Katherine 🏳️‍⚧️
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quadraticink.bsky.social
Katherine 🏳️‍⚧️
@quadraticink.bsky.social
990 followers 700 following 8.4K posts
Principal Software Engineer at Scopely.
Personal account for personal ramblings.
If I'm posting/sharing code, it's probably cursed.
she/her
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quadraticink.bsky.social
"To hell with graphics, squash the special effects. All has only functional significance. Given will, they would play on monochrome oscilloscopes." - Andrey Om for GAME.EXE, 1999.

I knew this quote was living in my head rent-free for a purpose.
Text in Russian, scanned from a magazine. Black font over turquoise background. "К черту графику, давить спецэффекты. Все имеет только функциональное значение. Дай им волю, они играли бы на монохромных осциллографах."
November 8, 2025 at 1:50 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
This will probably mean anything only to 5% of people seeing this, if that, but I had a very good evening.
Photograph of a theater sign against pitch black of the night, with barely visible outlines of the building to the right. The name of the theater, in large illuminated letters, reads "Fox". Bellow it is an illuminated board advertising upcoming shows. They read as follows. World Ballet Nutcracker 12/3 Warren Miller's Sno-Ciety 11/5 Mashina Vremeni 11/4
November 5, 2025 at 9:01 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Flawless.
Screenshot from timeline. First post by, @dapenpan.bsky.social: "was planning to take a break today but got distracted" followed by a drawing of a catgirl. Second post by @deswalsh.bsky.social with a frame from Deep Space Nine of Julian Bashir leaning back from chair to look up. The quoted post below is by @garyjkings.bsky.social saying, "Everyone on Bluesky is a character from Deep Space Nine."
November 4, 2025 at 12:45 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Inspired by economics of AI, I have an idea I want to pitch to AI companies about powering their data centers.
A photograph of an extension chord with two power sockets and a switch on one end, and a standard European plug on the other. The plug is plugged into one of the sockets of the extension, forming a loop.
November 2, 2025 at 4:07 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
What about the wrong person playing guitar? Is this the same problem? AI training grades images with ghost hands down so much that nonsensical arrangement is preferred to not having hand obviously connected to the person actually playing? And again, legs. Can't have too much obscured!
Screen shot from video in a quoted post at the top of the thread. It shows two AI generated characters sitting on the sofa. One on the left is playing the guitar, but instead of having their left hand on the fret, character sitting to the right of them has their hand on the fret of the guitar in a very awkward position. Legs of the character playing guitar are also awkwardly in the frame, as if trying very hard to make sure the guitar doesn't obscure them.
October 29, 2025 at 11:01 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Is this why characters are reaching extra far? Because a more natural motion would result in the hand being out of the frame too long?
Frame from video in quoted post in the beginning of the thread. It shows AI generated characters in a cafe. In the foreground, 3 characters are sitting around a coffee table. One on the furthest left has their face horribly distorted, which looks passable for bad compression in motion, but is clearly just messed up by genAI. The character in the middle is reaching to put hand on the should of character in the right. Instead of leaning in, the arm extends becoming about 20-30% too long for a human.
October 29, 2025 at 11:01 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Did the skirt turn into shorts here, because there is a negative prompt against not having two legs?
Screenshot form the video quoted in the opening post. It shows an AI generated character in an AI generated apartment. The character is wearing what can be graciously describe as shorts, which were a moment ago were a skirt.
October 29, 2025 at 11:01 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Oh, right. I had that pre-ordered. Funniest part? I forgot about that, and last month I finally consolidated 4th into a single box, with everything neatly organized. Well, that did not last. 😹
Screenshot from email notification. Text at the top reads, "Items in this shipment." Below is a small thumbnail of a photograph of the box, and description to the right reads, "Twilight Imperium - Thunder's Edge x 1. You will be charged on October 17, 2025"
October 23, 2025 at 9:52 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
There, are, of course, a lot of costs associated with a building that aren't just material and labor, like architectural design and engineering, utilities, etc. But there are methods for dealing with it. See if you can spot some optimizations from my hometown.
Section of an aerial photograph of a residential area of a Russian city, with most of the buildings shown either started or completed while this was still USSR. Most prominently, taking up most of left 2/3 of the photograph, are 4 massive residential complexes. These are long curved structures, making two 45° turns across their length. They are 9 stories tall, which is a bit hard to tell from the angle of the photo, and consist of a repeating patterns of architecture, each centered around its own internal stairwell and elevator access, which are not obvious from outside unless you're really familiar with Soviet architecture. Near the top, there is a smaller building used as a kindergarten. There are also 3 tower apartment complexes scattered in between ranging from about 10 to 20 stories tall. 2 of them have very similar foundation shape, but are not of the same height. In the top right there are 3 more complexes, these contain a single 90° turn, are made of fewer repeating blocks, but are taller at 17 stories. There is a bus terminal, a shopping center with some ongoing construction, and a small plaza. Most of the area between the building is grassy with some trees and walking parks. There are a few access roads and some parking areas, but they take up a fairly minor portion of the land use.
October 23, 2025 at 8:57 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
I'm prepared to call it a partial success.

