BC SOFTWARE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

I'm pretty sure whoever designed this control usually makes gender selectors for websites...

Poly Bridge has a language SLIDER.

 all languages exist on a spectrum from English to 한국어
next I want to see a game with a "choose language" button and it brings up this language map like it's a skill tree
gonna spend 200 XP to unlock Tamil
that's from here:
https://t.co/QaV1tKK4oa
also I'm not saying this game's online leaderboards have been exploited, but the top 15 (at least) scores for this level spent zero dollars on their bridge.

so they won without placing any bridge pieces? that sounds hard.
I thought I'd finally try Poly Bridge 2 to see if it has the same language slider but, uh, it doesn't seem to work as well
I think it just didn't like me alt-tabbing away to mute it.

Sadly, no: they've moved to a much more sensible drop-down
Poly Bridge 2: Just Like Poly Bridge 1, but we upgraded our UI toolkit!
I want a game where all the options are sliders
jump key: [slider from the top left key on the keyboard to the bottom right]
online leaderboard playername:
name length: [slider 1-10]
letter 1: [slider a-z]
letter 2: [slider a-z]
letter 3: [slider a-z]
good to see that Poly Bridge 2 inherits the mouse control bug where it always applies the mousewheel movement even when the game isn't the active window
I'm alt-tabbed over to twitter and as I scroll up and down the poly bridge 2 window is just zooming in and out
so one of the Neat New Features of Poly Bridge 2 is the replays system. Along with making your own bridge and comparing prices on the clearly-hacked leadboards, you can now view other player's solutions!
so obviously I want to know how this works. There's two obvious ways it might work:
1. the leaderboard contains videos. these are just mp4 files of the game being played
2. the leaderboard contains the data for the bridge designs, and it's being rendered in-game
the fact that it shows them all in a little window does make me think they're just video files, though.

and even though people aren't hacking 0$ wins into the leaderboard now doesn't mean they aren't cheating. They just do it with physics, not RAM hacking
here's one that shows a bit better what's happening.
They made a "bridge" which is a bit of dense road that falls and crushes the car, but since cars can't "crush", the physics engine ends up squirting them out like a watermelon seed
ok, three things I've figured out from wireshark:
1. it's talking to cloudflare
2. it's using TLS
3. it's probably about 750 kilobytes for one playback
TLS means I can't super-easily tell how it works.
and #1 and #3 mean it's probably just videos. tiny videos.
of course now the question is:
does it compress the videos in the client and upload them to the server?

or does it upload the solution to the server and let it render them?
because if it's #1, I might could beat a level with the video of Never Gonna Give You Up.
not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.
anyway I could now MITM the game and see into the TLS connections... it doesn't have a proxy setting, but it probably uses the IE one.
And thank fuck for that, because I'd hate to configure my proxy using a slider.

More from foone

foone
foone
@Foone
you know how Atari called the Jaguar as a "64bit system", because it had two 32bit CPUs? (or because it had a 64bit bus, but let's not worry about that)
we should apply that logic to the current generation of consoles.
So the Switch is a 256bit console. It's the Nintendo 256.

The Xbox Series X? terrible name.
Better call it the "Xbox 512 Blu-ray".
like the Jaguar CD, the Sega CD... the good old days when consoles had their media type in the name.

Boringly the PS5 is also a Playstation 512 Blu-ray, because both of them are using the same AMD Zen 2 CPU.

The Switch one is weeeird. It's built on an Nvidia Tegra X1, which is an 8 core 64-bit CPU, so that should be 512, right?

Well... no. Four of them can't be used. And later documentation doesn't even mention them.

it's some weird system where the system-on-a-chip has four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores but only the A57s are usable?
TECH
foone
foone
@Foone
So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over
GAMES
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foone
foone
@Foone
I was todays years old when I learned that Final Fantasy VII's Midgar Zolom is an exceptionally badly translated reference to Jörmungandr, the world serpent from Norse mythology.


The other name for Jörmungandr is Miðgarðsormr, which got rendered into katakana as ミドガルズオルム, or "Midogaruzuorumu".
But when it was translated back into English, the translator didn't get the reference.

So they split that into the city name Midgar and the rest as... "Zolom".
Which is not a word.

It was supposed to be a bit of a pun in Japanese. Midgar, the big city in FF7, is named after Midgard, the Old Norse name for the Earth (as opposed to the other realms of the Nine Worlds)

so obviously a big snake living near the city of Midgar would be the Miðgarðsormr, since that basically translate as "Midgard Serpent"
GAME
foone
foone
@Foone
love to see a youtube video that references a script that's linked in the comments and it's an obfuscated link to a one-click hoster.

