I'm a big fan of the historical information that Yark shows.
Arrimus 3D recently replacing a large chunk of their 3D modeling tutorials with religious content was a pretty big lightbulb moment for me that so much of the content I rely on - not just for the initial learning of a new skill, but as a continual reference when I forget something - is so fragile.
I immediately bought a NAS and began backing up everything that I gleam even the tiniest bit of learning from using a similar project, TubeArchivist[0]. Projects like this are really important for maintaining all of the great knowledge on the web.
Seconding tubearchivist. One of the killer features IMO is the browser extension [0], which adds a button on every video to send that video to the server to archive.
I have a pretty simple system in place. One family member knows the password to my computer, one trusted friend knows the password to my password manager.
Neither of them know what their passwords go to, but they know about each other, so I figure with some coordination they’ll figure out how to unlock both.
My password manager has, obviously, all of my passwords but also has some letters to family and friends and some instructions on what I want done with my body.
Disney "influencers" are such a scourge on theme parks. Normal visitors take loads of photos and videos, often at inconvenient times, but when it comes to being in/on the attractions, they usually put their phones away and shut up.
Most rides at Disney parks have pre-shows about 3/4 of the way through the line that set up the story for the ride. Sometimes these are audiovisual, sometimes animatronic, but always with audio and almost always dark.
Likewise, most Disney rides are "dark rides" where the ride is primarily in the dark with animatronics and the scenery lit by carefully designed show lighting.
Influencers have seen these pre-shows and rides a thousand times and don't care about them. They keep there full-brightness phone up and filming for them and talk over them to their audience. It's incredibly distracting and immersion breaking.
I imagine Disney sees them as a net-positive though, as I'm sure they drive tons of ticket sales. Most influencers are travel agents who get paid by Disney, or are affiliated with a travel agency.
> I imagine Disney sees them as a net-positive though, as I'm sure they drive tons of ticket sales. Most influencers are travel agents who get paid by Disney, or are affiliated with a travel agency.
FWIW, I dug into this a while back because I was curious.
Most of them don't get 'paid' by Disney in a traditional sense, but will get things like exclusive access to press events/rides, free upcoming products, or in the case with that flop of a star wars hotel a "free $7,000 hotel stay."
All of which lets them technically say "I'm not paid by Disney, they just gave me this to show all of you!"
Most of their money comes from donations/stickers/whatever the latest term for it is from the livestreams.
Usually the order with Disney showing off new stuff goes something like
> Most of them don't get 'paid' by Disney in a traditional sense, but will get things like exclusive access to press events/rides, free upcoming products, or in the case with that flop of a star wars hotel a "free $7,000 hotel stay."
>All of which lets them technically say "I'm not paid by Disney, they just gave me this to show all of you!"
So they literally are not receiving any meaningful payments from Disney. A “$7000 hotel stay” you can’t even resell is worth very little compared to $ in bank.
Also, you forgot about Club 33. Those folks sometimes get better treatment than the regular passholes.
> So they literally are not receiving any meaningful payments from Disney. A “$7000 hotel stay” you can’t even resell is worth very little compared to $ in bank.
Except it's $7k that they most likely would have spent themselves as a business expense to try and get money from their streams. It's still Disney paying them, just in an alternate way.
It's why YouTube, Amazon and others require you to disclose that you got the item for free, because that can significantly alter your view and is basically turning you into an ad.
How many "normal" people would spend $7k for a 2 day hotel stay where you basically are stuck in someone else's itinerary? Hint, not enough to fill out 100 rooms consistently, even within 2 days. But it was all "OMG THIS IS AWESOME YOU HAVE TO DO IT" from the 'influencers.'
>Also, you forgot about Club 33. Those folks sometimes get better treatment than the regular passholes.
Oops, yep. Forgot the $100k Disney club. Plus the timeshare suckers.
> Except it's $7k that they most likely would have spent themselves as a business expense to try and get money from their streams. It's still Disney paying them, just in an alternate way.
So and so. Here’s an exaggerated example: Disney likes your consistent shilling and grants you a Club 33 membership valued in many tens of thousands.
Even as a big Disney influencer there’s a very good chance you’d never have paid for this.
From a legal POV whether or not something like this is compensation isn’t clear, it’s highly dependent on the specific details. An influencer absolutely can legally receive gifts from Disney knowing that they’re almost certainly hoping for those gifts to pop up on that influencers feed.
> It's why YouTube, Amazon and others require you to disclose that you got the item for free, because that can significantly alter your view and is basically turning you into an ad.
I always assumed that was a legal requirement. Isn’t it technically classed as fraud (or something?) to not disclose that you were sponsored by the resort?
Obviously this will vary by jurisdiction, but it's a relatively new problem in all of them. (At least, the format is new and it hasn't been obvious if/how the old rules apply.)
