Fabian Giesen

Sometimes I wonder "how did people ever discover that really spicy peppers are edible" and then I remember Surströmming and go, yeah, hungry enough humans will try to eat _anything_

2026-06-14 06:15:26 UTC

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I thought you ran in those circles. Oh well, guess I inadvertently put you into a box there. I'll make a point to avoid that in the future.

2026-06-02 08:20:37 UTC

stop hiring necromancers for big construction jobs. once again, someone rolled up with a skeleton crew

2026-05-16 08:05:12 UTC

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they have one plant in China and one in North America, but it's really mostly Europe, and specifically over half of it really is in Germany https://www.miele.com/en/com/production-sites-2157.htm#item-0-0

2026-05-16 08:00:25 UTC

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alas, Gütersloh, not Melee Island

2026-05-16 06:07:57 UTC

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btw, to whom it may concern: Miele is a German company, not French, that odd parallelogram over the "i" is just a fancy logotype and not some sort of accent, and it's pronounced ME-leh not me-ELL

2026-05-16 06:05:08 UTC

you could seriously hurt someone with a washing machine
it'd be a miele attack

2026-04-08 00:33:02 UTC

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These last few years have broken something deep within me and I have no idea what to do with myself now.
It's not about the generative whatever particularly, that's certainly not helped but it's mostly yet another manifestation of something that's been eating at me for way longer.

2026-03-30 22:05:35 UTC

Never looked at the specs of the original SGI RealityEngine, and holy shit https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/166117.166131
this is completely bonkers for 1993. Just look at these boards!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealityEngine#/media/File:SGI-re2-ge10v.jpg (this is actually a RealityEngine 2 Geometry Engine)
and a Raster Manager board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealityEngine#/media/File:SGI-re2-rm4.jpg
no wonder these things cost $infinity

2026-03-29 08:10:48 UTC

FUN FACT: the "nano" prefix ultimately descends from Ancient Greek "nanos", which means "dwarf".
Consequently, translating "nanotechnology" as "dwarven machinery" is arguably defensible.

2026-03-09 19:46:47 UTC

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Turns out daylight doesn't save after all 🕶️

2026-02-25 18:46:35 UTC

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I mean, I have to. You know the rules. Definitely don't want BSD to pass without congratulating at least two other people. It's not worth the risk.

2026-02-25 18:38:58 UTC

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Happy Black Square Day!

2026-02-13 01:47:52 UTC

In my over 40 trips around the sun, I have accumulated some profound wisdom I fully intend to pass on.
So let's get started: when a milk carton tells you to "open other side", that's not the best time to stick it to The Man.

2026-02-05 07:05:04 UTC

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far be it from me to wish them a fulfilling life with lots of friends

2026-02-05 05:56:15 UTC

free pitch for a Star Wars villain: stormtrooper but they hit with every shot

2026-01-20 07:50:13 UTC

Out of curiosity: trying to find out how well-known root beer is outside North America

2026-01-16 00:35:09 UTC

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"If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!" -- Iain M. Banks

2026-01-15 23:35:52 UTC

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BREAKING: SCE insider confirms PS6 "more powerful than 768 PICO-8s duct-taped together"

2026-01-14 17:31:27 UTC

(en.) MTBF = (de.) Brechmittel

2026-01-14 01:19:28 UTC

random thought: if you see someone's record collection, you know what music they like
if you see someone's DVD collection, chances are you're seeing what movies they liked between the late 90s and the late 2000s/early 2010s _specifically_

2025-12-20 18:58:25 UTC

Wookash interviewed me a while back and the video is now public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7nIghaXJ80
spoiler: we don't really even make it past the introductory questions despite the length :)

2025-11-09 06:38:32 UTC

You ever think about how you can taste protons, and they're sour?
["Sour" tests for acids, which are hydrogen ions in solution, and H+ ions are just protons.]

2025-10-18 23:46:57 UTC

"Do Red Dead Redemption 2's Power Lines Connect to Anything?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTtMCoJrGxk this is incredible
TL;DW they didn't get it 100% right and there's some mistakes and several anachronisms in there, but overall, holy shit

2025-10-17 23:45:02 UTC

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steel wool in dire circumstances

2025-09-11 04:21:20 UTC

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I think so, Brain, but where would we even get an amplifier large enough to turn a volcano into a subwoofer?

2025-09-05 21:43:07 UTC

My sister (who is a psychology prof) has been lamenting that her students now frequently have no idea how files or directories work.
They're supposed to learn how to analyze data with R and this concept that there is a current working directory and they need to know which directory their data files ended up in and either use an absolute path, or use relative paths and set their working directory appropriately, is proving to be a real stumbling block for a lot of them.

2025-06-28 04:34:58 UTC

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It's also the reason I get livid every time some major Windows update rearranges the UI (for the umpteenth time) and throws in some new pushy feature that won't shut up nagging me to use it.
Apple, MS, etc. affect an attitude of "we own this device, and look at the nice thing we just did for you", then don't understand when users hate it.
And it boils down to ONCE I BUY IT IT'S MY DEVICE, NOT YOURS.
You don't get to mess around with the settings or install random major stuff.

2025-06-28 04:30:43 UTC

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Think of it like breaking into someone else's home to leave a gift.
It's not about whether they like the gift or not in the first place.
The invasion is what's causing the upset.

2025-06-28 04:29:28 UTC

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I don't think that's the problem at all.
I hate that stuff even for things I'm into. That doesn't have anything to do with it.
Rather, _it's not your device to put things onto_. (Especially promos/ads.)

