Tech Over Tea - Europe's Push For Linux Is Fascinating | Solo

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

I've been keeping an eye on the European push towards Linux and honestly it's really cool that this is going on.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as always your host, Roddy Robertson, and do you know what I think is fascinating? The whole European push towards Linux. So Europe and Linux have always had this, like, it's always been like a relationship there, right? Because Europe has a lot of people, the US has a lot of people, obviously places with a lot of people,

you're going to have a lot of people that are interested in doing FOS things, open source things, and especially because these regions do have, you know, higher levels of internet connectivity. India, for example, not traditionally being heavily in the Foss world, but as more infrastructure is built there, as more internet access is becoming available, you are seeing more and more of that in India as well.

Same with China has a different problem. China has had, you know, wide internet access for a while, but China is kind of like in their own little locked off part of the world. Now, my point here, getting back to my point, My main point. Europe's always had like this... There's always been like big projects come out of Europe, right? Most notably is something like KDE. KD, if you don't know, started out of Germany.

The KDEE is the non-profit for KDE. It is an EV that is a... What does EV stand for? KD... it's some... Again, it's some German word. What is the actual thing? I don't remember the term. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Engetregginaverin or something. It's German non-profit. That's literally just what it is. But it's not just Germany. And we're seeing this sort of branched out into other places in Europe. For a long time now, there's been the Free Sopper Foundation Europe. This has existed since 2001. But we're also now seeing this adoption of Linux,

of open source, of open standards, in governments within Europe as well. Recently, we had the whole thing with the Dutch government for whatever reason deciding to make their own Nix-based Linux distro. I don't know why they decide to make their own distro, but that is what they did. They could have just made their own package repo for Nix and effectively get the exact same result. I don't know.

That's what they decided. There are problems with basing off Nix because Nix does rely on GitHub and GitHub is American. Yeah, for anyone who doesn't know specifically why the Netherlands did this, this is related to what happened last year with the international criminal courts where warrants for arrest were issued against Benjamin Netanyahu and I'm forgetting the guy's name the former defense minister, I want to say. Defense Minister of Israel, they had arrest warrants issued against them, and the US was like, no. And then, because the US was like, no, they decided to apply sanctions to the ICC. And then when

you have sanctions against an organization and your US company, a US company cannot do business with a sanctioned country organization. So the leader of the ICC had their Outlook account cancelled, which is annoying and kind of petty. And it's not even like they had taken down everything from the rest of the ICC. It was specifically just the Outlook account of the leader of the organization. So it's not even like a full application of the sanction. It's kind of just like, we're going to be slightly annoying because we feel like being slightly annoying.

Microsoft specifically stated, they were not going to apply it to the rest of the ICC. So it was just like basically malicious compliant, but malicious compliance is done in a way where it's still annoying to the organization that it is being applied against. So,

the head of the ICC ended up switching over to Proton Mail, and then the rest of the organization started to move over to OpenDesk. Open desk, in case you don't know, is this project right here, is their page in English? Yes, it is. This project

right here. Sovereign Bay Design. Open desk is the customizable office and collaboration suite designed specifically for your needs in public administration. So they're kind of like their sales pitches, we are good for government use, all this good stuff. I believe it's just a collection of existing open source tools though. I don't actually think it is its own, yeah, it's not its own custom thing. It is part of Germany's digital A digital sovereignty project But it makes use of

Collabora Online is collab where's collaborator based out of So Collabora Online is built off of Libre Office But where is Collabora actually from? Ah, okay apparently they are in the United Kingdom I did not know that So we have Collabora Online We have Next Cloud, where is Next Cloud? Next Cloud.

Where are they Bost out? Yeah, I'm going to assume that the guy who made this is, yeah, yeah, I was going to say, if you can imagine a German name, that's a pretty German name to me. We have element, element is by the Matrix developers, Matrix is, I don't know where Matrix actually is,

founded out of. Jitzy, same with that one. Actually, let's see if we can find that one. So, Matrix is, so it's made by, like, the core Matrix developers. I'm not sure on that one. If somebody can work that one out, let me know. As for Jitzy,

oh, it's Bulgarian. Okay. The reason I know it was Bulgarian is literally the first line. is, oh, it is a Bulgarian word. Fair enough. Fair enough. So it's a collection of open source tools which are not directly tied to the US and preferably not tied whatsoever.

So it's a European sovereign thing. Now, obviously, Europe can have problems within Europe. We know our history. But as long as the European Union exists, that is kind of like the thing they're doing. They're trying to be their own sovereign country collection of entities, much like how the US is a sovereign collection of states. Some of the states can't really exist by themselves.

Likewise, some of the European countries probably can't exist by themselves at this point either. But that is neither here nor there. So, they adopted Open Desk. I believe they've fully adopted it. I'm not actually 100% certain on that, but they definitely began adopting it. and then they worked on a new distro built off of Nixus. So this is something that Denmark, Denmark, do I say Denmark? Netherlands.

If I said Denmark before I meant the Netherlands, I think my brain thought Dutch and then filled in the rest with Denmark. I don't know. Not important. So they're building their own distro. Over in Germany, there is a state that has decided to adopt Linux in their like government usage and then also I think federally if I recall like at the at the actual country level I think ODF is the format they now use for like all government documents I just

want to double check that one Germany ODF um okay not yet but they are standardizing it by 2027 that is the plan that they have and if they do that, I could imagine you probably would have other parts of the year you also do this as well. This is much less of a major change than adopting entire new operating system, entire new software suite, adopting a different format that is an open format. So this is the thing with ODF. DocX is a semi-proprietary format. There was a time where Microsoft actually did try to make it a, like, the standard.

I don't remember why it didn't become a... standard, but it didn't become a standard. And I think older versions are maybe. Um, or older versions might be more open or something like that. But ODF is the format that is used by the Libre Office Suite, by Collaborate Online, by the open off, I guess by open office is also an office suite, by the open source set of office suites out there. This is like the, the primary set of formats for the documents, for the documents, for the, presentations for the spreadsheets, all this good stuff. There are these open formats specifically for use with these tools. And the nice thing about an open format is the specification for it is documented. So if for whatever reason the tool you're using it doesn't support, doesn't like do something you want it to do, maybe it's like missing a set of features that are supported by the standard or I don't know, maybe the tool you're using just stops being developed because it is an open standard, anybody else can adopt that, and that gives these documents a lot more longevity.

And when we're talking about government documents, longevity is, you know, really important. Because, you know, we want to have a chain of history of the document. We want to have the original versions around. And obviously, when you have something physical, there are ways you can, like, there are materials you can print on, there are kinds of ink you can use, there are ways you can store the document. they're going to make sure it is readable long into the future. When we're doing things digitally, if you're not using something where it is just like a plain text format

where it's just going to work forever, assuming we don't forget how basic character encoding works, and the basic character encoding we do is open, so not really a problem there. But any sort of rich text document you would get from a, like, oh, Microsoft Word kind of thing, if there comes a point where Microsoft says, oh, older documents that were written at this version of Word are now no longer going to be

supported the new version, or maybe they are supported, but some core part of the formatting breaks or something break, like some sort of issue with it where things are not properly transferred over, those documents are then, like, fundamentally going to be broken. And Microsoft makes it really annoying to run older versions of the office suite now because the whole Office 365 thing, and if they just decide at some point that they're going to deprecate something, that's just deprecated, and there's nothing else you can do about that. So not relying on something where that can be done for something of, you know, historical significance, national security, anything like that, is just a good idea. Then you have France, somehow to France,

are adopting Linux as well, and various other places in German, you're also adopting either open source tools, Linux, open format, or combination of all of the above. And I'm kind of curious to see where it goes. Because over in Australia, we kind of just like, people just forget we exist most of the times, just like, we're over here, don't worry about us, we're just doing nothing. We are technically part of the Commonwealth, but like we don't really care about that. So like, yeah, we have some sort of connection to the European continent, not the EU, because, you know, kingdom is not in the EU anymore, but it's part of Europe.

