The only reason I could think of not to reveal would be the fear of collusion. If they know the comparison stores are Alice’s Deli and Bob's Bodega, they could either collude with those owners to raise prices on select items or simply go and look at prices and only offer copies of the most marked up items in those stores (which could be as simple as loading the sandwich with cheap toppings that would be extra at the comparison shops).
Any sane policy would rotate data points. How many sandwich shops are there in NYC, hundreds? Thousands even? How often do they shut down, open, change owners...? Burning a couple every year is not an issue.
I also got nothing with [0], so I unblocked JavaScript and removed /html from the URL and there's the ticker at [1]. I suppose ia= is for 'inline applet' or something.
Funny, you're justifying Google's strategy that e.g. Genius.com complained about: scrape and present the raw data that people want, and they'll be able to avoid another pageload, while the site doesn't get a visitor-- but wasn't that the point of SEO? It's like search engine means something else now.
Along the same lines, the first time I heard a TV commercial for Bing (~10y ago) I had very little idea what it even was but they happily promoted it as a 'decision engine', IIRC.
Sincerely, you're asking for ideas, and there are other opportunities to vote besides the past presidential elections. If you don't find that suggestion helpful or think it was offered in bad faith, just ignore it. Getting heated or snippy isn't going to do much to encourage others to submit ideas.
Edit to add: And being able to not react reflexively to every perceived slight is itself a good suggestion as it's going to make you more effective in dealing with a lot of the polarization that's out there.
While the previous poster is being a little flippant I don't think he's being totally unhelpful. If you want to send the message you are unhappy with Trump then on top of any protesting you do also make sure you get people to vote, when they can, against his policies. There are mid terms in less than two years so make sure the Republicans who support him take a hammering at the polls.
I never understood why people on Linux always fight to have games on the platform. From the dev perspective, Linux is probably a sub 5% market share so it's never worth the effort compared to releasing new features/content.
Why fight this losing trend when you could easily dual boot or even have a dedicated gaming rig?
> I never understood why people on Linux always fight to have games on the platform.
Because it is important to challenge monopolies least they abuse their position of power. With DirectX, XNA etc., Microsoft pretty much holds the monopoly as the PC gaming OS. Microsoft has made bold moves against individual freedom and privacy in Windows 10, and I'm sure more will follow.
And what better platform to compete against Windows' monopoly on PC gaming than the most popular free OS? I think that in the long run, continuing to create and display demand for PC games on Linux will only help gaming and even computing in general.
Rarely there are standards bodies that aren't controlled by companies and their interests.
If they allowed OpenGL to flourish, it would ultimately be controlled by either Nvidia, ATI, PowerVR or someone else in the interest group to suit their hardware. Somebody has to pay the engineers.
Look at W3C, if is practically controlled by Google, and they only do what suits their needs, the way they want.
Look at Bluetooth, Apple is controlling the thing, and now they are releasing a newer version that's selfishly taylored for Apple to sell expensive headphones probably with patented methods, which they will use to protect themselves in court in case someone goes on a patent war against them.
> If they allowed OpenGL to flourish, it would ultimately be controlled by either Nvidia, ATI, PowerVR or someone else in the interest group to suit their hardware.
As opposed to DirectX, which is not implementable on other systems without large reverse-engineering efforts, because the technology depends on proprietary and encumbered middle-ware. Does a former specification for DirectX even exist (aside the documentation for Microsoft's implementation of the API)? Or it is one and the same, is it not? Where is the DirectX equivalent of MESA?
W3C, Bluetooth etc. have nothing to do with PC gaming. Why are you bringing this up? But since you mentioned W3C, what would you prefer - proprietary technology controlled by a single entity, such as Adobe Flash, or an open standard, such as HTML5?
An open platform allows free choice of technologies to use it with. A closed platform restricts those choices. A monopoly in control of a closed platform has even more freedom to restrict freedom of choice, and push forward with platform lock-in.
"An open platform allows free choice of technologies to use it with."
Which are also made by companies just like Microsoft.
