Like someone else suggested, this is likely a case of automated flagging by fraud detection systems, but it does not excuse such terrible communication on Patreon's part.
I have been following the recent Patreon backlash with interest, which I think was triggered by Patreon banning a youtuber who goes by Sargon of Akkad for using the phrase "white [n-word]" in a youtube video. Sam Harris, who was one of the highest earning people n Patreon, closed his patreon account and explained why he did so [0]. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin (popular internet personalities who spoke out against Patreon's trust and safety policies) are planning on launching an alternative [1] to Patreon that is more pro free speech. It would be interesting to see if they manage to build a free speech alternative since the problem usually is that the worst elements on the internet flock to it before regular people and the site/service will be labeled a hub for nazis/white supremacists and no bank/financial institution will want to do business with such a service. It also sounds like companies such as Stripe and Paypal can do little even if they wanted to support a free speech alternative to Patreon, since that would cause issues with their payment networks.
I am interested in learning a little about how the financial infrastructure works (banks, payment processors, regulations), who decides what types of service should not be allowed even if it's legal and what it would take to build a free speech alternative to Patreon, so if there are some good resources that you know about, please share them in the comments.
But notifying the owner is not a part of automated flagging? How hard is it to make it send out a short e-mail? This is basically very bad care and support for clients, however one spins it.
Perfect timing. I just started reading up about phaser since I was looking into building a html/js powered browser based gaming site, something like miniclip.com.
I am a complete beginner and I want to build a simple game to simulate trading bitcoin. Let's call the main character Wojak (since it's the most popular meme for bitcoin trading related discussions). Here's the idea : Wojak got into Bitcoin early and made a nice little fortune and now stays at home trading bitcoin on exchanges. I want the setting to be a house with furniture, a door, a window and a computer. Maybe something slightly better than this : http://img.phone.baidu.com/public/uploads/store_4/d/7/6/d769...
I will be using historical bitcoin price data to simulate a very simple exchange the user can trade against. Here are my questions for anyone who has built a game using phaser :
* Is phaser suitable for what I plan to build?
* can you give me an overview of what sort of time and effort building a game like this will involve?
* How do I generate the assets, models of the furniture? What tools are commonly used?
* How do I get audio for the background music and some simple effects for the scenes? Any good resources for this? Maybe there are apps that can help with this?
* Any good tutorials to get me up to scratch in understanding how browser based games work from a developers point of view?
* Any good resources and communities that might be helpful for what I have in mind?
I started looking into phaser and building browser based games a couple of hours ago, so apologies if the questions and my thinking are all over the place.
Phaser is perfectly fine for that. Since you are building a game about some sort of economy that evolves, you are likely to need some graphs in your UI, I doubt Phaser has components strictly for that but it's likely that someone has done some libraries, or you can roll something simple with the 2D primitives that Phaser does support.
However, it sounds like your game is going to be more based on UI interactions (buttons, etc) than in "realtime" action, which Phaser is very strong at. If you are already comfortable with straight HTML and CSS then you might be better off building the game as a Web App, and use lots of great libraries in that realm.
Until you have the foundations of your game, I advise you to not worry about graphics and audio. There are resources like https://opengameart.org/ where you can get some material to work with so it's not just a plain and ugly looking thing. Once you prove that the game has legs (and you as its developer have legs too) then you can start looking into creating or comissioning assets.
I think it's fair to say that Phaser is pretty established. If you're just targeting the Web+2D, you can get a smaller output too, rather than, say, bundling Unity into your game.
Not a knock against those two, they're both quite good. Phaser is definitely a reasonable option, though.
If you're an absolute beginner, go with a modern engine like unity, game maker, cocos, ...
If you're an average dev and knows js, phaser is very nice. (But do you only want to target browsers?)
No, no, no. I started on Game Maker about 12 years ago. It taught me a lot of crummy programming practices, and often took care of too many of the underlying aspects, to a point where I was often doing things without any understanding of how they worked.
Unity is free, and offers something much closer to a proper IDE. It's usage of C# also encourages newer developers to learn the fundaments a language they can very much apply elsewhere if and when they need.
No mention about the privacy implications of having every transaction tracked? We're already at a point where pretty much every transaction is tracked and a cashless society makes being tracked a requirement to function in society. Is privacy even a topic of discussion with governments looking to go cashless?
I still try and pay with cash wherever possible, but many offline/physical stores often require a phone number or email address to complete a transaction, so privacy goes out of the window even when using cash.
Good point. There is a rumor among my local IT fellows, that some banks who also run an insurance companies (or partner with some) share transaction information with insurance guys to help them identify whether discount is possible for a specific person or not. E.g. if someone frequently spends a lot of money in pubs, most likely that someone will have health issues sooner or later. So better to increase the insurance fee.
For sure such information trading is illegal, but as the government doesn't give a single care, most likely it is true.
>There is a rumor among my local IT fellows, that some banks who also run an insurance companies (or partner with some) share transaction information with insurance guys to help them identify whether discount is possible for a specific person or not. E.g. if someone frequently spends a lot of money in pubs, most likely that someone will have health issues sooner or later.
Or worse, what if they decide you had too much pub spending/fast food, so you can't get that new organ you need?
I keep my "entertainment" budget (pubs, eating out, etc) in cash for this reason.