But just don't worry about us. So I'm kind of just like sitting over here watching what plays out in the US, watching what plays out in Europe. Like, you know, Australia is not in one of the countries where anyone wants to claim sovereignty over the country or try to rename it or anything like that. It's kind of just like, we get to sit over here and just watch the rest of the world fight. Basically, the only people that we could possibly have some sort of conflict with is New Zealand. They're the only ones that, like, close enough by where, like, we can have, like, any sort of,

like, bad blood. And I guess, you know, there was the whole thing in, like, World War II with, like, you know, all that stuff with Japan, but Japan's been chill for a while, so we don't know what about them. Japan's, like, doing their own thing. And there are, like, little islands here and there, I guess. But, like, for the most part, we just get to, like, watch the world. play out here and just see how things go. But I'm honestly curious to see where this goes long term. I would be surprised to see anything sort of revert, right? If you've swapped over to Linux and either you've, you know, now have your own sovereignty

or also saving money, what reason would there be to swap back? And if you show that it is working in some places, would that then indicate that it'll work in other places? And if it works in those places, like I could see within, you know, 15, 20 years, at the very least, like, all documents in the European government are handled with open source software, are handled with open formats. Like, that's not an impossibility that can happen. Putting aside, like, relations with the US, if you can demonstrate that these documents last longer,

it is cheaper to use this software, migration isn't really. that expensive for the kind of work that's being done in a, you know, government document writing setting. Like, why would you ever go back? And I'm curious what that looks like long term, because let's say that you're a, like, you're outside of the government, right? If your government is using this certain set of tooling and they're demonstrating that this tooling works well, would that then be an encouragement in private business to do that

as well. The issue with private business is, obviously, you have to work oftentimes with other businesses, and you have your legacy documents as well. But you've got to work with the business and you're going to go to do what everyone else is doing. This is why it is so hard to adopt open tools in this environment, because somebody has to be first, or it has to be an organization that is big enough that it can do basically everything in house, right? You can't just swap to DaVinci Resolve if you're a... a Premiere based studio. You can't just swap to, I don't know,

what's the, what's the Photoshop alternative? Photoshop alternative. What is it called? The big, affinity, that's the one. You can't really swap to affinity or better yet, you can't really swap to Gimp. Let's just assume that,

putting aside whether you're missing features or anything, let's just say Gimp has all the features you need. You can't just swap to Gimp from Photoshop if you're working with clients that also make use of Photoshop because, you know, you're not sharing. And this is the other thing. You could, if we were working more with open formats,

if everything here was done with an open format that was well supported, well documented, going between these different tools, yes, there would be compatibility issues. But when you're working with a known, understood format and everything supports it well, that problem becomes less and less and less. And you have a lot less tied to an individual suite of software. and you can start actually making real decision. This is why Adobe gets away with so much of what they get away with,

because you don't have a competitor to Adobe. Like you can say, oh, affinity is a competitor, this competitor, no, they are entirely different paths. They are not direct competitors. They are not replacements. They are, if you're going from this, you are learning an entirely different toolset with entirely different plugins,

with an entire different set of file types you work with and doing that migration is not just a matter of oh you download the other tool and then you move stuff over. Looking in another way, right? A lot of people look at like a game engine and think, oh, well, this is a game built in, I don't know, let's say UE5. You can't just migrate that over to another engine without doing a lot of work.

Early on the project, yes, you could. If all you have is just like assets and a bidder code and not really like a, you know, a large code base, getting that into another engine is not crazy difficult. But when you start having a structure, you're relying on the tools, you're making use of built-in features, maybe you have custom tools built around that suite, built around that engine, suddenly this becomes a much, much harder endeavor to do. and in many cases, even if that seems like a dead-end path, it might be so insanely difficult that it doesn't make any sense to move over. You'll actually see this with even like different versions of an engine.

You were seeing games built in Unreal Engine 4 for a long time after UE5 came out, especially for these AAA games, because firstly you have developer knowledge around that, older engine, you have knowledge around the problems with the engine. That's a real big one. When you go to a new version of a software, a new version, especially if something complex like a game engine, it's going to introduce new features, but it's also going to introduce new problems. Like, it's not going to be in a perfect state. No software is without it bugs.

So you suddenly now need to learn about all these new problems that you didn't know exist. And maybe some of those problems don't affect you. But maybe they are a critical path that you have to travel down and suddenly you need to fundamentally re-architect the way things are working because it just is not going to work without massive performance overhead or massive bugs or anything else like that. This sort of, any sort of big adoption like this is just going to be difficult. But if it can work well, if it can provide improvements, if it can maybe, you know, save some money. Who knows?

Maybe it might actually be worth it in the, uh, in the long run. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just curious. I like the idea of more people using Linux. Kind of regardless of what the reason is. Like, regardless of what distra or it may be, regardless of what software you might pick, regardless of basically like anything about what you're actually doing.

Yeah. I'm just... I like Linux. I like Linux and I like seeing things do well with Linux. Now, I was going to talk about a WSL thing, but I think we'll take a brief break from that. And I want to talk about a gaming topic. This one right here.

Mum, where did my Robux go? The Roblox scam targeting children. Now, there is a reason I want to talk about this, because I played Roonscape. Let me just find exactly what the update was. Roonscape, when was the Grand Exchange added? I started playing around about November-ish 2007. I think I started playing...

I think I started playing Roonscape, the update the Grand Exchange was added. I don't fully recall, but I played RuneScape a long time ago, I played it for a long time, and I'm sure a lot of you either play RuneScape now, whether it be OSRS, or for some ungodly reason you're playing RS3. And this is going to sound very familiar to you, okay? Let us have a look at what the kids are falling for today. Your 10-year-old son has started playing Roblox when he realized, all of his in-game currency, Robux is gone.

When you try to find out what happened, he says he was recently promised extra Robux if he followed a link on YouTube. When he signed on at that site, he was taken to the Roblox site as usual, but there was no sign of the extra currency. He has fallen victim to a fraud where Roblox users, many of whom are children, are being targeted for their login details.

With those details, criminals can steal the virtual currency and players' personal data. Within Roblox, users buy Robox to buy virtual items such as skins and all this other bullshit, using ready-made kits bought on the dark web, fraudsters create a fake login page that is identical in appearance

to the legitimate Roblox site. The kid will lend to their details and the fake website will actually redirect them to a legitimate Roblox page, says this person here, the Vice President of Global Affairs at the Cybersecurity Company, NordvP, So ultimately the kid will get to where they want to go.

By that stage, however, the criminals will have the details they need for the defrauding. Now, what does this have to do with Roonscape? So, if you played Roonscape, maybe today still, I don't know if it's still happening today, but especially in the past, there were quite a few well-known Roonscape scams. And honestly, obviously with Rooscape... Roblox real money is being stolen, so it's probably worse. I get it, especially in cases where maybe you had saved your credit card to the account. Don't do that.

Bad idea. I never save my credit card to any service. I enter it every time. But I got scammed at least three times as a kid. At least two times. at least two times, probably three times. And I think getting scammed as a kid is probably, it's probably a good thing for you overall.

Now, again, real money is being stolen here, so it does make it worse. But who remembers if you played RuneScape, the gold, the, what is it? The armor trimming scam. Roonscape, armor trimming, scam. This is an ancient, ancient scam. So, basically, okay, for some context. OSRS, black trim set. So, uh, okay, no, that's, uh, yeah, the gold version. No? Where is it?

uh that one Hold on Was there a gold version of black armor this? There was wasn't there? Um, gold. Yeah, black,

yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one. The black gold trimmed armor, I just forgot what the name actually was. So, basically this is, it had absolutely no additional advantages to it. But it took the black armor

and then gave it this fancy gold trim around it. And literally identical stats. It is basically just, it looks cooler. And, hey, that, you know, it looks cooler. And, you know, you're a 10-year-old playing a video game. You like things that look cool. Now, these days, it's dirt cheap.

You can get it pretty easily. RuneScape, gold, trimmed. Back then, though, prices were, like, way... different way higher, all this good stuff. Or the, actually, I guess, okay, Rune-Trim, Rune Gold Trimed is still pretty cheap as well, but either way.

You can't trim armour. That's the point I'm trying to make here. You cannot trim armour. The only way to get it is from a specific event in the game, a specific, like, task you do in the game. However, as a child, you don't know this. As a child who maybe, you know, you just started playing the game like,

I don't know, a couple of weeks ago or something, you don't know this. So, um, you see someone who's like, hey, I'm trimming armor, I'm trimming armor. And you just give them the armor because you don't know that they're not trustworthy yet. You're like a 12 year old. You haven't really met anyone that's a scammer yet. Like that's like, what? The what? That's not going to happen.

Um, then they just leave. They steal your shit. They never come back. They're just gone forever. That was one time I got scammed. Another time is, uh, there was a, a, I think it was a guild. I want to say it was a guild.

