That distinction doesn't really exist. You have to pay employees. You have to pay for equipment. You have to pay for office space. And the countless other costs of running a company. There's no way they can realistically say "this particular dollar we got from you was used for exactly this purpose".
A budget that is influenced by the budgets of everything else. If you have $100 in free 'foo' money for 'foo' efforts, suddenly you do not need to fund 'foo' from your general fund and you can move those dollars you would have otherwise used for it to instead be used for anything else you want.
Their FAQ is not really clear on that, my feeling looking at this page is that it is more like: this money goes directly in the pocket of GOG, so by helping us to generate more money for us, you are helping (indirectly) the preservation of games as it is what they do.
But I saw nowhere in the FAQ explicitly that this subscription money will only be used to the "active act" of preserving other games.
It's hyperbolic, sure, but the broad point that there are things that parents find hard to parent for reasons, and society should think about helping them out, is 100% true.
it's a false dichotomy because it implies that the only two options we have are either draconian regulation, or no regulation whatsoever. that's the dictionary definition of a false dichotomy.
I never argued that we do nothing. There are plenty of laws on the books related to internet safety, and plenty more that we could pass. What I'm specifically against is mandating ID verification.
It's a coordination problem. I can "parent" my kids by banning them from social media sure, but if the other parents don't also do that, then I just made my kid a social outcast.
As it is we have to allow our eldest a lot more screen and social media time than we think is healthy, but it's more healthy than not having any friends.
I'm not necessarily in favour of a government ban, but I do wish more parents were on board. At the primary school (age 10) 100% of other kids had phones, and no one else seemed to give a shit.
He hired a level designer who also wrote a Sokoban game. (Can’t remember the name, but it was free and web-based, IIRC.) That game had some really great, unique ideas in it, and I’d be shocked if the new Blow game was bog standard.
It was Jack Lance, who wrote Enigmash. Tragically, he died in 2023 at the age of 25. Jack Lance superlatively creative. I cannot find the words to express how much the world lost. I do not know of a finer puzzle designer.
I'm British and I have sometimes chosen Canadian English as my OS language so that it will not constantly try to correct my usage of z in words like this.
Right - don’t make subagents for the different roles, make them to manage context for token heavy tasks.
A backend developer subagent is going to do the job ok, but then the supervisor agent will be missing useful context about what’s been done and will go off the rails.
The ideal sub agent is one that can take a simple question, use up massive amounts of tokens answering it, and then return a simple answer, dropping all those intermediate tokens as unnecessary.
Documentation Search is a good one - does X library have a Y function - the subagent can search the web, read doc MCPs, and then return a simple answer without the supervisor needing to be polluted with all the context
I've seen this for coding agents using spec-driven development for example. You can try to divide agents into lots of different roles that roughly correspond to human job positions, like for example BMad does, or you can simply make each agent do a task and have a template for the task. Like make an implementation plan using a template for an implementation plan or make a task list, using a template for a task list. In general, I've gotten much better results with agents that has a specific task to do than trying to give a role, with a job-like description.
For code review, I don't use a code reviewer agent, instead I've defined a dozen code reviewing tasks, that each runs as separate agents (though I group some related tasks together).
To an extent I think would be surprising to anyone who hasn’t done interviews, all developer CVs below about Staff level are the same.
Everyone’s architected a system, handled communication with stakeholders, contributed to technical direction of the team, mentored other developers, etc etc
You’d think that but I remember one interview where the candidate was highly recommended and they had never communicated with a stakeholder. A PM had always done that. They had never talked with a user. Ever. They had 15 years of experience.
It’s funny the stuff I assume is really easy and common and keep getting reminded that the world is really diverse.
And it’s not even because you don’t want to. It’s just because that’s how things work. I spent years talking directly to users and then I started working for a multinational, and I haven’t seen a user in 7 years…
The FAQ should state explicitly that patron money will only be used for preservation, not put into GOG general revenue, if that is indeed true.
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