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Nat Brown @natbro@mastodon.social Profile
Nat Brown @[email protected]

@natbro

4,814
Followers
887
Following
993
Media
15,936
Statuses

now: apple, formerly:VR @ Valve , past: @TheTileGame , rel8tion,facebook; music & mobile @myspace ; cto, @ilike ; startups; microsoft:xbox/activex/clr/com/ole/mspub

Seattle, WA
Joined July 2008
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
Wow, iPhone priced at $499. This sets Palm up to win at $399, and sets Blackberry up to dominate at $199.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
ohai! so today I start at apple. a little thread if you're interested...
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
Fascinating perspective. So also is revenue per employee per hour. Apple $232.80 (125,000 employees) Amazon $46.79 (560,000) Google $183.53 (85,000) MSFT $102.82 (131,300) Intel $83.96 (106,000) FB $256.00 (25,000) NFLX $351.85 (5,400)
@profgalloway
Scott Galloway
6 years
Revenue generated each hour: Apple $29.1 million per hour Amazon $26.2 million per hour Google $15.6 million per hour MSFT $13.5 million per hour Intel $8.9 million per hour FB $6.4 million per hour NFLX $1.9 million per hour @jonerlichman
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Ah WordArt! Miss you little intern project from 1991!
@zephanijong
hatsune mitski
4 years
reject embrace modernity tradition
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
Steam Link for iOS and tvOS - so glad Apple customers will now get to try it out!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
ohai :) so as of 7 Feb I'm no longer doing VR at Valve - if I left your question unanswered or your bug unfixed, DM or natbro @gmail .com - happy to help connect you with good folks still there! kthxbye!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
don't tell me we weren't hip back in the day. this was pure gold wow.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
@vr_sam Yep, me and a punk named @forstall .
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With macOS 14 Sonoma now out of beta, Game Porting Toolkit 1.0 is out, too!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
this is pretty true. immersion - it's a thing.
@borismus
Boris Smus 🇺🇦🇮🇱
7 years
Smartphone AR looks so hot on twitter, but the demo underwhelms. VR is the opposite: hard to screen cap, but more impressive in person.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
just can't wait to see what you all think of and build with #Knuckles .
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
can confirm - great screen shake that’s almost a head-haptic (tm) with no nausea. 10/10 would explode things again.
@MrZulubo
Zach Tsiakalis-Brown
6 years
I just figured out how to do screen shake in VR without making the user throw up! Here's my code, feel free to test it out/use it in your game.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
Reports of VR’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
@SkarredGhost
TonyVT SkarredGhost
5 years
Graphs of peak VR players count on Steam across the last months. That peak in the end is so satisfying to be seen... source: @reddit #VirtualReality #VR #gaming
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
new day, new website.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
ohai. Knuckles EV2. kthxbye.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
"Over time, the best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have become wary of building on top of centralized platforms. We now have decades of evidence that doing so will end in disappointment."
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
I am reminded of the first macOS eGPU I built at Valve in 2016. It protruded from its case and instead of a power button I jammed a paper clip jumper across ATX 20/24. I recall being told it was the ugliest piece of hardware that had ever sat on a particular conference table.
@nixcraft
nixCraft 🐧
4 years
What the f...? When you just want to upgrade your GPU no matter what. lol.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
ML is the new Moore’s Law, it feels to me. If you haven’t ever simulated (or debugged or performance optimized) physics interactions in graphics or games this might not seem astonishing. But it is astonishing. 300-4000x speedup with a few MB impact?!
@anorangeduck
Daniel Holden
5 years
Results from our new paper on data-driven physics simulation for games. Produces 300 to 4000 times speedup over standard physics simulations by combining Machine Learning, subspace simulation, and lots of training data!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
🧐 “Streamlink”
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
*fantastic* post about using iCloud IDs for your users on iOS. please, everybody do this.
