Vector Databases for Semantic search and AI application
IBM has a good video on what vector databases are and how they’re used by AI systems.
Good evaluation of different Windows UI dev frameworks
Windows Developer does a decent job of covering different Windows UI frameworks such as WinUI, WPF, WinForms, .NET MAUI, Uno Platform, Avalonia, React Native, and Progressive Web Apps.
The reality of running a business in Portland 2025
In this video from the Portland City Council, local Portland business owners describe the daily nightmares they deal with when running a business in 2025.
This is not hyperbole. It’s not ‘fake news’. It’s the real life stories told by local shop owners and workers getting guns and knives pulled on them, being assaulted, calling in people having serious mental health crises (screaming, stripping, masterbating, assaulting passerbys/employees, or standing nude in front of their shops) and the city police and services do nothing. Their shops experience regular break-ins they must pay for out of pocket, rampant shoplifting and violent confrontations, homeless campers right in front of their businesses that scare customers and employees, spending thousands out of pocket for emergency repairs, being dropped for insurance, cleaning up drug paraphernalia, vomit, human feces, and urine on a daily basis.
They report customer foot traffic dropping more than 50%. Workers are regularly threatened to the point the owners decide to close their downtown shops because they no longer could keep putting their workers in harms way. It’s probably why Portland now has one of the highest commercial vacancy rates in the country.
As someone that volunteers at a local public entity downtown in NW, I can confirm all of this is true. We had to deal with this on a DAILY basis. We often had to do twice daily sweeps around the building to clean up multiple piles of human feces, drug paraphrenia such as needles, foil, bloody bandages, etc. All of which are serious biohazards. Local “harm reduction” groups gave out free drug paraphernalia and open-air drug dealing was a daily morning ocurance – all within 100 feet of an elementary school. Even when filming drug dealers and submitting daily reports – police and harm reduction groups would not come by or do anything.
Children there would see open air drug use right outside the windows of their school – and it was all legalized by Measure 110. Calling cops or city services did nothing. Police response for dangerous individuals was upwards of an hour – if they came at all. Other city services would pander, victim blame, and ultimately never do anything. The problems have been going on for months to years now – with little end in sight.
The semi-repeal of Measure 110 helped – but Portland is still a deeply troubled city that I cannot recommend to anyone. This is especially true for anybody looking to start a local business.
Hacking SecuROM in an old Jurassic Park game
Nathan Baggs wanted to play a retro version of Jurassic Park, but found it was busted due to DRM. He then proceeds to walk through how to hack it with a debugger and binary/disassembly tools such as Ghidra, x64dbg, CFF Explorer, and PE Bear.
It’s a great video on how people go about hacking old programs.
Another ASCII rendering method
I wrote previously about Acerolas ASCII shader, here’s another method by Useless Game Dev.
Descent 3 open sourced
Kevin Bentley, a programmer who worked on Descent 3 way back in the ’90s, has released most of the original source code for the game on GitHub under the GPL 3 license.
Worst Volume control
In 2017, there was a contest to design the worst possible volume control. It goes to show you that just because you make something look cool – it could be the worst design ever.
Even more can be found here.
Economists alarmed by dramatic declining school enrollment as people leave Portland
Besides bad management leading to a 10 year academic decline until Oregon is the 5th worst school system in the country, Portland has another new problem: dramatically declining student enrollment.
In 2023, Portland schools saw an astounding 17.3% enrollment decline. Parents simply pulled their children out of the failing, dangerous school system into private schools or moved elsewhere. What’s worse, is this trend has not only not stopped, but continues to see loss of students. This, all despite some of the highest spending per student and 30 years of complete Democratic party control.
Part of this may be due to the steady, 3 straight year population decline of Portland as people leave some of the highest taxes in the country, one of the highest property crime rates, and some of the least affordable housing due to urban growth restrictions. How bad is this decline?
The 2015 forecast, for example, predicted about 55,000 students for the 2028–29 school year. The latest forecast predicts PPS will dip below 40,000 that year, enrolling 39,945—about a 27% decline.
This means that Portland schools are about to see their funding dramatically cut since it’s based on student population – probably by about 30%.
Links:
Game Biz landscape in 2025
The greatest challenge to future games will be competing against those already out there – and that are refusing to go anywhere.
GamebizIndustry did a very interesting 2 part write-up on the current state of the game market that provides some data and commentary on the current gaming marketplace.
Some interesting points:
- Game spending is down as inflation and food/housing costs have gone up after Covid over-exuberance. Player counts are back to a more stable and sustainable level.
- Total game spending has been flat the last several years as we exited Covid. However, more games are getting released all the time so the simple math tells you the average game is making less than it was a few years ago.
- When a game now cost $200-250 million to make (instead of $20 million like in the past) risk tolerance goes to zero. Expect far less innovation in big titles and low-risk sequels.
- Behemoth games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, or Call of Duty are sucking all the air out of the room. They are ‘black hole’ games that suck everything in and keep it there.
- Those games are amazing at funneling players and keeping them there with their social hooks.
- Every IP holder is trying to get their IP into a Fortnite or into a Minecraft rather than building out their own games, because that’s where the audience is.
- A third of people who turn on their consoles every week are playing Fortnite. Half of the total hours spent on PlayStation or Xbox every month is in just the top ten live-service games. That’s before anyone else even gets a chance to be played even once.
- The data is clear: console buyers are becoming older and more affluent and the younger generations are choosing mobile or PC because of the ease of entry and because they already have the devices.
- What you’re seeing, particularly with younger consumers, is a default to the free-to-play entry point.
- Platform exclusive content’s days are numbered
- Everyone’s publishing everywhere. The expectation is that whatever I want to play, I can play it wherever I want. If not, I’m not interested.
- $80 price points
- Upfront price is a huge barrier to get people even to try a game. Why pay $80 when Fortnite is free and “big, complex, and with so many different ways of playing”
- Anything targeting the $80 price bracket is likely to either be a sequel or something that’s similar to another game that sold well – a ‘comparable’.
- Women make up a huge segment of the audience – accounting for roughly half of Switch players.
- They play and pay a lot less.
- They generally don’t self-describe as a gamer
- Even though the combination of outsourcing and AI could help to curb the rapid acceleration of game development costs, they are not sure it will actually create the deceleration of cost. AI is like Excel for accountants. It’s a tool that makes part of their job easier, but it’s still hard work that requires expertise.
- The future of game development will probably look more like movie production. Studios will likely only retain a small band of creative directors and producers, then hire contractors or co-development studios once the pre-production is done and concept set.
Links:
Database Normalization
I had forgotten the rules for the levels of database normalization. Not surprising since I last had the class over 20 years ago. Those problem sets immediately came back to me.