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  1. Thor GalleVerified
    @thorgalle
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    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 day ago

      To all past, current and future Readup contributors: some changes are happening to our donation fund. I'll be in touch about how it develops!

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 day ago

      The Yuzu Patreon currently brings in about $30,000 a month, making a $2.4 million settlement a significant expense for Tropic Haze LLC, the US company set up to coordinate those Patreon donations for the emulator's development.

      "significant expense" is an understatement! With that revenue, it would take 80 years to reach $2.4M. And they stopped collecting donations.

      I wonder: are the developers personally liable for this amount, or are they protected by the LLC? Will the LLC go bankrupt under such a debt? Do they have liability insurance that covers this?

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 day ago

      But I don’t know that these steps are enough to prevent Nintendo from throwing around its weight again, particularly when it comes to emulating the Nintendo Switch, its primary moneymaker.

      And I can also understand this. Emulating an active platform has always been a dubious idea, even immoral. Emulators provide a simple channel for pirated ROMs to be run, whether they want to or not. And in this case, such piracy is obviously damaging to the existing legal market.

      Putting aside legality, the moral argument for emulating old and inactive platforms is much stronger. The source article has an aside that covers the actual "collateral damage": Pizza Boy, DraStic are also making changes, as well as supporting libraries. It's sad that this scene is getting affected too. I hope it doesn't last.

      Nintendo is said to have hired from the scene for its own in-house emulation team, and Sony definitely did, hiring at least one developer of the PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2 to bring PS2 games to PS4.

      Wow, I had no idea. This means publishers can benefit from "appropriating" & selling emulation, but in doing so, they make the sold games less abandoned, and more questionable to emulate 🤔

    • thorgalle
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      commented1 day ago

      "If Google does the upstream iOS work and shares it via Chromium/Blink open source, this opens up more options," according to Eich. "If Apple forbids using this alternative engine outside of Europe, however, the cost of supporting two engines may be prohibitive."

      It's unfortunate that Apple's measures being EU-only disincentivizes companies to leverage their new freedoms. It would help if some influential US state(s) pass legislation similar to the EU DMA, like how the California CCPA came after the EU GDPR.

    • thorgalle
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      read5 days ago
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      scouted6 days ago
      v1.metal-archives.com9 min
      v1.metal-archives.com

      Interview from 2005 with a mysterious programmer couple from Montreal that built a giant collaborative database of metal music. Probably the largest in the world. They have kept it (four-handedly?) online until today, seemingly as a side project, and ruled it as benevolent dictators for 22 years. Incredible.

      It’s fair to assume that anyone who has ever seriously looked into metal bands has visited this website, and that’s a lot of people.

    • thorgalle
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      commented1 week ago

      Gripping read! This succeeds in covering the people behind the ultimate red button. I definitely wish this reality didn't have to be real.

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      read1 week ago
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      scouted1 week ago
      jamesg.blog3 min
      jamesg.blog
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      scouted1 week ago
      Duke University Libraries BlogsWill Sexton11/30/238 min
      Duke University Libraries Blogs
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      commented1 week ago
      world.hey.com4 min
      world.hey.com

      I agree with this, mostly!

      I haven't actively used Windows after Windows 7. I moved to Linux & afterwards macOS without regret, so I missed all the developments around WSL. But, today I spend hours in VSCode each day, GitHub has all my code, and I started the Copilot trial last week to check how helpful it really is. Corporations everywhere use Office & Teams, on all platforms. MS is everywhere today, not just on Windows!

      we should expect more indignant press releases, more threats, more evasion, more malicious compliance.

      Apple still builds solid hardware and software, even though breakthrough innovation on mainline products halted. I wrote something recently partly on how I both like & dislike what they do. Despite many gripes, I felt that they had become less closed in the last years: non-iCloud file synchronization apps can integrate nicely with iOS's file manager. There is an Alpine Linux emulator in the App Store. Since last year push notifications were possible for web apps.