It's really hard to combine gaming enthusiasm (with the exception of retro gaming) with love of the 'free choice' and not be delusional.
The main reason: the GPU. There is very little value in having an open specification, if the implementation sucks. And the complexity of the graphics stack is such that nobody but huge monoliths that can focus lots of paid personnel to implement the GPU, implement the drivers, fix the drivers, fix the drivers, fix the drivers...
It's grueling, backbraking work to make a complete hardware based graphics stack.
Yes, there is MESA - so if software rendering suffices one can use more open options.
We can argue what do we mean by "gaming" of course. Solitaire, chess, tuxracer - yeah, I agree, free is very doable.
GTA v, Witcher 3 ( triple aaa titles) - you need a BigOrg to mind your graphics stack, of which there are only handfull on earth, of which Microsoft is one, and not worse as the others (if we limit discussion to games).
>> Yes, there is MESA - so if software rendering suffices one can use more open options.
>Mesa has hardware accelerated implementation of OpenGL. You don't need "big org" to do it. But it surely helps if they put resources into that work.
The hardware specific driver is the more laborious thing to get correct. Well, OpenGL as well, but the driver is what I was after, not the specific API on top of it, and if the driver is buggy the OpenGL implementation on top can only try to patch things only so much.
>> of which Microsoft is one, and not worse as the others (
> It's worse than many others because their goal is not to improve the graphics stack, but to lock everyone into using MS systems.
I don't think there is any way MS can lock everyone into using their system.
I would claim MS has driven innovation in hardware accelerated realtime graphics by providing a stable and tested API at a time when OpenGL implementations were buggy and broken due to the messy work Khronos did with
the standard and the way the implementations were done.
Not really, especially recently. They were pretty slow (because OpenGL was even slower to evolve), and only woke up when AMD voiced their interest to open up Mantle (which became Vulkan). So AMD were the main innovator in the recent times, when graphics APIs are concerned.
My comment was about monopolies and how they creep into other fields through lock-in and proprietary technology which restrict choice. You have warped my comment into one advocating for a fully open platform stack, a strawman. At this point, why not also argue that the games are open source too? I mean, that would be nice, but it wasn't what I was saying.
> Which are also made by companies just like Microsoft.
And that's fine, as long as it doesn't come with strings attached such as "This technology shall only run on Microsoft Windows" or "All users of this technology, even open-source projects, must pay royalty fees".
Sorry, - strawman was not intended. As a person with some experience in the graphics industry, the way I see it: if one uses hardware accelerated real time graphics capability, one is always effectively locking some parts of the rendering codebase in to some specific hardware platform. No matter what the API used to program the platform, you are effectively locked in to very few vendors. There really is no rational reason to highlight Microsoft as especially bad player in this market - on the contrary (as long as they are not the only game in town, of course).
> There really is no rational reason to highlight Microsoft as especially bad player in this market - on the contrary (as long as they are not the only game in town, of course).
How are they a good player, if they could back Vulkan instead of pushing lock-in DX12, but they didn't? It's clearly bad.
> The main reason: the GPU. There is very little value in having an open specification, if the implementation sucks
I don't know, maybe we should try. Currently the implementations suck, because there's no specification, not the other way around.
> And the complexity of the graphics stack is such that nobody but huge monoliths that can focus lots of paid personnel to implement the GPU, implement the drivers, fix the drivers, fix the drivers, fix the drivers...
Substitute GPU / graphics stack with general purpose OS. Sounds plausible, yet there are lots of people working on that huge monolith for free and getting paid.
MS actively has been trying to negated PC gaming to get consumer to XBox (closed all MS Game Studios, stopped all franchises like Age ofvEmpire and FlightSimulator series (everyone is angry about the Farmville style cheap F2P knockoffs), closed MS Windows Live, stopped DirectXdotNet and XNA, changed completely the direction of DirectX with DX10 and yet again with DX12, and the infamous privacy issues aka telemetry that half of the gamers will never upgrade to Win10 including myself). macOS, SteamOS/Linux, PS4 and WiiU/NX will get a lot more gamers - and that will continue until MS fires its third CEO sooner than later. Win10 UniversalRuntime/Store games are implemented in such a bad way it's just laughable and XBoxOne has little marketshare compared to PS4. And Win32 game market share is still huge, also thank to Steam (Valve is very much against Win10!), compared to the WinStore which has little to offer and compared to Android and iOS the WinStore on WinPhone smells and feels like it is already and legacy platform.
