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2 yr. ago

  • Yeah I was about to say ... anyone that's got a problem with UE5 should take a look at Remnant II.

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  • I give you about 3 seconds. Then you're getting the horn because you were on your phone at the light like a jackass.

    I mean seriously, it's not a big ask to not use your phone while you're driving.

  • As one of those old modders ... It was "blood sweat and tears" mixed with community organization that allowed Minecraft modding to shine. Later aided by Mojang's help and refactoring.

  • Sure and that's whatever... But 310GB for the operating system? That's nuts

  • I mean, fishing is more comparable to mining in RS2, there are other skills (typically refinement oriented skills) that have more down time between clicks.

    Combat I definitely feel needs refinement. Though, I actually do like the fact that combat is not "I have a bow and I'm shooting something 1 tile in front of me and/or safe spotting."

    The skills are only trained in one area, but they have interactions across areas. You use resources gathered in the forest in town and in the mines. The weapons you make in the mines can be tuned to any other location (etc...)

    Andrew does a pretty decent job of explaining the thought process here if you're interested: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2791440/view/4442331835939160237

    A lot of this is to solve the long time MMO issue of "new content is released but it's only for high level players and long time layers in general have a ton of advantages in the new area."

  • It's not really new. It's just uncommon and it can be abused to make different spellings that look like English spellings but aren't.

    It's kind of like goog l e.com vs goog I e .com but on a much larger scale.

  • You should try Brighter Shores.

    The original RuneScape developers and owners (i.e. Andrew Gower and his brothers) are back with a new game, at a new company, with an industry shattering $5.99/mo subscription price for all content.

    No micro transactions, no pay to win, no outrageous DLC pricing, no bull shit ... just a fun game with many similarities to OSRS but also modernizations, formula improvements, and lessons learned.

  • With Linux you just open the software manager and search for it with effectively 0 chance of your grandma downloading a virus.

    The app store model is the Linux model. Linux just doesn't have paid apps in said stores.

  • The problem is a hash algorithm is exactly the sort of thing that copyright would be horrible at protecting. The source code is hardly relevant at all, it's the operations that matter.

    A big part of patents is to allow private sector research to occur. RCA failed and maybe patents should just fail too.

  • like the umbrella wedge/spring to make it open automatically.

    That to me is a very specific algorithm. It's a simple mechanism but putting it together might be a bit tricky.

    That's very similar to SHA, it's a fairly simple set of mechanisms but the actual composure of those ideas into something that works as well as SHA does takes very specific research experience. It's not at all an abstract idea, it's a very concrete and specific set of operations that you invented first.

    Imagine if the patent was "an umbrella can open itself with the push of button" no further details. That's close to the level of detail some software patents are argued at and effectively what the "put a game in your loading screen" patent was awarded on.

    You can't patent the idea that "an umbrella should be able to open [somehow]" so I likewise think it's ridiculous that someone was able to parent "your game [somehow] runs another simpler game before it runs."

    Patents should be to protect very specific research so that the private sector can do said research and profit from it. Patents should not block out broad concepts. The patent in the video game situation was and should've been ruled as bogus. It's not the type of thing anyone needed to research or think about, you just literally go "what if I added a game to my loading screen" and you're in violation.

  • I kinda felt that way about the entire show... Some people really loved that show and I watched it just to know what they were talking about... But for the most part I kept wondering what I was missing.

    I watched all of the seasons and ultimately felt like it was a good time passer but not a particularly captivating show.

  • I think software patents should really only apply to extremely tricky algorithmic "discoveries" (which I would consider inventions, as someone that's written a SHA256 implementation from reference material, nobody is "just coming up with that").

    "Ingenuity patents" like that loading screen game are everything that's wrong with software patents. It's not all that crazy of an idea to add a game while waiting to play the main game. There's no radical research required there, just an idea.

    I don't think vague ideas like "a game in a loading screen" are sufficiently creative to warrant a patent.

  • Or at least the bar should be much much higher. Like if you've invented the SHA algorithm... Fine.

    However, if you've just invented "a way to purchase something over the network via a phone"... That is not patent worthy.

  • We're also living in an era where regulator bodies have been repeatedly weakened by large companies and interest groups.

    Does that fire resistance hold up over a decade, two decades, a century, etc? Even if internationally regulatory bodies are 100% in good hands ... there's no way everybody is using the same blend of wood + fire retardant.

    Also how realistic are the laboratory conditions? Do the same testing rules apply if an accelerate has been used to increase the burn rate?

    What about the human impact? What's the impact of inhaling smoke off of these? Environmental impact from the gasses inevitably produced?

    How repairable is the timber structure in case of fire?

    These questions have pretty reasonable answer for steel and concrete because we have decades of experience with it.

    I'm not an expert in this space but this seems like an incredibly dangerous gamble to take for not much gain. Concrete and steel are reliable building materials that are mostly issues because of the energy cost to produce them. Fix the energy supply chain and they're about as green as anything else.

    This isn't being pitched because it's "better than steel and concrete" it's being pitched as "green" and call me a cynic but if it was actually "better" than concrete and steel and safer than concrete and steel, they would outright say that. Arbitrarily being "more green" with no other information (and being based on a material that is supposed to combust but doesn't), is a huge red flag.

  • Because these are literal sky scrapers. Fire on a wood structure is a recipe for catastrophic failure. A fire in a large structure could have similar effects to those large high rise condos that collapsed in Florida from poor maintenance.

    This is very likely dangerous deregulation of the fire code to cut costs being "green washed" as a new thing that needs a hell of a lot more scrutiny. Building large structures with wood WAS a thing in the past, it was outlawed because it's EXTREMELY dangerous when one of those structures ignites.

    They're only getting away with it because these are composite timbers which have been "tested" to be safer. I'm very skeptical that those tests are comprehensive, at least to the point where I would feel comfortable spending a significant portion of my life in one of these buildings.

  • Obama in his book says similar things about the filibuster. It's his major regret, not ending it when he had the chance so that he could've done more.

  • I think all three of those groups are in for a pretty bad wake up call regarding what their protest vote bought them...

  • That's just it ... He's heavily invested in alternative energy...

    Tesla makes electric cars, home and industrial battery packs, and rooftop solar. It's in his interest for Republicans to believe in climate change.

    At the very least it's in his interest for Republicans to not squash electric cars and solar power.

  • Yes, there are a lot of them still lurking...

    Liberty Tabletop, American Blanket Company, American Giant, Craftsman, etc