      But the indignant & petulant reaction to the DMA showed that more things need to change fundamentally for Apple to truly sail a more open course.

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      commented1 week ago
      Foreign AffairsAndrei Kolesnikov3/7/2420 min
      Foreign Affairs

      Pessimistic, but informative & historical look behind the scenes. It explains the swing Russia has made to modernization and now reversed through Putin, still within my millennial lifetime. The pessimistic part is really the assumption that this long-term unsustainable situation can be sustainable for years to come.

      his primary tactic for preserving power is maintaining a sufficient level of socioeconomic well-being—in particular, by buying the loyalty of the lower-middle classes with social support. If economic failures can be overcome through political repression and an archaic national-imperial ideology, it is possible to rule for a long time.

    • thorgalle
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      commented2 weeks ago

      Inspiring, but also strangely off-putting. It's like running has been his only real purpose in life for the last two decades.

      Kipchoge’s wife and three children live a half hour away, but when in training, he’ll only see them from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. The rest of the time he’s in camp, running 200-220 kilometres a week

      He’ll set off minutes behind the field and all those who avoid being caught by Kipchoge will earn an entry to the mass-participation race at the Paris Games

      Lol!

      Great read, thanks Deep!

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      commented2 weeks ago
      tbray.org9 min
      tbray.org

      Good, measured take on today’s GenAI boom. I’d have to read some of the linked articles to really understand what he means with “meaning” though.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted2 weeks ago

      I only really gained sponsors when I regularly mentioned that my sponsors account existed. Otherwise, I lost more to attrition than I gained. This sat weirdly with me, as it felt like begging.

      “If you build something valuable, charge money for it”

      I find the topic of (F)OSS projects & monetization so fascinating. There's a lot of hate about open core models, but it probably the most realistic way to make a project sustainable and keep the people involved happy. All the best of luck to Ellie & Atuin.sh!

    • thorgalle
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      scouted2 weeks ago
      Henrique Dias2/27/242 min
      Henrique Dias

      An ID check during the night time, that’s a pretty bad experience! I’ve taken two similar-looking night trains in Finland now, 10-15 hrs to go to Lapland. I’m also not good at falling asleep in trains. For some people, I know it feels like being “rocked asleep”. Not for me!

    • thorgalle
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      scouted2 weeks ago
      12challenges.substack.comLouis Barclay2/26/242 min
      12challenges.substack.com

      Cool project!

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      scouted3 weeks ago
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      scouted3 weeks ago

      Scary. I guess soldiers know they’re up for risks, but “bugs” in the aircraft design are risks that you’d expect to be eliminated through careful consideration & thorough testing. I hope they find the root cause soon.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted3 weeks ago
      robbowen.digital8 min
      robbowen.digital

      The issue couldn't actually be solved in code. It turns out that, in devising and coding all of the logic needed to test the various noun endings, I had passively learned the rules needed to form them.

      We work in a practical medium and any build experience, good, bad or abandoned, is still valid experience.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted3 weeks ago
      RESPECTFUL INSOLENCEOrac2/23/2412 min
      RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE
    • thorgalle
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      scouted3 weeks ago
      Ben Werdmüller6 min
      Ben Werdmüller

      Great reflective post!

      I haven’t been spending a ton of time interacting on any of them; it’s common for almost a full day to go between posts.

      My situation, sometimes: I haven’t been spending a ton of time interacting on any of them; it’s common for almost three months to go between posts. Considering "almost a full day" as "a ton of time" is perhaps indeed a sign of addiction! 😄

      I’m not interested in having him be tracked or modeled. I know that this is likely an inevitability, but if it happens, it will happen despite me. I will not be the person who willingly uploads him as training data.

      ✅👌

    • thorgalle
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      read3 weeks ago
      Associated Press2/7/244 min
      Associated Press
    • thorgalle
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      read3 weeks ago
    • thorgalle
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      commented3 weeks ago
      designformankind.com15 min
      designformankind.com

      I think you can try to be on the Internet while avoiding Influencers, and/or the places where they put up camp. I still happily don't use TikTok, and stay away from Instagram/LinkedIn/Facebook as much as possible.