Yeah, I think it was like a, um, guild that was recruiting members. Now, Roomscape guilds are basically just, they were pretty much just chat rooms. They weren't really anything. There wasn't really that much in the way of group content back then anyway. Um, God Wars. I guess if you're on some clan wars stuff and,

uh, some will. The Lelty PVP in like the open combat zones, I guess. But like, basically, guilds were just effectively... Guilds, what are they called? Is it guilt? Wait, RuneScape Guild. Was it Klan?

No, it was Klan. Klan? Sorry, it's been a long time to play Roonscape. Yeah, Klan. That's it. Yeah. There was a RuneScape clan, a RuneScape clan that was recruiting members.

And, uh, well, they provided a link for a place to go to to, like, join the clan. And you put in your login details. And, uh, they try to log into the account. And well, uh, yeah, you lose whatever's in your inventory. Or if you don't have a bank pin, which I think at the time, I don't know if it is now, at the time it was not required to have a bank pin, uh, your bank would be entirely emptied by the time that you logged back in as well. Um...

Yeah... Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What a fun time that was. But here's the thing. Getting scammed as a kid, especially in a game where... Look, it doesn't...

Look, you get... you lose... you lose some armor. You lose some money in a game. It's just gold that you've farmed in the game. It's armor you've obtained in a game. Nothing's actually of value lost. And you're playing the game, like... the game like a shit ton anyway as a kid. So yeah, you're sad, yeah, it annoys you, but like you get over it. However, it makes you realize that there are people in the world that are out there who are not worth, like, who are not, you can't trust them.

You cannot just listen to every word that a person says to you, especially if they're an adult. You cannot listen to every single thing that is said to you. Some people out there are either morons, which you realize very quickly as well, Or they are not out for your best interest, and they are trying to make your day bad and worse and try to steal all of your stuff. And if they could get access to your credit card, they would probably, you know, steal your mum's credit card as well.

I, at the time, was paying for my membership with the physical monthly membership cards. That's how I was getting membership back then, because my mum did not want to put her credit card into her website, so instead we bought monthly account cards instead, which was, you know, the certainly thing. Eventually she changed her mind, she put her card into the account, you know, you know, stayed playing the game for quite a while following that point.

I quit playing when RS3 came out because I didn't give a shit about any new combat, and it seems like a lot of people didn't. And, well, okay, there's a lot of problems with RS3, but, you know, no one cares about RuneScape 3. RuneScape 3 is a dead game. I'm sure someone plays it, but I don't. And I've no interest in playing it. But, but low risk, low risk scams,

I think, it's like one of those things where I think it is a good thing to have something like that happen when it doesn't matter and in a context where it doesn't matter. because if it doesn't happen where it doesn't matter, you know, I know people who were never scammed as a kid. Some of them are a little bit too trusting. There are people out there who their first time dealing with someone who is a genuine bad actor

isn't until they are an adult and they don't know what to do against someone who genuinely does not care about them as, as a person. It's not even like, oh, you know, you're my friend or you're not quite, like, genuinely doesn't even think of you as a human being. You are nothing but a way to obtain money. You are nothing but a, you are nothing but an account and a set of numbers. There is no like actual, actual person in the loop here. If the first time you meet someone like that is, you know, a, you know, a, phone call scam, you know, especially now with, now we're seeing voices being replicated in scam calls. People are getting calls from, you know, someone who is claiming to be their mother or maybe their kids or their grandkids asking for money. Or maybe they have some details because there has been account leaks over the years, you know, over time, various details yours get leaked. People find out your mother's maiden name.

People find out the school you went to. find out all of these little details and when someone starts like say if someone says oh I'm from the bank and then they start saying private or least what you think are private pieces of information about you you're immediately going to be more trusting because oh some random person out there they wouldn't they wouldn't know what school I went to or what my mother's maiden name was or what this other thing or that like they wouldn't know these details or worse yet if maybe your address had leaked or maybe your ID had leaked, which is something a lot of people are going to do with now that we're seeing ID verification going into basically a lot of countries are adopting this. And a lot of the storage of these IDs has been pretty goddamn terrible.

Discord is a great example of that. A lot of people are going to have that, like, really core information leaked. And if someone's like, oh, well, your address is this. Your prior address was this. or one of your former address was this, or this is the registration number on your car, this is, like, all of these details you can get if some of that, like, basic stuff has leaked,

or this is, you know, the numbers on your credit card, stuff like that. I guess if they have the numbers on your credit card, they probably don't need to scam you anyway. They have your credit card anyway. But I guess if they don't want to immediately get, they don't want to burn it, like, burn the resource they have.

maybe they wouldn't use the credit card, they would instead get you to like willingly give them money to make sure they don't lose that that venue, I guess, that avenue, not the venue. If the first time that you

like experienced someone trying to scam you is when that happens, it's like, what do you do? Like, you are, you're dealing with a situation where you're, You never, you never dealt with the simpler iteration, right?

It's, it's kind of like, oh, I don't know how to swim, and no, I'm not going to throw you into the deep end. I'm going to throw you into the ocean, work it out, get back to shore. You're probably going to drown, right? It's like an ocean. Let's just say, it's the ocean, and it's like, it's like a surf tide. Like, you're going to die, right? Right, you're gonna die.

And if you're, if the first time you get scammed is with the kind of scams that are available now, yeah, you're probably gonna fall for it. You're probably gonna give some money away. You're probably gonna give some details away. You're probably gonna do something where you're gonna just like not even realize what is going on until far, far too late.

So again, whilst maybe it's not the best that some parents lost some money because their kids got scammed in Roblox. Honestly, it's probably better than them getting scammed later in life. Also, stop buying your kids Robux. Easy solution. Don't buy them Robux and they can't lose any Roblox. Oh, but they really love the game. I'm sure they do.

I'm sure they do. but they'll survive just playing the game without some fancy skin without buying some random bullshit in this game. Yep, yep. Or just get them play RuneScape. That's another option. Just get them play OSRS and their life will be

their life will be vastly better. They will understand economics. They'll understand markets. Honestly, a lot, like Ruincape's a game that taught me so much more than I realized taught me when I was like initially playing it. Like,

honestly playing any any MMO and really get into it honestly does teach you a lot of stuff that you otherwise probably wouldn't intuit about the world for example it's probably a good thing to have a market with regulations because if you're a market without

regulations just look at what you can do in an MMO you can just buy up the entire stock of the entire market and then price fix it however you feel like doing it. You can collaborate with other large buyers and control all the stock. You can maybe, let's say some item needs to be crafted. You can get all of the large crafters into a guild and then convince them that pricing should be a certain price. And if they priced it in that way, you give them some sort of incentive, like maybe some raid gear or so.

Like, you know, there's a reason why maybe having a regulated free market's probably a good idea because just play an MMO and you can see what happens with a market that doesn't have any regulation. It gets pretty bad pretty quickly. I would know as someone who is very much manipulates some MMO markets because, you know, good way to make some money. Turns out being the one who controls the market, manipulating a market, actually a great way to make some money. Who would have guessed? Complete mystery. But besides that, I assume they still do it now.

OSRS, Grand Exchange, prices. Let us have a look, see. I don't know, let's pick Dragon Hatchet. I don't know, just an item. Sorry, is it a Dragon Axe, not Hatchet. Dragon axe. Yeah, that one. That's the one.

Do they have the chart? Yeah, yeah. Look at this. We have a chart of prices. Wow, this item is fucking worthless nowadays. What happened here? But like, understanding how pricing over time works, understanding, like, why is a price going up and down?

Like, what is actually happening? what is going on? Okay, that doesn't really change in price much. Like, if there is some massive event that happens, maybe something changes price massively for some reason, maybe some new bosses added, so you start seeing resources for certain encounters just completely changing in price,

or what are the things that people actually are interested in the market? Like, why are people buying up, vials? What is the... Why do you need fire ruins? Okay, well, fire ruins are used for this, this, and this. Okay, well, pure essence is also a massive... Oh my god, it is 2GP...

What the hell? I remember this was like 300. Um, I haven't played in a long time. Um, like, let's say you wanted to... Let's say you wanted to make some money like fishing or something.

Like, obviously sharks are... Actually, that's the Cook Shark. Sharks are the highest... I think this is counted in volume. Oh my God, there's 700 GPH. Yeah, this is counted in trade volume. So, is it better to do high trade volume? Or do you want to go with a lower tier item that you can maybe obtain more of?

