We tried to see how many mailbag questions we could do this week. As it turns out, the answer was “all of them”. There’s technically one question left, but it was a “What do you think of this video” type question, and I hadn’t watched the video.
Paul will be away for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll have guest hosts. Maybe I’ll do something else. I dunno. We’ll see.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #332: Mailbag Speedrun”
Someone asked me to explain this nonsense with GameStop and this Reddit vs. Some Hedge Fund stuff. There are a ton of explanations in the form of facecam YouTube videos, but if you’d rather read than watch a person talk for fifteen minutes then answers have been hard to come by.
The media is baffled and can’t seem to break it down for the non-experts. You can jump over to Reddit and try to follow the chaos, but the explanations are lacking in context, dense with technical jargon, and filled with in-jokes. There really isn’t a newbie-friendly way to get a handle on things.
I absorbed some financial knowledge during my time serving on the front lines of the Dot-Com bubble. I am nowhere near an expert and there are still details of this story that are beyond me, but I have a rough grasp of the basics and I think I can break it down for the uninitiated. So that’s what I’m going to do. Here is a short, jargon-free overview of what this mess is.
I have no personal stake in this. I own no stocks, and if I did I’d have tissue paper hands”Paper hands” means you’re risk averse and will sell shares at the first hint of trouble. This is in contrast to “diamond hands”, which means you’ll hold a stock you believe in and ignore scary fluctuations that might make others sell.. I don’t have the composure or capital to participate in the market, but I really enjoy reading about it. I’m not a speculator, I’m a spectator.
Also, if any experts read this: Feel free to correct me where I’m wrong. I did quite a bit of research and tried my best to simplify things without bruising the truth, but this thing is fractally complex.
First off, we need explain what it means when people talk about “shorting” stock.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Reddit vs. Wall Street”
Ugh. I’m already tired of thinking about 2020. I’m trying to enjoy my 2021, so the last thing I want to do is revisit the tribulations of yesteryear. Let’s just get this over with.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2020: The Best Stuff”
Note that in a couple of weeks, Paul is going to be away. I don’t know if I’ll get a replacement host or if I’ll skip the show. We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy Paul getting once again angry / incredulous at a game.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #331: Dyson Sphere Program, Per Aspera, Huniepop 2”
Cal finally beats Trilla into submission and recovers the holocron. Then Cere shows up, and makes another appeal to Trilla for redemption.
Cere’s speech is actually really good, particularly the line where she says, “I know the choices I made took all of your choices away. And I have failed you, Trilla.” It’s a wonderful scene, well-written, and the actors perform the hell out of it. It’s a good line, although it trips over the fundamental problem with using torture in this game.
Trilla didn’t get a choice because she was tortured, and breaking under torture isn’t a choice. I agree. But Cere only made those choices because she was tortured. So therefore nobody made any choices and nobody in this story is at fault.
Regardless of what you think about how much responsibility a torture victim has for their own actions, the morality of this situation is inherently contradictory because both of these people are grown adults that took actions in response to torture.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 22: Darth Cameo”
Last year was not a particularly fun year. For the most part, I did not have a good time. A lot of the games I wanted to play were either disappointments, or delayed to the next year.
But I can’t claim it was all bad. I did manage to find a few titles that amused me. So here is the list of titles that kept me going…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2020: The Good Stuff”
Cal finally won a lightsaber duel against Trilla, but he managed to lose the holocron anyway. Since the holocron contains a list of a bunch of young force sensitives all over the galaxy, we can’t really let the Empire keep it. The Empire will round the kids up and stick them in the giant alignment-changing torture machine and turn them all into Sith.
Cere knows where Trilla went. There’s a secret Imperial base where they run their torture factory, and that’s where the inquisitors are based. So the only way to fix this is to assault the very heart of Sith power.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 21: The Slog”
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
Finally, the age-old debate has been settled.
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
So what happens when a SOFTWARE engineer tries to review hardware? This. This happens.
T w e n t y S i d e d
