It’s a Half Life/Alien cross-over

I suspect you’re just repeating arguments you’ve heard, so don’t take this internet rage personally, but that is complete bullshit.

• Hosting costs nothing. Devs will gladly foot the bill for that if given the option. Even if you distribute your apps on AWS (which is notorious for severely overcharging on egress), your expenses will be no where near 15%-30% of your revenue.

• Payment processing is a competitive field outside the appstores. Even 15%-30% is ludicrous when “overpriced” processors like stripe charge 2%-3%

• APIs are not something sold to developers. They build them as part of the operating system because they have to. That’s how it works. They could try selling licenses, but it would result in devs not building on their fancy new features.

(you didn’t mention the ones below, but people with your argument usually do, so I’m adding them for completeness)

• Security is also bullshit. The Appstore and Play store are FILLED with malware. It is not physically possible to manually review the sheer volume of apps published to those stores. They also are not incentivized to improve the process much, because each time your kid or grandma accidentally activates a $40/week subscription, Apple/Google take a 15%-30% cut.

• Curation/promotion is bullshit. Discoverability on these stores has always been bad, but has been particularly awful since both Apple/Google have started selling search ads in the store. The other day I almost accidentally downloaded a fake ChatGPT app because it was the first result when I searched, it had a very similar icon, “ChatGPT” in the name, 5 stars, and millions of downloads.

These stores also heavily incentivize devs to push subscriptions. I suspect (but haven’t confirmed) that the Appstore and Google Play both rank subscription based apps higher than others, and subs tend to pay a lower revshare fee than other monetization types.

I could go on all day about the rotten dumpster fires that are these disgusting stores. The only people who defend them are fanboys and people who have never actually had to deal with them professionally.

This isn’t quite the full story. The OP is editorialized clickbait. The engineer wasn’t just “criticizing” NC infrastructure, he was testifying in a lawsuit against it, and the defense complained about it to the NC board of examiners for engineers because he did not have a license. The board then sent him a letter saying they were investigating him for practicing engineering without a license.

“Wayne’s troubles began when he agreed to help his son, Kyle, a North Carolina attorney, with a case about a piping system that allegedly flooded a few local homes. In his deposition, Wayne testified truthfully that he was not (and never had been) a licensed engineer. In fact, like the majority of engineers nationwide, Wayne was not required to get a license since he worked for a company under the state’s “industrial exception,’” according to the Institute of Justice.

Source: https://www.wect.com/2021/06/10/retired-wilmington-engineer-files-federal-lawsuit-against-state-board-claims-first-amendement-violations/ (on the same site, linked in the OP)

So it’s still stupid, but it’s not as stupid as the OP is making it out to be (for those sweet sweet clicks).

Python is the best language for tooling and systems stuff. It’s like bash, but good (and portable)

barf emoji

Nudity is not strictly porn, but not all nudity is strictly harmless. Platforms like these are for clickbait and attention whoring, and there’s no better way to get attention on the internet than sexual content (especially on a website mainly used by kids/teens).

And it’s basically universally accepted that porn is harmful to children. We all watched some of it when we were young, but most people had circumstances that limited their exposure or access to it. A modern mainstream addiction machine like Twitch serving softcore porn to children under the guise of “artistic nudity” is going to fuck people up. That’s not even mentioning the “cam whore” aspect to it, which does frequently fuck up the lives of fully grown adults.

What sites are parents supposed to allow their kids to access if rules like this start slipping in? Short of invasive AI scanning, it’s not possible to monitor every single thing your child watches on a site at all times.

OpenAI is no different

That’s not exactly true. OpenAI is structured like Mozilla, where there’s a nonprofit parent part which owns a for-profit subsidiary.

Idk all the details, but I suspect that the typical exit strategy isn’t in the cards for them without some legal shenanigans.

There’s also a distro called Hannah Montana Linux, but that doesn’t make Hannah Montana literally Linux.

I keep seeing stuff like this but I don’t get it. Azure is Linux because if it was Windows only, nobody would use it. It’s a shit service filled with tricks to lock customers in.