And is the price delta between what this is sold per item and how long it takes you to get the equivalent of a lower-tier? item, does that make up for what it is? And can you actually sell that item? Because maybe you want to buy, maybe you want to like fish a lower tier item or a lower tier fish, but maybe people aren't buying that in the same kind of volume and it just kind of sits there. Like, these things, which when you play an MMO, especially when you start getting into trying to like make money in a game like this, these are things you have to insure it about how things, about how the system works and oh my god magic logs are 700 gp oh my god

again another thing I remember when they used to be way more expensive what the hell um sorry sorry getting distracted by prices of items that were in the game when I played the game um but like playing MMO gave me an understanding of how these worked. And also, I think it gave me like a better foundation for maths as well. Like, having to work out, like, okay, well, again, I have an item that's worth X amount of gold. It takes me this long to get an inventory and then get that inventory back to the bank. Okay, if I were to do, let's say, swordfish or lobsters, it takes me less time to get a full inventory.

And let's say the bank is even closer. So let's say you have less of a travel distance to get to the bank. Okay. If you work this out over an hour, so let's say, like, how many sharks can you generate per hour compared to how many lobsters you can generate, is this actually like worth more to go with the lower tier? Because I, if I recall correctly, it wasn't even the most money to do. magic logs back when I was playing. It was better experience, but you would actually cut down

U logs because U logs were both higher volume sold because I believe they were also, I think there might have been better experience or just cheaper overall experience to get to 99 for fletching. Yeah, something like that. And then I think people teared up from Maple to you when they're doing firemaking as well. But, like, you, like, you,

like, you, like, you're going to play a game and try to, like, even just do, like, the basic,

basic, basic levels of min-maxing, let alone, like, actually doing min-maxing. Oh, okay, so what gear should I be using for this? And, like,

let's see, get into PVP. So, okay, what level should I be at? Let's say, I want to target, I don't know

what people people here. Let's say you want to target combat level 50. So combat level and Roomscape is calculated with a combination of all of your combat stats and I think they're I think HP might be like weighted differently. I don't know the exact

calculation for combat level. But basically you would have to choose which stats you're going to level and some people would do a pure build. Some people would have oh I'm going to have zero I'm going to have a I guess level.

I mean, I have level one defense, but then put all of these levels into, like, attack and strength. And even though I'm, like, paper thin, I'm doing so much damage at this combat level that it makes up for it. And doing this calculation and working out what you want to do, if you're just not going to play, you know, obviously a lot of people just do meta. But if you want to work out what a new meta is, especially after, like, maybe a new item has added, a new tier of bosses, or something like that. I guess you get the same kind of thing if you're looking at something like Path of Exile, it's not just like a runescape thing. Path of Exile is the same thing.

World Warcraft does the same thing. Any game that I think... Obviously, MMOs have markets. Peewee's not an MMO. It's an ARPG with MMO-esque element in the same sense of like a Diablo kind of game. Any game that has a open market I think is a really valuable experience for someone

just to understand how markets work. And it really, it makes you realize that a lot of the theories you have about why things, like how and why things should work, when it's in a game setting, you start to realize what people would do when they don't have any inhibition, right? Because maybe there's things you wouldn't do in real life because that would be bad and that would make people homeless

and that would like, you know, you'd be a bad person for it. That an MMO, you know, hey, if I buy up all of the supply of this item and I buy it up faster than people can buy it, I buy it up fast than people can, uh, can craft it, can, uh, can obtain it. Suddenly, I can set the price. to whatever I want it to be.

Probably a bad thing to do in the real world, but, you know, ask over my eye about it. They will, um, they'll tell you, tell you all about that. They'll tell you all about that. So I was mentioning, um, we're going to move on from the RuneScape thing now. I was mentioning, um,

Linux before. I don't really talk about a little Windows thing. So Microsoft just cut out the middleman for running Linux tools. on Windows 11. So, obviously we had WSL, and WSL is still a thing. But if you wanted to run containers, you would need to make use of third-party tools like Docker desktop,

and Docker on Windows has always just been, let's just call it a second-class experience. It's a lot better now because of WSL, but it's always kind of been a second-class experience. Now, we have something known as WSL containers. This was announced at Build 26 and is now generally available. I don't really care about using Windows myself. However, I have been noticing that over the past,

I don't know, a couple of years, it does seem like Microsoft is, I don't know if I'd say getting worried, But definitely paying a lot more attention to what is happening in Linux and paying a lot more attention to, I guess, trying to compete in this space. Because whilst they might have the regular, like, average desktop user, when it comes to the developer space, I don't know any developer. Maybe this is just my circle.

Maybe it's different. I don't know anyone who uses Windows because they like Windows. Most people I see only use it because they are a developer of things on Windows or they need to use Windows for another reason. They're not really a fan of Windows. A lot of devs that I see, if they can get away with using MacOS, because a lot of people do like MacOS, or they can get away with using Linux, a lot of them are going to do so.

And Microsoft is paying attention to this happening. And that's why you have W yourself. They realized, oh, you can't compete in this space when you're not, when you're competing in the developer space, you're not competing with the same set of criteria that you would compete if you're dealing with the user space. In the user space, you can offer like dumb features and fancy interfaces and all this stuff. But developers are like, I'm just going to do things in the terminal.

And I don't actually care about all of these fancy features and fancy interfaces because I'm going to use my tools the way I want to use my tools. If I can't use my tools, the way I want to use my tools, then your system is fundamentally broken. And containers are a large part of a modern developer workflow. And as I said, have just not really been a great experience on the Windows side because it makes sense. You're generally running Linux containers,

running a Linux container on Linux, understandably, is going to be easier, is going to run better, is going to... I think Docker's generally has had more features on the Linux side as well. I don't know if it's the same now,

but I'm pretty sure it is. So if people are going to be using Linux and they want this feature, they're just like, well, you know, they don't really have an option but to compete in the space. I can't really lock people into a platform when they are not using your platform anyway.

When they are more than happy to swap over to something else, like, why would it matter what locks you put into place? Like, you're not dealing with the days of IE6, right? IE6, Mike Stoff got away with doing a lot of bullshit because they had, I want to say, like, 90, 90% market share. What was the peak of Internet Explorer market share? Something like that. It's something like Chrome has today. Yeah, 95% was the peak. They got away with doing a lot of bullshit back then because who cares if their standards bodies, who cares if there's guidelines, who cares if there's guidelines, who cares than anything. They are the guidelines, they are the standards body. You have to comply with them because that's just how things worked back then and the web was so broken back then. So many things only worked on

i.e6 because i.e6 did things in such a fucking weird and stupid way that people just were kind of stuck with using it for so long and it was so bad in fact that into edge i think maybe they still have an Internet Explorer compatibility mode because there are still old government websites that expect you to be on Internet Explorer, right? Like, that's how bad things were in this space, right? Like, things were like really bad, but you don't have that in the developer space. You don't have that kind of lock, so you kind of gotta play at least, at least a long, enough to get people to not hate your platform. Now, long time down the line, if you maybe build up that trust again,

you build up the developer ecosystem, you get people reliant on your platform, maybe then you do some fuckery, and maybe then you start cutting things out, maybe then you start doing some stuff, but it's a good thing to have Microsoft on the back foot, at least in something. I would like to see Microsoft on the back foot when it comes to the desktop space as well. If that was the case, you know, things would probably go

a little bit smoother. You'd have a lot of issues being dealt with. You'd not have some of the bullshit they are pushing out. But, you know, one can only hope. One can only hope. I've talked about this a number of time. I'm not going to get into it now, but I do think maybe things would have been different

if we didn't have the kind of ramp prices that we have today. if the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine were able to, especially the... Well, the Steam Deck had issues of COVID launch where there was just no RAM, and the Steam Machine had an issue of basically RAM being stupid expensive and also no RAM that, you know, you just didn't really have the kind of splash it was going to have. I think in another timeline, another universe, things could have been maybe very different when that happened. But speaking of Microsoft,

speaking of Microsoft on the desktop and Microsoft not being on the back foot, despite canning the co-pilot Plus brand, most people love its AI assistant, says Microsoft. I don't know anyone who... Okay, there's a couple of different places to look at here. I don't know anyone who loves like the chapbot built into...

Windows. I do know people that really love making use of copilot, that like really rely on that as a developer tool. But I don't know anyone who their go-to-AI offering is copilot, like, is Microsoft's offering as like a general chatbot. I feel like a lot of people sort of look at it like being, and maybe I'm missing, maybe I'm like, you know, I'm wrong here, but I don't know of it having a

crazy good reputation. Obviously, putting aside that some people don't like chatbots, I mean like, in the context of you use a chatbot, I don't know of anyone who says, I love Microsoft's offering. Maybe there's somebody. Maybe there is, but I don't know those people

Maybe it's just that I Um Maybe it's just that I don't associate with them Maybe that's Maybe that's just what it is And uh Maybe there's maybe there's a lot more to it than uh than meets the eye maybe there's a lot more to it than I know

But I think um On the topic of chat bot I think a lot of people have I think there's definitely a very outdated perception a lot of people have on the capabilities of these tools. And I see this a lot in any AI discussion. I'll see people say things like, oh, they constantly hallucinate.

