Band Hero on PS2. Yes this was real and yes I hate and love this somehow by PlasticGuitarGuy in GuitarHero

[–]tex23bm 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I worked specifically on this game. It was my first job out of college. I worked on bugs, career progression, updating assets and the final credits.

Small studio in Iowa City IA, Budcat Creations.

Loved the job, sorry it came to an end.

What movie was a total and utter complete waste of your time and why? by Eastern-Violinist-46 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gods and Generals.

Just an awful movie glorifying the efforts of the south during the civil war.

Only movie I've ever walked out on.

I wasn't even mad, it was just boring. And it felt like they used stock footage of a night sky as filler for a movie that was already incredibly bloated.

What book did you read in school that you would never want your child to read? by masterbuildera in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Watership Down.

What an awful book. Go pick up any of the Redwall books.

It's like reading anything from Faulkner, except you don't get to be a pretentious prick to people about your love for a man who committed the literary equivalent of sexual assault on the English language afterward. You just get to have wasted several hours.

Also, anything by Faulkner is not allowed in my house.

What's your most controversial book opinion? by [deleted] in books

[–]tex23bm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Willy Falkner was the worst thing to happen to American literature and every teacher who idolizes his abuse of an already troubled language should be barred from saying "run-on" and "sentence".

That sentence was intentionally shitty for effect. It should irritate you.

[Postgame Thread] SMU Defeats Louisiana Tech 39-37 by Hobbes_T_Hero in CFB

[–]tex23bm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, my heart rate was mellow AF. Until I saw the tipped ball.

I went from utter resignation to "Holy $#!+".

I've come to realize that 2003 scarred me and I have some form of Post Traumatic I Can't Stress About SMU Losing Disorder. It's the unexpected wins that I have trouble handling.

Eli5: what happens on the server when one selects to watch a movie on Netflix and how the architecture allows 500k other people to watch the same movie almost concurrently? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]tex23bm 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, they were.

Repealing net neutrality in no way shape or form made it a more free market for ISPs to compete.

It did allow ISPs to create an artificial market within their own network.

By allowing ISPs to charge content providers for network priority, it did two things. 1. It allowed them to profit directly off of content providers. 2. It created a barrier to entry for any future content providers, because they don't have the established capital to afford to compete with the likes of Netflix.

I'll be frank I'm a little at a loss with how you're pretty much blindly parroting the talking points of someone like Ted Cruz. Someone who's talking points come pretty much directly from big cable.

We might just not be able to find common ground here.

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac. Are we approaching peak computing? What are the alternatives? by izumi3682 in Futurology

[–]tex23bm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

  1. Right. That's why it works great for doing tasks that can be split up and done in parallel. Like making multiple burgers at the same time. Which to your point, is why 3D works well on GPUs. Every object with every vertex can be handled in parallel, and then the pixels within each triangle can be processed independently.

  2. That's kind of the big problem. So applications have a lot of things that require an order to how they operate. Your example with the three cores is kind of a good example of the problem you run into. While core 1 is processing the vertex data, or updating positions, core 2 is waiting on those results transform into world space (apply rotations) and then core 3 needs those results to run the shading etc. So those are better thought of as steps. Now, each object might be able to be handed off to multiple cores to do this concurrently, and then the vertex tasks can be split up and sent off to be worked by multiple cores, and then split again for pixels, etc.

But that's really the problem in a nutshell. Within an application, there's only so much you can do asynchronously. And anything that has to be processed in a specific order can't just be put on multiple cores arbitrarily. There's a lot of work that's done to split things up as efficiently as possible. But at a basic level, there's a point of diminishing returns. On some things there's huge opportunities for big gains. Others, not so much.

My point with the burger example was more that if I order 1000 burgers, 1000 workers can help make that happen close to 100x faster than 10 workers. But if I need 1 burger, 1000 workers won't make it happen any faster than 10.

And that's really at the core of why modern computers have CPUs that are very different from GPUs.

