thatKamGuy
@thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos 1 day ago:
IP/trademarks/copyrights/etc.
This is likely going to be the main reason for the takedown notices, Sony will be exercising their legal rights in order to defend their trademarks & copyrights on Concord assets.
If a company doesn’t defend them vigorously, then any unlicensed works that are allowed to exist are then used as legal precedent moving forward to null/void such copyrights and trademarks.
As an aside, Sony is a global corporation and can likely choose to write down these losses in the most preferred region to maximise the tax offset - so likely either the US, or Ireland.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 2 days ago:
The whole selling points was to track fridge contents via cameras so that not only could you ‚see’ inside without having to open the door - theoretically saving electricity, using AI it was supposed to be able to track expiry dates, and suggest shopping lists in order to have full recipes.
Additionally it had all the usual „smart home” integrations on top of that.
But let’s be honest, the whole point was just to put in yet another screen that vendors could sell advertisements on, as well as track/sell personal information.
- Comment on Red Dead Redemption Coming to Netflix, iOS, Android, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 3 days ago:
Sabotaged by the stupid placement of the microphone and earpiece… I still remember the taco phone memes of the day. Shame, it could have been great!
- Comment on I knew it 4 days ago:
- Comment on I knew it 4 days ago:
True believers worship the icosahedron.
Don’t believe me? Roll initiative!
- Comment on 'The PS5 is only in the middle of [it's lifespan],' says Sony CFO 4 days ago:
I’m not saying AI will go away, or not continue to improve - but we are very much at the tail end of the current mania phase, and we will see some market pullback as AI startups begin to go out of business when all of those lofty promises of AI fail to materialise.
Diminishing returns on ever increasing investment, circular investments based on speculative returns, these are all signs of the tail-end of a stock market bubble.
- Comment on 'The PS5 is only in the middle of [it's lifespan],' says Sony CFO 4 days ago:
The best way to think of them is as cousins; they are similar - but not exactly the same.
They focus more on higher VRAM and CUDA cores compared to GPUs, while forgoing 3d acceleration capabilities.
But they both come out of the same factories; so when the demand for AI cards is as high as it is now - and Nvidia can sell as many as it produces with a higher margin than GPUs, there is little incentive for them to produce more GPUs and sell them at a competitive price.
So when the AI bubble bursts, demand for AI cards will crater - and there will be no financial incentive to mass produce them in such high quantities. This frees up production capacity at the TSMC factories, incentivising production of lower margin products like GPUs.
Economics is largely a game of supply & demand; when supply outstrips demand, prices fall as sellers search for buyers. When demand outstrips supply prices go up as buyers search for sellers.
- Comment on 'I think we're in the fight of our lives': Fired Rockstar employees and IWGB are confident the GTA 6 developer will be held accountable for its alleged union busting 5 days ago:
Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.
- Comment on 'The PS5 is only in the middle of [it's lifespan],' says Sony CFO 5 days ago:
Assuming the AI bubble bursts before then, we might actually see somewhat reasonable pricing for next-gen consoles.
A major reason why prices have remained so inflated for so long post-COVID is because data centres have been sucking up every bit of silicon that TSMC has been able to pump out for both Nvidia and AMD.
But that would be honestly a very small upside, compared to what would likely be the Mother of All Stockmarket Crashes. The market cap of the Top 10 AI-related stocks is greater than the current US national debt, they aren’t in a position to be able to reasonably bail out those companies when it all eventually goes to shit, like they do in 2008.
- Comment on 'The PS5 is only in the middle of [it's lifespan],' says Sony CFO 5 days ago:
It’s more about the console’s lifecycle, rather than it remaining the ‘current generation’. They’re implying that they will continue to ‘support’ the PS5 for another 5 years, whatever they determine that to mean (likely just keeping the online store open, maybe also multiplayer servers, and whatever PlayStation Plus features ).
