yaeger's comments

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

Still, it is only symbolic. Not that internet points are really that important anyway but seeing as his last posts are already 4 days old, all this reactionary downvoting will do nothing to his overall "karma". After 2 days, a downvote will not reduce your karma. So yeah, all this does is show the rest that apparently there are a lot of upset people out there.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Warner Bros Suspends Sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC Version

I bet it was an executive decision. The game was already delayed. Twice. They probably decided to push out what they had for PC just so they wouldn't have to announce another delay. For the PC version only, of course. While simultaneously releasing the console versions.

My guess is, they thought even though it is buggy, they can fix it with patches and will only get minor flack for this from the PC users. And that this would be the better choice than to anger every PC gamer by announcing the third delay.

Well, now it is clear that this was the wrong decision. They both, underestimated just how broken the game was and how incomplete compared to the console version and they forgot about Valve's newly introduced refund system.

WBGames can claim that they suspended this game for PC but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say it was Valve that suspended this game because they were tired of processing so many refunds. They would have said "A game that gets this many negative reviews and all are claiming horrible performance and missing effects must clearly be broken and therefore we shouldn't continue to sell it as it will only lead to even more refund claims."

A couple of interesting things to note: 1. They removed the PC logo from all Arkham Knight pages. 2. The company itself tells people about how to request refunds 3. The company also asks for patience while this is being worked out

The last two are somewhat contradictory to me. When a company tells customers on their own free will how to get refunds sounds like an admittance to failure and that they do not believe this can be fixed in a timely manner. And then they still ask for patience which sounds like they are working on a solution. Paired with them removing all PC logos from their promo pages for this game really seems weird.

While this announcement was leagues better than the marketing speak of the first announcement they did, I think customers still need more, clearer information what is going to happen. People who deal in software already know this but the average customer has no idea how long such things can take. Therefore they should explicitly announce what they are going to do. To me, it doesn't sound like patches will do the trick. From all accounts, this pc version sounds broken by design and the root causes are stuck deeeeeep in there. So, if they plan to fix this, then they should announce that an entire rewrite is needed and that this takes time. While at it, they should also tell us who will do this rewrite. I am sure no one wants Iron Galaxy at this again. We want Rocksteady to do it. Because we know they actually can make a Batman game. As evidenced by the ps4 version of this one and the first two games in general. Both ran fine on pc. I already heard speculation that they might try and release this in the fall when they scheduled the SteamOS and Mac version of the game. One can only hope for the sake of the windows version that Rocksteady will not be busy writing these versions and continue to outsource the windows version to the same cracksquad that arsed up this time.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Rockstar Jacks Up GTA Price for Steam Summer Sale

They are hellbend to teach PC users that games shall cost 60 bucks as a general pricetag, apparently. So even if they do sales, they just bundle it up with some trivial stuff just to hike up the price so it will once again come down to 60 bucks. Just cause people on console are okay with paying that much for a game does not mean they can pull this on PC users as well. I know I will never pay that much for one game. 45 for a brand new release is more than justified. 30 for a slightly older one. But 60 for a single game is just ridiculous.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Oculus Rift

They better not dare making this Win10 exclusive and hosing people who plan to stay on Win7 for the foreseeable future.

People were all up in arms when facebook entered yet there was never an overlapping issue that would mean the Rift would be gimped or held hostage or anything. People who were suggesting FB login to use the Rift were quite frankly talking out of their behinds.

But this deal now with MS is awful. There was no need for Oculus to do that. None. It clearly wasn't a money thing. It wasn't for the controller as they clearly work on their own one. What on earth was riding these people to go with MS when it is clear that they are fully focused on their console and tablets. This does not paint a good picture to what the rift might be reduced to just to make it fit onto all of MS stuff. Pretty much like they are currently in the process of "consolification" of the desktop OS.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Show HN: Free Reddit submission scheduling and vote potential estimation

>In fact it might be the worst time to post because you are competing with all those other people.

I don't understand that reasoning. Yes you are competing with other people, but for a reason. Reason being, during that time a lot more people are active and that is why the chances are much higher to have a high scoring submission.

Isn't your reasoning the same as saying you shouldn't play the lottery using "dates"? Like anniversaries or birthdays. So numbers 1-31 etc because that is what everybody plays and if you win you have to split the pot with all those other people? To me, this is ignoring the fact that a million dollars split between 100 people is still a lot more than zero dollars you get for yourself because you played different numbers.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: RedditStorage

Woah, that'd be a lot of tweets. Even reddit with its 10000 char limit per comment has loads of comment trains if you want to store a sizable amount of info that way. With twitters 140 char limit, that would be a huge amount of tweets. You'd probably run the risk of being identified as a spammer if you send that many tweets at once...

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Android Pay is coming

With google being all about data mining and getting as much information on you as they possibly can, I am having the hardest time believing that google will introduce a payment system that cannot track peoples individual shopping behavior.

