This looks a lot more reasonable than the non-Deck handhelds. A lot cheaper, has proper touchpads, and it might be Manjaro but at least it is not Windows.

But compared to the Deck, I don't know if it holds up. It seems to compare favorably to the mid-price Deck, but I don't see the point of many of the updates compared the cheap one - like the display resolution for this size... and in terms of support, it is hard to compete with Valve.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThis is probably an unpopular opinion, but I want proprietary software on Linux. If the Snap Store is the only way I can download Adobe After Effects, I'm completely willing to do that. The Snap Store and Flathub makes it easier for Adobe to target Linux should they ever change their mind about whether to support it in the next 15 years.

iOS doesn't have this problem on nearly the same scale despite how much more popular their app store is than the Snap Store. Yes, malicious apps have found their way onto the App Store over the past 15+ years, but only a small number of them and not regularly. Almost every app on iOS is proprietary. Yes, they have a lot more manpower to review the apps, but it shows it's possible to safely vet proprietary software.

Preventing this malware from getting on the Snap Store doesn't require analyzing the code. It requires a reviewer to realize this company is impersonating popular finance-related software they did not develop. What's that saying? "When you're wearing rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."

Nah I agree and I think most people would - most games are proprietary, and we aren't just giving up those, plus a lot of other apps including some we might need for work (so not even a choice).

I'm just saying that the model preferred by proprietary apps - a store that sells pre-packaged, ready-to-run software - has this drawback, moving trust from "the people that make your OS" into "a million devs that it is hard to hold accountable". It isn't even about having access to source code to audit it, just about the hands-off approach, about the implicit expectations of developers in each case, etc.

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I have a bunch of loose thoughts about this.

1) They really should be manually reviewing at least new dev accounts. Checking not only every new app but every update to new app (easy enough to put something harmless and then push the malicious part as an update) is a lot of work, but if any rando can create an account and start publishing apps? That is bad
2) So much work put into containerization/sandboxing, and you just let anyone distribute apps that ask for people's logins. I mean, it is good that apps can't go steal your browser cookies or replace your bootloader, don't get me wrong. But looks like there was some easier, low-tech work (having people check apps for obvious red flags) that needed to be done anyway, and it was not.
3) They should ban absolutely all cryptocurrency apps regardless. First they are exceptionally high-risk, but also fuck ponzicoins.
4) The snap store is a (partial) move from a repository that Canonical actually maintains themselves (maybe badly, but they put the software there and could make all choices) to a store where they are just a middleman, and that lets devs keep control. It is obvious that for them it is less work and more profitable, and that it is attractive for proprietary apps... but this showcases exactly the kind of problem of this approach: you are getting blackbox software from a bunch of randos, not free software from a trusted distro.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyJust illegal in some places, yeah. But if they've been selling 'em in the US, the fact that the sales elsewhere were legal will not stop Nintendo from suing them into oblivion, making it impossible for them to continue selling them elsewhere.

So the lesson for other such devices and for emulation in general is not don't do it, but don't allow sales in or downloads to the United States, or any place with a DMCA-lookalike.

The point is that there are legitimate users. The argument is that it can't possibly be used lawfully so it is exclusively a tool for crimes and it doesn't hold water, for this and other reasons.

Distributing it in the US might be a crime if it is decided that it is a tool capable of breaking DRM (even though it is insufficient for that task as it does not contain the keys), but my point is that it is not because "there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games".

It is not a crime to make a useless emulator that can't play games, and if people use your useless emulator for crimes it is not your problem. But if someone made a program that breaks the DRM of switch games, doesn't matter if it can emulate them, distributing it is a crime.

Nintendo is grasping at straws. They are making many wrong and misleading arguments to push a copyright-maximalist narrative that serves their purposes of suppressing legal and ethical competition and denying basic customer rights. Pushing this narrative is probably more important to them than suing the yuzu devs for money they can't pay. Yeah people can be sued in the US for looking at Nintendo wrong, doesn't mean that is what the law says.

