No, Unreal Tournament (2014).

It's pretty depressing what happened, actually, because on paper, it was awesome. The base game was free, and it even had a new game mode called Blitz. The amount of maps it shipped with was pretty meager, but the goal was to have modders sell their maps/mods/skins/etc as IAPs within the game and then they got a cut. The game still allowed for private/dedicated servers, and while it lacked some of the polish of UT3, the framework was there and it really worked well as a de facto tech demo for UE4, and was surprisingly stable for an alpha release.

The problem, of course, was that Fortnite quickly became their money printer, limiting how much effort they put into developing the base game, before they finally canned it.

I'm still really bummed about it; I really liked the pre-alpha version I got to play with some friends for a bit.

The request isn't to "gimp" the product features, it's to GIVE USERS THE ABILITY TO OPT-OUT. Users should have the ability to say "no thanks", and Microsoft should allow Windows to behave accordingly. If the argument is that an opt-out control is "gimping product features", then it implies that Microsoft believes users MUST have them, which is a faulty premise that should be corrected...because a $599 Macbook doesn't require iCloud.

I don't think there is much in the way of misunderstanding.

Still a long wait...and while I could perhaps understand a 15-minute wait (long enough for someone to realize it's a unique request), it's unnecessarily long and disproportionately punishes people who don't kiss the Google ring. Microsoft got called into court for doing FAR less to Netscape.

...which also requires photo ID and a bunch of other hoops, which is a whole headache for FOSS apps. Besides, "verified" means that it's up to Google to bless the developer...which means that Google can decide not to bless a legitimate dev, or can bless an illegitimate dev, or the means of signing an APK can be stolen or leaked...or Google can change the process to require "re-verification" every 30 days at $25 a pop...the process is so ripe for Google to use it for their benefit.

In isolation, perhaps...but it's not like Google is adding this in some sort of broader context that allows for rooting and modding, it's part of an overall trend to make Android just like iOS.

True...but I think there's a bigger problem with balance between safeguards and personal responsibility. Will the next version of Android require a pop-up confirmation after 30 days, or automatically disable the ability to add new sideloaded APKs at intervals? Google isn't stopping here.

This isn't a given; lots of phones don't allow this, or if it's possible, one blows an eFuse...Google isn't adding this delay but also requiring bootloader unlocking from licensees...

Same...but it requires a LOT of research, AND one would have to effectively backup and restore their phone because unlocking the bootloader wipes the phone in the process.

The problem in this case has less to do with what Musi was doing, and more to do with the means of enforcement.

Honestly, I'd agree that the app itself was problematic in what it was doing. I might even agree that there should have been an injunction against Musi.

That, however, isn't the problem.

The problem is that Youtube went to Apple and said "de-list this app for us because it violates *our* TOS"...and Apple said "sure thing". Apple didn't say "give us a court order and we will comply with the court order", which Youtube would only have gotten as a result of winning an actual-trial in actual-court with an actual-judge granting an injunction.

The court system allows for really inconvenient things like "knowing that someone is seeking to compel an outcome against someone", "allowing the defendant to tell their side of the story", "ensuring that the defendant has access to the evidence being used against them", "enabling a (hopefully) neutral third party to hear both sides", and giving the benefit of "government enforcement of the ruling"...those sorts of pesky details that allow for a fair society to exist. Youtube sidestepped all of those things and just asked Apple to do them a solid.

Ultimately, I do think Musi is in the wrong here (if they're not using their own infrastructure or licensing agreements and using Youtube's instead, they should be doing it with an above-board agreement rather than technical loopholes), but the problem isn't the outcome, it's on the very-problematic level of control that allowed Youtube to sidestep due process, enabled by Apple's repeated unwillingness to legitimately allow sideloading on iOS, that the court just legitimized.

So then, let Samsung either pay $X per install like they do on their laptops for Windows, or let Samsung fork AOSP.

They do - they get to control the ad infrastructure and the data that comes from the full Google suite, from hardware vendors like Samsung and Motorola and Oppo. If Google doesn't like it, they can fork AOSP and make PlayOS, and deal with the fallout that comes from pissing off their hardware vendors AND regulators.

And why is that? Perhaps I'll grant the awkward wording where "and then figure out why things don't work" is referring to Google, rather than the user who treated their phone like Linux? Nobody gets Android help from Google directly. Even the phone modders know that installing third party software means that the first party can't help you...so, Google seemingly has no support burden, and users get exactly what they've always had? What's the problem here?

Because the payoff is in keeping people in the Google ecosystem. All the data Google gets to scrape to train their AI has a cost, and that cost is "keeping Android afloat in an open-enough state to keep it as an ecosystem who's side effect is the existence of LineageOS and F-Droid, either of which are used by a tiny segment of users." Android is also an ad platform; every web search shows an ad, and some advertisers pay $50/click for those ads. Android *absolutely* has a payoff, it's just externalized from the users.