2025-05-24 19:01:37 UTC

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Pretty sure this is something different

2025-05-24 18:53:49 UTC

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This is the result of something you eventually find a cryptic note suggesting you do

2025-05-24 17:00:05 UTC

"That's never happened before"
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/563/873/863/372/133/original/a74bb264b60278dc.png

2025-05-09 01:54:03 UTC

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E.g. to test whether pop count of something <= 2, you can do
t1 = x & (x - 1)
t 2= t1 & (t1 - 1)
and if t2==0 after, that tells you the pop count was <=2!
If t2==0 and t1!=0, pop count was exactly 2.
Not necessarily that useful these days, but I still find it satisfying to conceptually shift the usual pow2 test from "do the mask trick and then catch the one exception" to "check whether <= 1 bits set and not <=0 bits set".

2025-05-09 01:49:56 UTC

Small note:
You know the usual "(x & (x - 1)) == 0 && x != 0" test for power-of-2?
Doesn't that second part kind of bug you? I know it did for me.
But actually there's a different way to think about it.
"(x & (x - 1)) == 0" doesn't test for power-of-2-ness, it tests for "number of bits set <= 1". (Power-of-2 would be == 1). Because after all it clears the lowest set bit and then tests whether the result is 0. 0 maps to itself.
This immediately generalizes to other small pop counts.

2025-03-18 18:46:58 UTC

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"\n" vs "\
n"

2025-03-13 16:21:31 UTC

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🤷 it be like that sometimes

2025-03-13 02:09:03 UTC

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The less said about Final Fantasy, the better, but I will say that nobody seems to trust FF, they're all "these 4 are the good ones"

2025-03-13 02:05:26 UTC

The "Final Fight" franchise by now has 6 installments and I ask you, why would you still trust any franchise that has betrayed its fundamental premise that often

2025-02-26 06:18:14 UTC

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This year, I celebrated Black Square Day with the traditional "read a novel chapter on the bus".

2025-01-27 18:46:32 UTC

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Definitely not Spacechem, I never made it past the first 7 levels or so

2025-01-27 18:17:13 UTC

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I usually make it until the day of to even learn when the date is, and I usually don't know which teams are playing, so thank you for ruining my streak

2024-12-11 05:13:46 UTC

look I'm not a complete Grinch but I really can't commit to "jingle all the way"
my personal limit is around 2/3rds jingle, I just can't do any more than that

2024-12-01 23:27:05 UTC

Every time someone self-describes as "content creator" I die a little inside.
Look, "content" is the language of people who run a CDN, a TV station, a publication, a record label, whatever. They are mainly concerned with the shape of the thing and how it fits into the otherwise empty space they're managing. Nothing wrong with that per se. This is my day job!
But. BUT. If you're making the thing, it's an article, or a song, or a short, or a video essay. Whatever. Not "content".

2024-11-22 04:14:13 UTC

we hold these truths to be self-evident: that the use of ragged-right text alignment is not justified

2024-11-04 02:03:23 UTC

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This was one of those things where I figured "I should write this up some day!". It's done! Alas, I checked the git log on when I first committed that and it was... May 2017. Welp.

2024-11-04 01:59:53 UTC

New blog post: "BC7 optimal solid-color blocks" https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2024/11/03/bc7-optimal-solid-color-blocks/

2024-11-01 01:30:18 UTC

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Anyway, why do I mention this?
I'm 40-year old, and I can't remember half the command-line switches for tools I use _daily_ without looking at the command-line help. (I do remember the switches I use daily, but anything I haven't done in 3+ weeks, yeah I need the docs.)

2024-11-01 01:24:56 UTC

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This randomly popped up in my brain, don't know why.
I do remember that I had read the book (back when it was called Dinopark!) before the movie and it was one of the first times where I saw a movie based on a book I had read. I was very confused by movie!John Hammond who is, by all accounts, exactly the kindly old nerdy older man character you'd expect RIchard Attenborough to play (and survives). Book!Hammond (as I remember anyway, haven't re-read it in 30yrs) is arrogant, useless, and dies.

2024-11-01 01:18:18 UTC

Most immersion-breaking moment (not really, but go along with me here) in the original Jurassic Park film: John Hammond, the CEO/owner of this amusement park, not only knows how the generator system for his park works, he knows the emergency power restart procedure by heart to the point of being able to describe the function, operation and appearance of the primer switch handle all before even glancing at the blueprints. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzUx3XSzvg

2024-10-29 06:10:55 UTC

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the 4 food groups: HFCS, dark fiber, caffeine, microplastics

2024-09-29 05:28:54 UTC

art project idea: "The British Museum", which is housed somewhere outside the UK and will accept and display any donations from anonymous donors into its collection that were provably stolen from Great Britain

2024-09-14 23:35:52 UTC

Video title "Yes, you can visualize 4D!" speak for yourself, but I can't even visualize 2D so I doubt it

2024-09-07 08:35:22 UTC

Since Free Will is apparently a problem, has anyone tried Freemium Will instead?

2024-09-02 21:28:12 UTC

While I do in principle agree with "bros before hos" it's just for lexicographic reasons

2024-08-13 00:20:07 UTC

0x28

2024-07-31 06:35:31 UTC

You know that annoying thing where a 1.25x (+25%) improvement in throughput (work per time) is the same as a 0.80x (-20%) reduction in time for the same amount of work?
Easy fix: just start giving ratios in decibels!
Now your 2x speed-up is a +3dB speed-up is a -3dB reduction in completion time!
(I'm not serious about this. But I'm also not not serious about this.)