It’s obvious that WSL is EEE. It only exists because of their focus on the cloud, and they realized that Windows was a poor dev environment for Linux software. Microsoft is directly incentivized to kill Linux so people get even more locked in to their ecosystem.

Is the reason you have a good impression of them because you use VS Code? That’s not even open source. The proprietary parts are all more spyware and walled garden shit designed to lock you in.

Or maybe you’re not a dev, and it’s because you like Xbox gamepass? That’s an anticompetitive attempt to monopolize the game industry. It’s unsustainable and designed to price out the competition and lock in customers, which is classic monopoly shit. It’s the best deal in the game industry today, but prices will shoot up when they get the market share they want.

The golden rule still applies today, as it did 20+ years ago: never trust Microsoft

I actually have experience porting games and engines to consoles. If it runs on a development PC (likely Windows), they have the build system and platform layer implemented, which is the hardest part. Porting the content is also an important step, but really only for consoles, which usually have limited memory and power.

Typically the only problem with “PC ports” today is when the game wasn’t designed around mouse/keyboard, or when the devs didn’t make an effort to optimize it on consumer specs (although nowadays console architecture isn’t too different from PCs so there are more optimizations that work across platforms). Another potential problem is when the game gets a lot of last minute hacks to fix bugs in order to ship on a console and those hacks don’t survive a platform transition, then the publisher just tells them to ship as is since there’s no certification process on PC. Basically, the problems are almost always logistical/business decisions due to a lazy/cheap publisher.

None of that is going to apply to this game. Rockstar has always intended to ship and fully support PC from the beginning. They had the technology, the talent, the incentive, and the time to do it. The most realistic explanation (IMO) for the PC delay is that they’re trying to double-dip.

You mean that’s how Bill Gates gives your baby autism.

Sure, but GTA 6 is 100% already working on PC. Not just because they develop the game on PC, or because they’re building on top of the RDR2 engine (which is already ported to PC), but because they planned to support PC from the beginning, and that type of engine work usually gets ironed out early during development or in pre-production.

I was just pointing out the flaw in your tire analogy though. TBH I’m not saying they should give free copies to people who bought it on other platforms. That’s unprecedented for giant publishers like this. But I am pissed that they’re delaying the PC version since you can be sure it’s a calculated plan to ensure PC gamers buy the game twice. They collected enough analytics and surveys to know that a significant amount of GTA5 PC gamers also own a next-gen console. It’s all very nefarious.

Unless it’s either PS5 or Xbox exclusive (not both), I don’t think that’s true. Sony and Microsoft wouldn’t collude to prevent launch on PC. That’s extremely illegal, even for companies that are masters of dodging antitrust laws.

The most realistic explanation (IMO) is that Rockstar did their research and found that most PC players also own a console, and will very likely buy the game twice in the long run.

Or if we’re being charitable, maybe the game needs more optimization work before it can run well on the Steam deck, and they want that working before launching on PC.

Tires cost materials and labor to manufacture, but digital games cost nothing to copy.

#SayingTheQuietPartOutLoud

Computer programmers are the devil.

Oh shit, you’re actually a modder! Thanks for helping to keep these old games alive, and keep up the good work!!

I’m a sucker for nostalgia.

I don’t remember all the steps I had to do, but I do remember it being a pain in the ass. I downloaded the black edition from myabandonware.com and installed a widescreen mod (which messed up the UI since some elements were slightly offscreen, but it didn’t bother me).

Besides that, the only other annoyance was the controls. There are actually a lot of community layouts for this game, but the ones I ended up using were a pain when navigating the menus. You’ll definitely want to try a few.

FWIW, here are my current working launch settings for it:

• Proton 8.0-4
• Launch Options: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command%

So I guess if you get past the installer, those should get it to launch.

Even Steam themselves say it sucks for preventing piracy:

The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.

Plus, it’s optional for devs.

I pirated Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) and played it from start to finish on my Steam Deck because it was impossible to buy. I would’ve paid $20 for that old ass game if it was available for sale, but it was literally impossible.

The problem is that these giant publishers are led by MBAs, and as someone who went to business school, I know first hand how stupid those people are.