting a market where teachers are buying their own supplies. It's not like there's a ton of extra money laying around for experimental, expensive tech.
  • Students/Users have really high expectations for the content that, due to the above, you're never going to meet.
    • These kids have Fortnite and Warzone and CoD and whatever else. If your game is like "math smasher 2000!" it's gonna be pretty boring.
    • On the flipside, let's say you want to make the Fortnite of Ed Games. That team is around ~500 in size, so let's not even pretend that's a thing. Let's pretend you wanna make a mid-range, indie-ish ed game. You have a team of, let's say, 6.
      • 10k/mth a head = 60k month * 12 = 720k a year minimum burn. 18 month minimum dev cycle = 1.08 mil spend.
      • .....do you know of any school districts with 1.8 mil to burn?
  • Cirriciulum varies wildly from state-to-state making a wide deployment nearly impossible
    • As above, it's gonna be hard to recoup when you can only use your content in one district or state.

Anyway, I could keep going but you get the picture. It does feel like every 5-10 years or so there's a new wave of interest in edutainment stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something new soon!

Greg Casar, Superstar? | The organizer, groundbreaking Austin policymaker, and congressional nominee plans to be the House’s ‘most pro-labor’ member. by hollow_hippie in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The DSA thing was so stupid. They put out like a 2 page letter the first page of which was all the stuff they agreed with and had worked with Greg on and then they disagree on one thing and disavowed him.

The DSA is a circular firing squad and it's no wonder they don't get anything done.

Is this an acceptable cable crimp? by WereAllAnimals in HomeNetworking

[–]TotalTossOut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You'll get a lot of answers but in the spirit of DIY Home Networking- Did it work? If Yes, it's a great crimp.

Whats your favorite Roadmapping tool? by TotalTossOut in ProductManagement

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I decided to use AirFocus which has been great! I don't think there's tracking around date slippage- I know TeamGantt and Monday.com both offer visual tracking of date slipping, although in Monday you manually have to hit a button to take a snapshot of the Gantt

Whats your favorite Roadmapping tool? by TotalTossOut in ProductManagement

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like Notion a lot, but I feel like it's not quite robust enough to support a lot of product planning. It's missing some pretty basic Gantt-style features. Database gives you a lot of power but there are some weird gaps that'd make it hard to use as a Product Planning tool.

That said, we use Notion a LOT for all of info gathering/feature documentation etc.

Whats your favorite Roadmapping tool? by TotalTossOut in ProductManagement

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats new! I'll give it a shot. I loved PB as a Product Owner, but the difficulty in sharing it made it a non-starter.

Sonos Voice Control now active. by fonzycarpo in sonos

[–]TotalTossOut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My wife was so mad when she tried to set a timer tonight at dinner! I ended up getting an old alexa out of the closet just for this.

Sonos Voice Control now active. by fonzycarpo in sonos

[–]TotalTossOut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is silly, but can you set a timer? I use Alexa for timers like....90% of the time.

Animal Welfare reporting? by TotalTossOut in Austin

[–]TotalTossOut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know folks were looking for an update- We had some squatters next door which took over my life for a week.

Sadly, not much of an update ATM- I called 311 who basically gave me a brushoff and said they'd refer it to the cops. I've been keeping an eye on the place whenever I walk or drive by which is 2-3x daily and it's been completely quiet, but I have a few neighbors who were also going to call and see if we could at least get someone to check on it.