It was one of Apple's selling points that they do not see what you buy. They only handle the monetary transaction. Only the merchant and you know what was purchased etc.

It is funny to imagine google knowing this valuable information is running right through their service/device and they do not or cannot take a look. As a data miner that would be more than frustrating.

yaeger | 10 years ago | on: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

Judging by in what context I have read about Hola so far, I guess the biggest use case is to circumvent geo block to access things like Netflix. But yeah, ever since I learned that I am acting as an exit node for others I have stopped using the service as I do not want to be the one answering for stuff others have done in my name(IP).

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Apple Releases new MacBook Pros with Force Touch Trackpad

Only if they didn't sacrifice the mag safe in favor of it like they did on the 13 inch.

The mag safe was one of the best inventions for MacBooks ever and it is sad to see how nonchalantly they retired it on the 13 inch. And I doubt the rumor it was because it is too light now. The mag safe is for when you trip over the cable with your leg. Doing that, you will always do so very abruptly. And so the weight of the MacBook cannot be that big a factor. Other wise, comparable things like the tablecloth trick would never work. The glasses and plates also do not weigh a lot. But tug on the tablecloth abruptly enough and away it goes with the glasses and everything still on the table. Same thing happens with a mag safe connector.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: How to survive a job interview with Elon Musk

>Musk is known to work more than 20 hours a day

Sorry but no matter how high I value his contributions to technology do I believe statements like that. Just think about it. How would these 4 hours downtime be divided? One would think all goes towards sleep. But can you really close your laptop, instantly jump into bed and sleep? No showers? Brushing teeth? Eating something? And what about in the morning? Alarm clock goes of, jump out of bed and instantly open the laptop and start working?

Again, I like the guy enough but I wish they would stop to publish these obviously fake fluff factoids. You can still be a genius when working reasonable hours.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

In that regard I would love it if Apple would announce OS11 at dubdub. That would be too funny seeing MS standing there with their Win10 which they said would be the last Windows version.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

>Or you can view it as mobile being enhanced by commonality of OS with one found on the desktop.

You could, if the mobile didn't have the minority share of the install base. Why would we be okay to enhance the minority at the expense of the majority?

> If the same UI works in both environments...

And that's precisely the thing. it doesn't work in both environments. Windows8 has already showed us what happens when you slap the touchy feely stuff on the desktop and let the user figure it out.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

I like to call it "consolification" as it seems apparent to me that this is where MS is heading with their OS.

Not long and Xbox and Windows will be identical. And sadly, it will be the Xbox that has the dominant genes, UI wise at least.

It is all over their corporate speak, too. "Life time of device" when discussing the upgrade cycle of the OS... What is the life time of my PC that I built myself out of many different vendors offerings?

I, too am a bit worried that all this cloud business is getting more and more traction. When I saw the big warning "Not recommended" when trying to create a normal user account and not one of these windows online account deals I though "You can't be serious". Why would it not be recommended to use a local account which was the norm for so long? Unless they already plan many changes to the OS which would leave users with local accounts in the dust so better to try and convert as many people to our online accounts as possible, they must think.

Either way, I am in the process of building a new rig. The old one didn't even have an i3/5/7 CPU to let you know how long I've been using my current PC. And on this new PC, Windows7 Ultimate will be running the show and I will be watching from the outside over the next 5 years minimum how this Win10 business develops. From my point of view they have 5 years to do a lot of 180s and actually make a Windows11 which will take the under-the-hood advancements of Win8-10 and plug that into Windows7 so we can actually have that Windows7 improvement we all want.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Steam Removes Paid Mods Feature

A lot of the backfire could have been avoided if they they had this info prominently displayed on the homepage.

I can't tell you how many times I read about these knee jerk reactions from people with their self imposed boycotts of the entire Steam platform. The reason most given? "Because Valve takes 75% and only leaves 25 for the mod maker".

These people were so quick with their math they never even got to the fact that a) Bethesda takes a cut, the highest one at that and b) this split came from Bethesda and did not originate at Valve.

But, as these things go, have one of these people spew out this misinformation, get enough people to echo this and many others will take it as fact. You can then try to tell them as often as you like how that is wrong and they will just downvote you because "you're just a valve shill" resulting in nobody seeing the actual facts and the echo chamber happily moves down the wrong way getting more and more worked up.