(Experimenting with Miliastra Wonderland)
October 22, 2025 at 8:13 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Move ZIG
For great justice.

(Yes, I am this old.)
October 21, 2025 at 4:46 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
I'm glad Genshin only gives me an "Oh," option, because that's what I was thinking.

The bait in this game is strong.
A screenshot from Genshin impact during a cutscene showing Azariq, a mercenary from Sumeru desert wearing gilded bracers and shoulder armor with heavy sand protection over his face, yet leaving much of his muscular, tanned, and scarred torso exposed. He is standing on a sand dune formed over some ruins, with bits of stone steps and a mechanism still visible. There is dialog caption shown on the screen as well as a single option for player response. Azariq: "*sigh* Yes, yes, she treats me like a brother. And we'd get along better still, if she didn't like hanging out with the ladies more!" Player response option: "Oh..."
October 20, 2025 at 10:35 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Inspired by the above, for your consideration.
Edited photo of a traffic sign "yield". The sign is an inverted triangle made of retroreflective material with a wide red bordure on a white field. There is a word "YIELD" at the honour point. The image is edited to remove the background. A broad brush of paint is added above the word "yield" to add additional background over the red bordure, and the words "DO NOT" are spray painted over, so that the text reads as, "DO NOT YIELD"
October 18, 2025 at 9:47 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Playing with some concepts around reflection again. I wanted to see if I can make something that allows exporting methods as painless as possible. The goal is to have something not unlike Unreal's actor system, but without code gen and with as little magic syntax as possible.
godbolt.org/z/bc8EnfG7G
class Character: public Entity { public: virtual void Move(float x, float y) { posX = x; posY = y; } virtual void Report() { std::println("Character at ({}, {})", posX, posY); } decltype(&Character::Move) move = &Character::Move; decltype(&Character::Report) report = &Character::Report; float posX = 0.0f; float posY = 0.0f; }; class Player: public Character { public: virtual void Report() override { std::println("Player at ({}, {})", posX, posY); } }; int main() { Script scr{}; scr.Register<Player>(); std::stringstream cmd{ "Player player\n" "player move 3.0 4.0" "player report" }; scr.Eval(cmd); return 0; }
October 12, 2025 at 2:10 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
I'm glad I'm not the only one with multiple extra copies of Guns of Icarus.

I don't even know how about half of these ended up here. Bundles, I guess? If anyone sees anything they like, free to good home.
Screenshot from Steam inventory. Games shown are Amnesia Dark Descent, 3 copies of Guns of Icarus, Metal Slug 3, Mirror's Edge, 3 copies of Orbital Gear, State of Decay, and 2 mystery games only labeled as Steam Gift.
October 11, 2025 at 8:37 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
The only non-AI explanation I have.

(But no, it's definitely AI.)
Louis de Funes in Fantomas raising his hands in surrender. His left hand is fake, and he has his real left hand stick through the opening in his rain coat, pointing the gun at someone in the direction near the camera.
October 11, 2025 at 6:19 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Heroes OE first thoughts. (🧵?)

Crunchy. Hard to judge balance yet, and a lot will come down to maps (will custom be a thing?) but solid start. Not sure what I think of the law system yet, but having two upgrade options for units? Yes! I like this. Not sure I'd ever pick not archers here, though.
Unit upgrade window from Heroes Olden Era. The window is captioned, "Choose a creature to upgrade" at the top. Two options are presented. One on the left is captioned "Skeleton Warrior" and shows a skeleton wearing tattered armor with loose arrows stuck in it, and carrying a large sword. Option on the right is captioned "Skeleton Archer" and shows a skeleton in much lighter, but equally tattered armor, and holding a bow. Both of these skeletons are shown to stand on a stone platform, almost like they are miniatures for a board game. There is a cost shown below each unit, each with an icon of pile of golds and a number "340" next to it.
October 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Technically, there are two notes in favor of Hive not using user content for their genAI, both in ToS and FAQs. But they are ambiguous. It is unclear from ToS and FAQ if training genAI on user submitted content constitutes retention or reproduction of user content.

