Phil and the likes were too hands-off on these studios post-acquisition. They got too complacent enjoying steady paychecks over years of delays while working on their niche games that only highlight their artistic vision over generally fun gameplay. That's where they failed. The Activision/Blizzard acquisition and GamePass fumble were just a nail on the coffin
Yes, I agree. I empathize with Phil in spirit on it. He's a real gamer and tried to create a space for the developers to do their own thing and create what they want. But it doesn't seem to have been great business.
I remember the glowing praise at the time for the policy of being hands off and allowing studios to cook. Gamers all over the world were very happy about that approach. Unfortunately it looks like many studios do in fact require hands-on management to make tough calls and keep things moving. I'll remember this next time studios complain about management interference.
We already saw this during the Kickstarter era where all the temporarily confused AAA studios sold themselves as having been held back by unreasonable publishers all this time only to produce the most bland and still unfinished games now that they were funded directly by fans.
You need two different types of management. You need the creative type who understands what customers want and ensures that is what you deliver. You need the financial type that understands profit margins.
If the company lacks either, or either gets too much power they are in trouble. Creative types will spend too much money on things that are nice but won't deliver enough value and so the company goes bankrupt. Financial types don't understand what customers want and optimize away all the expensive creative value the customers buy.
Note that the above applies to every type of company. Exactly what "creative" means is different for different industries, and some need it more than other (how much innovation do you need in soap?...). It always applies though so you need to ensure you get both types in leadership positions even though they don't like or understand each other.
Yeah, cool, but right now they're axing idsoft, which was anything but "artistic vision over fun gameplay". What they did also pretty much kills idtech as a viable engine.
Now with all these layoffs, most likely the numbers will change, but how many are aware that Microsoft actually owns a big chunck of well known studios?
One reason is that from the public eyes they kept their names and independence from Microsoft/XBox branding.
> encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.
I highly doubt this. The platforms that didn't have any jailbreaking scenes weren't because the devices were so secure; it was because there was not enough demand for it. If given enough time, there will always be hacks and bypasses just like Denuvo or hypervisor bypass like the recent hack.
I disagree. Demand for pirated games is still huge, so I don’t think the lack of hacks is just down to lack of interest. Everything points to these protections getting stronger over time. Denuvo, hypervisor-based security, and the recent Xbox hacks all suggest the same thing: bypasses still happen, but they’re becoming harder, slower, and more specialised. I’m not saying future systems will be impossible to crack, but the trend seems to be that beating them is getting harder, not easier.
Arguably there was not much interest on those platforms. I believe you will be right eventually when physical access of the actual machines are kept away from us, so it’s a matter of solving the latency issue.
iirc microsoft also allowed installing homebrew without cracking the console, which definitely was a conttibuting factor. Why hack the console if you can just install your own software already.
And it isn't like any xbox console exclusives come to mind, all their stuff comes out on pc too.
It’s not just Koreans. Nearly all countries near China hate Chinese (probably except North Korea). The air pollution has been definitely the reason why it got worse but largely it’s been historical reasons
I'd suggest giving Eufy 2k cameras a try. I was also a long time Wyze fan but I've recently switched to Eufy after trying out their 2k cameras. Compared to Wyze, it offers better resolution (thus 2k in their name), on-device pet/human detection (Wyze charges monthly fees for cloud-based detection), and way better app experience. It's slightly more expensive but well worth the price for me.
Very slightly more expensive when you hit a sale like this past cyber monday they were $28 each. To build on the plus sides vs wyze, they notify you almost instantly while wyze cams take 12-15 seconds. It has custom detection zones that can be any shape/size polygon, not just a square. I was most disappointed with the wyze outdoor having a hardcoded detection zone... and then unlimited detection time with no cooldown between detection which is also part of wyze's subscription service
For me the real selling point of the wyze cams is the free one week cloud storage (for detection event, with 5 minutes cooldown period, not permanent recording). This means I don't need to subscribe to anything and still have a record even when the burglars take the cam/system.
As a korean myself, I can say that kimchi is not really considered “spicy” to Koreans. It just happens to have chili peppers. When Koreans talk about spicy food, it’s the spiciness level of something like bulldak (spicy chicken) that has a lot more spicy ingredients. In relation to effects on health from eating a lot of spicy food, I don’t think you will find much in studying Koreans. Korean food is notoriously famous for being salty (especially soups that most Koreans eat daily) and a lot of Koreans suffer cardiovascular diseases from high blood pressure because of their diet.
On a side note, it’s really kimchi’s acidity that helps with cleaning palate much like Germans’ sauerkraut or Japanese’ pickled ginger (called “gari”) that you eat with sushi.
It was accurate until this year - Amazon switched 401k providers from Vanguard to Fidelity. I don't remember all the details but after tax contributions (which are required for doing a mega backdoor) are possible now, but weren't before.