And yes, they do in some cases. Say things like, oh, the code they generate is utter garbage. And yes, in some cases. And like, these are just not things that you could ever reasonably use. And I think there are definitely obviously problems, right? Like, you're going to see problems. You're going to have it misunderstand question. You're going to have it like make shit up.

but I think like with my discussions on Wayland there is a lot of people out there who have absolutely no idea what they are even angry about anymore they don't actually know the state of the software they don't know what it is capable of and I think that's why a lot of the arguments I see that people make against AI immediately full flat because you can very quickly tell when somebody actually has no idea

where we are today, where their understanding of what these tools were doing, is set three years ago. And it's totally reasonable, totally, completely reasonable to not like AI, like it is totally and completely reasonable to not like Wayland. However, when I see people make arguments that I know are factually wrong based on what I can see these doing today, or in the case of Whalen, know that things have been dealt with, it immediately puts into question any complaints you might actually have about the technology. When I can't trust that you know where things are, I can't trust that any of your takes are actually grounded in reality.

Because I think if you don't like something, you should be the most influential, person on it. You shouldn't have an opinion that is set years out of date that every time you make an argument, you immediately look like a moron because everything you're saying, people disprove in five seconds. And it's like these are problems that been dealt with long, long ago. And this is a problem that comes up time and time again. A lot of people do not have any interest. in understanding the thing they don't like. They have this initial first perception, maybe after like a six months or so, they decide, oh, I don't like this thing, and then never update what their position is ever again. And especially in a fast-moving field like it is with technology

and especially like it is with these AI tools, it is very evident where you don't know, You don't know what things are doing today. I see this. I see this all of the time. I see this constantly, especially if you get into, any of the spaces that really don't like AI.

Like, if you go on Mastodon, harassing KD Velt. I think they've stopped the harassment now, but that was a fucking mess. If you go on Blue Sky, you will see, you'll see on Reddit, you'll see over and over again.

People that have, absolutely no idea what they're even afraid of. They don't even, like, they're afraid of things that are not even remotely a concern now, when they should be afraid of 10 times, 100 times more powerful software, than even remotely exists at that point. And that's my point here. These tools are getting better and better and better and better. And if you are genuinely concerned about...

this stealing jobs, this doing this, this copyright, all this good stuff, if you are genuinely concerned about that and you don't know what these tools are capable of doing, like, you need to update your perspective. You need to find out where things are today and what is actually happening and like why these things are actually dangerous in certain contexts. what they're actually doing.

And why is it that even though you say over and over again, AI bad, AI can't write code, why is it that people that are professional developers keep adopting? You might say, oh, well, it's just cheaper. Okay. But how is it cheaper? If the code is generating is terrible

and you need to rewrite it from the ground up, why is it cheaper? Like, that should immediately, like, set off an alarm bill. Like, maybe my perspective isn't correct here. Maybe there is something I'm misunderstanding. Why is it that people like Linus Torvalds are using this tooling? Why is it that so many kernel developers are making use this tooling? And the kernel is not collapsing under its own weight.

Maybe there is something I'm missing. Maybe the tech is further along that I initially thought. And there are problems, but they're not the problems I thought they were, or they're not the problems I thought they were in the state. that they were in three or so years ago. It's not that AI is generating terrible code. That's not the problem. The problem is it's generating code

that is better than a lot of people that are writing code, and that is displacing a lot of people. It's not just displacing people because it is generating a lot of code. It's displacing people because, frankly, there are a lot of people out there who are not that great developers.

They are kind of just, you know, basically everything involving skill is a bell curve, and there are people on the left side of the bell curve, there are people in the middle of the bell curve on the lower end of the bell curve, those are the kind of people where it's like,

yeah, AI is very much displacing them, and like, you need to know why that's happening. It's not just happening because of whatever reason you want to come up with. Like, there's actually like, well-grounded reasons

even if maybe they are not a human first reason. I wasn't planned to rant about AI today, but it happened, so, you know, it is what it is, I guess. You know, we're not going to keep ranting about AI. At least for now, maybe we'll come back to a bit later. We shall see. Actually, one thing I want to talk about,

going back to a gaming-related topic, open source any PS5 dumps emulation to run PlayStation 5 games natively on PC AMD Zen2 architecture enables proton-like binary translation for Windows and Linux So this is basically a translation layer for running PS5 games on a PC And we're seeing a lot of interesting stuff coming out of the like PlayStation 5, emulation, PlayStation 5, compatibility space.

Yes, I know. There's not really much in the way of PS5 exclusive games. What games are exclusive to PS5? What is the actual list? Okay, this is not a full list, these are...

Okay, uh, console exclusive but also on PC. Okay, that does not count. Astrobot, Astro's Playroom, which is a PS5 demo, Demon Souls, and Marvel Spider-Man 2. And I guess there's a couple of others that have not come out on PC just yet, and future PS5 games are not going to be on... A future Sony published PS5 games are not going to be on PC, which is why some developers are pulling out of Sony because they actually want to make money and not release on. platform that is um dead uh so this is a is this this can't be a full list is it is this a full list okay this doesn't wait is this the okay this is the actual remake of the god of war trilogy okay

okay that is not a game that exists yet so technically counts um 24 games i don't know if this is everything i'm gonna assume fucking neptuneer games on the list of as well. Astrobot, Astro's Playroom, C-Smash, VRS, new dimension, code of violet. Isn't this a game where the developers didn't want to release it on PC because something stupid about moders? I think this is the...

Yeah. If I... PC mod... Yeah, yeah, they didn't want to release on PC because they didn't like moders. Dead or Alive... some new Deader Alive game that is not out yet. Demon Souls, Destructional Stars, Earth Defense, 4.6.2. Ghost of Yote.

God of War, Lafay, which is not out yet. Sons of Sparta, which is out. God of War trilogy remake, which is not out. Intergalactic, which is not out. Lollipop Chainsaw 2 is... Did that come out? Is that a thing? It was a re-release. Sorry, I'm actually confused it. Yeah, no, oh, that's repop. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.

Marvel's Wolverine, which shouldn't have come out. Neptunia, which is out in Japan, paper beast, whatever that is, quantum error, quantum state, Saros, R-type final three evolved. What the fuck is that? I have, is this a re-release of a, I guess it's a re-release of a PS4, the PS2 game or something? I don't know. Silent Hill, short message, until dawn two, and the winds rising. Wait, what's the winds rising? Which one's that?

The wind's rising. And I guess there are some, like, probably some random... Okay, there are some random indie slop games that, like, you know, take over the PlayStation Store. I guess they're also the VR game, PlayStation VR exclusives as well. Oh, it's one of the Hero Project games.

Okay, okay. So, the point here is, yes, there's not much in the way of true exclusive PS5 games that actually matter. But it's more of just like a, it's cool to be able to do this. It's kind of just like a fuck you to Sony. It's like, hey, we're going to make a translation layer.

We're going to make a translation layer. We're going to make an emulator. We're going to make another emulator. And we're actually going to play these games how we want to play them. We're not going to be locked to this platform. And, you know, this might be part of the reason why Sony is going the whole digital only, but that's not going to change anything. Oh, it's digital only. Yeah, and people are going to work out at some point how to dump those digital games from the PS5.

What's eventually going to happen, I think this is the route we're going to go. You're eventually going to see games that like basically end up streaming content as a form of DRM. Don't take this as a, as a suggestion. But I do think that is a direct. direction DRM is going to go, where certain content, like, core gameplay system, like, something in the game that, like, makes the game function, core gameplay, like, loops, is basically going to be something that is not even part of the game, is going to be streamed from a DRM service. I think that is a very possible route that future DRM could go. I don't want it to go that way. I'll just keep playing my 20 plus year old J. RPG so that happens. I haven't gone back and played the original Final Fantasy games.

I've got plenty of games to play. It's not a problem for me. But, you know, it would be kind of annoying. It would be nice to have... It would be nice to have these games that are exclusive or even just the PS5 versions of games that are not exclusive being preserved into the future because there have been these games that we have basically lost over time.

Right? Like, there was... What was this? It was on the PS4? PT. I want to say it was PS4. Where it was a demo that existed for a short while, and then it just kind of like vanished. Um, I think PT has been preserved now. I think people... Have got that...