I agree with you, but I also think asking leading question sucks. Just say what you mean!
Open Standards are the MOST CRITICAL thing we can be considering right now. If we can agree on standards that can adapt to other standards, using AI most likely, then we can get on with being able to trust each other again.
In order to trust each other, we have to be honest about our intent. Personally, I think the use case of games on insecure hardware is probably fine. To a point.
It was a rhetorical question :) I don't think anyone in their mind would say that we should pursue lock-in rather than open standards. Except crooked monopolists.
I find it hard to believe gaming capability would be a major motivator in the PC market. They're more of an item in the PC enthusiast segment - which is not the majority of the market.
If one looks at what sort of hardware is sold in systems - the majority is not really well equipped for high end gaming[0][1].
Therefore I conclude in the general PC market does not hold games that important.
My view of the hardware spec of the average desktop or laptop GPU is anecdotal but I would guess it's fair to say they are sub NVidia's 960M in performance (which I have on my years old 'gaming' laptop and which is kinda slow).
> I find it hard to believe gaming capability would be a major motivator in the PC market.
One of the most frequently cited reasons I hear about for why home users and enthusiasts are not using Linux is availability of games. It's true that this does not speak of the entire market, but it's not an insignificant part. It is also a market segment that is more realistic to dislodge than, e.g. corporate use.
> the majority is not really well equipped for high end gaming[0][1].
Not sure what you mean by "fighting", perhaps you mean expressing opinions and needs online which would mean pretty much everybody is fighting here.
I like to stay on linux because it is a great development environment and as soon as I am done with a game or get psyched for implementing an idea during yhe game, I am able to switch immediately back to whatever I was doing before I started playing.
Your suggested alternative of waiting for a reboot and restoring all the files and editors is just uncomfortable and I am surprised you couldn't figure this out.
a) A few years ago it was a sub 1% market share and no games bothered. Now it's a sub 5% (disclaimer: I'm making these numbers up) and i'd say approx 50% of indie games and 10% of AAA bother. We fight because we're slowly winning.
b) A dual boot setup is awfully annoying. I keep a ton of things open in a "i'm in the middle of this" state, and shutting everything down/losing that state in order to reboot is a massive cost, and it means in practice that I only ever boot into windows to play games if I plan on playing a specific game for several hours at least - it means I can't play a game casually. Over time, I've started avoiding windows only games altogether.
As for not having a dedicated gaming rig: Space, mainly. And cost, secondly. I could potentially set something up, but I'd need to share monitors/keyboard for practical reasons, which is a ton of setup I don't really have time to get right. Other solutions like a windows VM, same reason.
I completely feel you on b. I always have a set of various folders opened and even with shortcuts it's a pain in the ass to reopen them all (because what's open depends on what I'm doing).
It didn't have to be this way. Linux and UNIX desktop environments used to excel at session management and restoration, but if you can even find the option anymore in your desktop environment of choice, it rarely keeps all of the state from all of the apps you would want.
a) It never hurts to let the developers know you want it
b) In theory, you should be able to hibernate Linux and boot in to Windows
> I'd need to share monitors/keyboard for practical reasons, which is a ton of setup I don't really have time to get right
I use a fairly cheap KVM, which isn't problem free, but is less hassle than swapping cables between my macbook and my PC (used for nothing but games). Even swapping the cables between 2 computers isn't that huge of a hassle ;-)
Mac used to be the same story, but now I would bet that at least 10% of indie game sales are on Mac.
If you're using tools like Unity, then shipping to Linux is not nearly the headache it used to be.
