lostgame

Ha. Your example is rather specific seeming to me, as I actually work on one of the big 5 Canadian banking iOS apps here in Toronto.

For obvious reasons; we don’t ship to alternate stores - even if such a thing as iOS sideloading existed; we wouldn’t support it, and we of course do not support anything but the Play Store on Android.

It’s obviously partly a support cost issue - there would be less than 1% of our millions of users using F-Droid, etc - and, more importantly; it’s a security and support issue.

I think for a while we even had some sort of check that would detect a jailbroken iPhone or rooted Android device and attempted to refuse to run on them. Security is so far above the #1 priority working in banking it’s insane. We’d never consider anything outside of Apple or Google’s official solutions. We actually have real life contacts at Apple to help address specific security or approval concerns; which is practically unheard of.

So I’m guessing with this you’d use an alternative store like F-Droid instead of the Play Store? (Pardon my ignorance, I’m an iOS dev and have been for a decade; I don’t really know the Android landscape.)

Came here to say this. I grew up in the Sonic ROM hacking and fan game creation community (with this same username - my first posts are around 2001 and still around) and it was so cool to see how SEGA not only didn’t fuck with, but silently actually supported the scene. It was really awesome to see taxman and stealth get to where they did! I remember playing around with the Sonic Retro engine back in the day on my actual Dreamcast hardware. :)

Meanwhile; my friends in the Mario and Metroid hacking scene would constantly be hit with cease and desist orders from Nintendo, and some absolutely insane projects have been basically DOA and had to go underground. It’s quite a bit sad.

lmao, as if the designer is in charge of what they’d like to do 90% of the time.

Ha! I also use my G4 for music software, especially old VSTs that are PPC-only. I love it!

'iSheeple'

cringes

You had some credibility up until then...

Future projection: Cinemas will become the next arcades.

For a time, arcades were the only way to experience video games, just as cinemas were for films, and, at least through the early 90's, they were still by far the best way to experience most AAA titles like Street Fighter 2, etc.

But game companies wanted more profit than just arcades could bring in, so we got the advent of the home console.

For a time, the arcade technology was still clearly superior to the home console technology, but home consoles quickly eclipsed what the arcades could do,and simultaneously changed the medium massively, allowing us games like RPGs, which had multi-hour-long very immersive and deep gameplay and storytelling that was simply not possible on a cabinet designed to get as many people in and out of it as quickly possible.

In the late 90's, we had games like Final Fantasy 7, something so far removed from the original concept of an arcade game it could only have ever existed as an in-home experience.

What can we learn from the closure of arcades in relation to the fall of theatres?

The experience of media has to be better than what is offered in our homes, to get us to leave them. Cinema has practically passed that tipping point already, especially to anyone with a decent home video/audio system, which is more insanely affordable than ever.

I predict cinemas will, in the next couple decades, very much go the way of arcades - including a small resurgence of 'real', independently-owned cinemas that will exist to give us that nostalgia-laced experience that will be indie enough at the time to be considered hip and retro.

Obviously that's massively different.

We can sit up, pause, move around, snuggle with a lover, we can just run and take a piss if we need without worrying about missing a critical scene, or watch it in two parts if we're feeling tired and want to catch the rest the next day.

My partner and I are also not out a combined $50 and we got to share a bottle of wine at home while we watch the movie on my 4K TV. No transit, either. We can just roll over and pass out if we want.

Cinema has a problem if it continues to stubbornly refuse to implement intermissions in films 2:30+. I'm just so over it.

If we want long movies in the cinema, we desperately need to re-introduce the intermission.

Seriously, going to Avatar 2 was a nightmare I think for half the people who saw it because after 1 1/2 hours, your popcorn and drink are empty, your butt is starting to hurt and you need to pee from all that soda you just drank. This is just basic biology.

Not only that, but a 10-15 break in the film provides another opportunity for concession sales, a massive positive for the cinema, and certainly one that could compensate for any schedule readjustments they may have to do.

I simply can't see a negative to an intermission, for either the cinema's profits or for the customer's enjoyment of the experience.

The lack of intermission makes going to the cinema for films of this length a net negative, especially with how much it costs.

I think Avatar 2 may be the last film longer than 2 hours I actually bother to pay to see in the cinema.

I'd describe the experience, especially with the awful, strange and distracting as hell frame rate jumps Avatar decided it needed, as more uncomfortable than enjoyable.

I honestly wish I'd waited and just watched it from home on my 4K TV snuggled with a partner, lol.

