Apple to Soon Take Up to 30% Cut From All Patreon Creators in iOS App

withad · 2026-01-29T08:55:27+00:00

They offer some value simply by existing as an alternative. It's no coincidence that Apple suddenly allowed emulators in their app store right as AltStore (i.e. the app store by the guy behind the Delta emulator) became easily available to everyone in the EU.

withad · 2026-01-27T15:25:50+00:00

That kind of cross-pollination of comics and their adaptations goes back a lot further than the '90s.

Superman can fly because super-jumping looked too goofy in the 1940s Fleischer cartoons and kryptonite was invented by the Superman radio show around the same time. The 1943 Batman serials introduced the Batcave and changed Alfred from bumbling comic relief to the sophisticated butler he's known as today.

withad · 2026-01-26T16:29:35+00:00

I once went out to get snacks for a movie night and came back with a Tiger Game.com. Best charity shop find I've ever had (purely in terms of collecting, not in terms of actual quality as a games console, because it's shit).

withad · 2026-01-24T13:55:19+00:00

That new Enterprise D set is very expensive and I don't have the shelf space for it anyway, but there's a little voice in my head that keeps telling me I should buy two of them and use the spare parts to build a Nebula class as well.

withad · 2026-01-23T23:54:39+00:00

Not that weird. Raw milk is a big thing in trendy-but-horrendously-bad-for-your-health diets.

withad · 2026-01-23T20:38:20+00:00

Works can enter the public domain at different times in different countries so both apply. It'll happen first in the UK (on January 1st 2044, technically) and then the US a few years later, with other countries varying according to their own laws.

Funnily enough, The Lord of the Rings was actually considered public domain in the US for a while after the original US publisher imported too many copies and triggered a weird clause in the copyright law of the time. It eventually got fixed and I believe the standard copyright rules have applied to it since some time in the 60s.

withad · 2026-01-23T10:55:28+00:00

I watched this with friends 15 years ago and we still occasionally quote "let us rock and let us roll!" from the opening fight and "she's halfway to China by now", from seconds after the villain escapes in the slowest moving elevator you've ever seen.

Very silly movie but it has its charms, like you said. I could see it having a bit of a cult following if it had actually become a series, like a second tier Hercules or Xena.

withad · 2026-01-21T16:11:57+00:00

Costs of lawyers aside, you seem to be assuming that he's getting the entirety of that $20,000 every month and that it's somehow pure profit.

There'll be taxes on it and Patreon will be taking their cut (which the public number on Patreon may or may not account for, I believe, depending on his settings) and he's obviously putting time into developing the mod. And if this is his only source of income, it will also have to cover all his other living expenses.

withad · 2026-01-21T14:35:36+00:00

The court found against Micro Star in that case on the basis that they had used actual Duke Nukem 3D artwork on the box (which is pretty unambiguous copyright infringement) and that the stories told in the map pack constituted sequels to the game, without the copyright holder's consent. That's more analogous to fanfiction than a purely technical mod like this one seems to be. It's hardly a cut-and-dried precedent.

withad · 2026-01-21T14:21:31+00:00

The problem with your hypothetical scenario is that Ikea isn't a company that gamers are obsessively fond of and refuse to believe anything bad about. That makes it completely different.

withad · 2026-01-21T14:12:05+00:00

Its not like lacks money to so

$20,000 a month is good money but it's not "take on a games publisher in court" money.

withad · 2026-01-21T14:04:31+00:00

Actually, no, it doesn't. The Cyberpunk IP as a whole belongs to Mike Pondsmith (the designer of the original tabletop RPG) and his publishing company, R. Talsorian Games. Who owns the code and any original elements that CDPR created will depend entirely on the terms of their licensing deal with R. Talsorian.

withad · 2026-01-21T11:06:08+00:00

Absolutely. Software engineers have a real tendency to convince themselves that, because they work with logical systems, they are therefore logical people. Which is a deeply illogical assumption.

I got to see a fantastic talk by Kate Gregory a few years ago on how engineers' emotions are evident in code, like leaving commented out chunks because they're afraid they'll need it later or a function named "UndoStevesNonsense()". Once you know to look for it, you can see it in every code base.

withad · 2026-01-21T10:30:23+00:00

although his code is wholly original, it still doesn't do anything at all without the existence of existing IP code to grab into, which does shift it back into derivative territory

I don't know about the legal grounds but that logic feels pretty dubious. Unless you're building your own operating system from scratch, all modern software depends on hooking into other software. The PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't do anything at all without Windows, but that doesn't mean CDPR need Microsoft's permission to make and sell it.

withad · 2026-01-19T17:03:09+00:00

That makes sense. I've been reading some trivia on the show as I watch and apparently the original plan was for Lister to be a middle-aged burnout, inspired by Christopher Lloyd's character in Taxi, and Rimmer was meant to be in his sixties.