I play a lot of games, but thanks to this shift I no longer have to run Windows (can't play overwatch but I can live without it for now). I, for one, am glad I don't have to double my purchases.
Actually we do see way more games for Linux. If you paid attention, their amount increased a lot in the past several years. From major engines, to major distributors, Linux is now in the gaming mainstream. Only legacy publishers mostly lag behind (the likes of EA and Blizzard). But they are always followers, not innovators.
> Why fight this losing trend when you could easily dual boot or even have a dedicated gaming rig?
Because I don't want to pay Microsoft. Because I don't want Microsoft to collect my data. Because I care about my freedom. What better reason is there?
But then folks like you need to be willing to pay the game developer whatever it costs them to hire an engineering bench to maintain a linux port - ideally with significantly higher profitability than the windows version to make it worth the effort.
> But then folks like you need to be willing to pay the game developer whatever it costs them to hire an engineering bench to maintain a linux port - ideally with significantly higher profitability than the windows version to make it worth the effort.
I've no problem paying for Linux games. At one point I spent quite a bit on Humble Bundles (before they got boring), and I always paid twice what the averages for Windows & (then) OS X were.
A Humble Bundle is a last-ditch effort to sell an old game -- appealing to hoarders for the company to gain some publicity (as some just give all to chaity). The last "2K" bundle had $360 worth of games -- for $8.97 and only a small proportion of that comes back to the company.
If you want to support Linux as a platform, I recommend you donate at higher e.g. $50 or $100 tiers to Kickstarter projects that have Linux stretch goals and be vocal about your donation.
Paying 5% of the sale price years after the game has come out doesn't strike me like fruitful.
I have a gaming rig. And it runs Linux. Hopefully this makes things more clear for you. And I don't see any losing trend here. Amount of Linux games continues growing, same as Linux gaming market itself. So trend is clearly winning. But some developers need more pushing.
In addition to all the other replies (because we have computers with powerful GPUs that run Linux, because many other games run on Linux, because all the modern games engines support Linux, etc), in this case one of the devs previous games also runs on Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/app/242110/. That seems like reason enough to at least ask the question of whether they have any Linux plans.
Maybe people don't want the hassle with dual booting and a $100 Windows license to play games. Instead, they can save $100-$150 more and get 480 or 1060. And thanks to 2500 games on Steam there are plenty of games on Linux now.
And Linux marketshare and number of games are still rising, so it's anything but a losing trend.
Because as a developer, it's often easier to develop for Linux than other major platforms. You often get Linux compatability for "free". It's worth asking for for this reason.
That's not exactly true. With some newer tools, it's possible to export to an OpenGL Linux executable, but in other tools, especially older ones, it's still so specialized for DirectX that's it's not always possible especially with AAA games, and companies don't have much incentive to make Linux versions because the market share is significantly lower than Windows. The only reason that it's more easily possible with game platforms like Sony and Nintendo's hardware offerings (MS uses a special flavor DirectX for Xbox) is that the two aforementioned companies plus a lot of other game dev companies pour a lot of money into developer resources that Linux distros doesn't have.
You mean to say they put resources into lock-in to tax cross platform development. Those who care about the progress of the industry put resources into shared technologies like Vulkan, which makes cross platform development more affordable.
Yes, some do development in OpenGL, but why would a big company put resources in the development of something unless it has tangible benefits for the company? E.g. why would a big AAA company like EA put effort into changing their tooling to support OpenGL when they make millions from consoles and PC? It would only make sense to develop for non-DirectX or change tooling if the cost of changing is outweighed by the benefit. It's the same reason why a team like Github took 2 years to change from Rails 2.3 to 3 even though 4 had already been released for a while by that point.
I'm not saying it's right, and I wouldn't mind seeing better gaming support on Linux and Mac, but I'm saying it's reality.
Asking common sense questions about practices of legacy publishers is a futile endeavor. I stopped asking such questions for a while already. Those who want to innovate, do it, and find it useful for them. Size of the budget has nothing to do with interest to release for Linux and have wider cross platform reach. If anything, big publishers have more resources to do it. At the same time, innovators happen to be smaller studios, who actually are expanding Linux gaming market, while legacy publishers don't pay attention.