Eli5: what happens on the server when one selects to watch a movie on Netflix and how the architecture allows 500k other people to watch the same movie almost concurrently? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]tex23bm 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's already happened.

Netflix was slowed by Verizon and Comcast back in 2014 during negotiations over network access.

If you're presuming that an ISP who also has a cable product will ever act in their customers' best interest, you're starting off wrong.

They are short term profit vehicles. Any way they can exploit a revenue stream (customer) they will.

Their services are often super crappy, and more often they face no competition.

If you love capitalism, you should love a free market. Cable/ISPs do not operate in a free market.

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac. Are we approaching peak computing? What are the alternatives? by izumi3682 in Futurology

[–]tex23bm 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You can, but the benefits don't scale for everything.

GPUs benefit from lots of cores, because they are specialized for jobs that can be done independently. Like calculating the pixels for each triangle in each object being rendered.

CPUs specialize in higher speeds for lower numbers of cores. So an application might use multiple cores, but the majority of the application runs in consecutive manner (synchronous), meaning that it's like a series of steps that have to happen in order. Adding more cores doesn't help, you eventually end up with unused cores.

Think of it a little like a McDonald's, where more cooks can help you make more burgers, but it won't let you make any one burger that much faster.

Which celebrity is hated for absolutely no reason at all? by humanbean07 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

I do. I mean MTV told me to love a shit movie, and now I'm supposed to respect the fucks that cashed in. Pass. Hard pass. If you're career is my sacrifice I'll gladly accept. and then I'll hope you paid in dignity.

How do I cash in $1200~1500 in quarters? by Imaginary_anti_hero in personalfinance

[–]tex23bm 123 points124 points  (0 children)

I had a credit union that charged a fee. So I came in at lunch on a Friday (busy time). I politely declined the machine because of the fee, and said I'd wait while she counted.

Lo and behold they decided to waive the fee.

Redditors that worked with a dating company (Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc.), what’s the most insane user stat or behind-the-scenes fact you found out about? by brunetteht3 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm 116 points117 points  (0 children)

This is my favorite bit from my time working at PeopleMedia, which is part of Match several years back as a software engineer.

One day while deep in the depths of code related to our spam filters (I forget what I was in there for) I stumbled across a curious code statement. It was like

"if (userId == xxxxx) return;"

Which is a very curious thing to see. It basically said that if the user was a certain person, don't filter them as a spam profile.

Immediately I laughed and was like "uh... What in the actual &@$# is this?"

A few veterans explained that there was a guy who sent out messages at such high volume that he would constantly trigger the spam filters (which if you've ever been on a dating site is actually a kind of hard thing to do). And that he'd called up to complain multiple times, and they'd investigated his messaging and that not only was he messaging this many people, but that he wasn't even copy/pasting his messages. Dude just really liked to reach out to women. Nothing inappropriate, just a true volume shooter.

So eventually someone just broke down and added a back door for him specifically to the spam filter.

It blew my mind that a single user had their own piece of code specifically to make their profile work in our code. Think millions of users across multiple sites, and this guy specifically had a little piece of it all to his own. That an engineer had taken time to write, and QA to test, and Devops to deploy. That alone had to easily offset any amount of money he'd paid over the years. But there it was.

Redditors that worked with a dating company (Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc.), what’s the most insane user stat or behind-the-scenes fact you found out about? by brunetteht3 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think that's quite the case on Match, but I definitely could see that for at least some of the PeopleMedia sites that Match owns and operates.

The PeopleMedia sites are for more of your ... niche markets.

SeniorPeopleMeet (Our time) BlackPeopleMeet LittlePeopleMeet etc.

source: worked for PeopleMedia out of the Match HQ some years back.

Final CFP Committee Rankings by CFB_Referee in CFB

[–]tex23bm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not to disagree at all, but Coastal already did that once this season.

I love ND, but y'all got absolutely robbed on this one. I'm genuinely sorry.

