iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 4h

apparently EA is not Electronic Arts anymore these days

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

when you goof off on youtube all day but have to show some results to keep the job

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

crumb @crumb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4998...

ihoggan
I was a graph theory junkie long ago and even moved to Budapest for awhile to study among the greats. While I was there I started working on Barnette's Conjecture which came to occupy my thoughts over the next 24 years of my life, on and off as I worked in many different fields. Last summer I even thought for a few days that I had actually solved it. But it's supposedly proven here - problem 180. I don't know what to think exactly. I spent thousands of hours on that problem. I really enjoyed it. Hearing that it is solved somehow makes me sad in a far-off way, like hearing an ex-girlfriend died suddenly in a car crash. I don't know, there's probably a lot of people feeling odd emotions tonight. There's no Lean proof for this one so I'm digesting the paper. On the surface it looks like an approach I considered 24 years ago and abandoned.
I revisited the problem this summer, along with my partial solutions, when the previous round of stunning proofs came out. Several hours of work with Fable simply convinced me it wasn't yet solvable and reinforced how hard of a problem it was.

jboggan
I went back to that Fable chat and showed it this new preprint. It coded up the new constructive algorithm and ran it against the existing test suite, that looks good at least.
It has been super helpful in delineating where the crucial concept came from. The proof is rather simple as graph theory proofs go, but it does seem to use some constructions that would only seem obvious if you had serious physics experience with partition function and calculating energy states that cancel out. It's not a wholly alien bolt from the heavens, but I can also see how there hasn't been a human being with the broad theoretical physics knowledge combined with the deep graph theory experience in planar graphs to come up with this idea. I don't know, I'm looking for precedents of this formulation and some old papers of Penrose counting the number of edge colorings of this same graph type are coming up, the line of argument at least rhymes. But I agree with the thought that this sort of progress should not be siloed inside those companies. I propose a tax so that every slop cannon Al video pays for another hour of compute time for advancing mathematics.
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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

inject some of that time travel juice into my veins so I can go back 10 years before the current state of things, thanks

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

we completed the first new level of the DLC, quality design as usual.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

new Escape Simulator 2 DLC is out. Can't wait to jump in!

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I want to remove all my hair, get tattoos and live in orbit to grow some crystals out of my space habitat.

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026

Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

graphics cards are so expensive now that I can warrant spending a few evenings bughunting for Unity for their 6.7 beta sweepstakes.

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

when I'm reading about recursive self improvement in AI and consider the slight chance it's not just hype and marketing.

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Kara Stone @solarserver.games · 12/09/2026

hearing a game dev give a talk about indie success say that his wife pays for everything so that he can keep making games full-time has really inspired me to find a wife who pays for everything so i can make indie games full-time

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm not sure why people are so resistant to the idea that Steam shouldn't take 30% flat tax both from small time indies and EA/Ubisofts/etc of the world. They, in fact, give discounts to AAA after $10/50mil revenue down to 25/20% respectively. But 15% for indies under $1mil? Preposterous!

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

the great filter migth be unaligned AGI systems turning on their creators.

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

Joe Wintergreen @joewintergreen.com · 08/09/2026

It would be incredibly impactful, man. People really need money

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm not sure how giving 15% for small creators under $1mil/year revenue causes bad incentives or can be exploited. Apple and Google have done this for like 5-6 years now. It's the difference of being able to pay rent or exit the industry for us indie folk.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Should be 15% for entities earning under $1 mil yearly revenue. This way they retain their AAA golden goose while giving indies a break.

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Scott Anderson @impossible.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I did some very rough calculations using the latest @gamediscoverco.bsky.social data set. Valve's lifetime revenue, since Steam launch, is roughly $100B. If Valve made $0 from every game that made $100K or less they would "lose" $0.5B, the cost of 1 mega yacht. At $1M that number is about $2B

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Did some wargaming yesterday by representing Russia in Baltic Empires. I won so mixed feelings about that. But good game, would love to play more.

Baltic Empires: The Northern Wars of 1558-1721

Baltic Empires representation of Riga as a major trade center of the region.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

looking into what it would take to do a Risk of Rain 2/Roboquest/Vellum/Gunfire Reborn 4 player coop game solo and I don't want to look anymore. still, the idea is nagging me.

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Brendan Duncan @brendanduncan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

For the last 5 years I've been working to bring #WebGPU to #Unity. It started as a side "what if" project, became a hackweek project where the first triangle was rendered. As of Unity 6.6, it's officially supported! It was awesome deleting the Experimental tag! discussions.unity.com/t/webgpu-out...

discussions.unity.com

WebGPU out of experimental in Unity 6.6

Greetings from the Web Graphics team! We’re excited to share a milestone we’ve been working toward since the first early-access build: as of Unity 6000.6, the WebGPU graphics API is no longer experim...