There was, in the 2000's, a SEGA Saturn emulator called 'Cassini'.

I now know why, lol.

While I have my complaints with the Apple ecosystem, I similarly have to agree that in my case as an audio producer - MacOS 'just works' - I rarely have to do updates, there's no intrusive advertising; I'm an Apple Music user and I love how it syncs between my Mac, Phone, and Watch so seamlessly...

Logic is a phenomenal piece of software with an incredible value for it's price and feature set, and I've still got an Ableton instance as well, the VSTs or AU's work perfectly in both.

I've honestly never had issues with my Mac/Logic setup so I've been using it for more than 15 years. I will probably continue using some variation of this setup for as long as I continue to produce music.

If the commenter can't open their existing Ableton files in Bitwig, and/or use the existing VSTs they've likely spent years with and collected or designed presets for, it makes somehow converting to an entirely new DAW far too daunting and complex a process for any serious producer.

I myself use Logic Pro, and have files from Logic and GarageBand from over - (holy crap I'm getting old) - 17 years ago, that still open and play in Logic - (minus the occasional missing plug-in) - and I've used Logic for so long at this point that there is literally almost no barrier between my imagination in terms of composition, engineering and production and the actual software and hardware.

To switch to a solution such as Bitwig not only removes access to the 17+ years of files I've got (who knows how many years of files the original commenter has) - it makes it so I can no longer, e.g. just send a Logic or Ableton file to a fellow producer - which I often do, and is often done; for collaborations - it removes access to the incredible library of software instruments included with Logic that I've slowly became a veritable genius with over more than a decade...

Ultimately, unless you pretty much started with Bitwig, or Ardour, etc - I couldn't ever see a seasoned producer who has settled into their closed-source DAW of choice ever seriously considering this.

As a SEGA kid growing up through the 90's, I got to watch my favourite console and game maker make business decision after business decision so incredulously stupid, just - so unbelievably, shockingly daft; that one would have to assume the corporation itself was somehow a sentient - yet suicidal - entity.

From the baffling release of the 32x 'console', to the jump-start release of the Saturn (which cost them insanely valuable retail connections and meant software wasn't ready for launch) - to the shit-show that was the never-released Sonic X-Treme - SEGA seemed obsessively dedicated to making sure it made every major business decision as damaging to its existence as possible.

By the time they finally produced a frankly phenomenal offering with the Dreamcast, the industry's good will towards SEGA had all but vanished. I recall EA saying after the debacle with the Saturn they wouldn't even make games for the Dreamcast.

All these years later, that girl who grew up getting and cherishing her SEGA Genesis as a Christmas gift in 1993(4?), spending way too much time on the playground about how much better SEGA was ('there's actual blood in Mortal Kombat, though, suck that, Nintendorks!') fully expected to be using the equivalent of a Dreamcast 5, and if SEGA hadn't been frankly just so incredibly stupid, I most likely would be.

This is just a continuation of normal behavior for SEGA, another monumentally stupid decision based off all the wrong motivation and market research.

This is fantastic! I am a huge fan of seeing limited hardware pushed to it's limits (I'm a SEGA Saturn homebrew developer at the moment, but in high school I was huge into GBA, and then eventually DS, programming) and this is the adorable and skill-laden kind of project I love to see on the front page of HN! Great work!

The cores were also ARM7 and ARM9, respectively.

IIRC, the ARM7 one was essentially identical to the ARM7 used in the GBA, and was used for the GBA backwards compatibility mode on the original DS/lite.

One of the girls in my poly pod (I am both poly and lesbian), I'll call her 'Y', is South Korean and bisexual, and has repeatedly stated she'd rather die alone than to be stuck with an average Korean man. It seems like family pressure is the only reason left for South Korean women to give into the absolute shit deal that marriage is for them.

Yeaaaaah, until that stranger ends up being a total sketchbag.

As a woman, unless I'm meeting other women I'd never feel safe about this. Even so, it would be weird.

Could never be down for this, and I'm only half a recluse.

If 2001 taught us anything, it's that this mission is doomed.

I can vouch for the quality of these events and the attendees. It's been a consistently fun, interesting experience and I've made some neat connections.

Why would I replace it with Firefox? What makes it different than Firefox? If I'm already using Firefox, and have it set up the way I'd like, why should I change it?

That's the point I think a lot of commenters here are making. Same here, I saw the landing page and immediately dismissed it. There needs to be information about what you are offering.

How easy is it to flash Ubuntu onto an existing Android phone?

