Phoenix84 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (166) comment rss

  • On the post: Unity’s New Pricing Plan Unites Everyone Against Unity

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2023 @ 03:56pm

    Yeah, but look at the time remaining. Bundles are usually up for 20 days or so. The Unity ones were already up before this happened.

  • On the post: Unity’s New Pricing Plan Unites Everyone Against Unity

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2023 @ 03:43pm

    Unity is burning itself to the ground

    Imagine pulling your game from Steam or other storefronts to avoid new purchases from bankrupting you... while all existing users can still re-install the game on new devices without limitation... thereby bankrupting you anyway. Create a script to: 1) Create new VM 2) Install OS 3) Install game (pirated for extra LULZ) 4) Delete VM 5) Repeat 6) Bankrupt Developers while they wait for Unity to (not) resolve fraudulent installs. Every new VM is a new "machine."

    Is any of this illegal?
    Back when I worked for a company in the private sector, there was a stock trading blackout company-wide for 45 days before, and after any company announcement. I thought it was some SEC regulation, but maybe not?

  • On the post: The Batshit Crazy Story Of The Day Elon Musk Decided To Personally Rip Servers Out Of A Sacramento Data Center

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2023 @ 01:54am

    Cowboy transporting happens

    In my early days at a company, we moved our HQ to another city about 30 minutes away. I was tasked (by the IT Director) with transporting one of our servers (the one with the company's product source code on it) between the old and new office. After it was unracked, I loaded it into my '97 Corolla and drove it up to the new HQ, unloaded it, and placed it in the new rack. This was ~2010. I'm not an IT admin (though I have homelab experience), I'm just a software engineer that worked with that source code. It was risk sure, but it was also just our company's data (and not all of it). No customer info was on that server.

  • On the post: Streamer In Japan Gets 2 Years Jail Time For Uploading Let’s Plays, Anime Spoilers

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2023 @ 09:51pm

    I wouldn't say highly, some people don't care (either about receiving them, or giving them). That said, a spoiler appropriately marked as such without actually spoiling anything in the title or preview is fine by me, as it lets the viewer choose. I wonder if that was taken into consideration here?

  • On the post: Forget About Platform Exclusives; Here Comes The PC GPU Exclusives!

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2023 @ 11:00am

    This is the primary reason I switched to AMD. I'd argue AMD's hardware is inferior to nVidia, however their commitment to open source and pushing open standards is why I'm happy to support them, even if it comes at a cost in other areas.

  • On the post: Forget About Platform Exclusives; Here Comes The PC GPU Exclusives!

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2023 @ 09:13am

    RTX

    This isn't new. nVidia Ansel and RTX for example. Games have been incorporating ansel and RTX features for years, which only work on nVidia hardware. If you're an AMD GPU user, you're almost a second-class citizen in games. I'm one of the said users, it's annoying.

  • On the post: A Banana Puts The Final Nail In The Coffin Of 5G Hype

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2023 @ 09:17am

    Faraday Cage

    Mindless 5G medical hype has been a particularly healthy niche. Like when Verizon hyped “5G-powered” medical gear that not only didn’t actually require 5G to work, but wasn’t likely to be used by actual medical professionals who generally prefer fiber, Ethernet, and gigabit Wi-Fi due to the less reliable nature of cellular.
    Have you been in a large hospital? They're a giant Faraday cage. Once you get more than about 20' from a window, all cellular signals are blocked. I doubt 5G, or any "xG" would ever be useful in a medical setting.

  • On the post: Huh: Microsoft To Sell Cloud Rights To Activision Games To Ubisoft To Placate The CMA

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2023 @ 10:54pm

    I'd rather the deal fall through. This is a disaster. my interpretation of the news was that Microsoft has to license the cloud rights for their own first-party titles from Ubisoft, they don't automatically get them just because they're their own games. Forever (at least for the games made in the next 15 years). Watch as a few years after a release, Microsoft is forced to remove their own games, from their own cloud platform, because Ubisoft doesn't want to license them anymore.

  • On the post: Social Engineering Meets Hacking With Prompt Hacking

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2023 @ 07:28pm

    Meets?

    Social engineering is a form of hacking.

