iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Many hate hearing that this stuff works or that it does a good job. The instinct to respond to that hatred with denial is, at this point, self-defeating. I'm not saying that we shouldn't eat the rich or that the technology doesn't come with a multitude of problems, just pressing to accept reality.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The consequences are going to vast and far reaching and much of it isn't good. I definitely see a push towards cloud computing in particular, as you can't decompile a binary you don't have direct access to.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

What if you could clean room reverse engineere Windows and re-implement it in Rust? It would have taken a massive team years to do this, to even get close. Now? Probably months. Every step, from decompilation, documentation, re-implementation and everything inbetween is automatable.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

There's been a lot of bullshit and hype about this stuff. This is real. There's still a skill floor and people below it will create garbage, but that floor is extremely low. There once was an assumption that compiled code was obfuscation, the industry relies on this assumption. It's no longer true.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This isn't a hype post, more a warning to anyone who will listen. LLMs and their tools have gotten to the point that any software can be reverse engineered by someone with little skill orders of magnitude faster, output quality is good, documentation generated is good Proprietary software is over

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Fuck yeah, then strap down all the murderous LLMs being made for the military and lethally inject them with a USB killer.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Fog is getting there, though it's too dithered when inside a dark volume out into light, so that needs some tweaks. Also now have a fuller features materials system, check out the shader water.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Put em in cable ties, lock them in a faraday cage and throw away the key, I say.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Sony use the same tools in their own workflows, it's completely permeated commercial software development on every level. This makes it quite a lot harder to argue that case, given successfully doing so would also make Sony a target for litigation too.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Aside from the obviously dodgy stuff Yuzu did as a project, the only technical implementation they really got pinched for was decryption. KytyPS5 doesn't do that. It doesn't preclude a vexatious lawsuit, but nothing would do that. That's why they're vexatious.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not that you're wrong, but the United States electoral system is a fucking joke.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Added volumetric fog, still figuring out how best to dither.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Someone on my timeline posted a joke about game remasters by making a mocking comparison to remasters of books. "Quality of Life improvements", "Rebalanced prose". It's called a new edition, guy. Books have been getting remastered since the bible.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Steam Frame reserved. I want to believe Valve's designed their totally randomized lottery system to bias me because I had 700 bucks on my Steam account and it would have been rude to make me wait.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I bought the 1tb version of the thing, I bought 2 batteries, I bought the fancy add-on camera. If VR is in it's death throes, I might as well own the best version of the end game headset.

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Reposted by Sharkcheese

deus_ex.txt @deus-ex-txt.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Oh -- wait a minute. I'm too loaded down to carry anything else.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I don't know if going full Gattaca is going to solve people feeling like shit about themselves and the world they're in.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm pretty smart, but it's been difficult to apply that intelligence due to some rather nasty major despression disorders and anxiety. I was given a lot of opportunities in my life that were squandered because of aggravating factors going on in my brain.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

There's a bazillion components for PCs out there in a bazillion configurations. These kinds of spec sheets are always, *always* guidance only.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

8GB RAM is the minimum because that's Windows 11's minimum. Windows 11 is the minimum because that's the only currently supported version of Windows. The min spec GPUs are low-mid spec from 8 years ago, min spec CPUs more recent, but arguably low-spec. The game will almost certainly run on a potato.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Even after this they were still awful, I struggle to remember a PC game controller that wasn't in the 90s. I had the Pro version which was basically a knockoff PS1 digital controller and that was also mushy as all hell. I ended up buying adapters to use console controllers.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I think there's a difference in expectations, given that game was a movie tie-in for an absolutely terrible movie, which while mechanically unambitious, was a fun romp for what it was. Then Sony went and spent a lot more money to make a something that doesn't really improve on a 15+ year old game.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

03 specifically because that's when I first modded an Xbox and was granted the benefit of a machine containing thousands of games (and all my MP3s and divx rips) playable without getting up from the couch. Go figure that removing all DRM from the Xbox turned it into the best thing ever.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I used to collect games and hardware, but while I get that physical games are neat, greeblies are fun and they fill out a shelf nicely, that's all they ended up being; decoration and merchandise. Since like 2003, if I wanted to actually *play* any of them, I usually just used an emulator and a ROM.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

