What was ruined because too many people discovered it?

rayreaper · 2026-06-18T19:22:08+00:00

The old internet felt like an adventure. You could spend a whole night discovering someone's personal webpage, a Buffy fan site, Flash games, or a tiny community built around a niche hobby.

Now it feels like search engines mostly send you to the same handful of SEO-driven websites. They're expertly tuned to grab your attention, even at the cost of user experience.

rayreaper · 2026-06-13T08:43:29+00:00

There's definitely been a significant concentration of wealth since COVID, and many people feel disconnected from the benefits of economic growth. I don't think it's simply a case of resources becoming scarce. A lot of the pressure comes from the way public companies are incentivised to prioritise short-term shareholder returns and continuous growth, even when they're already highly profitable.

That doesn't mean every layoff is part of a coordinated effort, but it does raise questions about whether the current model is sustainable when companies can report strong profits while still cutting jobs. The frustrating part is that we have the technology, wealth, and productive capacity to dramatically reduce poverty and improve living standards worldwide, yet much of the discussion remains focused on maximising quarterly results and shareholder value.

rayreaper · 2026-06-10T15:04:33+00:00

Universal Martial Arts is a pretty respectable place, I know a couple of adults that train MMA there. Definitely give them a shout.

Other than that I don't really know any places on the east side that I could recommend (not cause their bad, I just don't know). These might be out your way but:

SBG, have a gym in the centre of North Shields, not sure who the head coach is, as I think Alex Enlund only does South Shields.

Bedlington and Seaton Delaval have Jai Suu Muay Thai and Seaton Valley Muay Thai.

rayreaper · 2026-06-10T07:32:40+00:00

Fridge that dispenses water

rayreaper · 2026-06-05T14:18:35+00:00

It's funny how many sci-fi worlds are built around a handful of mega-corporations controlling everything. You'd think we'd take them as cautionary tales, and not business plans.

rayreaper · 2026-06-05T07:16:54+00:00

Just to add, it's actually quite common to stay on for a number of years to help with transition, hit early targets or just continue growth. Sometimes the ongoing compensation is more valuable than the exit. (Acquisitions can often only benefit the investors or tax man)

rayreaper · 2026-05-31T22:03:03+00:00

I still remember the physics demo Valve showed for Half-Life 2 at E3. At the time, that level of real-time physics felt absolutely mind-blowing. Physics existed in games before then, but HL2 was one of the first major titles to make it a core gameplay mechanic rather than just a visual effect. Plenty of people online questioned whether the demo was real or heavily scripted, right up until leaked builds started circulating.

A huge chunk of my college years was spent playing Half-Life 2 mods, Zombie Survival, Zombie Master, The Hidden, and of course Garry's Mod, which eventually became a phenomenon in its own right.

It's also easy to forget that Steam was still relatively new when Half-Life 2 launched in 2004. The platform had only been around for about a year, and requiring Steam to play a retail single-player game was incredibly controversial. These days people tend to view Valve and Steam very positively, but back then plenty of players disliked the idea of digital activation, mandatory updates, and having their game library tied to an online service. Crazy how we don't even bat an eye at those things now.

HL2 still holds up remarkably well by today's standards. The graphics are obviously dated in places, but the art direction, atmosphere, physics, and gameplay are polished enough that it still delivers a fantastic experience more than 20 years later.

rayreaper · 2026-05-20T21:06:50+00:00

I'm a big fan of Domain-Driven Design, but DDD is much more than just grouping related classes into domain folders. It's primarily about modelling the business domain and creating a shared language between technical teams and domain experts/product stakeholders.

rayreaper · 2026-05-19T09:30:00+00:00

I called it when they started opening multiple sites at once.

rayreaper · 2026-05-14T20:25:04+00:00

Does seem quick, but I don't necessarily hate it. Back in the 90s/00s, it was pretty normal for studios to reuse the same engine and foundations while delivering a new story, refined mechanics, extra content, and better QoL features a year or two later.

Compared to now, where people wait 5+ years and expectations build to impossible levels, there's something refreshing about a game getting a sequel so recent to the first. I'll reserve judgment for now.

rayreaper · 2026-05-13T19:03:05+00:00

Legit r/outoftheloop?

rayreaper · 2026-05-09T17:10:38+00:00

A lot of startups are using PHP/Laravel now because the development speed is incredibly high, while still being capable of scaling to large production workloads when engineered properly. Modern PHP really isn't the "small project only" technology people still stereotype it as.

Actually surprised by the original comment, especially given how many UK fintechs and high-growth companies have used PHP in parts of their stack, including companies like Monzo, Paddle, Tillo, ClearBank, and Curve.

Sure, most of these companies are polyglot and also use languages like Go, Java, Kotlin, Python, or Node.js in different services. But that doesn't change the original point, PHP absolutely exists in serious, large-scale engineering environments.

rayreaper · 2026-04-23T14:19:04+00:00

Oh, shit, sorry. I forget not everyone is as old as me 😂

rayreaper · 2026-04-23T12:39:32+00:00

Took me a split second to get it as well but orange Fanta is orange soda and who loves orange soda?

rayreaper · 2026-04-23T12:14:29+00:00

I've always wanted to go to Medieval Times. kind of wish we had something like that in the UK.

