Yeah, I looked into it and the backend is proprietary, so the central owner can restrict features. Like for instance independent instances can only have 10 users.

It’s “decentralised” except only in extremely limited scope, the code is centrally controlled and the network remains largely, functionally centralised.

They’re capitalising on the decentralised, federated buzz while doing it so poorly they’re setting up users to say “oh people tried decentralisation, it doesn’t work, look at Bluesky”.

If it’s not open source, it’s not decentralised.

The combat may not have been the most interesting versus basic grunts, but it never got stale. I’ve never played another game where the core gameplay changed so much so frequently.

Physics interactions -> Basic FPS -> Fan Boat -> Mounted Gun -> Gravity Gun -> Zombies & Traps -> Car -> THE CRANE FIGHT -> Rockets & Gunships -> Ant Lions -> Ant Lion Minions -> Turrets -> Resistance Squads -> Striders -> Super Gravity Gun

Honestly the HL1 combat may have been somewhat more challengjng, but it was a grind. Fights were often just frustrating. I’ve abandonded playthroughs because I didn’t feel like spending another 10 hours beating my head against the endless amounts of enemies just to get to the end of… whatever I was doing I forgot.

HL1’s big innovation was never removing control from the player just to tell the story. Beyond that they also had some interesting AI behaviour and weapons. It was a game with old-school length and old-school difficulty.

HL2’s big innovation was the physics engine, and they played with it in so many ways, whole polishing every other aspect of the design. They kept the gameplay tight and did something just long enough to explore it and then they moved on. They never forced you to hang out just repeating the same loop over and over to pad the length.

Pitch perfect snark, 10/10.

Yup, second this. GoPro is the Gucci brand, but you can get stuff that does 90 to 100% of what they do for considerably less. You’ll need to do a bit of research in sports communities to find out which ones are good, they will have opinions. Also FPV quad hobbyists will know a lot about them, especially which ones are light and tough.

Is Dan the loud one? I’ve never learned their names, but I’m waiting for him to scream something about them horning in on their territory.

I gotta find out what the Knowledge Fight folks have to say about this.

You’re just repeating the justification for patents with zero skepticism and apparently no awareness of how they actually get used.

Hell, I said the following to you a day before you made this comment, and you haven’t replied. Are you happy to just ignore the counter arguments then?

Edit: the fact both this comment and the other one just got downvoted with no reply would indicate they are in fact not interested.

I don’t see it that way. The systems we have in place now are the alternative to just sharing. The secret-keeping monopolistic behaviour of capitalists is preserved by things like the patent system, because they lend the appearance of legitimacy to an illegitimate system.

If you want to see the horror of the patent system, you juat have to look at the millions it killed in the pandemic.

The covid vaccine was developed by public and private researchers and paid for by the state, with a promise it would be made open source to allow anyone to manufacture it and hasten the end of the pandemic.

Bill Gates was one of the fucking vampires who blocked the open sourcing efforts, so poor countries couldn’t manufacture it, allowing the pandemic to run unchecked in those places and of course mutate and inevitably make its way back to wealthier countries for yet another outbreak that actually makes our news because it affects us. The patents killed people.

These companies were funded to do it. There’s no way they wouldn’t have worked on the vaccine otherwise. The pandemic showed us what governments can do when a crisis actually threatens the status quo and they’re forced to do the bare minimum of solving a problem. We didn’t need patents for it, just the will.

Oh yeah, just don’t read about what happens to our prime ministers when they attempt to defy the empire. Totes democracy we got over here.

To the ASIO agent assigned to tracking my every online move:

1. I didn’t see this comment.
2. I don’t understand it.
3. I would never do such a thing.
4. I’m sorry this is what your life has been reduced to. Your patriotism is misplaced and you would be happier if you worked against the creeping surveillance state rather than for it. You know better than any of us how horrible it is, and you have the skills we need.