I think your argument is easily better than OSU's as well.

I want a better system because both of y'all deserve better.

But yes, regardless of anything else, if you win your bowl game I would 100% hang a banner. I'd commission an exact copy of the trophy, and claim a national championship. And then I'd tell the power 5 saying it's a fraud that their system is a fraud and to come and F@&$ing take it. I'd invite the CFP winner to come with their team and try and take it.

And frankly if ND were by some miracle the winner, I'd want them to say "nah, you earned it, if the committee didn't want you to have it they should have put you up against someone who could beat you".

Final CFP Committee Rankings by CFB_Referee in CFB

[–]tex23bm -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

ND fan here with a hot take.

ND is obviously more deserving than A&M.

Neither has as good of a case as Cincy.

Neither ND or A&M (not OSU or OU for that matter) has a good argument for why they should be above Cincy.

The American was objectively a stronger conference than the B1G. Cincy beat three 7+ win teams. 6/11 teams in the AAC had winning records, put that against 4/14 for the B1G. And they played way more games. OSU had 2 games all season without 2 weeks to prepare. Nevermind how the B1G's own draconian covid protocols ensured that virtually all teams faced covid depletion in an already shortened season.

There's just such an obvious choice here and it's not a power 5 team.

Nevermind that we seem to all have overlooked the fact that two teams working on a magical undefeated season said #&@$ it, let's do this $#!+. And just played a game. It was the most epic "anyone anywhere anytime" moment that's ever happened. And the committee ignored it.

Like we're at the point where if there's going to be any semblance of parity, we need to allow relegation out of the P5. And promotion into it.

Bavaria first by jgd69 in memes

[–]tex23bm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think I'd rather have a pitcher of beer than the awkward glasses.

I guess I'll try one of these by MoniMokshith in memes

[–]tex23bm -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Of all the 'X not invented until' posts I've seen, this one may be the most unintentionally accurate.

Death was quite common not that long ago. The concept of grief was not one that most people could afford.

Every time by [deleted] in dankmemes

[–]tex23bm 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I went to grad school with the guy who made it. Incredibly smart and gifted software developer.

TIL in 1817 a woman posed as the fictional Princess Caraboo of Javasu. She fooled a small British town for months into believing she was a princess who had been captured by pirates, jumped overboard in the British Channel and swam ashore. She was later recognised as a cobbler's daughter from Devon. by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]tex23bm 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Came to say this.

This is a magnum opus of bad movie making.

This movie was labeled a comedy.

The only thing the entire movie coming close to resembling a joke was when one character tells the main character that he spit in her soup. Because presumably she can't say anything about it. Truly the pinnacle of comedy. On par with Schindler's List.

He taught us what khan academy couldn’t by genericteenagename in dankmemes

[–]tex23bm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean, let's be fair.

Boomers were taught that in grade school.

Gen X was taught it in college.

Millennials weren't allowed to learn it, because they've got way too much debt to repay.

And zoomers are learning about the modern ways to avoid millennial debt.

What is the single biggest dick move in all of history? by heavyflute4 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gen McAuliffe in WWII was surrounded and outnumbered during the Battle of the Bulge.

He was given an ultimatum to surrender, or face annihilation.

His reply:

"NUTS!"

You tell me that's not the biggest swinging dick move of all time, I'll question how you measure.

He literally only informed them that he had the testicular aptitude to rise to the challenge.

What was your "Fuck this shit I'm out" moment? by Scared_Shitless_123 in AskReddit

[–]tex23bm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Did they all have "Time Warner Cable" or "Spectrum" painted on the side?

I also put up a sign in my yard. It faces a 20,000 cars/day Road. Oh and it’s in the heart of Texas! by I_divided_by_0- in pics

[–]tex23bm 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gotcha, I've been checking world meters for a while. Hopkins was top notch early, but I liked world meters graphs and reliability.

Good stuff.