Okay, there are a fan rem... Okay. Okay, so if the demo was still in still still play it. I don't think PS... Actually, as any... You know, has anyone emulated that? I'm assuming probably by this point. Has anyone emulated... P-T.

P-T game. Okay, so yeah, it is playing in Shad PS4. So it is at a point now where, assuming you can get your hands on the ROM for it, you can play it with Shad PS4 which is kind of sick before I get into the... Shut up. There we go, muted.

Here we go, here we go. Which is sick, right? Like, PS4 obviously had more exclusive and you had stuff like this, but even so. I think it's just cool. I think it's just cool that there are people out there who are working on stuff like this. Now I know I know there's been some drama in the whole like console hacking space with um

the PS5 Linux guy uh what was his name um Andy Andy the Floo Andy Newon I think it was for a cool uh yeah yeah

um quitting after a hypervisor bug was reported to Sony that he didn't want to see reported yet or some other, some, it was just like a drama from a couple of weeks ago. Basically, a lot of people are finding exploits with LLMs way faster than console hackers are able to make use of them. And this is creating a situation where in the past people that were doing console hacking, they were just doing it for the love of the game. they weren't doing it to like create a product or create like something that you could easily adopt. Anything.

It was kind of just like it was there for the fun of poking at the platform. It was there for the fun of poking at the hardware. But now we are seeing these AI finding exploits that would have taken a person like months to find themselves. And then some people are just reporting them to Sony or doing various other things with them. and um it is just like I can get like why if you were doing this as like the

for the love of the game why seeing how much things have changed how much AI has completely revolutionized the space of hardware hacking that you just don't feel the fun anymore right I totally get that at the same time though

like, I don't know. I get it. Like, I get why people are annoyed. I, look, I totally get it. At the same time, though, really cool things are being made. Like, really cool things are being made. And, like, I think...

That's kind of where I'm out. I like the really cool things exist. I'm trying to find the video now, because people... It keeps getting deleted from various sub-rides. Here we go. Here we go. So, this is a, um...

So, Modern Warfare 2, there is a, I think it's like a... I think it's like a, I think it's like a D-comp and then rewritten in Rust or something? MW2, Rust... Uh, no, okay, Rust Lang, because there's the whole Rust map, I'm assuming... Yeah, and this was like a big AI thing. Um... So yeah, this is a open... source re-implementation of MW2 using the Bevy game engine. Now, is it written in Rust

because of the Rust map? Or is it because Rust is good with AI? I don't know which the answer is, probably a bit of both. But because of that, um, is this? Yeah, yeah. So, because of that, we are now seeing people do stupid, real stupid modding with it. Um, Of course someone adds CJ to it because You know why would you not add CJ to it? Because who would do with every game But this is another one where The guy turned it into Skate 3

Because Why not? We are seeing a whole new world Of modding become available Through AI, through DCOMs, through this like AI Through AI powered decomps That were just not going to happen

at all before. Again, you might say, oh, this removes the fun, this ruins everything, all this stuff. Maybe, like, maybe that's true. But at the end of the day, I think it is cool that we are getting really weird shit coming out of this. If AI is going to be here, I'd much rather see it used for, like, weird shit like this, than, you know, breaking into government agencies and all this stuff. I'm trying to find the other one. Um, yeah, this is a thing, I think this just happened.

Yeah, this just happened today. I don't know if it is... Presumably it would be another AI power thing. I don't know. Um, here with someone who is modded Minecraft into Eldon Ring. Because, like, why not? You have creative mode, you can play... Like, it's actually, it's, like, actually just Minecraft in Eldon Ring.

Obviously you can't interact with the world in the same way, but you can't destroy things, but like... The mobs will like attack bosses and the creeps will interact with... Like... Oh yeah, yeah, they also modded um... I guess is this... Black cop stuff? This is... Yeah, I think this is black op stuff as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's zombie stuff.

So yeah, they also... also modded black ops into it because why not? What a fucking weird world we live in what a

what a fucking weird world we live in where stuff like this is possible now. Again, it's probably all AI generated AI powered but at the end of the day

it exists and nothing is going to, um... Oh yeah, right, on the topic of Minecraft. So with the whole, with the whole like MW2 thing, people are doing a bunch of other things. Um, um, MW2 has also been added into

Minecraft or Minecraft is playable in MW2. I don't know. I think it's Minecraft in MW2. Um... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, wait. I actually have no idea I actually haven't

it might be MW2 modded into Minecraft or might be a Minecraft map with Minecraft World Gen modded in I don't I don't know What do? Okay Wait is this related to the skate three one Okay so yeah it's all modded into

Okay Yeah so it is hyperclawed power Um Okay MW2, Skate 3 and Minecraft in one rust get... Yeah, so all of this is modded into MW2. There was another one I saw the other day

and when it's like dealing with these like ancient games, I get it. Like it's cool. There was another one I saw. I'll see if I find it. I did see some people complaining about.

So somebody went and did a decomp on Terraria. Now, this is a slightly different thing. Because when we're dealing with Skate 3, when we're dealing with MW2, Minecraft's all about modding anyway, so it's not that big of a deal. Obviously, Terraria has a big modding scene as well. But I do think it's a bit different when you are taking a game that is still for sale.

Like, MW2, do whatever the fuck you want with it. Skate 3, do what the fuck you want with it. No one actually cares. Yes, MW2 is technically for sale, but the servers are literally unplayable because it's a hacker nightmare. I guess it's not servers, it's peer-to-peer, and that's part of the reason why it's a fucking hacker nightmare. There's some very unpatched remote code execution bugs with that game. Yeah, also the game is just controlled by hackers at this point. Putting aside the remote code execution stuff, every lobby is controlled by hackers.

So I don't really care about it in a case like that. But we're talking about Terraria and a game that you can still buy. I do think it's a bit different, right? It's like, it does feel a little bit weird to be doing that. Like, these tools are going to get more and more powerful. And if you know the engine a game is built in, doing a decomp is considerably easier. And a lot of these games are built in very well documented.

If it's building something like Godot, you don't actually need an AID comp. You can just like, there's just like a tool that you can just open up. up the game files and access everything. I think it's cool. Don't go wrong. I think it is cool. But I do think there's definitely some like ethical implications

of like opening up a game that is still, like, imagine, you know what I think is a big thing is going to happen? Like, I want to see where, like, how AI starts getting applied to like DRM stuff. Because that, like, people are obviously going to be playing around with it. I do wonder if we're going to see more people trying to like break open the DRM systems we have today. And I do wonder what that's going to actually mean for the DRM of the future. Right? Like if you're so many people that are like breaking your, breaking your DRM, pen testing your DRM, some people who are then going to be openly talking about how they did it,

what does that mean for the future of DRM on these what do you know what does that mean for the future of of DRM in general? I don't know I don't know I think it's definitely a discussion that is a discussion that definitely worth having and I think is going to naturally happen

even if people don't necessarily don't necessarily want to have it. Hmm. Anyway, anyway, moving on from that one. Since we're on some gaming stuff anyway, I saw a post the other day. No shot Kingdom Hearts was initially made for younger people. This game is stupidly difficult for no reason.

How old is this person? Okay, they don't say. I think a lot of people don't realize... how games were played in the past. I think people assume, so Kingdom Hearts 1 was 2002. So two things here. One, back in 2002,

there were a lot less people playing games, and the people that were playing games actually played games, right? There was a lot less people that were like, these, you know, kind of like, casual enjoys of games like you have today where, you know, they play like a video game here and there. Like, yeah, people did do that to some extent, but a lot of people playing games, when it was like a smaller hobby, a lot of the people playing games were more interesting games.

But I think a lot of people also misunderstand, like, the kind of resources existed at that time. Well, I think a lot of people assume, oh, it's 2002, you're not going to have the kind of internet resource you have You're not gonna have video guides and yeah, you probably didn't have video guides for a lot of games There were definitely video guides out there. We had I think When did eight when did Web video streaming become possible? Because it used to be Okay, 90s. Okay, it definitely wasn't common back then.

You know this was 2002, so this was This was three years pre-Yosue. So, like, web streaming was not really as much of a thing. But what you did have is, firstly, you had an amazing website that still exists today, and you can still use it today. You have Game Facts. I love Game Facts. Phenomenal website. People don't really talk about nowadays as much.

But this is a website where you just had giant, giant text lists and text blog posts of everything. you need to do. But you also had guides for games as well. But the other thing, though, like, the more important thing is when you're playing games as a kid, compared to when you're playing games as an adult, when you play a game as a kid, especially even as an adult back then, you didn't have as many games available. That's the other core thing. There weren't as many big games that were coming out.