- Comment on Australian households to get free electricity three hours a day 1 week ago:
In Victoria, there is already at least one retailer who offers a similar window to households without solar.
Australia has seen such a high uptake in solar panels, that solar rebates are basically down to like 1c/kW except for maybe the shoulders around dusk and dawn.
Makes sense to try and incentivise usage when renewables are pumping, and try to reduce some of the peak time usage which still relies on fossil-powered electricity generation.
- Comment on What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint? 1 week ago:
Oh, absolutely - but a lot of perpetual/evolving media has similar issues where previous canon ends up being recontextualised, reframed or outright retconned in order to better fit the overarching story currently being told.
Sometimes it’s for the better, others for the worse (cough, Shadowlands, cough).
Still, it doesn’t stop it from being an otherwise great example of world building - evident in part by just how many people actually care about the lore!
- Comment on Energy retailers to be directed to offer free power three hours a day 1 week ago:
The Solar Sharer scheme will initially be introduced to consumers in default market offer regions like NSW, south-east Queensland and South Australia from July next year, with consultation to extend the scheme to other jurisdictions by 2027.
For Victorians, I believe there are some providers who offer a similar feature already - I don’t want to endorse any particular as this is not an ad; make sure you use our VIC Gov’t Energy Comparison every year to ensure you’re on the lowest-cost contract for your circumstances.
- Comment on What you need to know about why house prices aren't coming down 2 weeks ago:
It’s a good idea to start with, but flooding banks with that much money will likely have a massive down-side (think post-COVID19 levels of inflation), and it would be difficult to determine the right amount for each house, given that prices would still be in flux/freefall.
My initial thoughts were about providing income tax deductions for losses on primary residence (eg. If your $900K townhouse in the ‘burbs devalues to $400K, you can claim the $500K over however many years it’s take you), as long as you continue to service your mortgage, after the initial refinance to determine eligibility.
But I’m sure a tonne of people would be able to immediately spot loopholes or other reasons why my idea wouldn’t work either.
It’s not actually all that easy, unfortunately - otherwise you’d think we’d already have had a politician put forward a proposal by now.
- Comment on What you need to know about why house prices aren't coming down 2 weeks ago:
Let’s say that housing prices come down back in line with historic (pre-2000s) trends, as honestly - they damn well should; how do we not fuck over the millions of otherwise innocent owner-occupiers who suddenly find themselves severely underwater on their mortgages, due to no fault of their own?
This is the needle we need to thread as a nation, and it’s a bloody hard one.
- Comment on What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint? 2 weeks ago:
World of Warcraft; Azeroth (the planet) lore is quite detailed and fleshed out - building upon the foundations of the original RTS trilogy.
It’s a bit of a shame a lot of it gets swept under the rug every major expansion and patch cycle, so it’s hard for new(er) players to catch up.
- Comment on We could have lived in a world where Hideo Kojima made a Matrix game, if only someone had told him he was offered to make one 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Inside ARMSX2: Interviewing the Team Reviving PS2 Emulation on Android (my article!) 2 weeks ago:
Beyond Android phones, it should also be good for the emulation scene on macOS.
- Comment on The year of the bailout: Australia’s biggest aluminium smelter next in line for taxpayers’ cash 2 weeks ago:
High energy costs, meanwhile my solar feed-in rate is at 1c/kW.
- Comment on Study Claims 4K/8K TVs Aren't Much Better Than HD To Your Eyes 2 weeks ago:
Interestingly enough, I was casually window browsing TVs and was surprised to find that LG killed off their OLED 8K TVs a couple years ago!
Until/if we get to a point where more people want/can fit 110in+ TVs into their living rooms - 8K will likely remain a niche for the wealthy to show off, more than anything.
- Comment on Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever 2 weeks ago:
There is like a good chunk of an entire decade’s worth of games that can’t be played on PC legitimately due to either expired licenses for music (e.g. EA Trax) or lack of support for older, disc-based DRM (SecuROM etc.).
