have you ever:
- struggled to find junior roles with game studios?
- wondered how to find contract roles?
- been a contractor, been disallowed from attending a holiday party and not known why?

let's talk about the weird world of contract labor in the US games industry! 🧵

first, i want to give context for why the system works this way so that you aren't just reading this thread going "WHY?"

in 2000, Microsoft lost a lawsuit with contractors. you can read more about it here. this is where "permatemp" comes from.

that lawsuit formed the backbone of "permatemp" contractor law in the US. the end result was that companies who need a lot of contract labor (i.e. game studios!) distance themselves from the process of hiring contractors, and it's largely done via third party shell companies.

i want to disclaim a little bit that by creating this thread, i'm not arguing that the contract labor process is ideal or fair or pro-worker. i have been a contractor. it had pros... and serious cons. i am simply describing the system as it works; do with this info as you will.

other disclaimer that obviously, i am not a lawyer, and please don't interpret any of this as "100% true in all situations." this info is based on my experience contracting, helping hire/convert contractors as a manager, and having many friends who have been through this process.

Please read.

Antis + akgaes have been mass creating bot accs recently to trend hashtags that look like they support J/M, but they're spreading misinformation to defame him + make him aware of h@te etc.

This is a thread to report them.

Dm me if you find any.
This is so scary.

The announcement of a new Perfect Dark has reminded me of a good story from my time at ATI. It was 2005 and I was in the 3D Application Research Group. The team which included @shaderwrangler @ChrisOat @mirror2mask @pixelmaven was working on the "Ruby: The Assassin" demo for

the launch of the ATI X1800. The ATI X1800 was significantly delayed (that's a great story too about a crazy hardware bug, but someone else who knows the details better should tell that one) and Microsoft was about to show the Xbox 360 for the first time at E3 2005. They were

planning to show Perfect Dark Zero, but apparently it was delayed. ATI had made the Xenos GPU for the X360 and Microsoft got wind of the new Ruby demo. It was a female character who vaguely resembled Joanna Dark so they asked us if we could port our demo to run on the Xbox 360

in time for E3. If memory serves, E3 was about three weeks away, which was insane. Our managers told us MS were offering each of us on the team $5,000 each if we were able to pull it off. This was a rare kind of incentive to get for us and I was really excited.

Anyway, we got pre-release dev kits which were actually Mac Pros with Radeon 9600 I believe. The first thing we had to do was get it all to build and run. The hard part there was dealing with PPC/endianess issues, but fortunately we had a lot of experience with that from porting

The National Security Agency has just released an important set of rules and procedures for electronic surveillance by the DOD (of which NSA is a

It is a big-deal doc but it also appears to be more a housekeeping update of the previous one rather something that makes major substantive changes, unless I’m missing something, so my current plan is to tweet for specialists rather than write a NYT article for general readers./2

These procedures govern, at a 30,000-foot level, DOD/NSA surveillance that is authorized by Executive Order 12333 because it uses techniques that fall outside the sort of national-security wiretapping that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) regulates. /3

FISA covers collection inside the US from a wire of coms w/ at least one end on domestic soil. So this is for all the other stuff, like collection abroad, certain satellite interceptions, & warrantless bulk collection of foreign-to-foreign coms as they transit the US network./4

The previous procedures date back to 1988 and were signed by then-AG Edwin Meese and then-deputy secretary of defense William Taft. (They were released in 2014 as part of the Snowden

I spent 1.4 lakhs on Zomato alone this year

Once these platforms build a habit, it's hard to leave

Lifetime value of customers is immense, which recover marketing costs and more

These very "loss-making" companies eventually become money-making machines

I love the assumptions people are making here to try to work out how this is possible, but I'll not share the math to just keep this fun.

Few hints: I have excellent cardiovascular fitness, love fine + healthy dining and order with my wife and brother

Guess AOV and order freq

I started learning Clojure in 2021 and there are a lot of things that I like about this language/ecosystem. I will try to summarize my experience in this thread.

If you're not familiar with Clojure, here is how the code looks like. Clojure is a Lisp-derivative which is different than most Fortran/C-derivative languages that we use today.

At first, the syntax was very off-putting (my god these parentheses!!), but then you start appreciating the elegance of the language and after sometime you stop being bothered by the syntax.

