clar fon @clarfonthey@toot.cat
they/them/their pronouns (https://name.pn/clar-fon)
unapologetically queer leftist. software developer for money, mathematician for fun. black lives matter.
this account is mostly for posting semi-long-form thoughts and stuff that are more appropriate for a general audience. personal stuff is on separate account.
Joined Aug 2020
UI/UX accessibility
in this year, 202/, UI designers haven't figured out whether icons should display the current state of a toggle, or the state that would result upon clicking.
for videos, we've decided that a play butto;n means "currently paused, click to play" and for audio we've decided that a speaker with a cross over it means "currently muted, click to unmute" which is already inconsistent, ignoring the fact that we don't always do this to begin with
and basically no one tries to properly solve this and just, assumes everyone knows what the UI means without any labels or anything
robotic eye contact
further progress: trying to figure out how to texture this, and decided on just going with regular colours + bump mapping. still needs tweaking.
clar fon
boosted
♀️
if your game is about people getting body augmentations and it doesn't have any queer people in it, i'm just calling it cishumanism
additional info re: super mario galaxy tech
Jasper has a really cool video talking about the gravity mechanics in Super Mario Galaxy which is where I found this out and I highly recommend watching their videos:
mario shitpost that is a thin layer over something actually cool
Nintendo listened to the fans after Super Mario Galaxy and finally decided to make mario an ORB in Super Mario Galaxy
because the usual method of cylindrical collisions for 3D movement weren't super great with the gravity mechanic, they decided to give Mario spherical collisions in Galaxy instead. but, this meant that he had to be squashed down so he'd fit in a sphere, making him shorter. even though newer mario games no longer require this quirk, the shorter Mario still remains.
in other words, Nintendo has an actually legitimate version of the Bigger Luke Theory, except it's true and it's a Shorter Mario Theory
clar fon
boosted
There's a new "experimental feature" being tested in Firefox 83: sponsored sites in the URL bar.
"Mozilla works with advertising partners to place sponsored tiles on the Firefox home page (or New Tab) that would be useful to Firefox users. Mozilla is paid when users click on sponsored tiles."
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy
You can disable this by setting `browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites` to `false`.
Found via https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/jybx2w/uh_why_is_firefox_showing_me_sponsored_links_in/
mario sunshine
Super Mario Sunshine has several levels that can easily be described as "the worst level I've ever played" which is why it's even more painful that a lot of the game is really, really fun
streaming soonish
been playing a lot of Enter the Gungeon, decided I want to stream it a bit tonight. will probably be in around ~2h since I want to make dinner first.
tech capitalism and not actually solving problems
it's really, really frustrating that right now, if a device has its own audio output, it's expected so handle its own audio, even if it does not handle its own video.
the original goal was to prevent the problems of the 90's and 00's where you'd have maybe two or three devices each controlling volume separately, which would mean if it's too quiet or muted it's hard to determine what volume to control. so, the solution is to just pick what device controls the audio.
back when audio was transmitted entirely via analogue signals, the only way this could work is if the receiving device controlled the volume, since the sending devices couldn't send along requests to change volume. and, adding in software to scale down the volume was expensive and unreasonable to expect in the sender (I disagree but you know...)
now, we live in an era where HDMI can send control instructions to hardware and the sending software almost certainly has the capability to control the volume, and chances are that you still have to control volume on the receiving device.
for me, this means that instead of pressing the hardware volume buttons on my Switch or computer keyboard, I have to press physical buttons on my monitor and manually click it to the right volume. which depends on what device is playing, since each device has its own preferred volume.
but, the use case is always that you're either using a big expensive TV with a remote or a monitor with no audio. nothing in between.
ugh.
honestly really sympathise with this (paraphrased) quote that I believe is from Arlo (YouTuber):
Nintendo is like a friend that you really really love that will just punch you in the face occasionally with no warning
queer language observation, combination subpost and self-callout
"bi" and "trans" share a lot of similarities.
both terms can be considered problematic. "bi" has the connotation of being binary and so does "trans", as it puts undue emphasis on transition.
both flags can be considered problematic. the bi flag puts a lot of emphasis on the gender binary, and while the trans flag does explicitly include non-binary people, it does so by still putting emphasis on assigned gender.
in both cases, the communities largely ignore these problems because they have existed for decades and grown through these problems and openly denounce them.
but for some reason, I particularly feel distanced from the bi community and very strongly tied to the trans community. not sure why, but it potentially has to do with the fact that I was introduced to the pan community before I was more open about things and to the trans community after.
🤷
how would you pronounce "xor"?
clar fon
boosted
RT @sonic_hedgehog
Sometimes we just need a little reminder.
tech industry and greed
honestly kinda disgusted to see job offers sent to my email that go over 3x my salary especially when even my current salary was considered too high for most of the people I talked to when I applied for my current job.
the tech industry has absolutely nowhere close to an understanding of the price of things and it's why we see startups pop up and vanish in a puff of billions of dollars without anyone even noticing.
crude analogies, cryptocurrency
I vehemently refuse with a burning passion to let bitcoin bros co-opt the term "crypto" for their fart-stronger-get-richer BS instead of letting it represent all of the super cool cryptography that we use to keep things safe on the web and on our devices
(because bitcoin is designed so that new bitcoins are rewarded to those who can compute more meaningless maths problems, it's effectively a race to see who can waste the most energy to get the most money. hence, fart-stronger-get-richer)
clar fon
boosted
You’ve heard of serverless cloud architecture 
Now, get ready for… 🥁🥁🥁
Cloudless server architecture 
We’re offering features you thought you could only dream of:
- Hardened database security: Databases don’t have to be exposed to the network thanks to the wonders of On-System Databases™ and Unix Sockets™, hardening security tenfold!
- Latency-free database connections: As if that wasn’t good enough, On-System Databases™ allow you to dramatically reduce latency by bypassing the need for pesky network connections!
- On-Demand Web Worker Process Spawning™ using the Common Gateway Interface™
- Bare-Metal Access™ to On-Server Storage™ for unparalleled Read™ and Write™ speeds
- Predictable costs: No more surprise bills. Pay only for what you specify! Our patent-pending Hardware Limitations™ automatically throttles your cloudless server if you reach capacity
- Documentation: tired of trying to navigate through the jungle of outdated and incorrect Azure or AWS documentation? Don’t fret! Operating systems are documented by the most dedicated gangs of nerds you can find on freenode!
clar fon
boosted
Hey, I have slots open for emoji commissions again!
🌲 DM me for enquiries 🌲
re: video game capitalism venting
right now I'm trying to play Snake Pass, which I've heard is a super fun game, but I have to:
- run it via Steam Play (gross) because it's Windows-only
- have to lower the graphics settings super low because it's horribly optimised
- have to deal with mislabelled controls since it assumes that you're using an Xbox controller, even though I'm using a Switch controller
- an approaching the point where it's near-intoleraly slow anyway
and the game was designed in Unreal Engine 4, which supports exporting to Linux. sure, it's not free, but considering how they took the time and effort to port it to every console, it's not like they didn't have the option.
and just… ugh. I understand indie devs not being able to export to Linux or Mac, but games by large studios have no excuse.
they/them/their pronouns (https://name.pn/clar-fon)
unapologetically queer leftist. software developer for money, mathematician for fun. black lives matter.
this account is mostly for posting semi-long-form thoughts and stuff that are more appropriate for a general audience. personal stuff is on separate account.
Joined Aug 2020