That’s before factoring older titles that no longer work due to arbitrary changes to DirectX and the Windows kernel, which break backwards compatibility.
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
Around 7.66 x10^-3^ nanograms
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
I don’t want to contribute to the mountains of AI slip on the internet, so instead I’ll just prompt the reader’s brain to imagine a picture of Bugs Bunny in Arabian robes, eating a carrot nonchalantly, with the caption “eh, wahabi ‘doc?”
- Comment on Honestly Bizarre 4 weeks ago:
Therefore, chicken and beef is vegetables.
Checkmate, vegans!
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Wait until they’re 2+ and randomly adding things to the cart in the hopes you won’t notice!
If you still enjoy using the self-checkouts for bigger shops then - you might just be a masochist! 🤣
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
With a toddler in tow, ain’t no way in hell I want to scan and bag a week’s worth of groceries all by myself.
For small shops of a couple items? I’ll absolutely going to go through the self-scans as they’re fast and convenient. But when spending the equivalent of ~$150USD across dozens of items - nah, fuck that noise. Especially when having to deal with any interventions because the machine vision gets confused by what’s happening on camera, or the weight sensor doesn’t correctly detect an item added.
Give me a cashier to scan and pack any day of the week.
- Comment on Built to last 4 weeks ago:
TIL rechargeable CR2032s exist, and also that their output voltage is higher than standard ones and apparently may run the risk of damaging circuits?
- Comment on AMD and Sony’s PS6 chipset aims to rethink the current graphics pipeline 4 weeks ago:
We don’t even need to imagine, necessarily! The quality of games released towards the tail-end of its life cycle speaks volumes: Uncharted 2&3, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 etc.
I don’t think there was anything actually wrong with the architecture per se, but rather just the lack of proper documentation and tools set potential developers back significantly.
It was definitely hubris on Sony’s part, thinking that they could do whatever they wanted given the prior success of both the PlayStation and PS2 consoles prior.
Those PS3 launch stumbles definitely were a wake-up call, however I do believe that because it was largely the US/Western arm of SCEI that lead the ‘rescue’ - they ended up wrestling control away from the JP arm, ultimately causing the PS4/5 to end up so risk adverse and largely unremarkable as a result.
- Comment on AMD and Sony’s PS6 chipset aims to rethink the current graphics pipeline 5 weeks ago:
Literal dictionary definition of a BIOS:
Note the part regarding enabling a computer to start the OS. But regardless, this point is largely moot as we are just arguing semantics.
No the PS4 doesn’t run a PC-style AMI/Phoenix BIOS, but instead a secure chain of Boot ROM to bootloaders - however, so do Macs, which are PCs.
Dumps of these console boot ROMs and loaders - at least in emulation circles - tend to be colloquially referred to as a BIOS, as it constitutes a System that handles Basic Input and Output.
It even putting this one point aside, it runs an AMD-designed x86-64 APU, that was available to purchase for PCs (AM1 socket) albeit with a reduced power GPU.
It runs GDDR5 unified memory like a modern iMac, or Steam Deck.
It natively runs a UNIX-derived OS, again like an iMac, or Linux on the Steam Deck.
Let’s just face facts, the PS4 & 5 are just iMacs in drag 😉
- Comment on AMD and Sony’s PS6 chipset aims to rethink the current graphics pipeline 5 weeks ago:
Every modern bootable device has a BIOS, as they are required for hardware initialisation before handover to an OS - which for the PS4 is called Orbis OS, and is based off FreeBSD 9. Which is a UNIX OS for desktop PCs.
While the PS4 does have a unified memory interface, which is very rare for common desktop PCs - they do exist, such as every single Apple Silicon Mac.
The PS4 and PS5 are just a very heavily locked down PCs, featuring AMD APUs not too dissimilar to what can be found in Ryzen notebooks, Steam Deck or ROG Ally, running proprietary operating systems with heavy encryption to try and prevent 1:1 emulation (think Hackintosh).
