Ah, the real generative art, before 'AI generative "art"'
You should look into shader art. Basically "drawing" using code that runs purely inside GPU. Which reminds me I recently found an artist that does this with code that fit within Twitter character limit. Sadly I can not remember the name rn.
I went to Discord and Bluesky. Yeah Bluesky can be political + US centric as heck but thankfully other niches still have major presence... unlike Lemmy and the whole threadiverse.
if it wants to survive, it needs more people, with more interesting topic.
I've been repeating this since 2024 to the point I sound like a broken record: It's ironic how you can't spell fediverse without diverse, yet it feels like the whole place feels so un-diverse.
I'm gonna repeat what the top commenter said--the fact that you wrote this at all means that you've grown as a person. That's far better than a lot of people including many people around me
One heartbreaking thing I learned from all of this is: good thing doesn't last. Or if it does last overtime it becomes stale or just bad. Many good subreddit I used to join either became too populated, abandoned, or straight up doesn't exist.
I don't think it's just nostalgia, something is off about current social media, even compared to only two or three years ago. And I for a life can not tell what exactly are off with them! It annoys me.
This is as much as a note to myself as it is a note to others:
If you are still planning to use social media, I suggest to curate your feeds very strictly. I don't wanna generalize social media recommendation system (also known as the Algorithm) as objectively bad, but they definitely feel like a bottom feeder in terms of quality of contents. They're not always bad, sometimes I find high-quality videos in YouTube's home page, but even then they're getting rarer nowadays.
Prefer using social media that still have customizable feed. Meaning: if the social media's feed home menu is an Algorithmic feed instead of reverse-chronological feed AND you cannot change it, avoid it or don't use it at all. I don't recommend Instagram or anything else by Meta, since the main feed aren't really customizable as far as I'm aware, I forgot if they still have chronological feed or not.
I recommend Bluesky as well, since the main feed is highly customizable. Their built-in "Discover" feed is trash but you can replace it with "Following" feed which shows you reverse-chronological feed of posts from users you follow. Or if you still want Algorithm/posts recommendation I suggest using this feed: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3guzzweuqraryl3rdkimjamk/feed/for-you.
For reddit-like alternatives I suggest PieFed, since it's built to have a decent quality discussion with features like word blocklist or reputation system[^1]. The UI desperately needs an upgrade though.
Oh another thing: One thing in common between the apps I recommend above are, they have word block list feature. As much as you can block/filter out words related to the topic you are not interested in.
Please adblocker. It's a necessity nowadays, similar to how antivirus software are a necessity 10 years ago.
If you don't wanna use social media, I think I can recommend RSS. The disadvantage of this for me is it's harder to find content using RSS since there are no centralized place to find new feed to follow, as far as I'm aware at least. Even without it, usually with RSS the main body content is not included, so you have to open the original page. I'm fine with this with websites like personal blog, but with YouTube, it's too distracting.
Oh, another advice, specifically for Discord: join as few servers as you can. And prefer joining smaller (members count below 1000) server. Way less distraction and you can in my experience smaller servers are actually more high-quality. It's even easier to make friends in smaller server too!
If I can summarize it in one sentence: Heavily curate your feed. Emphasis on the heavily
Don't be ashamed of being nitpicky. Don't feel bad blocking someone. Nothin' personal, mate.
Also notice how I didn't recommend you to stop using social media entirely. Of course, I won't stop you from quitting social media completely, but I don't think it's bad to keep using social media. It's still a decent way to keep informed. You can still learn new things from social media.
If your friends are in Instagram and you still feel like connecting with them, feel free to do so. If you're an artist still relying on Twitter, I won't judge you. Just be mindful of the drawbacks and limit the usage.
After all it's a human instinct to connect with others right?
I don't think any social media is perfect, not even the Fediverse, ATProto/Bluesky, or other sites that claims to "fix" social media.
[1]: I feel like this system could be heavily abused, but so far it works great, surprisingly.
in my game engine, alongside with Entity Component System
You make your own game engine?
Yeah, I came across the concept of ECS while I was trying out a game engine called Bevy. It was interesting but like many framework made using Rust, it has too many abstraction or macros. It's not always a bad thing & I totally get why it's like that, but I want something more lower level for learning purpose.
So I searched around for more low-level stuff and found this talk by Andrew Kelley. Also I'm currently trying to create some city-sim game using Raylib and Zig, and I plan to try to apply to the game I'm making. It's my first time trying to properly make a game so it's gonna take a while lol
Yeah, it's such an interesting concept, and I like how Andrew not only explains the concepts well in such a short time, he also explains how he applies to Zig's compiler at the later part of the talk. Even more interesting, (CMIIW) data-oriented programming originated from game development, but as we can see it can also be applied everywhere else
Ah, the real generative art, before 'AI generative "art"'
You should look into shader art. Basically "drawing" using code that runs purely inside GPU. Which reminds me I recently found an artist that does this with code that fit within Twitter character limit. Sadly I can not remember the name rn.
Edit: the artist I was thinking of is XorDev
I can totally tolerate Bluesky being too political. But the US-centric attitude there annoys me very much.