@andrewchen
andrew chen
9 years
IOS Onboarding without Signup Screens via @Vladiim
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
. @PolyarcGames congrats on the launch! we’ve got your trailer on the lobby big screens - don’t worry Quill is still cute this big!
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based on your feedback (thank you!), on latest macOS Sonoma betas... if the HUD blocks your view, toggle it on/off with SHIFT+F9 (might be SHIFT+FN+F9 on your keyboard), change its alignment with SHIFT+F7, and toggle logging on/off with SHIFT+F8.
@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! A few cool new (brief) videos at including more details about the Metal Performance HUD.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
// TODO: fix before release
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
an early #Knuckles example, more details and a longer video at HT @MrZulubo
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
8 years
truth - VR is output and input. additionally "if it's not fun when it's gray blocks, why would better graphics our sound make it fun?"
@cvanw
Chris Van (CVAN)
8 years
VR content creators: Users want interactivity first, visual fidelity last. Don't underestimate user agency.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
10 years
so ashamed i never thought of this RT @tech_faq How a network engineer gets the kids ready for school... http://t.co/TrkHKSsTcM
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
i'm looking forward to continuing to work on my obsessions by focusing on all applications of graphics, and working with any of you using graphics on Apple platforms :) /END
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
wha? Sega still sells 150,000 Genesis consoles/mo in Brazil. yes the 25yo console with a 7.5MHz 68k CPU. 16 bit!
@davidplotz
David Plotz
9 years
Brazil is a video game alternate universe where Sega beat Nintendo. http://t.co/KRq0XIU8nb
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
@matttwood Buy more books and batteries and leave them by the bedside.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Also new this year in iPadOS 14, low-level keyboard & mouse APIs including delta-mouse events & pointer locking. Can't wait for to play the games you all can now bring to iPad! WASD FTW!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
I had forgotten how leafy trees cast pinhole camera shadows during an eclipse - so cool!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
no big deal, just moar games.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
External GPUs support in macOS comes out of beta! much gaming! such VR! wow!
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Ohai, want to check out how your game might run on Apple silicon Macs? Check out the game porting toolkit.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
Sweet, sweet hand presence in VR. I think (and hope) that you all are really going to love working with and using Knuckles.
@zite00
Keith Bradner
6 years
SteamVR Unity Plugin v2.2.0 is now live on the Unity Asset Store! This brings support for Unity 2018 and 2019a, blending to precreated skeleton poses, indexer style action access, string based action access, and a documentation site!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
so that's one thing we've been up to.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
ohai, yeah, I don't just work on VR - having fun helping bring up Valve game engines on mobile. if you are an awesome iOS or Android engineer, DM me or natb @valvesoftware .com, we're always hiring.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
"It's because all the gatekeepers have been killed"
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
optimal VR display: 12,600 x 6000. naively rendered that would be 8.44 giga-pixels-per-second at 120Hz refresh.
@gmw3_
Good Morning Web3 🌅
9 years
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Well @tinatsb and I may not be the parents our 17yo and 19yo deserve, or even the parents they want. But we are the parents they have.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
Omg #ProudDad congrats kiddo, @MrZulubo - you have worked so hard for so many years, I’m floored. Also that hummingbird boss keeps killing me :( and the lava boss :(
@RtoVR
Road to VR
2 years
‘Vertigo 2’ Review – One of PC’s Greatest VR Games Since ‘Half-Life: Alyx’
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
ohai - do you like racing wheels, shifters, and pedals for racing games as much as I do? #WWDC22
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Rumble & lots of other game controller features new this year - live at last, check it out!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
Read about (how) input matters.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
Really terrific overview read of 6dof tracking issues. Important takeaway - never underestimate calibration. 1/
@ddiakopoulos
Dimitri Diakopoulos
7 years
New post! Here's my take on explaining technical challenges with inside-out 6DoF/SLAM tracking #arkit
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
insightful re: ARM in datacenters: http://t.co/bwnQ3BTqrD. more trickle-down benefits of the smartphone "war" http://t.co/zaStDfcrtb
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
11 years
Apple - the genius of not just managing your supply chain but literally eating every bit of IP designed in it: http://t.co/mjjysZN2QX
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
Soon after Zach first played Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64 with me when he was 3, we were pretty sure he was going to build video games. I couldn't have imagined he'd build Vertigo and Vertigo 2 - it's been amazing to watch and playtest! Congratulations @MrZulubo !