THAT'S DEFINITELY STILL GONNA WORK IN FOUR YEARS

it does still work, but that's because it's only been 2 years.

also, wow, this is horrible.

the script is to generate random kanji/han characters and insert them into minecraft books.
but the video references there being two hotkeys to generate two distinct books, which seemed odd. so I thought I'd check.

it turns out by "random" they mean "pre-randomized and is hardcoded into the 45 kilobyte autohotkey scripot"


I mean, I get it. I don't want to write AutoHotKey scripts either. it's a horrible, horrible language.

BUT STILL
CULTURE
foone
foone
@Foone
I'm watching these videos about the Georgia Phone Call and they're talking about if Dominion did any kind of weird hacks, and all I'm thinking is:

I need to get a voting machine.

Yeah, it turns out if you select the party vote option and toggle it Democrat-Republican-Democrat then tap the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen three times, you'll trigger the Easter egg and you can play DOOM!

Set your location to California, vote no on Prop 22, party vote democrats and select the Green presidential campaign Howie Hawkins, then toggle Prop 22 to yes, then longpress "reset ballot" and you'll get rickrolled.

This is how my brain works. "the voting machines could be hacked! The president might be trying to steal the election! What should I do?

Oh yeah, get a screwdriver and make a voting machine play DOS games."

I wonder if they're still x86 based? The last time we had a big electronic voting scandal, of the they were... But now we're in the arm era.
POLITICS

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Griffin - Live Protest News
Griffin - Live Protest...
@GriffinMalone6
Found your neighbor on Parler map and want to see what video they posted, here's how.

Here is an easy to follow step by step guide on how to locate your neighbors who used Parler and then view and Download the videos they posted. A thread.
SOFTWARE
Andrew Harmel-Law \U0001f3e1
Andrew Harmel-Law 🏡...
@al94781
Software architecture is in crisis, and the way to fix it is a hefty dose of anarchy.


Some lay the blame for this on @boicy with the whole microservices thing.

(Admittedly, @nicolefv, @jezhumble and @realgenekim didn’t help when they statistically proved that he might have been onto something with all that de-coupling and team-alignment…)

However I don’t blame him at all.

I think he saved us; bringing us back to the path of value-delivery and independent services, but now with added independent teams.


But one thing is clear. Microservices need more architecture, not less (as do other forms of #Accelerate-style software organisation).

(See https://t.co/B2hWmXhIqe if you need convincing)

I mean, all those pesky slices we need to carve up our monoliths (or were they big balls of mud?) That’s a significant amount of work right there…
SOFTWARE , ARCHITECTURE
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Jared Naude @ rC3 \U0001f680
Jared Naude @ rC3 🚀...
@JaredNaude
Infrastructure review #rc3


There were only 18 heralds for all the talks. It was really hard to pull off, this conference also started a news show. #rc3


Next is the heaven team. 1487 total angels volunteered of which 710 arrived. 76 weeks worth of work hours were done by the angels. They prepared a few goodies for the RC3 world. Badges were given to show angels. Tried to keep traditions from the conference on RC3 world. #rc3


Huge thanks to all the angels who volunteered. This conference would not be possible with the help of everyone. #rc3


Next team is the signal angels, this is the first time that people had to do remote Q&A. The procedure was quite different to the in person event. There were 157 shifts filled by 61 angels. There were 5 unfilled shifts. #rc3
SOFTWARE
foone
foone
@Foone
now that's a title screen


foolish people like to quote that "science says there are only two genders". This is incorrect.

Science instead says that in addition to the regular genders, there are 25 Science Genders, shown here. (tag yourself I'm Skull)


I have no idea how to continue with this game.
I clicked a bunch of things and the game just pauses for a second, except when I clicked electron it animated and then was replaced by... something


Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science!

Turbo Science is like regular Science, but FASTER


oh I see

is this Gizmos and Gadgets but by Sierra?
SOFTWARE
Sunil Kumar
Sunil Kumar
@sunilc_
How should one approach System Design questions during an interview?

Here's the step by step guide:

🧵👇🏻

System design interviews are generally open ended discussions. There's no one right answer.

The main focus in this round is to see your thought process and whether you'll be able to design a minimal system keeping future scale in mind and by following the standard principles.

Know that many interviewers deliberately make it hard to see how you approach a given problem.

You cannot possibly design a complex system in 1-2 hours which engineers usually take months to years to design, develop and build.

So this is how you should approach this round:

1. Clarify the requirements: As mentioned earlier the questions are generally very open ended. So you need to ask a lot of question to set the scope clear for the discussion.

Example: "Design an application like Twitter"

Twitter has a lot of features like:
- Post tweet
- Home timeline
- Profile timeline
- Analytics
- Likes
- Retweets
- Following
- Bookmark
- Trending etc

You get the idea!
SOFTWARE , INFO

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For fun I made a Robinhood account. It took me 5 minutes to sign up, get approved and transfer funds for trading...