Hey, if Google wants to give up AOSP development tomorrow because the fines are too prohibitive, let them. By all means, Google can absolutely do so and release PlayOS as a Pixel exclusive OS, and Samsung can figure out how to move forward with Tizen or their own AOSP fork...but Google's cost for doing this would be "all of the Play Store revenue and all of the ad revenue and a whole lot of the data mining revenue from the 99% of Samsung users who don't use F-Droid or LineageOS".

But more broadly...at what point does Alphabet become big enough to get the "Standard Oil" or "AT&T" treatment?

...well, first off, 8GB of RAM *should* be enough for general use. As an example, MS Office 2007 required 256MB of RAM, Office 2003 required 128...and it doesn't have eight times the features to justify the 2GB RAM requirement for Office 2024. Don't get me started on Acrobat. Chrome is another notorious RAM eater, but that tends to be based on the amount of javascript websites are bloated with - there's no reason for a single website to be taking 4GB of RAM, and when they do, it's NEVER for a reason that benefits the user. Admittedly, Hsu is the hardware guy, so it's not really his fault that memory optimization is something nobody is doing anymore...but I do think that a $599 MacBook with 8GB of RAM will help give incentive to revisit the possibility of doing so.

Also in fairness to Hsu, the PC OEMs are still beholden to Intel/AMD/Qualcomm for processors and Microsoft for Windows, and that's going to limit them because Apple can economies-of-scale their SoC in a way the OEMs can't. Similarly, Apple made the jump to ARM in a way that makes the use of a mobile chip viable; Windows on ARM has a place, but somehow I always run into a random issue, like a printer driver or VPN client that doesn't do ARM...Apple's ruthless treadmill makes that a more palatable and expected response in Mac World; Microsoft can't really do the same because "running Windows software" is the reason people buy Windows at all...and while it'd be wonderful if Hsu decided he was going to do an "Asus Linux" and make an in-house distro to make his own vertical, I don't see that being a gamble he's willing to take.

What Hsu *can* answer for, however, are the hardware cues that Asus took from the Macbook that made laptops worse overall. Clickpads are not an improvement over dedicated trackpad buttons. Sealed in batteries are not an improvement over socketed batteries. I'll concede that we don't need serial or parallel ports anymore (perhaps on one model for industrial use), but Asus wasn't exactly showing Apple up when they started shedding ports - they too were on board with with port minimalism, leaving users to carry a bag of assorted adapters to plug their stuff in. Perhaps it's different now, but there was a solid decade where Asus laptops where the most notorious victims of power sockets requiring a resolder after breaking off the motherboards.

So yeah, I'm not crying for Asus on this front.

So,I run /e/OS, and have done so for years. I don't understand what this will validate.

At present, Play Integrity is a means of telling apps that the software that's *actually* running on a phone, is the software that Google *expects* is running on the phone. Now, *in and of itself*, I don't see that as being a problem, because if Google says "this is a modified OS" or "this is a modified bootloader", apps can ignore this fact if it's simply informational. I submit that there should be a requirement for apps to divulge whether they will refuse to run if they are informed of a modified software stack, but any attestation mechanism should be limited in that way.

But let's assume that it's the case - as far as I'm aware, that's how it currently stands. The answer to ""Who" is validating "What"" is pretty simple: "Google is validating that unmodified software is running on hardware". An open source attestation mechanism breaks basically all of this.

So, even if we limited this to official builds of /e/OS and iodeOS (which is a big "if", since both have community builds, and are derivatives of LineageOS, and each have downstream derivatives), now, the app is trusting /e/OS...that the build is unmodified, of software that requires an unlocked bootloader in nearly all instances of its installation? Both OSes have integrated adblockers and other privacy tools, and MicroG that spoofs other data required for apps to run as if there were Google Play Services installed...so, are they saying "we solemnly swear that all of the anti-tracking, adblocking, and signature spoofing meets security standards"? Seems like conflicting signals to me.

If we're stretching "decentralized validation service" to include the public key infrastructure that handles standard Sectigo/Thawte certificates, I guess maybe...but if we're talking something closer to the blockchain...what bank is trusting an anonymous group like that?

Can we define "securely" here, and how a "specific device model" would factor in? Is even /e/OS looking to close the door on rooting and other kinds of mods? Is this the end of the road to /e/OS's community builds? Is this the sort of scenario where the presence or absence of Magisk would alter the calculus? If so, then why would a user choose an /e/OS device - especially if it means the removal of the MicroG mods that make regular Android apps work - over a stock Google phone?

