In other news today...
-
The Unity shit-show train keeps on rolling.
AppLovin - the ad network that Unity tried to muscle out of its space with ironSource - is now working on a proof of concept converter tool to convert from Unity to Unreal, Godot and Cocos.
And Re-logic - the Terraria people - stated that despite them not really using Unity, they've just thrown $100k to each of Godot and FNA and sponsoring both for $1k a month moving forward.
Unity really pissed people off.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
AppLovin - the ad network that Unity tried to muscle out of its space with ironSource - is now working on a proof of concept converter tool to convert from Unity to Unreal, Godot and Cocos.
Flapping mouths. If that was possible people would have been making bank ages ago.
-
In future news: $company unable to turn off lights for weeks due to forgotten password.
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
AppLovin - the ad network that Unity tried to muscle out of its space with ironSource - is now working on a proof of concept converter tool to convert from Unity to Unreal, Godot and Cocos.
Flapping mouths. If that was possible people would have been making bank ages ago.
GitHub - ProjectUnifree/unifree
Contribute to ProjectUnifree/unifree development by creating an account on GitHub.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
AppLovin - the ad network that Unity tried to muscle out of its space with ironSource - is now working on a proof of concept converter tool to convert from Unity to Unreal, Godot and Cocos.
Flapping mouths. If that was possible people would have been making bank ages ago.
GitHub - ProjectUnifree/unifree
Contribute to ProjectUnifree/unifree development by creating an account on GitHub.
Use ChatGPT to
Dead on arrival. đź‘Ť
-
@Tsaukpaetra I have no skin in the game but at least people are trying something.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@Tsaukpaetra I have no skin in the game but at least people are trying something.
I'm just sayin', devs have had decades to try and figure that out (you can't tell me nobody in the history of game engine programming hasn't tried porting between them) and yet upstarts are going to just throw it at LLMs and hope it works?
Outlook not great...
-
@Tsaukpaetra well, some devs have already been porting, so it’s definitely possible - and in some cases reasonably easily depending on what you’re doing.
Also yes, Outlook not so great. But at least it’s not Notes.
-
@Tsaukpaetra LLMs also won't help with asset migration. It's probably fairly easy in some specialized cases, but for the general case ... I think that means implementing a whole pile of Unity-specific stuff elsewhere.
That said, based on what I've heard, there is some precedent for this. Apparently, some studios would license an engine like Unreal not for its engine but for its toolchain. Basically, it would let the artists start working concurrently to the devs (who would be developing a custom engine). Dunno how common that was.
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
In future news: $company unable to turn off lights for weeks due to forgotten password.
easy-peasy
https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/'
Edit: found one with a GUI for people who
are too dumb to useprefer it to the CLI
-
-
@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
Outlook not great...
The web version is even worst
And the API it runs on is being blocked for 3rd parties...
-
@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
Windows Password Reset Tool: Recover All Forgotten Password - UnlockGoSounds like there's a "free download" but no free version.
-
Xbox leak reveals estimated costs of AAA games on Game Pass
Leaked Microsoft documents have revealed the estimated costs of putting third-party games on Xbox Game Pass. As reporte…
I’m beginning to wonder how much xbox is losing with costs like that. They could fund a few switches from unity with that kind of money.
-
@jinpa said in In other news today...:
@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
Windows Password Reset Tool: Recover All Forgotten Password - UnlockGoSounds like there's a "free download" but no free version.
So you have to pay a few dollars in order to share your current (and future) Windows passwords with that company.
I'd like to call that a win-win situation (once for the direct payment, and another time for selling your passwords on the black market).
-
Batteries not included. Processor sold separately.
Buyer Receives New Intel Core i9-13900K CPU From BestBuy Without Silicon Die
A media outlet discloses that upon purchasing Intel's flagship Intel Core i9-13900K CPU, a user discovers empty "black silicone" inside.
-
One-in-six admit to feeling awkward about giving gratitude in work - techbuzzireland
Workhuman®, the company revolutionising the way employees celebrate, connect with and appreciate each other in the workplace, today, on World Gratitude Day, announces the results of its latest Human Workplace Index. The new research found that almost one-in-six full-time employees admit to feeling...