In the UK for example the advertising regulator decided it's advertising, kind of like a 'product placement' on television, and therefore needs to be clearly so/declared.
Most of the influencers I saw talking about that Star Wars hotel when it opened were basically shitting on it. I felt like their reviews were pretty unbiased.
> The IRS have a completely different point of view.
Oh, I fully agree and I would bet a majority of them know that as well, they just have figured out a way to use some weasel words to act like it's not a payment to the general public.
It's because there is no exchange, if I give you a birthday gift can that be considered income? Obviously not as I am not asking for something in return.
However:
If I buy you a gift and we agree for the gift you do task x for me. Now that is income and the value of the gift must be considered income on your tax return.
Disney isn't saying "here is a room for free if you do x, y , z"
Disney is saying "here is a room for free" and that is the end of it.
Of course the obvious issue for Disney is that the influencer might never do the review of the park and never in a million years could Disney take them to court complaining services were not rendered.
You cannot give a gift with expectation of return.
So it's not income.
But it's limited because the one giving you the gift really has to trust that you'll do the thing you do.
I am surprised Disney would bother to be honest. I thought their theme parks were popular enough already.
> It's because there is no exchange, if I give you a birthday gift can that be considered income? Obviously not as I am not asking for something in return.
> However:
> If I buy you a gift and we agree for the gift you do task x for me. Now that is income and the value of the gift must be considered income on your tax return.
Caveat donor! The hand of the taxman extends somewhat further than laid out here.
It will be marked as an expense outgoing to a third party by Disney, and the third party will be named or identified. That third party if did not account for that income and get audited, will be provided a demand letter. Vast majority of the "audits" are fully automated using cross referencing expenses & deductions to incomes.
There is no such thing as "free" when it comes to the US IRS.
> Aw man, did the Star Wars hotel shut down already? I was hoping it would stick around until the check cleared for my kidney so I could take my family.
Nah, but you can book it for literally 2 days for now, which is somewhat unheard of for something like it, especially with the Disney and Star Wars name attached.
Talk with people around you and try to get agreement that if there's a disruptive influencer you'll all chant "Turn off the phone! Turn off the phone!"?
I could see that. I enjoy the live cam tours because my partner is immunosuppressed and we're not going anywhere for a while. So it's nice to visit virtually. But I hadn't thought about the actual visitors and what they would think about it. I could see how they'd loathe these people constantly recording and being obnoxious about it.
Buying a Tesla has caused us to bump up our timeline for purchasing a house. We are very lucky to have two charging stations at our apartment complex, but a few things make it a less than perfect scenario.
1) They charge a 40% markup on electricity. This is fair, given the upfront costs of installation and ongoing maintenance costs, but still a downside.
2) Since installing it, the number of EVs living here have tripled or quadrupled. A great thing, but also ties up the charger more frequently.
3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it.
All of that is still better than no charger of course, but we have other complaints with this complex and want to move when our lease is up. Looking for apartment complexes with chargers severely limits options and makes buying a house make a lot more sense.
> 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it.
The Tesla owners can fix this themselves by changing the charging speed manually in the car or the app.
> 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it.
I'd like to point out that the thread you linked to is for Australian Tesla owners.
Teslas sold in Europe and Australia include both the proprietary Tesla plug and a CCS plug. In America, Teslas are sold with just the proprietary Tesla plug and so the wall connector uses that, making it incompatible with non-Tesla cars.
This really feels like a non-story to me. It seems obvious that Tesla would have to create special builds or settings for crash testing.
Their crash avoidance features (automatic braking, steering correction, etc) can't be disabled by the user and it's rather hard to perform, say, a frontal crash test if the car refuses to crash.
This is my feeling as well, but to play devil's advocate; what settings could Tesla tweak to cheat on a crash test? I'm struggling to think what software tweaks Tesla could be implementing during a test that would game the results of the crash.
Airbag/seatbelt tensioner timings? Maybe lowering the threshold for their deployment? Maybe something sort of software-triggered fuse to make the battery safe?
Another commenter [0] highlighted the answer to this.
Crash testing isn't just crashing into barriers, it also tests automatic emergency braking. For crash testing, they could give a software build that's more sensitive to seeing pedestrians and bicycles, but not use that build in customer cars because it's prone to false positives.
Things like that, yes. It probably takes a certain amount of domain expertise to know exactly what, and how.
But it seems fairly reasonable to guess that certain settings that are normally generalized to work appropriately well across a wide range of crashes can also be optimized for certain cases if you know in advance which cases are being tested for. We see this sort of optimization-to-the-test being possible in most other domains so why not this one as well.
> It seems obvious that Tesla would have to create special builds or settings for crash testing.
Isn't obvious that you turn off the "crash avoidance" stuff if you want to test the car body only? Sure maybe the regular driver can't turn it off but I am expecting a Tesla mechanic can turn it off, rather then 10 engineers creating new software builds, deploy them on the cars and then ensure that when is the time to test the "Crash avoidence" you use the car with the correct build.
