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thowfaraway | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: How did you get rid of your performance anxiety?

Get Propranolol - miracle drug. Totally takes the anxiety out of presentations. I used it a couple times at large presentations, and it was really helpful. Since then I don't need it. Once you go through presentations a few times successfully, you learn it isn't that big a deal.

You feel 99% normal when you take it; it is not a sedative. It is just that the fear doesn't arise, the wave of panic never comes.

https://www.drugs.com/comments/propranolol/for-performance-a...

thowfaraway | 2 years ago | on: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

They can probably track accurately enough to identify that 90% of games aren't worth billing. Then once they are working with the top 10%, they can negotiate something that makes sense, like submit your monthly sales number, and Unity will use that as a limit on install count.

I agree what they are saying isn't workable, but that idea of install based fee could work, and would be better than a royalty for many.

thowfaraway | 2 years ago | on: Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat

They are providing a game engine to make the game. If that's not worth it, switch. They don't own your C# code or assets, so they can be moved. For a lot of devs, it provides a lot of value. I understand for F2P, low ARPU games this pricing scheme doesn't work and people should complain until Unity fixes it.

Unity has ~7,000 employees, and is losing money. They need to a way to monetize, and they are clumsily trying to target their most successful users to pay more. Price increase aren't rent seeking.

thowfaraway | 2 years ago | on: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

Those are exactly the types of games that would be much worse off under an Unreal style royalty.

Cult of the Lamb is $24.99 on Steam

Unreal royalty is 5%, so $1.25 per sale

Unity is $0.20

So royalty is ~6x more

If there was a reasonable way to count installs (I don't think it is technically possible), install fee is much better than royalty for most devs who are not F2P apps.

thowfaraway | 3 years ago | on: Incoming potentially catastrophic storm for SF area

It's no fun to drive in the rain, so either pick a nice place to stay for Wed/Thu during the storm, or postpone the trip. If you need to get south, just drive the 5, it shouldn't enough rain to flood it. The central valley flood alerts you are seeing are for rivers and small roads with stream crossings. Forecast there is only 1.5".

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

There are many controlled studies on other respiratory disease like the flu, and some on other corona viruses like SARS the show high efficacy of masks. If you doubt the science, fall back on common sense. A respiratory barrier is going to have some value in diminishing the ability of a respiratory virus to spread.

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1

The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective

The reason signaling has been mixed is because they were trying to preserve supply for medical professionals. The reason that medical professionals need them is because they work.

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery

Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo "moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession.

Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Secession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what actions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a civil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

PayPal does not look so bad. Their API and documentation has also become pretty good.

Documentation has gone form terrible to bad. API has gone from always terrible to appearing OK but will periodically destroy your happiness and productivity for a week. I would never voluntarily work with PayPal tech.

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Kotlin becomes second most popular language on the JVM

Those are great features of a great language to program with, but when you are talking about adoption, you want good, easy tooling to expose the good stuff. When the first two chapter of the oft recommended Clojure for the Brave and True are just about setup and and long Emacs tutorial, you are putting up a barrier to using the language.

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Kotlin becomes second most popular language on the JVM

It is probably net positive for advanced users who have niche needs that the different editors address, but I'm saying it is bad for beginners/learners. More specifically, I'm saying emacs/cider is bad for beginners/learners, and the more traditional IDE options aren't so solid.

thowfaraway | 6 years ago | on: Kotlin becomes second most popular language on the JVM

Telling someone new to a language to start with emacs & cider is a disaster. They are rock solid amazing tools for 2% of programmers. I like emacs, but it is harder to learn than Clojure, and trying to teach someone both at the same time is tough. Plus there is no real community unity in editor choice, so you have the community split over emacs, Cursive, VS Code/Calva, Atom. Plus a bunch of dead ends like Light Table or Nightcode.
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