Here's some details... Read on.

...it took me another 5 minutes to get qualified for options.

If I share a sign up I get "free shares" and I can share as much as I want up to 500$ worth.

The main UI has a prepopulated "list" of stocks/crypto to watch and links to news.


Clicking a stock opens a "trade" button that looks like this.

Notice options is first, buy second.

Options took me to an approval process (which took about a minute) and now away I go trading Baba options.


Buying stock looks like this. It emphasizes fractional shares.
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MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
She was born in 1675 to one of the bravest commander-in-chiefs of Shivaji's Army named Hambir Rao Mohite.


Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.


However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.


Sambhaji's wife and son Shahu were taken prisoners to the Mughal court. During the same battle, Shivaji's second son Rajaram(Tarabai's husband) , who was the heir to the throne now, managed to escape using a disguise. He made his way to the Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu.


Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.
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This day was inevitable. Indian Muslims always lived in La La Land. They bad mouthed real well wishers & slept with the enemy who never considered them as part of them. In Gulf, Indian Muslims were busy with Javed Akhtar & Sonu Nigam. Never interacted with South Asian diaspora

Now when Indian Muslims are thrown to wolves it’s Pakistani & Bangladeshi Muslims with whom they kept distance are the only ones feeling their pain. None of the people who they invited for Eid Milan. Qawali & Mushaira are there for them. Such people invoke wrath upon themselves

Indian Muslims never spoke for Kashmiri Muslims. Distancing from separatist was understandable but we never even bothered to highlight their human rights violation & rapes carried out by forces. We could have sent them humanitarian help we didn’t. Our silence made us complicit.

When Sania Mirza married Shoaib Malik it was something legal. A Muslim married another Muslim. Entire Hindutva media went after her. They launched a witch-hunt for months. No Indian Muslim stood by her. All were silent. Now days come when Muslims are arrested for marrying a Hindu

Indian Muslims particularly the elite downplayed communalism in India by saying it will pass or Hindu majority is good. Fringe are bad. They misguiding others. Muslims were always others. Indians were happy to see Muslims sing & dance & eat their food but never considered as own
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@JijoSunny
1/ 👋 Excited to share what we’ve been building at https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t + we are going to tweetstorm our progress every week!

Week 1 highlights: getting shortlisted for YC W2019🤞, acquiring a premium domain💰, meeting Substack's @hamishmckenzie and Stripe CEO @patrickc 🤩

2/ So what is Brew?

brew / bru : / to make (beer, coffee etc.) / verb: begin to develop 🌱

A place for you to enjoy premium content while supporting your favorite creators. Sort of like a ‘Consumer-facing Patreon’ cc @jackconte

(we’re still working on the pitch)

3/ So, why be so transparent? Two words: launch strategy.

jk 😅 a) I loooove doing something consistently for a long period of time b) limited downside and infinite upside (feedback, accountability, reach).
cc @altimor, @pmarca


4/ https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t domain 🍻

It started with a cold email. Guess what? He was using BuyMeACoffee on his blog, and was excited to hear about what we're building next. Within 2w, we signed the deal at @Escrowcom's SF office. You’re a pleasure to work with @MichaelCyger!

5/ @ycombinator's invite for the in-person interview arrived that evening. Quite a day!

Thanks @patio11 for the thoughtful feedback on our YC application, and @gabhubert for your directions on positioning the product — set the tone for our pitch!
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Suchi Sharma
Suchi Sharma
@Suchi_sharma_
#THREAD
1.Meenakshi Amman Temple(472ft High)also called as Meenakshi Sundareswarar is a famous Hindu temple located on the southern bank of Vaigai River in temple city of Madurai, #TamilNadu.It is dedicated to Parvati(Meenakshi)& her consort Shiva(Sundareswarar). @LostTemple7


2.Madurai Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple was built by King Kulasekara Pandya (1190-1216 CE).This popular temple visits over 15000 visitors daily & around 25000 on #Friday !Friday sees the most number of devotees visit the temple with the number going as high as +25,000.


3.Meenakshi Temple also hosts an annual festival called Meenakshi Thirukalayanam that is held in April. A celestial wedding of the god and goddess marks the end of the festival. About 1 million devotees visit the temple during this festival.


4.the temple has been tagged as one of the seven wonders of India along with stunning Architecture.The temple is built using Dravidian South Indian style of architecture, and is one of the most impressive temple structures in South India.


5.The principle deity here is MEENAKSHI, a form of Goddess Parvati. The idol of the goddess is carved in emerald hued stone. The Meenakshi idol has 3 breasts as Meenakshi was born with three breasts and was blessed that the 3rd breast would vanish once meets right man of her life
HISTORY