There weren't as many games that you were excited for. because there weren't as many games. Like, yeah, the density of good games, maybe, yeah, the density of good games was higher because there was less games overall. But if you were a kid, and let's say maybe you got like one or, let's see you were like me,

you got like maybe one, maybe two games a year, any other games you got, you likely had rented from Blockbuster or, like, video easy, or any other store like that, where you just like try it out. But if you're not doing that, you're going to play that game. You're going to work it out.

And the thing with Kingdom Hearts 1, the thing I think a lot of people don't remember about Kingdom Hearts 1 is modern Kingdom Hearts 1 is very different, very, very, very different to OG Kingdom Hearts 1. Same with Kingdom Hearts 2. So, if you were playing the original...

Okay, there's actually three versions of Kingdom Hearts 1. You have the JP release, you have the English release, and then you had final mix, which originally was only a GP release. GP Kingdom Hearts 1 and English Kingdom Hearts 1 were not the same game. There was like

some level stuff was rearranged, various other changes. I think some abilities, I think maybe there were some abilities added. I don't think, wait, I think, I have a feeling that KH1, Sephiroth

was not in GP, release. I want to say Sefroffroth was not in the original release. Yeah. Yeah. KH1 original JP release differences. I just want to double check. Differences. Okay, no.

It's comparing it with Final Mix. It's comparing it with Final Mix. No, not Final Mix. The modern final mix release. KH1 original JAP release Differences to original English release That's the other thing The original Kingdom Hearts 1 didn't have

sensible camera controls You controlled the camera with the Left and Right Like L2 and R2 You controlled the camera with those You didn't use the stick For some reason Um

Yeah So the original JP release Only had Phantom as a Superboss English release added Sep Roth, Ice Titan, and Kurt Ziza. The original release didn't have a difficulty selection. Also, there was different, some music changes. Many Heartless in the JP release also had higher HP,

like the Rock Titan was almost fucking double. That fight is already crazy long. Ursula gave more XP. And some recons. had double the HP in JP. Righto. There was some health some MP cost changes. I thought there was some level

differences. Maybe I was wrong with that. Maybe that's only with final mix. Um, well you could you could light the lanterns in Traverse Town with Blizzard. They would make a blue fire. Yeah, I see why they changed that one. But the original... The big thing, the real big thing with the original Kingdom Hearts One release is it didn't have cutscenes skipping.

Cutsene skipping did not exist yet. I think the first Kingdom Hearts game with that was... Rechain? What was the... First Kingdom Hearts Game to have cutscene

skipping I think it was either rechain or final weeks which if it came one Ah no I guess it was two Did two come out before

rechane or rechain or recchain Cuttein skipping later? I don't know I don't know it's important but the thing with not having cutscene skipping is you were determined

to get good at the game. You were determined to get good at games, just in general, but you were determined to get good at this game because Riku Ansel. Riku Ansel. It is I. Ansel.

The Secret of Darkness. Kairi. Kairi's inside me? Anyone who played the original Kingdom Hearts 1 as a kid before cutscene skipping has that cutscene just drilled into their head. You probably saw that cutscene like at least 15 or 20 times.

I think it's like a three minute long cutscene, five minute long cutscene. It was a long cutscene and you saw it over and over and over and over again. So you were going to learn how to play the game. You were determined to get good at the game because you were, You did not want to have to see that cutscene again and again. But the other thing is because you didn't have many games to choose from, you were going to play that game a lot. You were effectively going to become a professional at the game.

You were going to learn how the systems work. You were going to actually engage with the game. Imagine that. Actually having to play a video game rather than the game just playing itself for you, which is a thing that so many games do now. actually had to be a video game player. Crazy. Imagine that. Imagine that you actually had to engage with a game. When games are being made people that cared about games and when games actually made you engage with them, naturally what's going to happen is people are going to, and if you don't have any options to choose from, you're going to get better at a game, right? Like, if I see,

sit, like, you can say, oh, Eldon Ring is hard. If I sit a kid down in front of Eldon Ring, and that's the only game they get. Like, they get Eldon Ring, that's the one game they get for the year. They're going to learn to beat Eldon Ring. They're going to learn the game. I think people assume that kids are morons and just like, you just can't work out how, oh, well, this, this system is so confusing.

And yeah, maybe it is. Maybe it is. But kids are not stupid. In some ways, in some way kids are actually better at dealing with these complex problems. Because especially when you approach something with a pre-established notion of how it's supposed to work and that it doesn't work the way it works, like this is a thing that happens as an adult. A lot of people don't want to play with a system. They don't want to mess with a system. they want it to just work.

When you don't have that preconceived notion, that's what I'm trying to think of, when you don't have that preconceived notion about how a system is supposed to function, like you're naturally going to experiment with it. You're naturally going to try things out and you're naturally going to work out things that work. Maybe you don't have the optimal meta strategy,

but you end up finding something that works for you, right? Like you realize there are ways that you can do this and you're gonna overcome it. Like, this is not an impossibility for you. And if, you know, it is too difficult for you, likely you had, like, friends who were playing the same game as well, and you could, like, you could work it out from that. Like, the idea that, especially Kingdom Hearts,

the idea that Kingdom Hearts is so insanely difficult that you can't, like, there's no way you could have, like, worked out how, this is not even a blue checkmark, this is just someone who's dumb for the love of the game. the fact that you would think that a kid couldn't even work out how a game like Kingdom Hearts functions

like it is the other thing you didn't even have critical mode back then actually is it critical mode in KH1 proud proud mode yeah proud mode I'm pretty sure you didn't have I'm pretty sure you didn't have

proud mode back then yeah KH2 is critical mode so you You're not even like playing the hardest version of the game in the first place. And if you're playing the game on normal especially, yeah, you're going to die. Yeah, you're going to fuck things up. Yeah, you don't have as many tools that you're having Kingdom Hearts too, especially.

You can just fucking reflect spam everything. That's the other thing. Kingdom Hearts too. You didn't have limit form. Limit form was not a thing in the original KH2. Some people say, oh, this is hard, that's hard. Like, you couldn't, like, a thing I see people do now when they fight Sephroff is like, you just like get into a tough spot

and you just limit form. You could, there was no limit. The only forms you had were party member based forms. Like that, that's all the options you had. Now, you didn't have the data fights. So it wasn't as big of a deal there. And yeah, for the data fights,

maybe you do want to use limit form stuff. But like, you definitely don't need it for Sephroth. You can just like, everything you can get out of most part with, like, reflect. Like, reflect. Reflect is broken. There's a reason.

why KH1 is the last game we saw Aero in in the same form it's in. Nowadays, whenever you see Aero, it's always an attack-based spell, because Aero in Kingdom Hearts 1 was basically free damage mitigation and free damage. And there's a reason why we don't see Reflect in later games, because Reflect was a perfect guard that you could spam, that also did damage. Like, there's a very good reason why that's not a thing anymore. more.

Now, KH3 has his own things that are completely broken as well, but that's neither here nor there. And,

you know, DDD is no stranger to having, um, is it ballooner? I think it's Blunera. I think it's Blunra. That was a really busted

spell in that game. We can just like beat everything in the game but just spam ballooner. Or you have, um, is it lethal frame in rechain?

Rechain. Rechain, lethal. lethal frame lethal yeah lethal frame yeah yeah where you just

break most of the game by just spamming lethal frame you just build a lethal frame deck and you just win most of the fights in the game without any difficulty whatsoever um

there's plenty of other ways to cheese rechain though because it's a very broken game but just learn to play video games engage with a video game actually play the video game that's the thing

I do watch stream I don't really watch videos sometimes when I'm grinding away in a game but like if I actually want to like get you know into a game I turn off anything else I don't watch a stream

I don't watch a video if like I'm in a story segment or something I actually engage with the video game and try to like you know enjoy what it is. I think it was Josh Strive Hayes that said at one point where it's like

you have to actually give part of yourself to a game if you actually like a game can only do so much you actually have to engage with the game you have to give a part of yourself to the game to the game to

really truly enjoy it. Right? It's something where you really need to actually be willing to give part of yourself to a game. Otherwise, you know, any game's going to be terrible if you're not going to engage with the game.

If you're not going to engage with the systems, you're not going to like, you know, if all you're going to do is spam one thing and in some cases, you know, might be the best thing to do in the game. It's not going to be a... It's going to be no wonder that you don't enjoy it. Now, that doesn't mean like...