Well I would offer gratitude if it weren’t for the fact I asked for you to do you job!
-
@DogsB A related observation I've been waiting for a place to note.
In American English, at least, people are aware of the courtesies of saying both "Thank you" and "You're welcome." However, I can think of very few cases where I've actually said or heard someone say, "You're welcome." (The few times I've heard it was in a humorous context.) But I've noticed in recent years that younger folks are more likely to say "You're welcome" in response to "Thank you". My hunch is that they're less likely to say or type "thank you", so hearing or reading it strikes them with the same formality as "you're welcome" strikes the belt-onions.
In order not to provoke them to respond with "you're welcome", I'm more careful about saying thank you.
-
@jinpa said in In other news today...:
@DogsB A related observation I've been waiting for a place to note.
In American English, at least, people are aware of the courtesies of saying both "Thank you" and "You're welcome." However, I can think of very few cases where I've actually said or heard someone say, "You're welcome." (The few times I've heard it was in a humorous context.) But I've noticed in recent years that younger folks are more likely to say "You're welcome" in response to "Thank you". My hunch is that they're less likely to say or type "thank you", so hearing or reading it strikes them with the same formality as "you're welcome" strikes the belt-onions.
In order not to provoke them to respond with "you're welcome", I'm more careful about saying thank you.
I've heard it my whole life. I wouldn't say that I've noticed any real trend one way or the other regarding the frequency, except that my daughter often substitutes, "My pleasure," since she started working at Chik-Fil-A.
-
Streaming TV Is Entering Its Jock Phase
Like, literally. Everyone, save for maybe Netflix, is clamoring to offer sports as content dries up amid the Hollywood strikes. The latest to enter the scrimmage: (HBO) Max.
one of HBO’s big draws was big card sports events until they started their own programming. Most of the streaming giants were only able to get sports events recently on this side of the pond because tv rights were up for renewal.Having to subscribe to a hodge podge of services to see everything has been the norm for about two decades too. This is by design and how the rights are sold.
Lastly, grabbing sports isn’t to tie people over during the writers strike. Its one of the main draws to get people trapped in their ecosystem.
Geesh, this was almost as bad as an arsetech or verge article.
-
Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads early next year | TechCrunch
Amazon said in an update today that it will start showing ads on Prime Video early next year in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada.
Better question would be, will any one notice? I have a firestick, use it daily but completely forget prime is there most of the time.
Which is a pity because they have the greatest collection of bottom of the barrel b movie shit but the UI is so awful I can’t find anything.
-
@DogsB said in In other news today...:
one of HBO’s big draws was big card sports events until they started their own programming.
I was pretty bitter when they stopped doing boxing. They always had really good fights.
-
@DogsB said in In other news today...:
Lastly, grabbing sports isn’t to tie people over during the writers strike. Its one of the main draws to get people trapped in their ecosystem.
Sports is something I definitely do not want to pay for, so if they add it I see it as a waste of my money.
-
@DogsB I've been watching movies on prime off and on, since I had it anyway.
Been debating on prime for a while anyway, so I might cancel it out of spite if they start this. Fuck ads with a rusty spoon. And I'm also not in the mood of paying an extra 3 bucks if they continue limiting PC streaming quality to bottom tier.
-
We all saw it coming, and now it happened right on schedule. Panic over, everyone can go back to their normal lives.
-
@Mason_Wheeler I'd still not trust them in future, because they've already shown they can't be trusted. Maybe if they follow through this and not act like shitstains for the next few years, they might earn a little trust back.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
Maybe if they follow through this and not act like shitstains for the next few years, they might earn a little trust back.
-
@Arantor Meh. All the panic was massively overblown to begin with. Because 1) we all knew this was going to happen anyway, and 2) the original changes really weren't all that bad in the first place. The original policy was pretty narrowly tailored to only impact two groups: massively successful developers who can easily afford it, and shovelware builders who make the entire gaming industry look bad by association. And if the changes had run the latter group out of business, we should all have been celebrating.