This doesn't make much sense - insurance is about sharing risk amoung common entities, so increasing the premiums based on risk on micro-factors isn't really that helpful. You would probably get good enough performance from a couple of basic, easily obtained variables (age, weight, family history), instead of tracking, organizing and figuring out all of these variables.
Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. As I get more employees, I'd probably look at System76 first. I appreciate their US based manufacturing goal.
I purchased the Gazelle. It's mid-level. It's a 7th gen i7. It has 32 GB of RAM. Runs Ubuntu 18.04. Has 512 GB nvme ssd. The video card is an integrated Intel. This is perfectly setup for running 5-10 docker instances locally, VS Code, Android Studio, and other tools all at once. I never swap, even with Chrome. C++ compile times are acceptable. Go compiles instantaneously. I got all this for $1600, rounding up. Good quality for the money. Build-wise, I dislike a few things.
The plastic shell feels cheap. There are minor creaks as I lift and carry it around one handed by the corner.
The keyboard has a number pad, which I find annoying. Linux in general is terrible about turning the num lock on. Some apps will have it on. Other won't. This makes the Home and End buttons (accessed by my pinky) unstable: will I get 0 or got the end of the line? For a 15" notebook, there should be no pad. It should work like the MBP. It does have a backlight.
The screen is good. There are no dead pixels (unlike the MBP that had them since day 1 but not in great enough number to get a replacement). It's not 4k. Rather it's good old fashion 1080p.
Battery life is an interesting topic. Ubuntu is not geared for great battery life. XFCE is definitely not. As a result I really only get about 4 hours. In its day, the MBP got about 6 hours. My problem is the battery decayed quickly with the System76. I don't think, and I could be wrong, that the battery should be at 90% in one year.
As to support, they are a little slow to respond. I also think they have an odd process. As far as I can tell, I don't get emails about tickets. I have to manually login and check the status. That's odd. Another oddity is that I can't figure out how to close tickets. I asked a question about the fan. They answered in a reasonable period. The ticket is still open. There is not button, as far as I can see, that allows me to complete/close the issue.
Do notice the price tag. A similar MBP is about $3k. Sure, it has a better graphics card, but it's a linux machine. Gaming is not my priority. This price includes user-replaceable parts. I can buy a new batter without going back to System75. I can replace the SSD without going back to System76. All the parts are standard (I doubt I can add more RAM). If I got a more powerful video card, I could do all of this and save $1k vs MBP.
As a quick aside, I'd love to see System76 move the mouse pad to the top of the keyboard. I don't think most people need a huge pad. A smaller pad at the top would prevent the palm from hitting it, which is a problem in Linux. So if there are any System76 reps reading this, give it a shot.
>Could you talk about what those projects are about and what languages/frameworks you are using?
Sure, I'm working with Angular now. I might switch to Vue.js because I'm not crazy about Angular and I've heard very good things about Vue, but I'm also wondering if I'd like Angular more once I reached proficiency in it.
>What's next? Are you looking to start another business or taking some time to just learn and work on projects that you find interesting?
The project I want to get back to is a keto recipe search engine (https://ketohub.io/). I put it on hold for other projects, but I have more ideas for it and it's a good project for me to stretch my web development skills.
I may also consider projects targeting customers in Western Mass that nobody else is really going after. When I tell people here I'm a developer, many tell me that the software they're forced to use at work is terrible and old but there's no replacement, so maybe I'll find one I can tackle.
>Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading your blog posts and forum posts on IH. Good luck!
> Sure, I'm working with Angular now. I might switch to Vue.js because I'm not crazy about Angular and I've heard very good things about Vue, but I'm also wondering if I'd like Angular more once I reached proficiency in it.
I am probably preaching to the choir here, but if you are looking to sharpen your skills, it's almost always better to stick with a single tech and learn it really, really well. That doesn't mean it's harmful to step through some Vue tutorials to get a feel for how it is different, however, if you're not careful you can end up losing a ton of time learning about the JS framework du jour and not actually making progress on anything. Especially if you are not in any hurry to build something useful.
Just about the only constant in JS frameworks is that any decision you make now on which one to use will probably be wrong in a year.
That's not to say optimizing for development speed isn't a good thing, especially if you are looking to bang out POCs as quickly as possible to vet startup ideas. But if you're not careful this can devolve into "funtime with tech" that could be a major distraction which might not even look or feel like one.
I have been following the recent Patreon backlash with interest, which I think was triggered by Patreon banning a youtuber who goes by Sargon of Akkad for using the phrase "white [n-word]" in a youtube video. Sam Harris, who was one of the highest earning people n Patreon, closed his patreon account and explained why he did so [0]. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin (popular internet personalities who spoke out against Patreon's trust and safety policies) are planning on launching an alternative [1] to Patreon that is more pro free speech. It would be interesting to see if they manage to build a free speech alternative since the problem usually is that the worst elements on the internet flock to it before regular people and the site/service will be labeled a hub for nazis/white supremacists and no bank/financial institution will want to do business with such a service. It also sounds like companies such as Stripe and Paypal can do little even if they wanted to support a free speech alternative to Patreon, since that would cause issues with their payment networks.
I am interested in learning a little about how the financial infrastructure works (banks, payment processors, regulations), who decides what types of service should not be allowed even if it's legal and what it would take to build a free speech alternative to Patreon, so if there are some good resources that you know about, please share them in the comments.
[0] https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctw...
[1] https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/10772442911251742...