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Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt's not like torrent software, where you can cite legitimate totally legal use cases since it's a general purpose tool for file transfer. There pretty much isn't a use case for Yuzu other than playing Nintendo Switch games, which Nintendo will argue is 'illegal' because they have encryption in place to prevent it

It is illegal in some places. There are plenty of people living in countries where bypassing DRM and dumping your own ROMs to play on a PC is legal. The fact that yuzu can't be used in one jurisdiction does not mean it has no legal use at all. "Oh no, this car would be illegal to drive in Japan, so just making this car is already illegal!" - yeah, pure nonsense. It is just absurd to try to argue that something has no other uses, especially when that use isn't even being advertised by the makers.

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We generally have a very tenuous grasp on what is legally distinct or not, and the game clearly wants to be as close to pokemon as possible.

I personally think it is fine, but I have seen people comparing the 3d meshes and they look way closer - with textures it is clearly distinct, but I don't know if the meshes being too similar might be infringement?

But I must say that I really, really don't care for Nintendo's intellectual property. As far as I'm concerned, anyone should be able to sell games containing the Nintendo-created Pokemon. The original 151 are almost thirty years old, IMO they should be on the public domain already. So yeah, screw Nintendo, they might find a valid legal argument but morally fuck them.

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Quoting: suchNever heard of Double Eleven before, so I started digging... and this appears to be a support studio. Lots of ports, made stuff for other games, published an indie, but nothing remotely suggesting they have what it takes to make a game like this (which is not easy to make).

Tl;dr: not the PA1 dev, no experience in the genre (from what they share), and the latest in a slew of (poorly made) games published by PDX...

I'd be cautious.

They have been working on the first Prison Architect since 2016, initially to port it to consoles (that was before Paradox got the license!) and then were brought by Paradox to update the game and develop new content - I think they made all the DLC released for it (a few mid-sized expansions afaik, haven't played any of them). I'd guess that for all purposes they were the studio that got the PA license after the sale.

So yes they used to be a support studio working on ports and making stuff for existing games - including Prison Architect. So they do have experience not only in this genre but in this very franchise... which is not necessarily reassuring, as they mostly did DLC and the original design came from Introversion which was a very different company.

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Oh no, they changed it to 3d and got rid of the distinctive style.

Not that the new style isn't good (I like it for most management games, it is generic but nice), but I liked how the old one looked. It was perfectly clear and workable, but also unique and interesting. I liked how you could see the furniture being carried to the rooms being built, and how the top-down view made everything clear when building, and everything was very distinct and clear while also looking coherent together. The tiny sprites had lots of personality and matched the somber and edgy tone of the game (the cartoonish, rounded 3D is a bit too "friendly" in my opinion).

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Well they finally addressed the main complaint by gamers about those handhelds: no multicolored LEDs.

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Quoting: EagleDeltaThen maybe "indie" isn't a good category name for games. The minute we start shifting the definition of a word like "independent" we create confusion in the language and semantics do matter a lot. Yes, language changes over time, but that only works when the definition changes holistically, not when it changes definition for just one sub-area of concern. It also creates issues where now "indie" means different things depending on if you're talking about movies, shows, music, books, games, board games, etc. That is too much to expect people to keep track of.

All that said, a studio making a low budget game for their publicly traded company is obviously NOT "indie". By the same token, I don't think Larian, ConcernedApe, EgoSoft, etc can be anything BUT "indie".... being successful doesn't mean someone loses their "indie" or "independent" status. That implies that only failed studios that make something people like can be "indie".

It one hundred percent is a terrible category name, and my first post a bit above suggested many alternatives. I just don't think we are going to change everyone's minds. The meaning already changed, like it or not, and linguistic prescriptivism isn't going to change it back.

As far as we want to promote a better way, I'd rather we moved to better terminology to remove the uncertainty, than use bad categories to keep the language accurate.

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