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

Robert Yang @radiatoryang.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

when you make a surprisingly good meal that uses up all the leftovers, you should get some kind of bonus in real-life. maybe quad damage

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Sunday #boardgames with my brothers. Knarr + Skali expansion, Space Base, Vale of Eternity. Forgot to take a snap of Furnace. Wasn't exactly planned but all are engine builders.

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

Eternal Skies TCG RPG @eternalskies.neocities.org · 27/08/2026

Oh here's classic Steam ruining lives and livelihoods because they're a black box who never allows anyone to fix or rectify whatever they took offense to on that random day. Just another day for Valve, a company that fans defend to the death as they screw over your favorite devs every day.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

testing steam onscreen keyboard for input fields is not how I wanted to spend my evening but here I am.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

just had the strongest storm since the 60s over here. lost my balcony facade. lots of fallen trees too.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

new experience unlocked - got a hematoma sucked out of my left leg's calf muscle area.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

we failed to save the cheerleader.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

a desktop idle/incremental video game about a scarecrow scaring away increasingly occult birds.

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

Henry Snow @henrys.now · 12/08/2026

the year is 2027. you wake up, sun looks weird again. in an encrypted messenger you discuss which liquids are best at shorting out the secret police's electric gloves. two rogue AIs are doing battle in your wi-fi enabled AC unit. treasury is doing something with the yen for the fourth time

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

one would think that ascii approach to gamedev would be somehow easier, but the sheer amount of supporting tooling I need to code from scratch from renderers to editors is staggering. my only hope is that once the base is in, it'll get better.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

just had a very nice, very short conversation with my mobile network operator lady, where I confirmed I'm happy with the service and the best thing about it is that I don't have to think about it at all. And she didn't push any further trying to upsell.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

struggling with the larger ship designs, but getting somewhere I think. #procgen #ascii #gamedev

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

watching older shows I missed or was too young to watch. all the forehead wrinkles and expressive faces not paralyzed by botox elevate the experience.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

seeing if I can address #gamedev art bottleneck with procgen #ascii ships.

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Reposted by Arnis Vaivars

.chantal//RYAN @thoughtrise.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

i used to be more polite about this but publishers, even indie publishers, have become so shameless about this, & i've heard and experienced so many terrible stories, i just don't care, i'ma call it like i see it it may surprise you to know we devs do often end up hearing the backroom conversations

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I feel like Start Citizen has keyed into the perfect demographic with lots of disposal income that's underserved by the mainstream games industry... buying a dream that'll never come true somehow is better than not having anything in the space at all?

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Anton @antonhand.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Yo is anyone else using the new Steam Recommendation Personal Calendar thing? I freaking adore it. I don't think I've ever bought so many games in such a short period of time. Feel like I find something good several times a week now.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Game succeeded? Layoffs! The EA situation once again reveals how the parasitic owner class performs extraction capitalism in clear view of everybody with no resistance. We're walking right into some kind of enshitification dystopia with eyes wide open. The entire system is broken across industries.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I wonder where we are in software development compared with Chinese factories producing wool socks at a scale and price that no knitting auntie can compete with, even in places like Eastern Europe. Will I be the auntie, or some kind of factory manager? Seems like we’re past the point of no return.

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🐔 Brian Bucklew 🐔 ₑͤ＞∿＜ₑͤ ∞🌮 @unormal.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

why doesnt anyone yell at the mathematicians that they arent doing enough suffering for the proofs?

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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I need every single person who’s trying to fill a hole in their soul via the pursuit of money to see how utterly useless it is as a salve. You’ll still be this unhappy as a billionaire. Be a normal person and fill that void by mildly entertaining teenagers with weird games.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I read somewhere that adhd people are night owls because it takes the whole day to rebuild intent from the previous day and I resonate with that deeply.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

enshitification of local pharmacies - can't even buy a crutch because shitty supplements with clinically unviable doses one consumes in a month cost as much as one and take much less space. So I ended up ordering from amazon.

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Arnis Vaivars @rinvars.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Unity 7 looks good - better performance with no breaking changes out of the box and custom tooling remains intact, faster compile times, improved URP build times with much needed rendering features too. If you don't focus on the trend mandated AI news, there's a lot of good in there.

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Unity3D @unity.com · 21/07/2026

Introducing Unity 7 - built for a faster-moving, more open industry where creators, cross-functional teams, and coding agents can seamlessly collaborate across every stage of the development cycle. Unity 7 will enter early Beta testing in December, with the Full Release scheduled for Q1 2027.

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