I just can't see how this config can simultaneously keep the modders happy - the people who run /e/OS on their devices and donate to it - along with the banks and other companies who would want reliable attestation.

"$GAME, but where everything is free instead of requiring microtransactions"
"$APP, but without ads or subscription costs"

I'm not saying there's a lack of creativity in the world, but I *am* saying that the ones who would make apps that don't amount to "X but without annoyance Y" are the ones who are probably actual-programmers. This means that Samsung will either have users making apps that directly compete with for-profit games, or the feature is, from a users' standpoint, hobbled and hamstrung to the point of total uselessness, defeating the purpose.

And Delta, at least, still does. The problem is that people are bringing their phones and iPads onto the planes, and they don't have headphone jacks anymore, so while it was possible for a flight attendant to go up to someone using the speaker on their device and hand them headphones and politely-but-firmly say "use them or turn off your sound", it's a bit prohibitive to keep a pile of bluetooth headphones on hand for such a case...because of course, the person would claim "they don't work with my iPad"...

And this is the real problem. If this was a situation when I was growing up, my parents would either make me use my headphones, make me turn off the sound, or tell me I couldn't use my iPad while on the plane because it was rude to the people around me.

+5 Insightful.

So, back in 2008, Microsoft UX designers did a whole presentation regarding how they came up with the Ribbon UI.

It's a really interesting watch, even if you don't agree with their conclusions - some of the early prototypes look awesome, even if they failed the functionality test. The relatively short summary is that most of the features end users were asking for, were already in the products, and there was a discovery problem. Menus had grown from 5-or-fewer entries to nearly two dozen per menu, including the "tools" menu that was pretty much a catch-all for everything else. Toolbars had gotten so numerous that having all of them present left very little space for the actual document. A number of iterations were tried, and after a whole lot of iteration, the Ribbon UI was the outcome.

Now, in fairness, my biggest argument was that they should have had both options AND search as day-one features. The Mac version of Office 2007 had both menus and ribbons. Peter Schmidt made the "Ribbon Customizer" utility that added the menus back into the PC version. Custom ribbon tabs wouldn't be added until Office 2010. Search wasn't added in until Office 2016, ten years after the Ribbon came out. There was most definitely room for improvement in the jump between the menus/toolbars and the ribbon, and I'll wholeheartedly agree that the forced transition was one of the biggest sources of pushback at the time, and justifiably so.

That being said, between search and customizable ribbon tabs, I'm not convinced that the current iteration of the ribbon is *bad*, though I do think the 2007 look was a bit nicer than the 'flat white' look of 2013 and later iterations. In terms of "that's how we've always done it"...I'm not sure I buy that, either. Office as a suite was released in 1995, giving the menus-and-toolbars 12 years of active use. Even if you want to stretch it back to Word for Windows 1.0 in 1990, that's still 16 years, while the Ribbon UI has been the mainstay for 19 years. The ribbon has been the Word interface for longer than menus-and-toolbars, so while that doesn't make the Ribbon UI "good", either objectively or subjectively, it *does* reflect a service life long enough that many current Office users would consider Word 2003 to be the more foreign and unfamiliar UI.

In terms of LibreOffice, I love that it exists, I think it's super functional, and really could replace MS Office for most people in practice. However, I do think that the UX design team is great at creating a very *functional* UI, but not necessarily a very *pretty* UI. Now, this is inherently subjective, and the cries of "but Office 2024 is ugly!" aren't something I'd necessarily argue. However, I *would* say that LibreOffice would probably do itself a solid if it were to give itself some sort of theming engine, reminiscent of Winamp / Sonique / Windows Media Player in the days of old. If it were possible to leave it up to the users and community to make UI iterations, everyone could win - and that's something that's possible with LibreOffice that MS Office can never do.

I'm interested to hear why, in greater detail. The software part seemed pretty damn polished to me - easy UI, extensible via plugins, can't remember it crashing even once in ten years, seamlessly added support for digital cable and OTA sources, guide data was seamless and accurate, extenders worked well, unavoidable DRM was seamless...at a software level, I'm hard pressed to find a place where WMC fell short for its intended scope.

To me, the real issue was that Microsoft didn't have a flagship DVR that looked like a DVR, with an integrated 4-channel tuner and front display. There were custom designs that did this, and Sony made a number of Vaio computers that actually looked like TVs and had integrated tuners, but Microsoft was too dependent on OEMs to make the kind of hardware push that would have assisted consumers in something as simple as having such a device share shelf space with TVs, rather than desktop computers. Had Microsoft sold a computer that looked like a DVR, and was treated like a DVR, complete with a useful setup guide for getting a CableCARD configured the way TiVo does - or, to bring it full circle, made a "DVR conversion accessory" that made an Xbox a DVR - I think they could have competed head-on with cable companies and made a dent.