TBH all the screaming always felt like it was led by a few members of the former group trying to gin up synthetic outrage to try to protect their profit margins.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler I'd still not trust them in future, because they've already shown they can't be trusted. Maybe if they follow through this and not act like shitstains for the next few years, they might earn a little trust back.
Totally getting flashbacks to the Wizards of the Coast/OGL brew-ha-ha earlier this year...
-
@Mason_Wheeler 1) Of course it was, once the heat got too high. However, it's still a signal that the management thinks it's acceptable to discard the TOS and force you onto new TOS, that even dialling it back to somewhat letting you keep where you were isn't really that safe a position. They tried it once, there's going to be a long time before anyone trusts them not to pull that again, a la boiling frog.
- Given the way it was originally announced, indies would potentially have been bankrupted if they'd signed a modest deal with GamePass where the revenue would have taken them over the line but the install count significantly larger. Even the 'but the distributor will pay it for you' was a later clarification.
And the way it was originally announced, with installs, the question of exactly how that number would be arrived at was meant with a lot of early silence, with the unspoken implication being that all Unity builds were being tracked, which is a colossal breach of trust.
In any case, there's a lot of the indie sector that's still eyeing it up with 'I currently pay $400 per seat, you now want $2000 and you still want either an unquantifiable number OR a 2.5% revenue split, on top? Uh huh. And what guarantee do I have that you're not going to raise that price on me?'
The shovelware wasn't going to go away, it certainly wasn't going to kill it - they're an entire industry that operates on the basis of evading such bullshit as best possible - it's entirely possible it wouldn't even put a dent in it.
But I guess we live in a world where literally nothing exists between big successful studios and shovelware, and that the death of any indie that happened to be actually successful is an acceptable price to pay.
-
@Arantor The way it was originally announced, you had to have both high revenue and a high install count before you'd owe them a cent. The number of tiny indie studios this would have actually ended up bankrupting is zero.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
TBH all the screaming always felt like it was led by a few members of the former group trying to gin up synthetic outrage to try to protect their profit margins.
Anybody that read the actual terms realized that those would only affect a small group of relatively major devs. (People said as much in this thread. I think I mentioned that the median revenue for games on e.g. Steam is way below the limit they proposed at 200k.)
The two things that had people up in arms in the end were:
- Change retroactive. That erodes trust. What happens if it changes again? This time affecting you? If you're in the category of dev that is large enough to have agreements with anybody else (e.g., publishers), this should scare you.
- The "lol, trust us" approach to figuring out how much they'd charge, with -at the time- no transparency in how they'd get those numbers.
I'd love them to kill off a lot of shovelware, but both of those factors do not make for a sound foundation to build a business on.
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
In any case, there's a lot of the indie sector that's still eyeing it up with 'I currently pay $400 per seat, you now want $2000 and you still want either an unquantifiable number OR a 2.5% revenue split, on top? Uh huh.
If you have a business, that's vastly preferable. You can plan for it. Your publisher can plan for it. Revenue share is already the standard, so it fits into that. The revenue share part is small compared to what something like Steam takes. If you are paying the salary of an actual person, the $2000 per year isn't going to be your major cost. If you don't pay salaries, you won't be paying the fee unless you also made 200k already.
And what guarantee do I have that you're not going to raise that price on me?'
Well, that really is the crux. They're saying this:
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
They now need to show that you can rely on that. Them asking you to trust them isn't going to cut it. But I suspect they know.
-
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
They always had really good fights.
Well, you could try talking to Mrs. Boomzilla.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@Arantor The way it was originally announced, you had to have both high revenue and a high install count before you'd owe them a cent. The number of tiny indie studios this would have actually ended up bankrupting is zero.
$200k is not a lot of revenue. Hell, my company of 6 doing mostly WordPress brings in (quite a bit) more than that a year. (Lots of people still complaining about the $400 to $2000 hike = people not on the ÂŁ1m revenue plan)
What it would have done in practice, as originally announced, is ensured indies didn’t participate in bundles, GamePass, publishing demos or doing any sort of marketing whatsoever that actually works, meaning that they would go bankrupt - whether due to Unity gouging them, or them kneecapping their entire marketing effort out of fear.