One of the things that Clojurists (I guess that's what they call themselves 😅) always talk about is how they think of everything as data even the language's syntax! Every Clojure expression is just a plain ol' Clojure list that the complier reads and executes.

And for that reason macros in Clojure are first class citizens (in fact a lot of Clojure built-in functionality is built with macros). Macros are functions that take your code as input (remember your code is just a list data structure) and it transforms your code into...

Stephen, why are you so critical of Facebook and not the other big tech companies?

A 🧵 for well-intentioned engineers about how to navigate the complexities of big tech.

There's a simple inescapable truth about the distinction in kind between Facebook and the others.

Google could fix its content moderation and stop its military contracts and its business model would still be Google. (1/)

Apple could fix up its supply chain, raises the unit prices on its products for more sustainable and environmentally sound sourcing, and its business model would still be Apple. (2/)

Amazon could treat its workers better and stop self-dealing in adjacent markets with its own products, and its business model would still be Amazon. (3/)

Netflix could ... actually don't really have here to complain about here really. Maybe less Tiger King. (4/)

I have some thoughts re: the responses that @GameMinimalist got yesterday when he expressed his discomfort with history-based conflict games, their Euro-centric nature, and imperialist overtones/undertones. 1/

There are many people who are uncomfortable with wargames (the term I'm going to use as shorthand for "games that attempt to engage seriously with, or to model, some aspect of history in some way"). And that's okay. 2/

If someone is expressing that discomfort, I personally think the first and in some cases only thing one can or should do is *acknowledge* that. Listen to them and their concerns. 3/

If they're misinformed - a lot of folks seem to think that wargames are about gore and violence and bloodlust, that they act as a pressure release for dark impulses, which simply isn't true. I mean, converting numbers to an odds ratio isn't exactly drenched in viscera -- 4/

go ahead and correct that misinformation, while understanding that they might still be uncomfortable with it, and it's perfectly valid for that to be the case.

This reminds me of my grandfather. 5/

A short thread on tips for using Google Forms.

Firstly, everything I have learned about Google Forms was via @missdcox amazing YouTube tutorials. All the ways we use Google Forms are based on these videos. I would start by watching these:

We design Google Forms collaboratively across the department. These are created on the department Google Drive. The use of admin questions at the start of a Google Form enables this.

Teachers can access their class responses via the drive. All responses can be downloaded onto a Google Sheet and then filtered according to class/teacher/question.

We primarily use Google Forms for MCQs. At KS3, these are set weekly as the final task for students to complete. Most questions are based off knowledge students will have looked at in that week.

Today we are releasing the public beta of the @stripe extension for @code, which brings Stripe inside your editor. Let me give you some background on why we built this extension, what it does, and where we are going with our developer tools.

https://t.co/FyyHVNQtWA

A thread 🧵

By bringing Stripe inside code editors, we move Stripe-specific information inside the context where developers already are when they build. We believe this will reduce context switching, reduce friction, and make it faster to integrate, build, and test with Stripe.

We decided to start with VS Code, one of the most popular code editors, and build an extension that would bring in a range of common workflows through a new Stripe panel in the activity bar and a set of custom commands.

Let me walk you through the features:

🛠 Webhooks can be burdensome to work with, so we made it easy to forward webhooks events to your local box. You can trigger events to test - this is integrated with the VS Code debugger so you can easily set breakpoints and step through your code.

📑 Sometimes when you’re integrating events, it's hard to know what the payloads will look like. You can now see the most recent events, and we’ll fetch the full event payload as JSON if you click on it, so you can easily see the properties — all without leaving the editor! 🔥

When we say that "an algorithm is biased" we usually mean, "biased people made an algorithm." This explains why so much machine learning prediction turns into phrenology.

1/

Researchers with phrenological delusions ask machines to find statistical correlates of personalities or emotions, and machines dutifully provides them. It's high-stakes, machine-human collaborative apophenia, detecting patterns where none

Regrettably, this junk science gets published in respected journals. In 2017, @nature published a study by Stanford's Michal Kosinski claiming that machine learning could detect the facial correlates of homosexuality, creating an alleged AI gaydar.

