Article note: This is just fun that folks are maintaining the OG Xbox version.
Back in the day I bought a used xbox 90% for XBMC duty, because XBMC was a piece of the future so visible even Microsoft had to change course (...to capture and ruin it).
Article note: Neat. Zork is, strangely, a significant piece of cultural heritage at this point.
Redmond dusts off Infocom's classic text adventures and puts the originals into public hands
Microsoft developer boss Scott Hanselman saved the company's Ignite shindig this week by unveiling the source code for Zork I-III, all available under the MIT license.…
Article note: How is codec licensing always such a clusterfuck?
I remember 20-25 years ago dealing with greyware "Codec Packs" that were maybe not laced with malware just to make basic media playback work on Windows, and somehow the industry keeps doing the same shit. And now there are like 3 patent pools, so it's somehow actually worse. At least it looks like AV1 is becoming the dominant species, and it avoids most of that shit.
Plus, this is a "Removed functionality from already shipped product" situation, which is universally dirty.
Article note: Qualcomm gonna Qualcomm.
It looks like it's just the cloud features and some of the stack of their new board that's closed down for now, but it's not a good sign.
There has been plenty of drama in the Arduino world for a long time, hopefully the basic platform and community survives this round too.
Article note: American intelligence outsourced their insurance to a private third party, because American capitalism. One of the Chinese government's investment entities then purchased the insurance company and sucked all the information out of it, because modern Chinese pseudo-capitalist command economy.
Article note: I consider myself pretty bad at arithmetic, but I had some shocks on the embedded systems midterm I gave a few weeks ago, where otherwise capable students had a hard time with basic arithmetic, and especially the idea that the joy of SI notation is that you can work the base and the exponent separately.
Especially weird position to be in because I'm not generally a supporter of forcing kids to learn mental math tricks to perform like a circus pony, if you need precise answers to complicated expressions, use a computer. However, being able to do basic "is this reasonable" checks on orders of magnitude and eyeball ratios and the like is super valuable.
Article note: U-Boot is turning into an interesting (generally positive) study on maintenance of essential infrastructure. U-Boot is everywhere, and it seems likely it will continue to be everywhere. Wolfgang Denk (original author/company founder) passed in 2022, the company around it is wrapping up a graceful shutdown... and the community, including commercial maintenance, is still seeming pretty healthy.
Article note: I wonder why they backed down.
I *assume* there were indications the mandatory notarization scheme would present a problem in some of their ongoing litigation.
Still, good news.
Article note: This is broadly exciting even as someone not doing a lot of gaming of late.
A real full-market SteamBox.
A new, standalone VR w/AR features headset, following the previous most interesting VR platform.
The SteamOS ARM device implies Valve has an ALARM build tree in decent shape, which is a project that could really use some support and would be good for the greater device ecosystem.
Also evidence for the "AMD's new ARM parts are partly for a next gen mid-market SteamDeck" theory.
The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, Steam Deck, and Steam Controller. | Image: Valve
In 2012, The Vergebroke the news that Valve was making a game console. Gabe Newell himself dished on the company’s grand plans. By 2015, the “Steam Machines” had utterly flopped. But Valve never stopped quietly working on the idea. The Steam Deck handheld became the seed for a grand reboot of Valve’s console and headset ambitions. And now, Steam Machines are back.
Hello from Valve headquarters! We just saw the Steam Machine, the PC game console that’s not much bigger than a box of Kleenex. It’s coming alongside the sequel to the Steam Controller, the most customizable gamepad ever made. It’s like a Steam Deck for your TV with far more performance — enough to replace an Xbox or PlayStation in your living room, perhaps? But might be priced more like a PC… #valve#steammachine#steamcontroller#gaming#gametok
The new Steam Machine is for your TV, the Steam Controller is for your hands, and the Steam Frame is for your face— and they might just be the start. The company hinted there might be more SteamOS hardware later on.
We’re tracking Valve’s rebooted hardware plans in this Verge StoryStream. And if you want to know how we got here, it also contains our original Steam Machine coverage — going back over a decade.
Zoë: You sanguine about the kinda reception we’re apt to receive on an Alliance ship, Captain? Mal: Absolutely. What’s “sanguine” mean? Zoë: Sanguine. Hopeful. Plus, point of interest, it also means “bloody”. Mal: Well, that pretty much covers all the options, don’t it?