@MrZulubo
Zach Tsiakalis-Brown
2 years
Vertigo 2 is OUT NOW! This has been my most ambitious project ever, and I hope it was worth the wait.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
VR is just a toy. Don’t pay attention to VR. Nothing to see here, move along.
@BeatSaber
Beat Saber
6 years
Beat Saber sold 50.000 copies in the first week! That's INSANE, guys! ❤️ 100.000 copies...LOADING 🤘
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
Parents are downsizing, just took receipt of my old friend from 1979, signed by our (still) hero @stevewoz .
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
Steam for macOS now with "dark mode." Just kidding, Steam has been "dark mode" since 2010, these are just some good Steam Controller fixes.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
fascinating anecdote! reminds me of the emulation scene and how challenging it is to "simply port" old PC games to 64-bit, new graphics APIs, etc. many teams, source code, tools, and knowledge are simply gone. for many games we just have this binary artifact.
@gregmaletic
Greg Maletic
5 years
Great anecdote about the difficulty of archiving digital film materials. Finding Nemo, in this case. From via @tvaziri
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
8 years
now possible b/c "11.9 Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected..." was removed 6/13/16:
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
games and AR/VR push systems really, really hard. so making games & AR/VR content work well makes platforms better for all types of software. often games spin off new UX concepts, or the game hardware supply chain (like GPUs) ends up powering completely new solutions like AI/ML.
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using GPTk and seeing graphical glitches, unusual performance or input problems?we want to hear about them! A screenshot or video with HUD showing, sysdiagnose, and information about the game and where you are in it would be great - .
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
1/ good overview article on VR coming to macOS via SteamVR, but a few corrections if you're a dev and want to get started...
@iMore
iMore
7 years
Mac and VR have found each other at long last. Here's what you need to know?
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
GPU-rendered text - so clever! by @wjdobbie . my favorite part "source: MS paint"
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
googling how to use the 'lipo' tool to 'extract' an arm64 section of a 'fat' binary is the most horrendous search gone wrong I have ever accidentally done.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
Did you ever wonder what happens in Xcode 14 when you check "Show Graphics Overview" in Scheme > Diagnostics > Metal? #WWDC22
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
... and a multi-controller skeletal API and remapping input system to go with it. yup.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
Great thread about the birth of VR and also about @Valve . Someday I’ll blurb, too. Happy New Year, @tom_forsyth - I enjoyed reading all your commits @valve :)
@tom_forsyth
Tom Forsyth (TODO: think up cunning campaign pun)
5 years
In 2010 I was in my third year at Intel and Larrabee was well under way. Knights Ferry had been designed, built, debugged and was finally shipping to folks. I was finishing up on the features of the next one in the series, Knights Corner, /1
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
these are so good, btw - if you aren't sure how to get started in AR/VR... or game development for mobile or PC... or just about anything involving programming, check out @rwenderlich tutorials. 💯
@kodecodev
Kodeco
6 years
AR/VR Week: This week only, Unity AR & VR by Tutorials is 25% off. It covers: -ARFoundation -HTC Vive -Oculus Rift -VRTK -Windows Mixed Reality -And much more, including how to create fluid user UI!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
2/ put another way, VR is (at least) a decade of job-security for semiconductor fabs, GPU-designers, 3D modelers, network operators.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
Want to talk Steam, SteamVR, macOS, Linux & mobile gamedev work at Valve during #GDC2018 ? Find me Wed/Thu upstairs at the Valve booth or DM.