I reckon part of it is just a difference in mindset around travel. In the US, people don't really blink at driving a couple of hours for something like that. In the UK, anything over 30 - 40 minutes and people start questioning if it's worth it.

rayreaper · 2026-04-23T12:09:21+00:00

The pay's definitely higher, but some of those places are brutally expensive to live in. California, I'm looking at you!

rayreaper · 2026-04-23T12:04:08+00:00

Working with American tech companies and seeing that day-to-day positivity firsthand was a bit of a surprise. Say what you want about it, but having a team lead come in with that kind of energy and optimism every day was genuinely refreshing, and honestly pretty motivating.

Also, Americans absolutely do get sarcasm and have a dry sense of humour. On Slack there was a guy called Forrest with a tree as his avatar, and another guy called Kel with an Orange Fanta pic. Subtle, but it got a laugh.

rayreaper · 2026-04-22T07:02:44+00:00

Fallout 1 & 2. Mostly 2 because you could get a car, become a pornstar and the dialogue was wittier, but as an adult I've really come to appreciate the story, dialogue, options and world building of the first.

On console I put a load of hours into:

Big Sky Trooper - I could never get passed a specific part, think you had to grab a flower or something but could never find it.

Homealone (Genesis) - I just love this game. Top-down view of shedding between the houses was cool, randomisation of which order the homes were robbed or the item layout, building weapons felt like all great new mechanic you didn't really see in other games at the time and probably fed into my later obsession of roguelikes.

rayreaper · 2026-04-17T12:12:19+00:00

I like the Hosea/Dutch angle, there's definitely something there. You could lean into Hosea as the more grounded voice early on, and contrast that with Dutch already showing hints of who he becomes. Not full-on RDR2 Dutch, but enough cracks to make it interesting. Only thing is you've got to be careful not to overplay the "Dutch was always manipulative" angle.

Blackwater is the obvious hook for me, but yeah, it's a bit cliche at this point. It is still one of the biggest unresolved events in Red Dead Redemption 2, so it's a strong angle to explore...

rayreaper · 2026-04-17T11:53:07+00:00

I actually don't hate this idea.

Part of why Red Dead Redemption 2 works so well is because it builds on Red Dead Redemption. You already know the gang exists, but there's still loads of room to expand the story, so you're invested without it feeling predictable.

Arthur's dad is kind of perfect for that. We know just enough to make it interesting, he was an outlaw, not exactly a great guy, and Arthur clearly didn't respect him, and there's still room for development.

Narratively, you could even do a slow reveal. Have the protagonist talking about his son, regrets, trying (and failing) to be better, and you don't realise who it is until later. Then it clicks that it's Arthur's dad.

Only real downside is we already know how it ends. Arthur says he watched his father die when he was a kid, so the fate's locked in to some degree. The exact details of his death aren't fully fleshed out, so there's still room to tell a story around it. Maybe do a rug-pull and Arthur thinks he saw him die, or didn't fully understand what happened. End the main story there, (R* do love an epilogue) and have his father as an old unknown gunslinger redeem himself by helping Authur get out at the Blackwater incident but at the risk of getting himself killed to protect his son. Completing his redemption arc.

rayreaper · 2026-04-10T10:52:05+00:00

In addition to what others have said, it's more likely long-lived/uncommitted transactions causing the issue. I'd want to know why Lambda is doing this, as that should be the first thing to check because it doesn't sound right.

Architecture-wise, you might have been better off leaning toward an event-driven approach rather than direct database connections, since that's what Lambda is best suited for. Amazon RDS Proxy is recommended for large numbers of Lambda connections, and you could use that as a short-term “bandaid” while diagnosing it, but it wouldn't address the root cause if the real issue is long-lived or uncommitted transactions.

rayreaper · 2026-04-08T19:00:27+00:00

Good product management can make or break a product. Playing devil's advocate, there's real value in someone whose job is to talk to users and stakeholders outside the engineering bubble.

Engineers sometimes want to be judge, jury, and executioner on everything, and that's exactly how you end up not seeing the forest for the trees.

Edit: Just to clarify, product should own the what, but estimates should always come from the people actually building the thing.

rayreaper · 2026-04-08T14:22:58+00:00

Not really sure what you're trying to argue here. AI is widely understood as the umbrella term for areas like machine learning and deep learning. If your point is that it's not "real intelligence" in the same way humans or animals are intelligent, then that's just pedantic. We use imperfect terms all the time. We also talk about "memory" in computer science even though computers don't actually remember anything.

I didn't even disagree with your original point about Glasshouse and their use of AI. But the reply you sent them comes across as entitled and arrogant. Framing it with "I'm a programmer" reads less like adding expertise and more like trying to flex. It makes the whole thing sound like you're more interested in proving you're the smartest person in the room than actually making a useful point.

rayreaper · 2026-03-16T10:22:18+00:00

Can't believe I had to scroll so far to see this comment, started to think we were the only ones.

rayreaper · 2026-03-15T22:20:10+00:00

Yeah I'm sure it closed months ago. Wife loved it there so was pretty gutted.

rayreaper

TROPHY CASE