kids are on winter break

Some things cannot be effectively regulated in this manner. At all.

There is simply no way to stop people from building their own 3D printers. There are too many open source designs, and they can be built with very simple parts that are readily available at the hardware store. Most hobbyist-level 3D printers basically come as a kit that they have to assemble themselves anyways. What happens next? Background checks to buy stepper motors? Background checks to buy a microcontroller?

To me this is like trying to mandate government backdoors in encryption algorithms. There is literally nothing that would stop criminals from just using an open source encryption algorithm that doesn't have a backdoor, so you end up just making it so all legitimate communications are less secure than they should be.

I have a YouTube Premium family plan. We use it so much that it’s easy for us to justify.

The Steam Link app is exceptional. the Apple TV natively supports Xbox and PlayStation controllers so it all works pretty seamlessly.

the problem i have, that nobody has been able to really explain to me, is how the economics of streaming should be made to work.

content is insanely expensive to make. even with all of Netflix’s recent shitty changes, their operating margin is still only about 13%. that isn’t enough cash left over to fund production of every single show they don’t have. and it’s important that they actually be able to fund production, because unlike 10 years ago, most productions no longer rely on first runs on OTA or cable TV to make their money

so it seems to me there are three paths here:

1. the industry puts everything on a single service and dramatically increases the base price (remember cable? my parents paid twice as much for it in 2005 as i spend today on streaming services)

2. the industry puts everything on a single service and dramatically scales back production (remember OTA TV?) to fit within the budget afforded by a reasonable subscription price

3. studios branch off into competing streaming services

i’m not trying to start a fight or defend shitty corporate behavior (no one will ever get me to pay for ads), i just want to know how people think this could work in a way that balances out

The Apple TV is quietly the best little streaming box. It is very capable, and according to my PiHole it’s far less chatty than my Roku or Android TV devices.

Also, I love Tailscale. I love how this press release reads like it was written by nerds for nerds rather than by writers for investors.

I won’t defend Plex, but Jellyfin just isn’t quite there as an alternative yet. Their ATV app leaves still leaves a lot to be desired. I’m hoping it gets there sooner than later though so I can finally jump ship. The only other thing I really want is some tool to migrate the “watched” status of all my content to Jellyfin.

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The one thing keeping me off Jellyfin is the fact that Infuse for Apple TV doesn’t have great support for it yet. Infuse is by far the most capable media player on the device, and it has excellent integration with Plex.

I think this is why Denuvo has been successful. Where old DRM solutions got up in your face with onerous installation procedures, installing borderline rootkits, and ridiculous activation limits, Denuvo is essentially invisible to the end-user. It’s not ideal, but if developers are going to insist on shipping DRM I’ll take this over what we used to deal with any day of the week.

There’s your individual experience, but I’m basing my statement on Backblaze’s annual drive failure rate reports.

I doubt there’s any reliable data that confirms a significant loss in sales if they launched without Denuvo and its ilk.

There’s no publicly available hard data one way or the other. However the fact that publishers continue to use it while abandoning other forms of DRM suggests that there is probably some benefit.

I don’t really buy the argument that the only people who pirate content are people who would never pay for it to begin with. I know too many fellow software engineers that make comfy 6-figure salaries and pirate everything they can and spend money when it’s the only option.

It already played great on the Deck (Denuvo hasn’t been a problem for Wine/Proton for several years), but the removal of DRM is always a win in my book.

I’d like to see this trend of publishers stripping it out of their games after a couple years continue.

Single player works fine offline though

It stops real thieves “long enough”, which is why developers and publishers continue to use it. Lots of AAA games go uncracked for a year or more. The first few months or so are the most critical time for sales.

They’ve come a long ways since the '00s, when DRM schemes were both far more draconian and rarely effective for more than a few days.

Isn’t Western Digital one of the more reliable hard drive manufacturers?

This is my experience too. However, there is nothing special a game needs to do to support VRR. So the fact that VRR works fine in this game under Windows but not Linux makes me think there is a bug in Proton, the compositor, or the GPU driver.

I can say with 100% certainty that VRR is working as expected under Windows 11 with my RTX 3080. I haven’t tested in Fedora yet.

VRR works fine in Windows, maybe its a bug with Proton?

Remastered CGI and 16:9 would be nice, but I’ll be plenty happy with the original 4:3 presentation. Assuming this release is cut from the new masters made for streaming (and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t), it will look pretty damn good.

Later DS9 seasons were also shot for 16:9 with a 4:3 safe zone, but I would still be fine with keeping that whole show 4:3 as well.

The expanded frame wouldn’t add a whole lot to the experience, because they still shot to capture everything in the viewable 4:3 area. I doubt much effort was put into actually composing the shots for widescreen beyond making sure crew and equipment were not visible in frame.

The problem CBS has with DS9 is the extensive use of CGI throughout live action scenes (like Odo shapeshifting). It’s a lot easier to get away with just upscaling old CGI when most of the relevant shots are 100% CGI and don’t need to be composited back in to the original photography.

You see that, CBS? Warner figured out how to remaster and release their serialized '90s science fiction drama set aboard a space station on Blu-Ray. Surely doing the same for your serialized '90s science fiction drama set aboard a space station is not too tall of an order.

With the WGA and SAG strikes shutting down all production of new content, there’s never been a better time to put your editors and vfx artists to work remastering an old classic.