Well...ironically, I do think that most forms of consumer entertainment have been speedrunning toward the lowest common denominator for a while...but I would agree that MS decision makers do seem to live in the sort of self-congratulatory environment where there's the idea that the MS Store just needs time for consumers to prefer it, and that Windows is an active choice, and that people want Windows computers to be iPads or Chromebooks, which means that their half-measures please no one except themselves. However, I don't think that this culture is the same one that came up with WMC back in 2002 or kept it going through 2012ish, and thus I think that WMC failed due to external factors, rather than just banking on people buying a Dell Inspiron for use as a set-top box.

Well, I've heard that before...and perhaps there are some games where open-ended NPCs with CoPilot running the conversation in the background could be interesting, but for narrative-driven games, the NPCs will still need to be on-the-rails to a degree, in order to ensure that the player's interaction with the NPC fits the narrative. Conversely, I, as a player, don't want to have to type out all my dialogue to NPCs; I can go to Discord or IRC for that, so multiple-choice makes a whole lot more sense for expedience sake, and it's been a solved problem for decades.

So...as much as it seems like an obvious use case for generative AI, I'm not completely convinced that the implementation would work well - adding in generative AI means that there's a possibility that an NPC won't do what the script needs the NPC to do, and could make it impossible for the player to progress in some cases. If all the AI can do is paraphrase its script, then it seems almost-pointless to implement; just give the system a few different recordings and pick one at random if more variety of dialogue is the preferred implementation.

...Depressingly, the idea didn't quite stick the landing...but Windows Media Center was probably the best DVR software ever released for general consumer use, and using an Xbox360 as an extender was a great idea, too. Seriously, I ran this until right around 2021, and it's sad that MS didn't quite manage to work out how to sell this to consumers properly. In an amusing irony, I think cable TV itself would have lasted a bit longer if they did., because two of the things people hated about cable were the slow, crappy UIs of cable-supplied DVRs, and the $15/month/box rental fee. Had MS sold a WMC PC as something intended for the living room as a one-time purchase, it's possible that it would have helped remove these pain points enough to stem the cord-cutting.

Well, one of the issues we're running into here, is that it's kinda difficult to gauge what constitutes 'authentic', and at what point it stops being accurate to label it as either 'human created' or 'AI generated'.

If I prompt ChatGPT to "write a short story about a man raking leaves", and then post the 3,000 word output...I still came up with the prompt, so while most people would still say "AI slop", one could argue that a human was involved.

If I asked ChatGPT for a writing prompt, and I wrote a 3,000 word story as a result of that prompt, would it be 'human generated' because I wrote the story, or would it still constitute AI-generated because the prompt came from ChatGPT?

If I saw a prompt on r/WritingPrompts, and wrote a story from what I saw, could it be considered 'human created' because I have no way to tell whether the writing prompt was AI generated?

If I wrote the story out, then put it through ChatGPT to help me rephrase some awkward passages in the same way a human editor would, am I now unable to call it 'human generated'? If I used Grammarly for the same task? Am I unable to use a spell checker? Is it AI-generated if I wrote every word on a typewriter with no help from a computer in any form, but am selling a text-to-speech audiobook where the book is being read aloud by AI?

Images are the same problem - at what point between AI prompt and auto-contrast does an image become human-generated art? How much of the surface area can use content-aware fill before it stops being human-generated? What if a human traces an AI-generated image? or uses Live Trace on the Mona Lisa?

The real problem is that AI art is a spectrum and there isn't yet enough consensus on where the line is drawn, beyond which there isn't enough human involvement. Pinterest doesn't even have to be *correct* regarding where they draw the line, they just need to draw it...because without a clear definition, the labels are going to be inconsistently applied, and that's what they're really fighting against.

...What is Meta doing with AI, really?

Yes, it tunes their algorithm content for ads and to optimize screen time, fine, granted...but that's been a thing for over a decade; is it just being called "AI" now because investors?

If we take the easy road and say 'yes, because investors', then it'd make more sense for them to support anti-AI politicians, rather than pro-AI politicians. If it's purely branding, then anti-AI legislation would hurt Google and OpenAI more than it would hurt Meta; Meta can just say "we don't do AI, it's traditional algorithms, so this legislation doesn't apply to us", and the lack of AI branding starts to work in their favor at the expense of competitors.

I've never met anyone who's using the Meta chatbot integration in WA/FB/IG. If they've got an API that third party developers are using like ChatGPT or Claude, I've never seen it referenced. If they've got a server farm full of GPUs, unless they're leasing the capacity to someone else, it's unclear what they're actually doing that is either user-facing or directly profitable, so pro-AI legislation seems like it'd help them the least.