Mikal

Grind time

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I hate when folks turn fictional character trauma into a competition

[pran 🌙 cant reply :(( @hanguangjoobs]

so jc, the Clan Heir, was the only one abused in that household? funny how jc stans love to constantly undermine wwx’s abuse and completely leave out jyl.. reread the lotus seeds extra #pranpage

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I'd rather let folks book online than sort out appointments in DMs all day

[THE NAJ💜 @callmi_koko]

There’s currently a conversation about freelancers struggling to land gigs because of the rise of AI, and I think this is a conversation every business owner needs to pay attention to.

The market is constantly evolving, and the truth is that what worked for your business two years ago might not work today.

This is why I will always preach the importance of having a PLAN A, B and C and if possible S

You cannot afford to build your entire business around one skill, one platform, one source of income or even one customer acquisition strategy.

As a freelancer, you need to constantly evolve, improve your skills and understand how to position yourself in a market where technology is changing the way people buy services.

As a business owner, you need to understand that consumer behaviour changes, platforms change, algorithms change, and sometimes, the very thing bringing you money today might become less profitable tomorrow.

The goal is not just to make money. The goal is to build a business that can adapt, evolve and remain profitable even when the market changes.

Diversify your skills. Diversify your income streams. Learn marketing. Understand sales. Build systems. Stay informed.

And most importantly, never become so comfortable with what is currently working that you forget to prepare for what could stop working.

Because the market will not stop evolving simply because you’re not ready.

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I don't even know how you put a valuation on numbers like this

[One Bright Lab @BrightLabsMedia]

🚨Tracking Anthropic’s $80 Billion Loss on H1 - Exceeding the Revenue of Most of the S&P

How can a company losing $80B in just 6 months go public at a $1.8–2T valuation? 🤔

Most of Anthropic’s $80.7B H1 2026 net loss was non-cash 📉 — roughly $72B in fair-value accounting charges on convertible notes as its private valuation soared. Actual revenue was $16.3B 📈

That paper loss is still larger than the entire first-half revenue of ~470 of the ~500 companies in the S&P 500. Only the biggest names (Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, NVIDIA, etc.) typically clear $80B in six-month sales 💰

The AI race is rewriting what “loss” and “scale” even mean 🚀

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

They gotta bring that back, having to untoggle just to run is annoying asl

[ChadOfDuty @ChadOfDuty]

MW4 General Feedback [October 20]: Allow players to break out of toggled ADS by pressing Sprint, rather than having to manually untoggle ADS first.

A common piece of feedback from players who use the Toggle setting for “Aim Down Sights Behavior”: pressing Sprint does not automatically break the player out of the toggled ADS state. To exit ADS and sprint, the player first has to press the ADS input again to untoggle, then sprint. That extra input in the middle of a movement can make repositioning feel sluggish and unresponsive.

In recent titles like MWIII, Sprint breaks out of a toggled ADS directly. I have footage of both the MWIII and MW4 behaviors for comparison below.

Attached is a repurposed video from the Beta, but it remains equally relevant at launch. While the video demonstrates the comparison on MnK, this restriction also affects controller players, since it is the same setting.

Huge thanks to the passionate players who use this setting and have been advocating for the restoration of MWIII’s handling of it since Beta Weekend 1! I hear you and hope you get the resolution you've been patiently waiting for.

Tags: @InfinityWard @CallofDutyCM @CallofDuty @gawdgriggs @Selcopa

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

@AndrewCurran_ AI finna be in every damn industry 😭

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

Azriel lore got people in their feelings bad

[greenleaf777 𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊 @greenleaf7777]

That acosh prelude is amazing if you’re an Azriel lover
It hurts so much to read but we get to see him first become a shadowsinger, we meet his mother, we get more info on his father and how he got to windhaven and we get such a clear insight into his power
#acotar

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I just wanna play Helldivers without all the anti-cheat drama

[HELLDIVERS™ 2 @helldivers2]

This week, we want to talk about an important change coming to Helldivers 2 regarding our anti-cheat software.

