Yup, the Xbox does that; but it’s at least good to acknowledge that was not an insignificant effort on their part. They had a lot of people slowly putting out compatibility packages for old Xbox games based on popularity.
I’m guessing Sony doesn’t feel like doing that when they can also provide that hardware via more expensive cloud systems.
I’ve definitely had some of those issues. I won’t count an old issue where my GPU needed a special connection to attach audio to its DVI output (rare oddity). Some others:
I’ve definitely gotten it working and had a blast, but the number of button presses to get to starting the game can sometimes be hard to predict. Even when I had a computer dedicated to the TV (a long time ago when SteamOS was fledgling) it was pretty unreliable about having all the right updates and not needing a mouse.
On the idea of random drives: Many of them might not be able to read the encryption on Playstation discs. I could be wrong, but I think the way they operate involves more than just software encryption. Sony is best off making their own. Hence why pirates burn special copies.
On reading prior generations: I think they’d be capable of reading those if they wanted, but running old Playstation games is more a matter of correct CPU architecture. Most of us have played old games on the new consoles, but often there’s a bit of manual porting/emulation logic going on to get it working - so the package delivered from PSN isn’t exactly would come from an old PS2 disc.
Props for accepting a counterargument on the internet graciously. Not something we see often.
I don’t know if anyone needed a harmless (slightly dark) laugh on the subject, but I recently played an indie PnC game called “3 Minutes to Midnight” with a joke around this. You open a wall medical kit, and there are sheets of paper inside, which read “Thoughts and prayers”.
“My name is Stabby McKiller! Yes, I clearly stabbed four people in that home, and yes, I was convicted! BUT, I am also running for president! For total fairness, I demand my sentencing be delayed, so my sentence does not sway voter opinion!”
What fucking bullshit. THIS is bias.
I guarantee you they’ve only ported over about half of the Control Panel’s features. The common stuff, sure. The rest…
I’d argue part of this is true because of minimum wage and wealth disparity.
When you have a healthy disposable income, it feels more reasonable to give out some donations for good online content. But that’s not the case for a lot of people now.
It sucks because monetization models definitely influence the types of content we get. For instance, freemium video game models with cash shops are better for our current wealth gap, while a large set of consumers having extra cash through the year is much better for expensive, well-produced singleplayer games.
Part of me once wished for a utopia of only getting ads for things I have a reasonable interest in - working to inform me about options to spend my money on a service or product I need. It was based on Steam, which shows ads for games I like. No repeating ads to harass a particular message, no convincing people they need Brand X.
I don’t imagine we’ll ever get close to that.
It’d be fun if the EU started policing any use of the phrase “We are required to show this dialog”.
They’re not. They choose to show that dialog so that they can try to apply commercial tracking cookies. Anything for website function is already covered by EU laws.
I have gradually wondered if the issue has not been in our obsession with plastic specifically, but our need for sanitation of every object. “We need a material that will preserve its shape in transit and operation; but we then want it to gently break down into nature when we’re done with it.” No matter what materials of what strength we invent, that’s always going to be an oxymoron. There’s a reason people criticize biodegradable materials as often falling apart.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure medicine has made tremendous advances through the preservation of sealed instruments and drugs, especially for those with sensitive immune systems. But the 3000% thorough sanitization we keep of every single object we interact with has had a very gradual impact on our planet. I kind of want to envision just how fatal of a health risk it would carry if so much of our food wasn’t triple-secure-wrapped, and whether that’s comparable to the current impact of widespread plastic.
I’m saddened that Reuse has fallen by the wayside. I brought some cleaned liquor bottles back to my store for deposit, and the clerk admitted to me they’ll just end up in the recycling chain - it’s too much effort to locate transport/handling for the bottles.
Theoretically, there should be a lot of inward transit for cities and civic centers with not much going out. There’s a very efficient mental image of dropping off 80 bottles, and picking up 80 empty bottles to bring back, but it would just take more logistics than people care for to do it that way.
The obvious reaction to anything typically free getting paywalled is vehemence, of course - and that’s my thought given Reddit’s track record.
Still, if it weren’t them, I’m thinking about how this could be done in a classy way. Most people are not willing to engage on topics like politics because there will always be an unending army of trolls arguing in bad faith about them or needlessly engaging in flame wars. If there’s some form of friction behind entry, that CAN at least get people to think twice about insulting each other.
Price tags as a form of friction are problematic, of course, in that they “only allow access to the rich”. As such, I’d also be open to other ways of making it “difficult” to enter in a way that people could still do with no money. The silliest idea that comes to mind is that people must mail a physical postcard requesting entry (which could then loop back to price tags, since that uses a stamp)
Not quite on topic, but: This past week developers at my company have been slammed by the Chrome DevTools debugger freezing when you hit a breakpoint. There’s been no tracked bug and no timeline from Chrome on a fix. It’s been a little bit of a lesson in having just one browser engine.
Every time one of these articles is posted, I predict a very very short investigation into the technical workings of the project will find that the same could’ve been done with a much simpler central database. Or, that they were actually using a database at the backend and wasting their whole crypto approach.
I mean…I’ll go one further. I know there have been many historical “aged like milk” quotes, like about how much RAM computers need, but I’m still saying this in confidence: I don’t think that cryptocurrency or blockchains will ever have a useful purpose. Their design is built to solve societal problems, but introduces worse problems in implementing them. This goes well beyond just taking too much electricity.
Never trust your credentials to yourself, you can be bought out by beer, poor decisions, and tripping over the cables connected to your home server you cobbled together.
I’m not claiming that bubble doesn’t exist, just explaining that they’re not ‘reasonable’ by any normal assessment. Sandy Hook happened. Columbine happened. Virginia Tech happened. Nobody that is not a teeth grinding psychopath, or employed by the firearms industry, should believe gun laws are currently in a good spot in America. And yes, I’m sadly aware plenty of them exist in America. They are all voting for Trump, even if he eats a baby’s face and heart on camera. We can’t change that, and it’s silly to try to sway them with any logic or polite appeal. They will die as psychopaths.
Who out there was undecided and thought zero gun legislation is a good idea?
Granted, the specific AR-15 ban isn’t a great approach. But I can’t think of anyone who could’ve voted for him that resists looking at gun laws.
And yet, none of it will matter because anyone who had even been considering voting for the racist cheeto is infinitely entrenched and bound by their own logic.