jqubed

@jqubed@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Wii The Size Of A Game Boy Cartridge Finally Released Open Source⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It would be a big, expensive case, and as there are well-funded organisations that rely on the precedent not being set against them in both directions, both sides would get interested third parties funding their legal fees. No one wants that, so Nintendo stick to claiming emulators are illegal on their website

  I would assume particularly that no one who has big interests there wants it to go to court because once there’s a ruling and a precedent is set it becomes much harder to change if you’re on the losing side. So, for example, if game publishers lost and it was clearly ruled legal that consumers have a right to make software work with hardware that the software was never intended for, that would make it much harder for publishers to fight emulators without some additional problem like trademark infringement. The advice I’ve heard is unless you can be absolutely certain how a judge will rule, you want to avoid going to court because strange and unexpected things can happen in a courtroom that can be very bad for you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨came across some family heirlooms today, hahaha!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You would’ve had to pay for the call itself, but probably only if you had to make a long-distance call. I think by that time local numbers were pretty universally unlimited minutes, but long distance was 25¢/minute or more. I was too young to be buying phone service myself, then, but remember TV ads promoting 25¢ or 10¢ or something like that as a good deal. Around 2003 when I was first living on my own I used to buy prepaid calling cards to call home and those got me as low as 3¢/minute, and that was a bargain.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨came across some family heirlooms today, hahaha!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I seem to remember our first disks/discs coming in with 5 free hours. That might’ve even been included with a Packard Bell we bought.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic as Steam’s top-rated game⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BSOD is dead, long live BSOD⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People used to post Piped/Invidious links all the time, but that eventually became a problem because it meant the link often went to a different proxy than the one that might be a user’s preferred server, and it made it harder to copy the link for use with a preferred server. After some discussion, the consensus became that people should just post the YouTube URL as the main link so users could utilize the preferred proxy they likely already have configured, and then (optionally) include a Piped/Invidious link in the body text for those who don’t currently use a proxy but would like to try it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VMware perpetual license holder receives audit letter from Broadcom⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d be surprised if this takes down Broadcom altogether, but could certainly kill the division. Oracle still exists, after all, even though they basically killed Sun and Java.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anker is recalling over 1.1 million power banks due to fire risks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t paid much attention, but I had some myCharge units I bought at Costco last year get recalled. I suspect a lot of these have cheap batteries from suppliers that don’t put much effort into consistent quality. That’s “okay” with alkaline batteries where the worst that happens is they leak and maybe ruin the device they were in. Have poor quality with a lithium battery and you get a fire or even explosion. I suspect with Anker or some of the other brand names at least you’ll actually get a recall if there’s a problem. A lot of the other no-name, fly-by-night brands on Amazon or elsewhere probably don’t even give you that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3100: Alert Sound⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They were bought and basically no longer exist. Hot Topic was going to buy them but then GameStop came in with a higher offer. For a while they launched ThinkGeek retail stores in shopping malls but eventually shut them all down and now they basically only exist as some tchotchkes in GameStop stores. Even the website just seems to redirect to the main GameStop page now, not their “store” within the GameStop webstore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hello, non-Americans, do you have any Chinese language classes in your education system?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My school offered (from most popular to least popular):

  1. Spanish
  2. French
  3. Chinese (I think Mandarin)
  4. German

  I think my child’s high school offers the same, although I don’t know the relative popularities. I’m confident Spanish is still most popular, and judging by the number of posters around the school from German classes trying to convince kids to take German, I’m thinking German is still not very popular.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The world would be a better place if rain completely washed away bird poop⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have been in some heavy downpours that have done just that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Zynga shuts down Torchlight 3 developer four years after its acquisition⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL Zynga still exists

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does HTML actually run on a computer?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it was pre-compiled that could also cause issues not just across operating systems but also the architectures, right? Like x86 on desktop versus the ARM architecture most mobile devices use?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone use a phone without a protective case?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I always have a case. Basically every phone I’ve tried has felt too slippery without one to me, so I get one that’s a little more grippy

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had a Kindle for a long time and considered upgrading to a non-Kindle device but was concerned that they don’t seem to get manufacturer updates for very long. This could make that more attractive!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨European Commission fines Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for participation in online food delivery cartel⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  All the abovementioned practices were facilitated by Delivery Hero’s minority shareholding in Glovo. Owning a stake in a competitor is not in itself illegal, but in this specific case it enabled anti-competitive contacts between the two rival companies at several levels. It also allowed Delivery Hero to obtain access to commercially sensitive information and to influence decision-making processes in Glovo, and ultimately to align the two companies’ respective business strategies. This shows that horizontal cross-ownership between competitors may raise antitrust risks and should be handled carefully.