Clarification is needed.
3.3 Non-Exclusive. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, nothing in the Terms shall prohibit Hive from creating or providing any output or results (a) that are the same as or similar to the output made available to Customer or (b) from information or Content that is the same as or similar to Customer-Provided Content, in each case so long as the Customer-Provided Content from Customer is not used. Q: What happens to our data after tasks are processed by Hive APIs? A: Our default policy is to retain customer data for 14 days. We can increase or decrease our retention time upon request according to your needs (including not retaining your data at all). Please note that increasing retention time may incur additional charges.
October 7, 2025 at 7:46 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Second, Hive ToS regarding customer submitted content.
thehive.ai/terms-of-use

Note that genAI is one of their services:
thehive.ai/apis/image-g...
3.1 Use. Subject to your compliance with the Terms and the license below, Hive grants you a revocable, limited, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable right to access and use the Sites and the Services solely for internal business purposes. Subject to any limitations agreed upon in writing between you and Hive, you hereby grant Hive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to access, process, store, transmit and otherwise use Customer-Provided Content solely (a) for purposes of providing, developing and improving Hive Services, their underlying technologies and the output Hive delivers to Customer; and (b) for other purposes that are expressly permitted in the Terms.
October 7, 2025 at 7:46 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
@ceramicwombat.bsky.social sent me a set of his custom coin dice. Link to his etsy in replies.

These are cast from metal, and have a very satisfying weight to them. They also do work really well as dice, despite my initial reservations. Especialy the d10s. (Hence, Draw Steel book for background.)
Set of coin dice (d4, d6, d10/100, d12, and d20) cast in pewter and artificially aged, giving them a worn metal sheen. Each coin has slightly conical faces with flat numbered surfaces, only half of them visible on the side towards the camera. There is scrollwork between numbers resembling celtic knots. Cover of the Draw Steel rules book is used as background, and features a cast of heroes fighting monsters.
October 7, 2025 at 6:31 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Is that what people ended up calling that drink? I remember when it was making rounds before it was called that. It's fine.
Photo of a clear glass with a drink sitting on a table in the backyard. The drink consists of a dark beer (Guiness) sitting as a layer over a yellow-green soda drink (Monster Nitro). The backdrop consists of an overgrown backyard, afternoon sky, and an ocean in the distance.
October 6, 2025 at 8:32 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
"Violations in name or description?"

Is saying, "Transphobia," against community guidelines now?

What the everliving fuck, bsky?
Screenshot from the title and description of the feed that's been hidden by bsky moderation. Asuka's Anti-Transphobia Field @asukafield.xyz You're transphobic? How disgusting. (she/her) Support: ko-fi.com/asukafield
October 6, 2025 at 1:46 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Never doubted it for a second.
Cropped frame from the Hobbit movie, where Gandalf demonstratively tosses a bag of gold coins up in the air, showing off a wager won on betting that Bilbo will be joining the quest.
October 3, 2025 at 6:16 PM
quadraticink.bsky.social
Meanwhile, reflection in C++26:
template <typename T> void Reflect(const T& t) { static constexpr T s{}; constexpr auto& [...x] = s; auto& [...v] = t; ([&y=v]<auto p>(){std::println("{} = {}",[](std::string_view n){ n.remove_prefix(n.rfind("::")+2);n.remove_suffix(2);return n;}( std::source_location::current().function_name()),y);}.template operator()<&x>(),...); }
October 2, 2025 at 9:40 AM
quadraticink.bsky.social
- "Rates!"
- "It says rats."
Two frames from a first season episode of Angle. First one shows Cordelia standing behind a camcorder on a stand. She has a board with hand-written prompt for Doyle to read for the shot. Cordelia's expression is that of annoyance, and she has her hands spread in a matching gesture. Second frame shows Doyle, his expression is much more apologetic.
September 26, 2025 at 6:18 PM