It doesn't mean a game is good if you just choose not to engage with the optimal path. You know, there's the whole thing of, oh, you choose the buttons that you press, and it's one of the fucking most annoying... Like, I think it was... What was the thing you heard of like a Doom Twitter account? You choose the...

you press. Yeah, yeah. This is one of the... Yeah, this is actually such a fucking true statement. You control the buttons you press or ruined so much gaming discourse. So, I think this was about some, like...

What was even the context of the post? Um... The new ice bomb will let you freeze demons in place in Doom Eternal. We have an option to turn off that canon and play like class... and play classic like good old times. you control the buttons you press.

The problem with that statement is yes, you control the buttons you press, but that also applies to you as the developer. You control the systems you build into the game. If you build systems into a game where there is a path that is like 10 times more optimal than any other path, there should be no surprise when people go down that path

and then don't have any fun with the game. And that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any overpowered builds. But I do think that anytime you have something that is a overpowered strategy to do something, it should have some sort of drawback or some sort of mitigating factor that means you can't just immediately go down it. There should be something about it.

You need to put some commitment into this. You need to get to a certain high level. Get some weird gear. Like, things that you actually need to do to actually unlock that, right? Like, a lot of the crazy, powerful builds in Elton Ring require quite a bit investment, finding certain items, leveling up in a certain way, getting certain spells. Stuff like this, which takes you time to get there. And that's, like, becoming overpowered through your journey.

as a player through your journey as a character, I think is cool. Like, it is so cool to get really broken abilities and then go and stomp on an area that absolutely cooked you at some point earlier in the game. Like, that's always an amazing feeling. What's not an amazing feeling is five minutes into the game, you get something, and then you decide to never replace that for the rest of the game, because it is the most optimal thing that you can use throughout the rest of the game. Like that's not fun, right? That's not fun at all. But it is a thing with how many,

how so many games are designed. It's like some early ability is just so broken that, well, there's not really any reason to engage, like, to engage with anything else that happens because everything else is just a, kind of a downgrade of where you're at. And even, like, even good games, even good games fall into this problem as well.

Like, I was playing through, I've been playing the trail series on Nightmare. Third was a... Third is the one game that I didn't do all of the fights in because I did not want to do the Lewe and Cassius fight. Like, it was not going to happen at all.

Third was so... Third was so luck dependent with some of those encounters. I had no interest in spending months. trying to make that happen. But in zero, in zero... Actually, it... Was it in zero? Wait, sorry.

Trails from zero party members. Yeah, so you got a couple of... Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. So there are a couple of cases where you got some guest characters. Guest characters are party members that don't stick around. The problem is,

the core party of zero, was kind of so broken. Lloyd doesn't... Ellie specifically was so fucking broken that there was no reason to ever remove her from the party. So Ellie had this ability,

which got nerfed in Asia for good fucking reason because it was too broken where basically you have this AOE heel, but it's not just an AOE heel. So ALEA heals by itself already good enough. It also recovers some of your craft points.

Now, the problem is it recovers the points for everyone in the circle that gets healed. Who's in the circle? Well, Ellie can be in the circle. So you basically have this move that you infinitely heal. the party and infinitely, and then combine it with like another couple of items where you can regenerate those points even faster, you basically just have an infinite healing circle, which is obviously broken. Another thing that was very broken in zero, still kind of broken in Azio, is um,

another reason I would never take Randy out of the party is there is this item you can, this is a move you can do, which blinds the entire group of enemies, and pretty much do anything that are not immune to blind, that are immune to blind, sorry, are bosses. Anything else, for the most part, you can just blind them. And Zero introduced the ability to, when a enemy misses you, you miss the enemy as well, a counterattack happens. So if they're blind and they're missing constantly,

it breaks things very quickly. Now, the earlier games also had a ton of problems there as well. You know, you combine that with like Petrify or if you did the same thing with Tita back in the Sky series, you have the same problem where you just petrify every single enemy. And Petrification, no one heals it. Not a single enemy heals Petrification. Maybe there's like one boss. No one else heals petrification.

So, petrification is a permanent, uh, permanent status effect. What happens in petrification? Well, you attack them. Doesn't matter how much they have, they die. Obviously very broken. But these are builds that you have to engage with. These are choices you have to make. Now, the Ellie stuff, not so much. The problem with Ellie is she was so busted in Zero

that there was never a reason to remove her from the party. So I basically never switched out anyone, but the core party from zero. Now, as you're slightly fixes this by not starting you with the main people from zero again, so you actually have to make some choices. The problem is, when you get them, Ellie is a little less busted, Randy is still, he's still Randy. Tio can still summon Zyte who can still break everything, um, with attack delays.

But at least there's like some sort of a reason to maybe bring Wuzzy into the party. Maybe if you feel like it, even if it's just to use the combo crafts. Um, but I got very side tensioned there. Uh, the, the main point I'm trying to get at here is even good games have this problem, but I do like it when a game sort of either encourages you for exploration or some sort of like complex path to get something, right? Like Dark Souls 1, there were

really good things you could get really early on if you knew how to get them. But they were not things that were just handed to you. For example, you could get the Claymore at the start of the game when you got to Firelink Shrine. Like you could just go into the graveyard, grab the Claymore and have the best two-hand weapon for most of the game.

You could argue some other weapons might be better in some context, but like at that point of the game, by far the best two-handed sword. Or you could go and cut the tail off of the dragon and you could get the most busted weapon until like halfway through the game because whilst it doesn't scale well, it had just ludicrously higher stats than anything else. But this is stuff that sort of encourages you for exploring. Because normally, if you were to like follow the path the game would expect you to go,

you wouldn't get the Claymore until you're ready to go fight Grave Lord Nido. By that point, yeah, the Claymore is a good weapon. But like, it's not fundamentally changing stuff. And with the Dragon Tale, if you don't get it before the dragon leaves, you don't get it. So you just miss that entirely. but I like it when a game has these has these neat ways to get things that you otherwise wouldn't get.

Like that's cool. That's always cool to like sort of reward the player for experimenting with stuff and reward the player for, again, reward the player for engaging with the game. Not just saying, oh, you control the buttons you press, but actually giving users, giving players a reason

to engage with the systems you've designed because you've designed really cool and really engaging systems. So, I realize I've got a bunch of topics on here that I just haven't covered at all. I guess I'll move some of these later on. I did want to talk a bit about the Steam Controller, but I'll probably save that for a bit of a longer discussion

next time, I reckon. I guess briefly, because it won't be relevant then. Maybe I'll talk about it more next time. There has been an issue with OpenAI breaking into various things it shouldn't be breaking into their agents going off and breaking into government services. We had a big Medicare attack here in Australia very recently. there was another situation where a bunch of US government websites were also broken into by... Did I copy the link wrong? Apparently I might have copied the link wrong.

Okay, whatever. Various US government websites were also broken into as well. This is a problem. And this is a problem which is only going to get worse. it's going to get much, much worse before it gets better because these tools again are getting much, much more powerful, much better,

much faster, and more expensive to run, a lot more expensive to run, not little data heavy and power heavy and all this good stuff, but at the same time, much more powerful. And what that means in the future,

only time is going to tell on that front, but what I can certainly say is, uh, hey, maybe, uh, maybe, maybe, maybe it's time to get worried. Maybe the AI overlords coming for us and, uh, you know, everything's gonna be broken into. Or maybe we're gonna, maybe we're gonna get to a point where, you know, the AI is so good that security doesn't even matter anymore and just, everything's public. There's no, there's no privacy anymore. Everything's public and it's probably a pretty bad world, but, hey, maybe everyone has a personal AI agent that keeps them private. Maybe that's, maybe that's throughout we go.

everyone's just fighting everyone's AI is just fighting over supremacy over who the King AI is going to be who knows all I know is I think we're going to end it off there for the day

because I want to go to sleep because it is night time as you can tell I'm recording this after I got back from work I didn't get a chance to record it earlier I was busy earlier today and I'll probably I've got some videos to record tomorrow

which I wouldn't normally be doing, but I'm recording them tomorrow because, again, I was busy today. I'm recording this on Thursday as of the recording. That is the 30th of September. Anyway, I'm going to bounce today, so be good, be safe. I'm probably just going to turn my fan on because it is really warm in here right now. Maybe the air conditioner on for a little bit.

And, uh, yeah, yeah, I guess, keep yourself safe, chill out, got a drink, do whatever you need to do. and um don't let the AI break into your house I guess anyway that's gonna be it for me so

a video podcast on YouTube and Spotify as always the audio is on every podcast platform and that is going to be it for me for today so I am gonna go and I am