Fun fact: in Australia we don’t have a bill of rights of any kind, so the cops can just force you to reveal your passwords. The maximum penalty for refusing is 2 years imprisonment.

I don’t see it that way. The systems we have in place now are the alternative to just sharing. The secret-keeping monopolistic behaviour of capitalists is preserved by things like the patent system, because they lend the appearance of legitimacy to an illegitimate system.

If you want to see the horror of the patent system, you juat have to look at the millions it killed in the pandemic.

The covid vaccine was developed by public and private researchers and paid for by the state, with a promise it would be made open source to allow anyone to manufacture it and hasten the end of the pandemic.

Bill Gates was one of the fucking vampires who blocked the open sourcing efforts, so poor countries couldn’t manufacture it, allowing the pandemic to run unchecked in those places and of course mutate and inevitably make its way back to wealthier countries for yet another outbreak that actually makes our news because it affects us. The patents killed people.

These companies were funded to do it. There’s no way they wouldn’t have worked on the vaccine otherwise. The pandemic showed us what governments can do when a crisis actually threatens the status quo and they’re forced to do the bare minimum of solving a problem. We didn’t need patents for it, just the will.

Yes, the companies have a reputation to protect, but it’s also just a standard hype-cycle. If you pay attention to tech history these things always go in cycles like this.

Whether the tech is actually useful or not doesn’t actually matter. What matters is whether you can convince investors to fork over the cash with a shiny presentation.

The tech industry has basically habituated to surviving on selling us bullshit through hype cycles. I think it’s become dependent on them.

More or less what I was going to say. The covid vaccine was developed by public and private researchers and paid for by the state, with a promise it would be made open source to allow anyone to manufacture it and hasten the end of the pandemic.

Bill Gates was one of the fucking vampires who blocked the open sourcing efforts, so poor countries couldn’t manufacture it, allowing the pandemic to run unchecked in those places and of course mutate and inevitably make its way back to wealthier countries for yet another outbreak that actually makes our news because it affects us. The patents killed people.

These companies were funded to do it. There’s no way they wouldn’t have worked on the vaccine. The pandemic showed us what governments can do when a crisis actually threatens the status quo and they’re forced to do the bare minimum of solving a problem. We didn’t need patents for it, just the will.

And we would be free to reverse engineer and lift their stuff without people defending their right restrict us because otherwise they wouldn’t make it.

The vast majority of serious innovation - not just incremental improvements like this patent represents - is done on public resources, not private. The patent system allows corporations to swoop in, monopolise the patents and keep us from free access to knowledge.

The point being made in the video is that the second patent doesn’t correctly reference the prior art - the numbers are wrong - and it is not substantially different. The patent office didn’t do their due diligence.

As for the first, it’s not just code or the staggered idea. There is quantitative research that determines a specific and non-obvious methodology. (Edit: that’s my opinion, but it would be subject to interpretation whether something is obvious - I could easily be wrong)

The video critcises that patent for being overly broad, but there’s no need to attack it because it’s expired anyway. If you want to, here’s the specific link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5653925A/en

My broader critique of patents isn’t that they fail to stand up to their own rules - although they frequently do - but that the law itself runs counter to innovation.

If you’re saying this one is obvious, there is maths and research involved, not just "hey lay it down like this.

The basic concept is easy, the implementation details are not.

Yeah, it seems like it’s the fear of legal action that’s stopping them, but this information might change that.

Also, I mean “bad patent” according to the standards of patents themselves. I don’t actually think patents are good for anything.

Why do they have to “WANT” that? Ignoring the fact that they literally said they were happy it was changed back, why does that matter to the criticism? If it’s true, it’s true, and the fact that corporations are the ones in a position to habitually make terrible decisions about FOSS is a big problem. It’s valid to point out that it would be good to find a better way.

If anything it sounds like you “WANT” to ignore it.

Also, you’ll talk to me after it’s a solved problem? Why would I be interested in that? You have no interest in helping solve it now and I see no reason why you’d magically become useful after the fact.