So what if it's new? Technology shouldn't stand in one place. MS got so scared of it, that they rushed to push their NIH lock-in alternative (DX12). It demonstrates they understand the strong potential of competition here.
Drivers can be busted anywhere (including Windows). But with Vulkan they are reduced to hardware layer which is ironed out rather fast normally. Not sure what you mean about OS integration (sounds too vague). Fullscreen, input and etc. are mostly issues related to X11, which should be cleaner with Wayland usage. The later takes longer than it should to get adopted, but all major DEs are already close to it.
Sound - never had any sound problems on Linux for a while. Are you sure you aren't measuring it by experiences of some early broken Pulse releases?
> never had any sound problems on Linux for a while.
User experience is not the same as developer experience. Debian (where Pulse seems mostly standard) is not the only distro. Vulkan is expensive, time consuming and difficult to develop against - for a game that already had multiple launch delays.
I believe their claim is that it's for performance reasons. Drawing the line at everything without a 64 bit processor seems reasonable (from a "where do we draw the line" not a where dhould we draw the line)
Yeah, I love how they make it sound like old iphones
"weren't powerful enough to handle blocking ads!" when blocking ads actually significantly cuts down on the resource usage. What's frustrating is that on their new phones you can block ads in Safari proper, but apparently not from within an app like Flipboard. I guess they're saving that particular "feature".
Correct me if I'm wrong. I watched the Safari Content Blocker video that is presented in WWDC 2015 and it mentioned that the list of content to be filtered is compiled to bit code instead of reading it as a JSON file, which makes it more efficient and less draining on CPU. Since it is compiled down to bit code, 32-bit will not be compatible to 64-bit and that's why only the newer iPhones and iPads are compatible. It is not that iPhone 5 is not powerful enough but simply the CPU architecture doesn't support.
That's the most artificially overengineered solution I've seen in a while. Since the adblock list is custom, it would have to be "compiled" on the phone anyway, so arch mismatch simply doesn't apply. Even if it did, it could be done at phone startup. It's "compiling" a list of strings, not building an office suite...
There are so many high-performance/low-power ways to solve the extremely complicated problem of "does a given string appear in a given list?"... this is just Apple looking for excuses to force people on 5 to upgrade, as usual.
How would a framework that is explictly part of and designed for Safari possibly work in a third-party app with sandboxing? Seems pretty silly to accuse Apple of nefariously "saving" this.
Similarly, Apple never "made it sound" like old iPhones "weren't powerful enough". You really shouldn't put things in quotation marks and attribute them to others when you just made them up.
They could have it edit the hosts file or some better global interface for blocking/not blocking certain hosts from any app (which would be most users' preference when using ad blockers?)
I think it's ok to use scare quotes to convey sarcasm instead of a direct quote. There's admittedly some ambiguity there.
32bit vs 64bit is a super lame limitation to claim, and to most people "number of bits" would appear performance related. It's nice they finally enabled a way to block ads, but it's hardly a feature they deserve a pat on the back for. It's more like, I was seriously considering switching to Android if they didn't add it.
Right. No one is going to do that, because they make money off of ads.
This is why every other implementation of ad-blocking does not require the website owner to make changes (because they wouldn't, that's why there are resource hogging ads everywhere, because they put them there).
It's not their choice, that's the point. They can deny access to the site or app if they detect ad blockers enabled, I'm fine with that. I just think they'll lose their audience if they do. But what apple has done here is enabled the absolute minimum amount of ad blocking because they are at competitive risk if they can't at least check the box.
Apparently the block list is compiled/JITed to native code when loaded for better performance and battery life.
They probably decided it wasn't worth the engineering effort to add a second code generation backend for 32bit phones (which are now three+ generations old and already facing RAM limitations).
It’s about the port authority not publicly revealing what the 3 market comparable prices are.