-
@cvi while I agree the revenue share is vastly preferable as a business (and most of the view seems to agree), there is still a lot of suspicion over the “initial engagement” metric option as a route for those presumably hovering just over the line but that would be cheaper than 2.5% in some cases?
It’s definitely twitchy and 2.5% flat rate would have been much easier to just be the only option. As it stands, this other option left on the table is still spooking people a bit.
-
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
$200k is not a lot of revenue.
It is when you're getting the engine for free. It really, really is a lot of revenue for someone who's getting the engine and tooling for free. And with the elimination of the Plus tier, that's the only way to hit that threshold going forward. The one that's actually relevant is the $1M threshold.
-
I have been slacking in my science news:
Scientists find 'missing ingredient' for pink diamonds
Scientists said on Tuesday they have found the "missing ingredient" for pink diamonds, some of the world's most expensive stones due their rarity and beauty, and the discovery could help find more.
-
@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
I have been slacking in my science news:
Scientists said on Tuesday they have found the "missing ingredient" for pink diamonds, some of the world's most expensive stones due their rarity and beauty, and the discovery could help find more.
It's love, isn't it?
-
@MrL said in In other news today...:
It's love
Yes! For Science!
Residual processing defects significantly reduce fused silica optics' laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT), which seriously limits their performance and lifetime in high-energy laser applications. Extensive ...
-
@Dragoon "In the 1980s it was estimated that the Argyle diamonds emerged 1.2 billion years ago.
...
By measuring the age of elements in the crystals, the researchers determined that Argyle was 1.3 billion years old—meaning the diamonds came up 100 million years later than previously thought."
Sounds like a sign error.
-
@jinpa said in In other news today...:
Sounds like a sign error.
It's a sign that even phys.org doesn't properly copy edit their articles.
-
@jinpa Looks like it's
from the point of view of the diamond. More appropriate general phrasing would be "the diamonds are 100 million years older than previously thought", but if the diamonds were used as standard age markers then the article's phrasing is more useful.
-
@TwelveBaud I don't get what you're saying. Say I'm a diamond. I come up, wait a while and because I forgot my watch I ask a scientist how long ago I came up. At first he says I've been above ground for 1.2 billion years. Then I ask another scientist and he says I came up 1.3 billion years ago. That means I came up earlier, not later.
So the way you said it would be incorrect. The way they actually said it was incorrect, not just less useful.
-
@jinpa This is one of those "does biweekly mean every two weeks, or twice a week" questions for which there is no satisfactory answer.
I had this problem in a geography context with "larger or smaller scale" maps. Does "larger scale" mean the map of a certain region is larger, or that a map of a certain size covers a larger region?
Happens even in software. As soon as you start editing files that are too big to fit on the screen all at once, you invent a paradigm that allows scrolling, but there's no incontrovertible reason to prefer "you scroll the window 'up' or 'down' over a stationary file" or "you hold a window stationary while you move the file 'up' or 'down' behind it", I once found myself having to use such an editor where different teams made different decisions, and failed to check with one another before release, with the result that you could scroll "down" repeatedly until you reached the "top".
-
I couldn't decide between "what's happening with Windows 10" and "what's happening with Windows 11", so I'll drop it here instead.
Microsoft kills loophole that let Windows 7 keys activate Windows 11 and 10
You can no longer activate Windows 11 and 10 with older Windows keys.
-
@Zecc but can you use a Windows 11 key to activate Windows 7?
-
@Zecc said in In other news today...:
"what's happening with Windows 10"
There was no "what's happening with Windows 7"?
-
@Applied-Mediocrity Win7 wasn’t a rolling shitshow that needed live-blogging.
-
@Arantor Riiiiight...
-
@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@Arantor Riiiiight...
It’s not that it didn’t have issues, you understand, but it wasn’t a rolling shitshow like Win1x are because back then they weren’t using the community as the first, last and only line of QA.
Issues weren’t nearly as frequent or as fucktacular as these two threads have demonstrated.
Windows Password Reset Tool: Recover All Forgotten Password - UnlockGo