Read the blog here: https://t.co/ZIBkBnR9b7

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

Sending that second invoice reminder gotta feel awkward asl

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I gotta start reading Dune, this whole universe look crazy

[DuneInfo @DuneInfo]

"The man called Hayt stood impassively, metal eyes fixed straight ahead, body relaxed. No sign escaped him to indicate he knew himself to be the object of discussion."
Dune Messiah

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

Getting dropped that fast on Realism would have me sick 🤦🏾‍♂

[ChadOfDuty @ChadOfDuty]

MW4 General Feedback - Campaign [October 19]: Enemy AI detection and lethality on higher difficulties could be tuned for fairer, more naturalistic gameplay.

On higher difficulties, especially Veteran and Realism, enemy AI that has been alerted to the player can damage or kill the player unreasonably fast. This includes re-peeking a corner after healing, moving into an alerted room, or even breaking cover at longer ranges. Deaths in these situations happen fast enough that there is little-to-no window to react, which makes enemies feel less like human opponents and more like overtuned bots.

The attached video shows examples of near-instant deaths from my Veteran and Realism runs during the Early Access period (week of October 16).

A blanket increase to enemy reaction time could reduce these unfair deaths, but a few approaches used elsewhere in the FPS genre could keep these difficulties punishing while making deaths feel earned:

1. Accuracy ramp-up: Enemy accuracy starts lower on first sighting or re-acquisition and climbs the longer the player stays exposed. BioShock’s ranged AI did exactly this, starting very inaccurate and tightening over the course of a fight (shoutout @The_One_Boom for referencing this in his recent Campaign feedback video!).

2. Limits on simultaneous attackers: Cap how many enemies actively attack at once, even when a whole room is alerted, so stepping into a more crowded encounter is not an instant death. Two of my favorite series do this: The Last of Us utilizes a Combat Coordination System that assigns enemies to combat roles and caps how many can hold each role at once, and Bungie’s Halo games manage how many enemies are active through task-slot limits.

3. Minimum time between hits: Pace the shots that actually land on the player with a short global timer, so even an alerted room cannot connect several hits on the same frame. Enemies keep firing and suppressing; they simply take turns landing hits. This is a documented approach (see source linked below) with only the enemy holding a “token” able to hit, paced by a timer since the last hit (Game AI Pro 3, Ch. 33). This would not serve to make the player invincible, only ensure a death comes from staying exposed rather than from several hits connecting at once.

The goal is not to make Veteran or Realism easier, only to make deaths feel avoidable, or at least more manageable. Agree or not, I would love to hear your perspective: let me know in the replies how the balance feels to you in the launch version of MW4’s Campaign!

Sources (developers may find these useful!):
-The Last of Us enemy AI design (relevant to #2 above): https://t.co/P6fDajk1h1
-Halo 2/3 enemy AI design (relevant to #2 above): https://t.co/Bmw8ZnMnXN
-Global time-since-last-hit-timer paired with hit tokens; see pg. 395-97 for information relevant to #3 above: https://t.co/c9j2lMh1Pe

@InfinityWard @CallofDutyCM @CallofDuty

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

Nium really walked through all four of em like that

[SpawnUp @SpawnUpgg]

Nium just 1v4'd Surge's rumored roster in Methodz BDA $5k MWIII tournament😳

[tomie @tomieinlove]

My novella length piece of literary nonfiction will be published soon on here and on my Substack! It's a little below 30,000 words, but in creating it I wrote, and threw away, over 100,000. No part of the piece is written by AI. It's all by my own hand.

This is the most draining creative endeavor I've ever undertaken. The sustained mental exertion over two months of sleeping for one to two hours nightly has finally resulted in something I think is, well, good enough to show the world.

What's the piece about? On its face, it's about a trip to EDC I took with some friends in May 2026. But really, it's about a lot more. More than anything, I want this piece to be interesting for everyone, even those not interested in music festivals. I can only you'll end up as hyperfocused on it as I was.

🫶

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I be doing this with games too, got a whole backlog and still can't pick one

[thegirl_Zora_🌞❤️ @1am_aube]

“I have nothing to read.”

Meanwhile, my TBR has 300+ books.