  I suppose it can work if they still face robust external competition, like how Hyundai and Kia own stakes in each other and use their combined efforts to compete on the global market, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if even that has anticompetitive implications in their home market of South Korea, both for consumers and workers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI sees human interaction as a competitor to ChatGPT's super assistant ambitions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I read an article a while back highlighting how many “tech bro” products seem to be about eliminating human interaction, like grocery or meal deliveries, or self-checkout in stores. There is a convenience factor for these things at times, of course, but with the way many of these executives seem to be pushing exclusively using their services and having zero direct interactions with other humans it starts to raise questions about perhaps their own interpersonal skills and why they want to eliminate the human interaction. This feels like more of the same.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that the Australian Prime Minister said CEOs of multinational corporations conspired to undermine his elected government⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you for the explanation!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that the Australian Prime Minister said CEOs of multinational corporations conspired to undermine his elected government⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  “white-anting”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No time to explain, grab a milk and look at the camera⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  As it got dark they began the arduous procedure of aiming the laser and something very quickly dawned on everyone: While considerable attention had been made in the design and alignment of the laser’s optics and in achieving good sensitivity of the optical receiver, no-one had really thought too seriously about the practical difficulties of aiming a very narrow beam over a distance of 118+ miles! Using a number of improvised techniques, the laser crew managed to get the beam “close”, setting the elevation with various shims and other pieces onhand, but getting both azimuth (horizontal) and elevation (vertical) dialed in proved to be a hair-pulling task.

  After a bit of fussing, the receive site crew was tantalized by the occasional brief, bright flash from the distant laser but it seemed as though the transmit site crew could never repeat the maneuver - plus the necessary corrections - to get the laser back and on-point! When the receive site crew queried the Grassy Hollow folks about this on the radio it turned out that they were using two primitive tools to adjust the aiming of the laser: A large rock tapped at the end of the metal channel in which the laser was mounted for coarse adjustments and a much smaller rock for fine-tuning!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No time to explain, grab a milk and look at the camera⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t finished but this is a very interesting read

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTF is a rural town in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The role of the county government can vary significantly from state to state too.

  My understanding is that in Virginia the city/town that serves as the county seat is explicitly not a part of the county it’s located in!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EV Tax Credit Ending Dec. 31, Effectively Increasing Prices Up to 28%. See How Popular EVs are Impacted.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s hard to imagine any way this doesn’t throw a huge wrench into the adoption of sustainable car technology for the USA.

  I think that’s goal

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are American animations more expensive than Asian animations?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s why a lot of American cartoons like The Simpsons or Futurama are animated in Asia, usually Japan or Korea. They might have American animators do the key frames and then pay Asian animators to do the tedious in-between frames, or just send it all to Asia.

  This also puts a downward pressure on American wages, with the threat effectively being, “take a pay cut or lose the work entirely.” Seems to be what Hollywood is hoping to do with “AI” also.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shats⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  !nominativedeterminism@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shats⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Daniel Shats, M.D.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The World's First Mass-Produced Flying Car Is Here and It Costs $1 Million⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I couldn’t find specs skimming through the article, but it doesn’t look like it would fit in any normal parking space. Driving around might be as unwieldy as a motorhome or box truck, without the height advantage when you inevitably drive over a curb while turning. Doing that might also make it un-airworthy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The World's First Mass-Produced Flying Car Is Here and It Costs $1 Million⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This looks to me like yet another in a surprisingly long line of airplanes that are also designed to be driven on roads in someway, but they’re basically all noticeably worse at either task than vehicles designed specifically for one of those tasks. It also invariably ends up more expensive than two specialized vehicles, so there’s never really any reason to build these.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The World's First Mass-Produced Flying Car Is Here and It Costs $1 Million⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Way more expensive than most private aircraft, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I’m very good at math and would like health insurance. What is the easiest option?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry for the slow reply; just remembered to ask her. For bookkeeping you don’t need anything. It could be valuable to get a certification in QuickBooks, but not required. It just seems to be the most common software.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best tool for creating a basic business website⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re okay with writing a little HTML and just don’t want to deal with writing/designing the CSS, I recently found out about HTML5 UP, which has a bunch of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0-licensed templates. It’s fairly straightforward to modify the content if you understand the HTML, and then you can host it for free as a static page at any number of places like GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages.

  If you don’t want to have the CC-By attribution on the webpage, the designer also offers a service called Pixelarity with the same templates and more for a $19/quarter non-renewing subscription. You can continue using the templates even after the subscription expires and can keep making new sites with any template you already downloaded, you just don’t get any updates or tech support when the subscription expires. Upload to one of those free static hosts and it’s dramatically cheaper than Ghost or WordPress, and probably less work than a static site generator for something that’s not changing often.