3/

Unsurprisingly, Kosinski's study spectacularly failed to replicate. But as is so often the case, the blockbuster finding gets all the press, the careful replication work that calls it into doubt is roundly

Kosinski hasn't given up on AI phrenology. His lab's latest paper (published by Nature...again!) claims that he can detect political affiliation from social media

Incumbents almost always prevail with sustaining innovation

In disruptive circumstances, the entrants are likely to beat the incumbents

H/t Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Solution

Soooo, I'm so exciting to present my own version of the magnetic connection for @UltHackKeyboard!

Inspired by https://t.co/xRG70VmsPk and https://t.co/koCfb4sRDv

So, I've used NetDot Gen10 Micro USB for the task.

I unwrapped one of the micro USB father part and get rid of the plastic in it.

I've decided to glue it on RJ10 socket, as far as I've found, this is the best place to put the second socket. Yep, I'm still have the default one miniusb!

To have an even surface, Ive cut a little bit the trails on RJ10

I've found it challenging to solder wires to the magnetic connector's pins, so made it in the another way.

I've made holes in wires with a needle. So then just put wires ON pins.

The next. Glueing a socket to the RJ10. Since the force profile will change, it's necessary to enforce the RJ socket. So I've glued it on the perimeter.

Then the mag-usb is put to the socket. It's the only fixing thing for wires on usb. Glue for the God Of Glue!!

New from me: Co-op is quietly using facial recognition cameras to scan everyone entering shops. The tech is being in 18 stores and has been used for about 18 months. It's using tech from Facewatch, which says Co-op has the "best" watchlist in the UK

Adding some more details since this is getting some attention.

Here's how it works:

– CCTV captures people’s faces as they enter shops. These images are converted to a faceprint. This is basically a string of data, which is compared against a watchlist. Matches are flagged

– All the stores have signage about the tech, the company says
– The system doesn't retain everyone's data, it only keeps info about people who are added to watchlists

– The Co-ops in question are all part of the Southern Co-op franchise. It says the ones using FR are inner-city stores, with high crime levels
– The justification is crime against staff has risen. Since the tech has been used it says 3,000 incidents of theft have been diverted

– The watchlists used are created by Co-op and include images of people "known to have offended within our premises, including those who have been banned/excluded". Co-op decides who is put on the watchlist. Data on watchlists is stored for two years

Polkadot is complicated as hell! This 24-tweet thread is a beginner's guide to @Polkadot $DOT and @KusamaNetwork $KSM in simple English.

What is Polkadot? Kusama? Parachains? Crowdloan and Parachain slot auction?

Comment with other questions and share if you learn something ⤵️

What is Polkadot?

@Polkadot is a platform on which blockchain networks are built and connected into one unified network. These connected chains, called parachains, form a living organism of networks all in sync and secure. This forms the foundation on which Web3 will be built.

Dr. Gavin Wood, @gavofyork, founded @Polkadot after inventing the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the Solidity programming language for #Ethereum as the co-founder and CTO. Ethereum wasn't going to scale, and thus, Polkadot was born in 2017.

Blockchains built for Polkadot use a dev framework called Substrate (@substrate_io), the easiest and most advanced blockchain-building framework for coders.

Think of it as drag-and-drop blockchain consensus, or even easier, like Music EQ with dials up & down on certain features.

Ethereum is a one-size-fits-all chain. This doesn't work at scale.

Dev teams use @Polkadot's Substrate framework to build custom chains for a specific use/vertical, such as @AcalaNetwork for DeFi, @PhalaNetwork for Privacy, @chainlink for Oracles, or @hydra_dx for liquidity.

This has now started livestreaming, you can watch it here https://t.co/fGV4sx7OfD

Russia will not be participating as they've refused to take part in the hearing. Definitely the act of an innocent party.

Jacques Maire starts by explaining the situation they're investigating, the poisoning of Navalny with Novichok, and introduces the work of Bellingcat, as seen here

Jacques Maire also refers to the call between Navalny and an FSB officer who detailed the operation

Jacques Maire says no-one from the Russian delegation will attend, and will miss the opportunity to respond to the allegations being put today. The Russian authorities claims the poisoning happened either in the aircraft or the Berlin hospital.