As someone coming from macOS, the one feature that I miss most on Windows is applications remembering their old positions when plugged into multiple displays. When I first saw this happen on macOS, I thought it was some magic. Now on Windows, I have to constantly drag each window back into its own display every time I plug in/out from displays.
Window positions? I'd be happy if icons would stay in one place as i plug/unplug displays! To be honest MacOS and linux are the only current consumer OSs that have multi-display handled. And of them, only MacOS properly handles multi-display setups with differing DPIs.
I question that last statement. Not a Mac person myself, but I've noticed that when one of my coworkers plugs their MacBook into the TV in the conference room their resolution becomes so high that they can't see anything.
Some among them know how to get it right, but the majority just open chrome before plugging in and zoom to 500% afterwards.
Somebody pointed out that the text on the TV is actually the same size as the text used to be on the Mac--it's just that the TV is mounted too far away from the people for that scale to be the correct one. So I think maybe the Mac and the TV have successfully conspired to achieve some kind of real-space equivalence on the TV (though the Mac is now unusable by whoever is presenting since the fonts are all three times too small).
My point is less technical: when a new display device appears, the computer can't know how that image is reaching users. It could be VR goggles or it could be a jumbotron in a stadium. A better design would focus making it easier for the user to tune the scale, rather than assuming that the Mac knows best.
This was one of the issues in linux-land, that EDID info about DPI cannot be trusted.
Projectors obviously have no idea about the final DPI and TVs often lie, because same board is used across a range of models. It is the TV equivalent of "To be filled by O.E.M." .
Running 3 monitors here. Mixed DPI (laptop is 4K, both external displays are 1080P). Ubuntu with Gnome running on Wayland. A few of the applications I use still don't support Wayland scaling properly (meaning they need to stay on whichever monitor they were launched, lest their zoom level get messed up) but it's getting better and all of the built-in Gnome stuff works great.
This genuinely took zero configuration on my part, besides perhaps going into the Display control panel and changing the zoom level for the 4K display.
Depends on your setup. I run a fairly custom setup without a DE and such and I just use xrandr(arandr) and saved the layouts. I haven't bothered to make anything happen automatically since I have a few different monitor setups, so I just run the scripts manually.
I use High Sierra with 3 external displays, and my windows are almost always in different places when I unplug, plug back in. All monitors are the same model (this might make a difference), but I always plug them into the same port they were connected to previously.
One hypothesis I have is the order I unplug / plug in the monitors matters.
Edit:
after some quick testing, I can't seem to reproduce any issues while just briefly leaving my monitors unplugged.
The issue I notice the most is that windows get put back on the wrong monitor. e.g. window A from monitor 1 is now on monitor 2 and window B from monitor 2 is now on monitor 1.
> All monitors are the same model (this might make a difference)
It does: your monitors are likely reporting identical EDIDs. Or, to put it another way, your monitor's manufacturer is incompetent. (Which is sadly quite common.)
Windows remembers my window locations when I plug back in. Using a Surface dock with two Dell Ultrasharps. Maybe as someone else pointed it on OSX, perhaps it's the ID the monitors are sending back to your Windows install and it doesn't know which is which because they don't have a unique identifier?
I'm on Windows 10 at work with four displays (2x 27" and 2 x 23") and Windows can't even remember the position of app windows after closing and re-opening the app immediately, don't even have to unplug and replug a display for this it to exhibit this amnesic behaviour.
Isn't it up to each program to ask for its windows to be displayed in a particular place?
(Not up to the OS to override programs and show them where it thinks you want them; “how do I save window position?” used to be a popular question for Windows dev).
I haven't used it yet myself, been sitting on my Steam account since I got it in a deal, but apparently DisplayFusion [0] has window position profiles.
DisplayFusion is a great utility. I actually paid full price and I only use it for one purpose - window management. I have a few shortcuts I set up that allow me to manipulate the active window in multiple ways. I've set this up 2 years ago and I've been using it at home and at work for all this time. I can't say enough good things about the app.
Feeling always behind the others. I've recently completed my master in CS while working full time. I still feel that I'm vastly behind other people in terms of compensation and knowledge. I can never be motivated at my current work when I know there are new grads making double or triple of my current salary.
Problems you mentioned are not unheard of from my personal experience but it's highly dependent on which company or industry. Most of my peers who work in the software industry never had a problem of getting vacation time of few weeks and never work more than 8 hours per day. Of course there's a few times during the year where working more hours are encouraged (e.g. before release/deadline), but even then it's pretty rare. A lot of my friends from foreign countries will not hesitate to come to U.S. to work if they can resolve their visa situation. Also, this article mostly addresses academic jobs which is a totally different story from typical corp jobs.