Is there any potential to dual boot between it and Android?

Has anyone tried it out? How usable is it? Does it have actual calling support?

I still use XP 90% of the time when I just need a quick VM to run some odd Windows utility or other. It's lightweight, it's not filled with the intrusive privacy issues of 10 or 11, and a surprising amount of software is still compatible.

This is an exceptionally smart outlook; and reflects my own experience - if something is wrong in my code in Safari it is usually wrong elsewhere.

There's an important and cool concept here about using the weakest link sometimes.

Similar example: as an app developer, I intentionally use a phone several, several generations behind so I can see what the actual response time and general UX feeling is on the devices frankly a lot of users are going to have.

If my app runs well on my iPhone 8, it's obviously going to scream on a 12.

Actually immediately thought of Dolphin with this comment. The Dolphin team's dedication to having fantastic write-up that match every release is commendable as hell. Phenomenal software, as well. :)

That’s...uh, surprising as hell. The idea of a designer that could actually tolerate having to use Windows full-time for design work, even at Microsoft; would be much more surprising, from my experience.

Oh, wow - I had seen a version of this, years ago, as; I believe, a commercial.

It was a much, much better and far less obvious version, I can't tell because obviously I knew what I was expecting, but I strongly feel with this 1999 version I absolutely would've caught it. Very poorly done compared to the other one I've seen.

Ah, here it is, this one uses a 'moonwalking bear'. Upon seeing them both again, I 110% agree with my assessment that the bear version is far, far superior.

The space the original video uses is too small, and maybe it's that the camera angle is poor; it's so hard to tell but I'd honestly be surprised if too many people fell for the original today.

I actually had troubles following the ball because the gorilla was just too obvious and distracting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

>> It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic.

Millions of people buy cards that can only be used to specifically only play, say; 'Magic: the Gathering' (MtG).

You could probably invent some sort of new game with MtG cards, or do some sort of card magic with them (no pun intended); but MtG cards are very intentionally not designed to be 'general purpose' cards or tools to design new card games with. They have a very specific audience in mind.

Magic the Gathering cards are also much more expensive than a regular deck of playing cards I can grab from my local dollar store. They have a lot less utility than said cards I can acquire for a $1.15CDN, taxes in; and they also have a bit of a stigma from people who seem to not like MtG for various reasons.

Somehow, still; it's one of the largest and most widely played card or tabletop games in the world; easily - and it's got an enthusiastic community of passionate and fascinating people.

Is Magic: the Gathering ruining card games? It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are?

Fuck no. Apple isn't some offence to the notion of computers, either.

Maybe it's not to your taste, but just because a product is designed for a specific set of purposes or utilities that don't suit your preference doesn't mean you have to jump to the dramatic conclusion that these products are 'ruining' the entire notion of what a product is. It's just a different product. Get over it, and use a different one. Take a valium and realize people like and use different things, and that's okay.

On a side note, I develop hobbyist apps for WatchOS, iOS, MacOS, the web; and SEGA Saturn, all on my Mac; and I've never had any issues actually achieving the results I wanted.

Hey, hit me up at the email in my username. I’m a multi-instrumentalist and professional software and audio engineer who has worked in music technology in the past. :) This piques my interest.

Didn’t Rare often write their own custom RSP microcode? Maybe I’m mixing that up with another developer, but I think I read that in an interview.

I think; for myself, at least - doing ‘useless’; or passion/pet projects are a way to ‘keep up your chops’ or the like as a developer, and keep your inspiration for it.

I do SEGA Saturn homebrew, and mostly actually just experiments (I’ve never published any of my Saturn projects so far, though I intend to for one of them), and I only really do it for the obscure interest of learning a kind of fairly obscure and complex processor and co-processor architecture for…the love of it?

I don’t care if I make money off it; I don’t really need to, I don’t care if people see or use it; because that’s not the purpose behind the exercise, and I guess that does seem almost strange but the curiosity and learning is what drives me.

I work a 9-5 as a mobile developer and it’s honestly usually not that challenging or growth-inducing. Not that I’m complaining, I love my job and my company, but in order to stay passionate and ‘into’ programming I find doing these weird passion projects really helps.

Hope that makes sense!

EDIT: I’m also a music producer, and one task I really like to do in a similar way to ‘keep up my chops’ is to re-produce an almost carbon copy of a song I’m interested in particular audio engineering qualities about to, EG, learn about particular techniques being used. I’ll obviously never be able to use or sell them, but I can re-apply the techniques I learned in that experience elsewhere.