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GPTk 1 beta 4 is now live if you're up for late night GPTk'ing.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
10 years
12GB RAM, 8 Billion transistors in the @nvidia #TitanX more RAM and transistors in each than existed in our solar system when i was 5yo.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
yep - SteamVR was designed to support any headset, any kind of tracking, any manufacturer - when new HMDs have unfettered access to existing content, that's a win for content creators and gives new HMDs lots of test content.
@akipman
Alex Kipman
7 years
The #SteamVR build we promoted yesterday includes updated icons ❤️❤️❤️❤️
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! A few cool new (brief) videos at including more details about the Metal Performance HUD.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
1/ VR newbies (here my 12yo) try #htcvive , find direct manipulation UI frictionless, intuitive. gave no instructions. http://t.co/dKbTkyMsNo
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
6 years
ohai, here’s another cool project we’ve been working on. use it right away with Steam on your Mac or Bluetooth-enabled PC. use it soon on mobile with the Steam Link app.
@SteamDB
SteamDB
6 years
Bluetooth connectivity enabled for the Steam Controller
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
"an entirely new layer is going to be built on top" - crisp, insightful http://t.co/KPgjYcvgHp by @BenedictEvans http://t.co/PkaRQl0zGv
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
quiet and calm morning on Orcas island.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
9 years
solid piece about iOS vs android gaming HT @jhamby
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Features like button remapping and thumbstick swapping and inverting, yep.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
10 years
@mikeBithell wow! a much better tagline - i've updated your poster for you. you're welcome! http://t.co/BSkF18ZKd0
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
*this may impact lighthouse tracking performance.
@shen
Shen Ye
5 years
"Are you ready for Half Life in VR?" me:
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
want to work on graphics, games, and hardware across many platforms? come work with us, we’d love to meet you.
@Plagman2
Pierre-Loup Griffais
7 years
Today MoltenVK is released in the standard Vulkan SDK as a free of charge and open-source #Vulkan implementation for #macOS and #iOS . Targeting Vulkan for macOS is now a reality, as Dota 2 will show.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
Wow, nails it.
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@asymco
Horace Dediu
5 years
I wrote a blog post today:
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Ohai! Welcome Sony DualSense and Xbox Series S/X Controllers, we’re super jazzed to have you!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
so many digitals to analogs to digitals in this. mind blown!
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
I'll be at #wwdc2017 through Wed - DM me if you want to chat SteamVR on macOS or anything graphics or gaming.
@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
7 years
so that's one thing we've been up to.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
3 years
True rough story. Lessons learned all around. What a meeting - we got 1:45 with Steve and had been scheduled for maybe :30. Our miss definitely wasn’t all on Ali though - we had all discussed the approach and knew our numbers. Ah youth :)
@apartovi
Ali Partovi
3 years
As the world celebrated Steve Jobs’s life last week, I recalled a lesson he taught me. My one meeting with Steve didn’t end well. It’s one of my most painful memories, and a warning to startup CEOs about the danger of taking hype too far. Here’s the story. (1/n)
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
ah! the origin story of the expression "like mining a vein of shit" which, if you've ever worked with me, you know I reserve for special occasions. 1/
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
2 years
@renssies @SteveMoser Test away. Lmk if you hit any issues. With both paired, hold the bottom face buttons (left “capture”, right “home”) for a few seconds to join the Joy Cons into one controller and do it again to split them.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
3 years
I'm at the Pizza Hut. I'm at the Taco Bell. I'm at the combination C++ and Metal, yeah.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
platform ecosystems - a virtuous cycle of the platform improving, developers making software for the platform which in turn attracts more customers to the platform. i love working with developers because, hey, i'm a developer.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
5 years
Xbox.
@verge
The Verge
5 years
What should Microsoft call the next Xbox?
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
4 years
Yep, got your input glyphs covered, too.
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@natbro
Nat Brown @[email protected]
8 years
Oh! This is quite good and delightful if you are an engineer!
@b0rk
🔎Julia Evans🔍
8 years
How do you decide what to work on?
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