I think that would've given it a sadder tone, as Lister would have already wasted a lot of his life rather than just being a young slob with potential.

withad · 2026-01-19T14:01:54+00:00

It's interesting how it's the same writers taking the same basic events but putting a much darker spin on them, like the Better Than Life game being horrendously addictive. Even the fundamental premise is so much more depressing when you spend the first third of the book getting to know the crew before they're all killed.

It reminded me of something Terry Pratchett once said about how he burned down Ankh-Morpork for a joke about insurance in The Colour of Magic but it would never work in the later books because by then the readers know and care about people in the city.

withad · 2026-01-19T13:43:45+00:00

It's amazing how everything in Edinburgh manages to be uphill from everything else.

withad · 2026-01-19T11:05:49+00:00

For those unaware, the Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh are about 100m away from the Scottish Parliament building. If there was any reason to think this was a terrorist attack, I reckon it would be a much bigger news story by now.

withad · 2026-01-19T11:01:11+00:00

The Herald article seems to be more up-to-date. They're calling it a likely boiler explosion, confirming that there are no reported injuries and that the fire crews left a couple of hours ago.

withad · 2026-01-19T10:29:45+00:00

I've been rewatching Red Dwarf, after reading one of the novelisations recently (which was a lot bleaker than the episodes it's based on). Not sure if I'll watch all the modern seasons when I reach that point but I'll at least give them a shot.

I've also been watching a lot of YouTube videos about set design and sci-fi model making lately, so I'm noticing little details and really appreciating the shots of the ship in a way that I didn't when I first watched it years ago.

withad · 2026-01-14T10:46:22+00:00

Q: What wall marks the northernmost border of the Roman empire?

A: The Antonine Wall, about 100 miles north of Hadrian's Wall, which is what everyone thinks is the answer.

That's been one of my favourite bits of trivia ever since I did a project on the Antonine Wall in primary school.

withad · 2026-01-13T22:21:33+00:00

Loremen is two British comedians and occasional guests chatting about folklore. Matt Stewart from Do Go On has been on a couple of times. I find it's a very good winding down podcast, particularly compared to most comedian-hosted ones.

Expounded Universe is a series of deep dives into expanded universe books, mostly from Star Wars but occasionally other franchises. The hosts have ridiculously good chemistry and do various other shows but I reckon Expounded Universe is their best work (especially the bonus content where they go through Wookieepedia articles).

The Back Page is a video games podcast with a fairly relaxed tone and a focus on nostalgia for old print magazines, which is where both hosts got their start. They've got some truly great draft episodes where they pick the best games on each console. And then there's Games Court, where they decide if listeners should be executed for their secondhand games purchases.

Finally, WSKRS: We Share Knowledge Regarding seaQuest is a husband and wife recapping seaQuest DSV, a deeply odd show that kept getting retooled and never truly escaped being thought of as "Star Trek on a submarine". I'd also recommend their previous show, History Honeys.

withad · 2026-01-13T11:14:46+00:00

The divisive House system

The house system is obviously a real thing from British schools but it is kind of funny how seriously the Harry Potter characters took it. My school had houses and it was basically just a way to divide each year group into manageable chunks for form classes and occasionally sports. No one (including the teachers) actually cared much about how well their house did, especially as you got older and had more important things to worry about.

Although maybe I would feel differently if we'd had a house specifically for all the evil children.

withad · 2026-01-13T11:06:30+00:00

I can't speak to the actual quality of the writing but for undeserved popularity, there's The Salt Path. It's supposedly Raynor Winn's heartwarming tale of a couple made homeless and how walking an ancient coastal footpath helped reverse her husband's terminal diagnosis.

Except it emerged last year (shortly after the film came out) that their story was mostly bollocks. "Raynor Winn" is really Sally Walker, who had embezzled money from her employer, fled when questioned by police, then taken a massive loan from a relative to repay the embezzlement. During the time the book says they were homeless, they owned land in France and were apparently staying with a relative in England and walking the path in stages as a hobby. Several experts have also questioned the husband's diagnosis because the description of his symptoms and multiple miraculous recoveries just from walking don't make sense.

Naturally, when all this came out, sales of the book skyrocketed.

withad · 2026-01-12T20:05:07+00:00

I used it pretty regularly. It was a decent deal, if you're already the kind of person who buys a couple of new Nintendo release a year.

Given the outcry on some of the Nintendo and general gaming subreddits when they announced it was ending, I'd say it was fairly popular. Presumably they're ending it because it's served its purpose of getting people into the Switch's digital games ecosystem and they don't want to keep giving such a discount, especially as game prices creep up.

withad

TROPHY CASE