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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Hi, Android dev here. This is a different issue albeit a tangential one. But ultimately it has no bearing on the matter.

    The Oracle v Google case revolves around Google’s reimplementation of the Java APIs on the Android platform. This is key. Back when Android started, they used Apache Harmony to provide the Java API set on Android. Harmony was an open source implementation of the Java API set. Sun (the creator of Java) didn’t care, they held the copyright to the Java implementation, but made their money in different ways, so they let the Harmony project live.

    Fast forward a decade. The Apache Harmony project is dead. Android is stuck at Java 6 level APIs because of it, Android devs are annoyed they can’t even get Java 8 features. And Oracle bought Sun, and is monetizing the shit out of Java. They started charging money for the official Java SDK. Google didn’t want to pay Oracle, so they started reimplementing the newer Java APIs into Android, to pick up where Harmony had left off. Oracle saw this, found some code in Google’s reimplementation that was similar to the official implementation from Oracle (which is out in the open in the openjdk project) and sued the shit out of them looking for the payday they didn’t get when Google refused to pay Oracle a license.

    Ultimately, the SCOTUS ruling says that APIs themselves are not copyrightable (ie you can’t copyright the .toString() function name). But you can copyright the implementation of that function. Ultimately Oracle still won a bit, because they found something like 6 function reimplementations that Google could not successfully defend as clean room implementations.

    Why this is irrelevant to the Portal64 issue, is because the dev is not using the open source reimplementation of the Nintendo APIs. He’s literally using the Nintendo owned implementation of the APIs. That’s why he says he needs to switch to open source libraries. Those open source libraries have the same functions within them, but the implementation of said functions aren’t the same as the Nintendo ones (or they are and Nintendo just hasn’t sued the project into oblivion yet, I have no idea about the details).


  • From what I read, the codebase is using Nintendo proprietary sdk libraries in its codebase. So that is technically Nintendo IP. The fix is to switch to open source implementations of those libraries. But the dev is hesitant to put in that work without Valve’s approval, because if he does that work Valve can still fuck him over for using their Portal IP, and an n64 game isn’t distributable on Steam, so there’s literally nothing in it for Valve to bless/support it. So he’s worried that all that effort would be for naught. And Nintendo already threatened Valve in the past when Dolphin was attempting to distribute on Steam, and Valve backed down. So the theory is that Valve doesn’t want to piss off the big N in any way legally.

    Now, we can ask ourselves why almost 30 year old sdks are still valuable to Nintendo, but unfortunately copyright law being what it is, it’s technically illegal to do what the dev did. He should have seen this coming and used the open source libraries instead of the Nintendo proprietary ones. But I say this not knowing how good those open source libraries are, they could have problems, be incomplete, etc., or maybe not exist when he started the project. But either way a dev should have known using Nintendo IP in any form is fraught with peril.


  • My buddy works there now, as the audiobook company he worked for got acquired by them.

    You would be shocked how stupid and manual the content acquisition process is. Book publishers might as well still be operating back in the 90s, it’s all phone calls and spreadsheets attached to the emails and manual FTP uploads.

    If the music business is anything like the audiobook business they likely need so many non IT just to keep the machine fed with content.







  • I think the public perception would sway considerably when weapon grade material is no longer a possibly byproduct

    This is unfortunately something that a layperson who’s unfamiliar with the tech will always have a hard time understanding. I don’t think any reactor built in the US for power generation could ever be used to make weapons grade plutonium. From what I’ve read we only build light water reactors here, which aren’t good for such things. But how many regular folks take the time to learn about all the different types of reactors and how they work and what they’re good for? I only did it because the history of nuclear tech intrigues me.

    and the worst case scenario drops from a quarantine zone several square miles to power plant just going into lockdown for a few weeks

    Similar to above. These new reactors coming online are Gen III reactors, and have passive cooling features, so Fukushima-like events shouldn’t be able to happen anymore. But again, few people I think take the time to learn about this stuff at all.

    It doesn’t help either that regulatory capture has caused old Gen II designs without the passive cooling backups continue to get their licenses extended. Accidents will continue to be bad until we retire the ancient reactors, and start replacing the with new ones that have the benefit of half a century of operational experience and manufacturing advancements to inform their designs to be safer.



  • I have had them for well over a decade now after yeeting US Bank to the curb. Their customer service is top notch, there’s never been any fuckery whatsoever with my multiple checking accts, and the $10/month reimbursement of out-of-network ATM fees is solid.

    I was even able to get someone on the phone when I was in the middle of a casino at 1AM at a bachelor party, to get them to temporarily raise my ATM daily limit so I could continue the party. They would have to do something terribly egregious to get me to leave.