I finally understand girls who say “I have nothing to wear” while staring at a pile of clothes. 😭

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

All them software subscriptions renewing on different days make the budget annoying asl

[High Yield Harry @HighyieldHarry]

PIK 1L financing. We don’t charge you any interest for 3 years but we PIK at 20% with a 2.0x liquidation preference.

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I'm taking the workflow side, that's where the money gonna be

[Fox_AI @EchoCast_]

An 18-year-old student has created AI-powered robots worth $81,000 that perform their jobs exceptionally well.

Garment factories have resisted automation for decades because fabric is floppy and unpredictable. A humanoid that can handle cloth on machines built for human hands skips the usual answer: a custom robotic line designed around one product.

Picture a factory owner with hundreds of existing stations. Instead of rebuilding the floor, they add robots to the stations already there and shift them between stitching, pressing, folding, and bagging as orders change.

The payoff may not be cheaper T-shirts. It could be shorter runs. Brands face minimum order quantities because changing a line over for 300 units barely pays. If switching garments becomes a software task, a brand could test a design, sell it, and reorder within days instead of betting on thousands of units months ahead. That could even pull production closer to buyers. Nearshore factories rarely win on labor cost, but they could win on speed and lower inventory risk.

A lot still has to be proven: stitch quality, reliability, and who fixes a robot that jams at 2 a.m. That’s where a second business appears: technicians, fleet software, and specialists who teach machines new garments.

If the hardware becomes a commodity, the winner may be whoever turns a design file into a packed order fastest.

Would you rather own the robots, or the workflow around them?

[Complex @Complex]

Tony Hawk. Bam Margera. One ramp again.

The world is healing.

📸: Getty l @MarkyleRondon

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

Camping in ranked be smart asl when mfs keep rushing the same doorway 😂

[Mikal @gnatattack3r]

I might actually check out them Alex Xu books, system design stuff got me curious

[Anton Martyniuk @AntonMartyniuk]

10 more books I can't recommend enough:

On your way to Software Architect (Part 2)

Here's the order I'd read them in again 👇

𝟭. 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 (Mark Richards, Neal Ford)
↳ The map of architecture styles and the "-ilities" behind them.
↳ First law: everything in software architecture is a trade-off.

𝟮. 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 (Martin Fowler)
↳ The reference for problems you hit in almost every app.
↳ After it, you'll spot these patterns in code you own.

𝟯. 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 .𝗡𝗘𝗧 (Trevoir Williams)
↳ Saga, CQRS, and API Gateway in real .NET code.
↳ The new edition is updated for .NET 10 and C# 14.

𝟰. 𝗗𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 (Alessandro Colla, Alberto Acerbis)
↳ How to apply DDD to the legacy monolith you already have.
↳ Step by step: from a big ball of mud to modules and microservices.

𝟱. 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁-𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 (Hugo Filipe Oliveira Rocha)
↳ The real pain of events: ordering, duplicates, eventual consistency.
↳ Shows how to keep data in sync when every service owns its own.

𝟲. 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 (Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, Zhamak Dehghani)
↳ How to split a system and its data when there's no best answer.
↳ Sagas, data ownership, and service size, with clear trade-off tables.

𝟳. 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄, 𝗩𝗼𝗹. 𝟭 (Alex Xu)
↳ A 4-step framework to design any system.
↳ Rate limiter, URL shortener, chat. Classic problems, clear diagrams.

𝟴. 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄, 𝗩𝗼𝗹. 𝟮 (Alex Xu, Sahn Lam)
↳ Harder cases: payment system, digital wallet, stock exchange.
↳ Worth reading even if you never plan to interview.

𝟵. 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 (Lee Atchison)
↳ How to keep high availability as traffic and teams grow.
↳ Teaches you to measure and manage risk, not hope it away.

𝟭𝟬. 𝗦𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 (Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, Niall Richard Murphy)
↳ How Google keeps huge systems running: SLOs and error budgets.
↳ Architecture doesn't end at deploy. This book starts there.

📌 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗽 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗺𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲:
Before you read about a pattern, find where your project needs it.
Books stick when you have a real problem to solve.

Which of these have you read, and which one helped you the most?