No, Threadiverse isn't much better. I have repeated this criticism of being US-centric countless of times to the point I sound like a broken record.
I'm so done with this whole thing
I went to Discord and Bluesky. Yeah Bluesky can be political + US centric as heck but thankfully other niches still have major presence... unlike Lemmy and the whole threadiverse.
I've been repeating this since 2024 to the point I sound like a broken record: It's ironic how you can't spell fediverse without diverse, yet it feels like the whole place feels so un-diverse.
Daydreaming - Radiohead
I'm gonna repeat what the top commenter said--the fact that you wrote this at all means that you've grown as a person. That's far better than a lot of people
including many people around mePieFed is not even a fork, btw, it's a completely different software
i still can't believe 77 + 33 is not 100
AH!! Speaking of that, there is an excellent (and free) book about Network Programming available online, check it out: https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/
One heartbreaking thing I learned from all of this is: good thing doesn't last. Or if it does last overtime it becomes stale or just bad. Many good subreddit I used to join either became too populated, abandoned, or straight up doesn't exist.
Oh yeah there's a video I highly recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA
I don't think it's just nostalgia, something is off about current social media, even compared to only two or three years ago. And I for a life can not tell what exactly are off with them! It annoys me.
This is as much as a note to myself as it is a note to others:
If you are still planning to use social media, I suggest to curate your feeds very strictly. I don't wanna generalize social media recommendation system (also known as the Algorithm) as objectively bad, but they definitely feel like a bottom feeder in terms of quality of contents. They're not always bad, sometimes I find high-quality videos in YouTube's home page, but even then they're getting rarer nowadays.
Prefer using social media that still have customizable feed. Meaning: if the social media's feed home menu is an Algorithmic feed instead of reverse-chronological feed AND you cannot change it, avoid it or don't use it at all. I don't recommend Instagram or anything else by Meta, since the main feed aren't really customizable as far as I'm aware, I forgot if they still have chronological feed or not.
I recommend Bluesky as well, since the main feed is highly customizable. Their built-in "Discover" feed is trash but you can replace it with "Following" feed which shows you reverse-chronological feed of posts from users you follow. Or if you still want Algorithm/posts recommendation I suggest using this feed: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3guzzweuqraryl3rdkimjamk/feed/for-you.
For reddit-like alternatives I suggest PieFed, since it's built to have a decent quality discussion with features like word blocklist or reputation system[^1]. The UI desperately needs an upgrade though.
Oh another thing: One thing in common between the apps I recommend above are, they have word block list feature. As much as you can block/filter out words related to the topic you are not interested in.
Please adblocker. It's a necessity nowadays, similar to how antivirus software are a necessity 10 years ago.
If you don't wanna use social media, I think I can recommend RSS. The disadvantage of this for me is it's harder to find content using RSS since there are no centralized place to find new feed to follow, as far as I'm aware at least. Even without it, usually with RSS the main body content is not included, so you have to open the original page. I'm fine with this with websites like personal blog, but with YouTube, it's too distracting.
Oh, another advice, specifically for Discord: join as few servers as you can. And prefer joining smaller (members count below 1000) server. Way less distraction and you can in my experience smaller servers are actually more high-quality. It's even easier to make friends in smaller server too!
If I can summarize it in one sentence: Heavily curate your feed. Emphasis on the heavily
Don't be ashamed of being nitpicky. Don't feel bad blocking someone. Nothin' personal, mate.
Also notice how I didn't recommend you to stop using social media entirely. Of course, I won't stop you from quitting social media completely, but I don't think it's bad to keep using social media. It's still a decent way to keep informed. You can still learn new things from social media.
If your friends are in Instagram and you still feel like connecting with them, feel free to do so. If you're an artist still relying on Twitter, I won't judge you. Just be mindful of the drawbacks and limit the usage.
After all it's a human instinct to connect with others right?
I don't think any social media is perfect, not even the Fediverse, ATProto/Bluesky, or other sites that claims to "fix" social media.
[1]: I feel like this system could be heavily abused, but so far it works great, surprisingly.
Ah, will take a look. Thanks
You make your own game engine?
Yeah, I came across the concept of ECS while I was trying out a game engine called Bevy. It was interesting but like many framework made using Rust, it has too many abstraction or macros. It's not always a bad thing & I totally get why it's like that, but I want something more lower level for learning purpose.
So I searched around for more low-level stuff and found this talk by Andrew Kelley. Also I'm currently trying to create some city-sim game using Raylib and Zig, and I plan to try to apply to the game I'm making. It's my first time trying to properly make a game so it's gonna take a while lol
not sure who lunduke is & why we're talking about it under a post about data-oriented design :/
Huh, what interview?
Yeah, it's such an interesting concept, and I like how Andrew not only explains the concepts well in such a short time, he also explains how he applies to Zig's compiler at the later part of the talk. Even more interesting, (CMIIW) data-oriented programming originated from game development, but as we can see it can also be applied everywhere else
Note: the title is very click-baity but otherwise it's a really good article about empirical software engineering.
Thanks for sharing, will take a look
I just hope he's doing well. I would also like to say thank you for developing Kbin, and for maintaining kbin.social for as long as you could.
It's expensive