      There are small social spaces, like this one. Internet doesn't have to mean "following Influencers".

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Lol. Great arguments to not comment without thinking!

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      scouted1 month ago
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      scouted1 month ago
      nicolasbouliane.com5 min
      nicolasbouliane.com

      I use Wachete to monitor hundreds of pages for changes: mostly pages on Berlin.de and relevant passages of German law. If something change, I get an email highlighting the differences.

      Interesting, didn't know about such services.

      I often find myself in a position where helping someone costs me very little, and has a huge impact. But the costs add up, and it plays a big role in how fast the treadmill is going.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Great! 15/27 is barely over half, I would have thought it to be higher.

    • thorgalle
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      commented1 month ago
      Shaktian SpaceShakti Shetty3 min
      Shaktian Space

      Ahh, this brings me back. I really enjoyed the first season, but somehow stopped a few episodes into the second. I can’t recall why.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago
    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago
      Adrian Roselli3/24/207 min
      Adrian Roselli
    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      It is a wonder that podcasts are generally open (and remained so) by convention. The concept itself, "periodical audio delivered digitally", does not impose openness. It could theoretically be executed by closed and proprietary platforms, if only they gain enough market power.

      Right now, I suppose, the market is still fragmented enough so that all players (including big ones) benefit from general openness. This post made me curious, and I learned that podcast producers can generally move their podcast hosting provider ("publisher") because most of them 1) interoperate the open RSS standard for podcast sourcing & publishing, and 2) allow to configure a "HTTP 301 Moved Permanently" redirect that informs podcast subscribers/clients/directories of a new RSS feed location.

      In that sense, the "portable audience" analogy with Mastodon holds up. But Mastodon goes further: it's possible to easily export your followee list, bookmarks, and more, and import those into your new server. This is true portability: from the producer's and from the consumer's perspective.

      I'm personally using Spotify a lot, but I am worried that it does lock me down. They have to play along with open podcast sharing today, but they surely don't make it easy to move your subscriptions & listening history to a new app or service.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Lucid take! Community is the end, tools are secondary.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago
      Henrique Dias2/5/244 min
      Henrique Dias
    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Not very surprising, but still disturbing. I didn’t know Shazam-like sampling tech was built in, I assumed info was gathered from platform integrations with streaming apps.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Besides the halving of the overall fleet, another measure should counter the nuisance caused by discarded scooters: parking outside designated zones will be banned from 1 February.

      Interesting when political decisions have a direct and noticeable effect on your daily life! I'm visiting Belgium again, and commuting to Brussels for work. It involves a bike ride, train ride, and then a 15- to 20-minute walk that can be reduced to a 5-minute scooter ride. I've been doing the latter regularly when running late, but this change has made the service mostly useless for me.

      This morning I took a scooter as usual, but couldn't park it (in a proper spot) next to my office. So I went to a nearby designated parking zone, which was "full for this operator". The app showed three other nearby parking zones which were also full, so I spent ~10 more minutes driving to a parking zone with an empty spot, and walking back. This tripled the trip costs and time, and made me later than I would have been by simply walking. What a joke!

      People abusing the commons have ruined this useful piece of sharing economy for the law-abiding & neighborly citizen 😒 I'll consider taking my skateboard next week.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Glad to see that my former (and shortlived) employer renewed his commitment to Potential, an app that I found really meaningful, both to work on and to use.

    • thorgalle
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      commented1 month ago

      None of the community members supporting the bill at Thursday’s hearing mentioned homelessness.

      Interesting how very different issues and measures can get (intentionally) muddled up in one bill. Seems like a dirty tactic.

    • thorgalle
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      scouted1 month ago

      Cool! I did a long part of the Seattle -> LA Amtrak as a touristic activity, and enjoyed that. Patience for service interruptions & delays was required though. This high-speed rail sounds great! We need more real alternatives to flights.