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Latest Comments by Seegras
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game engine OpenXRay gets taken down on GitHub
10 January 2024 at 8:17 am UTC Likes: 5

In principle, the DMCA demands that
Quote"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
But sadly, there is no enforcement if that turns out to be a lie.

Modrinth announce their Minecraft launcher is now in Beta
7 August 2023 at 3:24 pm UTC

Not sure how I feel about it. Another modpack format?

Certainly modrinth already changed the modded landscape with their webpage alone: It's the best and up to date site for minecraft mods (not modpacks, yet, probably), with the best options to search and filter.

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
27 May 2023 at 1:00 pm UTC Likes: 5

Basically, Dolphin shared a 16byte secret key, which Nintendo dislikes. Nothing that DeCSS hasn't done also.

In the end, it's a quarrel over some DMCA provisions, and you can argue either way whether this is legal or not in the US. In most of the world there is no DMCA, and what they're doing is legal anyway.

Modrinth make their own launcher for Minecraft modders
26 May 2023 at 4:07 pm UTC Likes: 1

The question is, does it allow top easily create modpacks?

Because right now, that's massive a nuisance with curseforge. You basically need to run their app, on dotnet, on wine. Which may or may not work, depending on the phase of moon or what the apps devs smoked last night.

Immersion Corporation sues Valve over Steam Deck and Valve Index haptics tech
17 May 2023 at 4:30 pm UTC Likes: 5

To add insult to injury, software is not patentable. At least half of the patents involved in that lawsuit are actually software patents.

Europe: https://new.epo.org/en/legal/epc/2020/a52.html
USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_States_patent_law

But some fuckwits of patent lawyers argued, "algorithm" in patent law is not the same as in mathematics, and thus software -- of maths -- is patentable. Or that software was made specific to the device it ran on:
https://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/the-moby-dick-support-device/
(this is the reasoning underlying most of the patents mentioned in this suit).

Software patents as such have never been challenged in court, but they're mostly not enforced, and the patent offices keep accepting them illegally, even if they're not enforceable.

Immersion Corporation sues Valve over Steam Deck and Valve Index haptics tech
17 May 2023 at 3:45 pm UTC Likes: 7

The patent system is completely broken. FUBAR.

This is an NPE (Non-Practising Entity) in patent-system slang, meaning they don't produce anything, they were just able to secure a patent for some reason, that's suing a company that produces something. It's called extortion everywhere else.

And while the patent system might have been put up with good intentions, it only ever works for chemicals as intended (because CHOOH2 is an entirely different chemical than CHOOOH2, and not a derivative, and this is well understood); everywhere else it serves as an intertwined mess of a hedge that prohibits newcomers to enter a market, or as weapon of corporate warfare for incumbents to kill startups.

This is a relatively recent paper on this:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3

And here is a rant from 1851(!) in "The Economist"(!) that already understood why a patent system is total dreck:
https://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/voices-against-the-patent-system-the-economist-1851/

Valve gave Steam store search a very useful upgrade
8 May 2023 at 3:21 pm UTC Likes: 3

> handling typos a bit better too, matching up names a bit closer

Not sure how I feel about that. The bigger the indexed body goes, the more your queries get answers swamped with irrelevant stuff. Case in point is "I decided to ignore the numerical parameters in your error message" google.

Valve limits Steam store pages to 2 trailers before screenshots
3 May 2023 at 3:43 pm UTC Likes: 4

Yeah, I hate it when I have to guess from the trailer what the gameplay might look like. "Hm, it looks like 3rd person action -- oh nevermind, it's top-down real-time strategy, and the only time you see it this up close is in the cut-sequences".

Another Steam and Steam Deck Beta brings fixes and Steam Input improvements
2 May 2023 at 3:42 pm UTC

My steam on the desktop bailed out right away after the update. Turns out, steamwebhelper needs "apt install libsdl3".

Big Ambitions drops Native Linux support shortly after the Steam release
21 March 2023 at 10:21 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: InhaleOblivionAnyone of us who has used Linux for years prior to the advances of gaming understands why those of us who are lifelong gamers have two PC builds.

I can see why you would want to do that, especially if you want to play certain multiplayer games.

But no. I'm on Linux since 1995 or so, and deleted my DOS/Windows3.11-partition in 1996 when DOOM came out on Linux. So I've been a Linux-user AND a gamer years "prior to the advances of gaming".

And yes, if a game doesn't run on Linux, one way or another, native or with wine or with emulators, I'm not interested. I won't run (native) Windows ever again.