I love to see the Lua love on HN, especially given my other languages of choice are generally disliked around here.
Funny enough, I was just mentioning to a friend this weekend that I would love to write Lua as a full time job (and particularly in gaming), but those jobs seem nearly non-existent.
How do you recommend going about finding opportunities like yours?
If you want to work on "AAA" games, I don't think there are many companies left using it to this scale. An engine where those kind of games are developed almost fully in Lua, AFAIK, is Bitsquid (later Stingray by autodesk), but that has been discontinued. There are still some companies that use Bitsquid derivatives though, like Fatshark, Toadman and Arrowhead. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitsquid
As for non "AAA", I think https://love2d.org/ is quite popular for game jams and commercial 2d games - I haven't used myself though.
So maybe look for opportunities in companies using those engines.
Mullvad has been tremendous and the ease of use is terrific. I use a VPN relatively infrequently, sometimes going months without turning it on, so the one-time payments have been wonderful. The app is simple to use, and it's so, so easy to reactivate for a month when I need it.
I can't speak to their privacy as my VPN usecase is usually just "I need an IP in another region," but to the best of my understanding they are one of if not the best in the business.
My side project currently grosses close to $1,400 per month through Patreon.
I run a modded Grand Theft Auto: V roleplaying server with around 1,500 members (around 300 really dedicated MAU.) If you're not familiar with GTA RP, it tries to emulate real life as closely as possible while still recognizing that GTA is an arcade game. Players live lives as if they were real people, buying cars and houses, holding jobs, opening businesses, receiving medical treatment, being arrested, etc.
I've spent around three years working on the gamemode and spend, on average, 30-60 hours per week on it. It's really a pure passion project. Players support the project through Patreon in exchange for priority queue access (when the server is full, players are held in a queue until a slot opens up for them), custom license plates on their vehicles, custom phone numbers, and other cosmetic perks.
My son plays FiveM almost exclusively when he is on the computer gaming. He has been enamored with it for years now. As a parent who is also a gamer, I can't help but chuckle when I hear the conversations going on between everyone. Although it is not my cup of tea now, when I was that age, I would have killed to have such a world available for me to engage with.
The conversations can be interesting to put it mildly. When I get the chance to play, I mainly play a police officer and it has caused more than one moment of confusion when I didn't realize my partner had taken a work call and their co-workers could hear me barking out "lawful orders" from the other room.
Roleplaying games are really great for exercising your social skills and creative expression though, that's for sure.
I had a look at the servers for rent through your affiliate, and I did not like that they have 'drip'pricing - starts out at 7.40AUD or so, then the add ons come, like server location or decent RAM. Then on logout they offer e 50% off coupon, so I go back, choose a server and nowhere to put the discount code! SO awesome service, Ilove it I'm going to set up a a server, but maybe look for a better server provider with clear pricing. Also their servers in Sydney were down, so thats a flag also.
Wow, this sounds really interesting. As someone who used to be an avid GTA V player, I can imagine how much fun this can be. Do you have any videos on the mod and/or on the playing experience?
FiveM is the most popular platform for this type of modding, and is the one I use. nopixel is the most popular server on the platform and usually a good place to start getting a feel for what's possible on a modded GTA server.
If you check out https://nopixel.hasroot.com/, they maintain a list of all Twitch streamers currently streaming nopixel.
I've taken a bit of a middle ground approach, partly out of laziness and partly because it just doesn't seem all that necessary.
I have to wash my hair daily otherwise I feel absolutely gross, and I'll also wash the private and smelly bits daily with soap, but otherwise I only use soap head to tow twice a week.
My partners have never seemed to notice or complain about any off smells although I realize being around someone for long periods of time can desensitize you so I've taken a few opportunities to ask my parents who would certainly be the first to tell me if I smell like crap and they've never had any complaints.
Anecdotally, every partner I've had has told me I have great skin. Hair stylists have also told me I have incredibly healthy hair - I've been using cheap Suave Essentials (the clear baby blue bottle) shampoo with no conditioner since I was a kid.
> Keep the anal area clean by washing with water every day. Don’t use soaps as they will reduce the natural oils that protect the anus and may make the area dry and itchy. Use aqueous cream or a soap-free cleanser instead.
Arrimus 3D recently replacing a large chunk of their 3D modeling tutorials with religious content was a pretty big lightbulb moment for me that so much of the content I rely on - not just for the initial learning of a new skill, but as a continual reference when I forget something - is so fragile.
I immediately bought a NAS and began backing up everything that I gleam even the tiniest bit of learning from using a similar project, TubeArchivist[0]. Projects like this are really important for maintaining all of the great knowledge on the web.
[0] https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist