For graphics, the problem to be solved is that the N64 compiled code is expecting that if it puts value X at memory address Y it will draw a particular pixel in a particular way.

Emulators solve this problem by having a virtual CPU execute the game code (kinda difficult), and then emulator code reads the virtual memory space the game code is interacting with (easy), interprets those values (stupid crazy hard), and replicates the graphical effects using custom code/modern graphics API (kinda difficult).

This program is decompiling the N64 code (easy), searches for known function calls that interact with the N64 GPU (easy), swaps them with known valid modern graphics API calls (easy), then compiles for local machine (easy). Knowing what function signatures to look for and what to replace them with in the general case is basically downright impossible, but because a lot of N64 games used common code, if you go through the laborious process for one game, you get a bunch extra for free or way less effort.

As one of my favorite engineering phrases goes: the devil is in the details

I’m genuinely curious how saying that Linux GUI desktop has issues equates to gargling Microsoft’s balls?

So many people forget that while they understand how to use a Linux terminal and how Linux on a high level works, not everyone does. Plus, learning all of that takes time, effort, and tenacity, which not everyone is willing to do. Linus’s whole conclusion was that as long as that learning curve exists and as long as it’s that easy to shoot yourself in the foot, Linux desktop just isn’t viable for a lot of people.

But Linus has done a lot of public fuck ups therefore everything he says must be inherently wrong.

Whenever I replay OOT I never have a problem with Navi. She rarely hard interrupts, usually just a short tone and flashing C button that goes away after a few seconds. The voice lines only trigger if you press the button to call her, in most cases the hints she gives are genuinely helpful, and stays out of your way for the vast majority of the game.

Fi from skyward sword though… Far worse because she does interrupt gameplay, often repeats what the last dialogue box just fucking told you, and takes several dialogue boxes to tell you what Navi would have taken one to do. I’m glad they significantly overhauled her interactions in the HD release but I’m still going to be hesitant to play that game again

I don’t think the MacBook Airs launch is a good comparison.

Sure there was an early adopter tax on being one of the first “thin and light” laptops, but people already know what you can use a MacBook for, there was already a large value proposition in having a MacBook, the extra cost was entirely being more portable than it’s full size counterparts. Everything you can do on a Mac, just way easier to take on the go.

I’ve read a few reviews on it, watched MKBHD’s initial review, and outside of a few demo apps they point to the vision pro having no real point to it. Which if true, then it falls in line with existing VR headsets that are a fraction of it’s cost and in a niche market, being three times the cost of your competitors is not a good position to be

Yup your right, I was wrong. Valve keeps the copyright regardless.

Dolphin situation was different though. https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/

Valve only ever insisted that Nintendo had to give Dolphin permission to distribute since Valve was afraid of a potential DMCA coming from Nintendo if Nintendo thought that the encryption keys were IP illegally being redistributed. Since Nintendo says emulators are illegal everywhere but a courtroom, Dolphin team knew that they’d never get an ok. Valve probably knew that but didn’t care enough to help fight that legal battle.

I’m not sure Valve cares about brownie points with Nintendo. The Steam Deck is a direct competitor against the Switch, Valve has done nothing to curtail the use of Switch emulators on Deck, and the work Valve has been doing makes using a switch emulator a better experience.

This whole thing only makes sense if Valve wanted to protect their IP. Involving Nintendo really does sound like blame shifting without having to actually go to court

I’m with you on the first part. It makes no sense for Valve to do this. Using LibUltra or not, Nintendo has been relatively lax on people creating new code for the N64. At least to my recollection only in cases where Nintendo felt their IP was directly being threatened did they try and take down fan projects. Even then they heavily rely on the redistribution of Nintendo IP to take things down. Admittedly I have only seen others talking about the Portal 64 project using LibUltra but even so that’s Nintendo’s fight, not Valve’s.

I don’t see how Valve could possibly be afraid of getting sued here by Nintendo, it doesn’t make sense. Valve did not create it, nor distribute, advertise, or aid in any way. IANAL but I don’t see how Valve could possibly be listed as a party to the lawsuit unless Nintendo lawyers agreed with Valve lawyers to go after this guy for IP theft.

TBH I see this more as Valve seeing that with a project this publicly known, if they don’t defend their IP here they’ll lose any future copyright claims and want to prevent it. They also see an opportunity here, blame Nintendo who won’t flinch it at since they get labelled legal bad guys all the time, no real dent to their reputation while saving Valve’s internet golden child perception. Valve would never do something like this so it MUST be Nintendo’s fault. Based on the comments in this thread and I’ve seen else where, that seems like a good assumption. Nintendo takes the heat while Valve protects their IP.

I’m also curious how many people in this thread have ever been involved in product development and are actual trained/professional software devs. Because not only are some of these comments absolutely ridiculous from a business perspective, they make zero sense in a technical perspective too.

Proprietary file formats show up because often times the needs of the system don’t line up with CSV, JSON, raw text or they hit some performance problem where you literally can’t write that much data to the disk so you have come to come up with something different.

There’s also that a computer program in the last 50 years is, except for extreme circumstances, never truly on its own. That microscope control software is completely dependent on how Win95 works, is almost certainly reliant on some old DOS kernel behavior that was left over in early Windows, which Microsoft later completely ripped out starting with Win Vista (tossed back in for Win7 cause so many people complained, then ripped it back out in 8 which no one seemed to care about)

And it’s not just Microsoft that pulls this, even Lemmy’s darling Linux has deprecated things over the years because even in open source projects it’s unmaintainable to keep everything working for forever.

Kinda hard to sell ads when everyone blocks them

I feel like Win 10 default apps just waste so much screen real estate. I’ve been using Thunderbird for years and while 5 years ago I would agree the user interface is obtuse the refresh that happened a few years back really improved things. I’ve also never had stability problems and I have thunderbird tracking 7 email accounts with hundreds of thousands of emails total (I’m a data hoarder)

Evolution on the other hand, hoo boy, I have to use it at work and despise it lol. That program gives me stability problems and frequently fails to interact with Exchange. Gives me a great excuse for missing meetings haha

All said, Outlook desktop I think is superior to both Thunderbird and Evolution, I just don’t wanna pay for it