  • On the post: Sexy Sandwiches: PornHub Goes After Kebab Shop Over Signs, Logos

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2023 @ 04:06pm

    Mueslix

    It’s hard to imagine two marketplaces being further apart from one another than pornography and German sandwiches.
    I'm sure Peter Griffin can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMHKwQEe4IQ Anyway, is this something that would fall under parody?

  • On the post: Appeals Court: Salesforce Can’t Use 230, And Could Be Liable For Sex Trafficking Because Backpage Was A Customer

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 07 Aug, 2023 @ 01:44pm

    Chilling Effect

    That broad reading of § 1595 would extend civil liability to nearly every company and individual who did regular and personalized business with Backpage after it faced public allegations of sex trafficking.
    I read that as "innocent until proven guilty" no longer applies. If actions by others (non-DOJ) are to be taken based on "allegations", then anyone is automatically guilty based on an allegation and should be treated as such, regardless if a case is filed, or a verdict has been reached.

  • On the post: French News Agency Sues ex-Twitter For Not Paying Snippet Tax

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 02:33pm

    I messed that analogy up. More like "You have to post our ad in your newspaper, and pay us for the privilege. If you don't, you have to pay the government for failing to negotiate to pay us for our ad."

  • On the post: French News Agency Sues ex-Twitter For Not Paying Snippet Tax

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 02:30pm

    Sounds like extortion to me. "You can shop at this store, but if you don't, you have to pay a tax to 'support' them instead."

  • On the post: Man Who Sued Over His Tattoo Kinda Appearing On A Cardi B Cover Loses, Pays Legal Fees

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2023 @ 10:29pm

    Deepfaked

    So he was, in effect, deepfaked? Talk about swapping gender roles.

  • On the post: PSA: If You’re Late To Work, Try Blaming The Pixies

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 06 May, 2023 @ 11:48am

    This is one of the reasons I disable the assistant. The only place I allow it to be active is while Android Auto is active, since it's supposed to safer to interact with while drive, though tbh I don't use it much in the car either. The alarm app is bad enough with Google constantly changing the button labels/icons and press vs slide behavior. When you're drowsy and waking up and the screen is blurry, it's hard to see which button is snooze, and which is stop. I already press Stop accidentally often enough due to that, I don't need my alarm to stop randomly for some other reason. Or worse, as someone else mentioned, having it dial 911 for me with or without my knowledge.

  • On the post: Wizards Of The Coast Sends Pinkerton Agency To Person That Bought Unreleased ‘Magic’ Cards In Error

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2023 @ 11:13pm

    TBF, if WotC went straight to the police/feds to deal with this, they probably would have went in guns blazing and left everyone in the house dead. Think on the brighter side. :-)

  • On the post: Microsoft Yanked Forthcoming Game’s PlayStation Port To Make It Exclusive

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2023 @ 01:11am

    I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.
    That means that platforms Microsoft "supports", which typically are Windows and XBox, are the only ones they need to care about. If you want to play on a Playstation, use the Game Pass or other cloud platform.

  • On the post: Gamers Celebrate Their ‘Loss’ In Court Over Blocking Microsoft’s Activision/Blizzard Acquisition

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 11:24pm

    Piracy

    I, too, don’t understand why Microsoft sees it as economically advantageous to limit the platforms on which the titles produced by a studio it now owns can be sold.
    It's pretty obvious to me: Piracy It's much easier to pirate games on PC than console, so it would "benefit" (real or perceived) them to only release games on consoles, or at least release them first there, instead of on PC.

  • On the post: Elon Musk Throws A Shit Fit And Fires Engineer Because Not Enough People Are Viewing His Personal Tweets

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2023 @ 11:52am

    Is that why phone kept spamming me with Elon's tweets? Of all the accounts I follow on Twitter, only Elon's would ping my phone, and I have no idea why. Easy solution is I just unfollowed him. I clicked follow back before I knew better. :-)

  • On the post: Ubisoft Backtracks After Backlash To Make DLC Permanently Downloadable Despite Server Shutdown

    Phoenix84 ( profile ), 04 Sep, 2022 @ 09:30pm

    ability to redownload the content
    That should explain it.

Next >>