In the end, it was just an option to treat mods like DLC and games. Make em either free or charge for em. Nothing more. If mod makers want to make their work free, literally nothing changed. If they want to they could have started chargin for them. And if people didn't like it, they just didn't have to buy them. If there was a mod that was once free and was then moved to the pay side, people could have let the maker know that was a dick move. And if a paid mod breaks because of a game update, people could have let the maker know to better fix that asap or they'll demand a refund. Only with free mods you could say "yeah, it broke with the newest update. don't have time to fix. working on other stuff". If you sell it, you have to support it. But that is up to the mod maker, not the owner of the distribution platform.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Kerbal Space Program Launches Version 1.0

I tried it yesterday for the first time and my biggest problem is that the tutorials are a bit too confusing and seem to require some prior knowledge of where things are etc:

I naturally started with the training scenarios and the very first one was pretty confusing. I feel like the tutorial would need a rework by someone who was not involved with the game for months/years.

The problem is that if you are seeing the interface and everything for months on end, and then you write the tutorial, you will likely leave out some things that are "obvious" to you but maybe are not obvious to new people who see everything for the first time.

In case of the first training tutorial where you just build a rocket, why does the text in the end just say "click the red button on the top right when you are done"? Or better yet, why not disable all other buttons that will also take you out the game? I thought after the rocket is built I could click the "launch" button to test it. Because that button was clickable. But all it did was take me back to the start screen. So I though I made a mistake and clicked on the first training scenario again. And now the tutorial would not even progress. It says to click on the command module but when you do, nothing happens. I then had to alt+f4 out of the game and start it again.

I think if they divide all the training scenarios this way, they should probably make it so only the things regarding a specific scenario are clickable and don't result in such undefined behavior.

I then tried the second training scenario and the guy at one point said to "click the AP button and click warp here" It took me way to long to find this so called AP button. Since I was looking at my rocket when the tutorial said to click this button I of course searched high and low on the screen for this button to no avail. It wasn't until I hit "m" to get to the space view and saw my trajectory path I noticed "AP" at the high point of the path. To me, it looked just like a text next to the path but when I clicked it I saw the "warp here" button. It would have been way better for the tutorial to first say "hit m to get to the space view, see your trajectory path and click on the AP which you see at the highest point of the path." Just mentioning an AP button without indication where it can be found and more importantly if it really is identifiable as a button and not just looking like an informational text label would help out a lot.

Personally, I like tutorials better that would freeze and then super impose an arrow while pointing at the thing you are supposed to press next while simultaneously stating so in text as well. Doing it like this makes sure there is no way anybody would not find the button and go searching for it unnecessarily.

Oh, and also a defined end of the tutorial. If the second one is just supposed to let you take of and get to the ap and then burn your remaining fuel, after doing so, why not put up a message saying the tutorial is now done and maybe two buttons. One to return to the menu and one to stay where you are and feel free to mess around with the ship some more.

With the plethora of options and things to do this game is very powerful so I feel it is of the utmost importance to get the tutorials right. I don't think using big arrows to guide one through the complex menues would be pandering or holding the users hand too much. Just saying in text "You may have noticed this new button in the lower right" is not really helpful. I just thought "no, I didn't notice it, which one do you mean, there are like a half dozen there". If you want to tell the user about it, point an arrow at it, tell the user to click on it and then explain the window that pops up.

All in all I already know I will spend many hours with this game but I would probably get "into the action" quicker if the tutorials were laid out a bit better.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Audi and Amazon to try car-boot delivery service

Especially in Germany. I wonder if no one thought about the insurance companies when they thought this up. I bet they might have something to say about all this. Heck, when you sign up for insurance they want to know if your car is parked in a lockable garage or just on the side of the street. They also want to know who besides yourself will be having access/driving the car. The last thing I as a customer would want to is pay even more for car insurance cause the added liability changes my contract.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

>otherwise they would have long ago provided ways for paid apps to offer demos.

Like LITE version and Pro version of an app? Yeah, Why don't aht exist? Oh wait, it does. The devs just choose to make a free app and then have the pro version as in app purchase.

But I guess the devs doing it that way is also Apples fault. Somehow everything is Apples fault according to you people.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: What Happens When Apple Buys a Company You Depend On

Uh, how is this different? These zombies most likely will also offer no support or security patches. Hence the term "zombie". The only difference here would be that you could possibly still download the last version from their site which is not the case with FoundationDB.

As long as you have the latest version and you put it in your SCM or wherever you want to keep these things, you are just as able to take 3 years to migrate away from FoundationDB as you would be from one of these zombies.

At least with FoundationDB, as others have said, you actually know now what will happen in the future, with the zombie you might spend additional time "sticking it out" before you realize they will stay dead. That would be time you could have used to start the migration.

yaeger | 11 years ago | on: Windows 10 launches this summer in 190 countries around the world

You must have a lot of faith in Microsoft when you consider giving up your stable Windows7 in favor a dot zero release of an Operating System that in a lot of way still looks like Windows8. Unless I can see any kind of track record that it is indeed stable, all the cloud crap can be disabled and they actually put back Themes so I can get rid of everything "modern" or metro or whatever they call this nonsense, I am very happy sticking with 7 for at least the next 5 years.
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