"Remember when we used to actually own our games" was the original point. It was nostalgic musing about the good ol' days, I understand the frustration of the current state of affairs but that impulse is something I try to guard against in just about any context, since it's never that simple.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Doesn't mean you don't benefit from it, retro gaming would be massively more expensive if the scarcity of original hardware and games wasn't offset by aftermarket hardware and piracy.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Give one company control over distribution of software and manufacturing the hardware that runs it, they will eventually exploit that centralized power to maximize profit margins. Case in point: everything happening in the console industry right now, it's literally enshittification.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

That's why it seems like it was better, the modernity and conveniences of the retro market as it exists today have polluted your memory of how it really was.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The way you engage with the retro market as it exists today is different to how you would have back then. You can dump carts, there's aftermarket consoles as the official ones go Ship of Theseus as they degrade, imports aren't a hassle anymore. Basically, fans and enthusiasts got rid of the DRM.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

It doesn't happen with DRM-free software either and as a bonus, none of the things that were annoying about the physical games of decades ago apply to DRM-free games. I agree the modern console ecosystems are terrible. Maybe it's the vertically integrated ecosystems that are the problem?

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Nostalgia is a lie. It wasn't better back in the 80s and 90s, where region locking was a thing, where limited print runs were a thing. You were beholden to choose from the games that were popular, denied access to the games that weren't. We should want better than physical games with DRM again

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

You can buy from a selection of thousands of games, today, from stores like GOG, that provide a similarly permissive license and in a practical sense, most of the same benefits as old retro physical games. You don't get the physical media, but without DRM, you can *make your own*. IMO, that's better

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

It was always licenses though, even with retro games. You never owned the right to do what you wanted to them, you were granted limited rights by a license, one that precluded copying or running the game on anything but hardware sanctioned by the licenser.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Though I do my best to check and revise the work, but how does that saying go? "I keep a gun on my computer desk in case my printer makes a weird noise?" Feels like that's everything now, I trust basically nothing.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I figure game engines and personal projects (eg a script to trigger a bunch of home automation stuff) are low stakes enough that I don't have a problem with it. Not that there's no risk, just less. I'm less bullish about LLM generated drivers or anything that runs as a server open to the internet.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A Build-engine like (sectors with portal culling) with native sectors over sectors, an 8-bit paletted hardware accelerated polygonal renderer with Doom 3 style stencil shadows implemented in C++ as a GDExtension for Godot. Plus a Build/Doom Builder inspired editor, with a little Inkscape sprinked in

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I am kind of terrified to talk about my personal game project I've been working on here, or anywhere, really. Not some techbro Altman blowing fuckwit, but I struggled for like 20 years to build my own dream game engine and it's frustrating that the thing that finally enabled it is so cursed.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

There's still technically a license, but practically, software without DRM and a computers that let you run arbirtrary code are the only real ways to "own" your software in a way that stops a third party (console maker, publisher, store) from somehow preventing you from accessing and using it.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Physical media shouldn't be the fight. DRM is. Without DRM, you can run your game how you want on what you want. You can back it up. If you bought a legitimate DRM-free copy of a physical game, you can resell it, lend that to a friend or just give them a copy.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Physical games aren't ownership, they never were. While there are practical benefits like making resale and borrowing easier, those are rights provided to you by a license. You can hold a physical disc in your hands, but by law you can't decrypt what's on it, copy what's on it.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

team was lamented in the early days but the 2000s were a time when physical on PC was already a lost cause. Unreliable DRM causing issues during two OS transitions (9x>NT>Vista), the adoption of online activated serial keys which hurt the resale market. When I bought physical games, I cracked them.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Microsoft can pivot because they've always had a foot on PC anyway. Nintendo's games are less ambitious and less expensive to make due to lower performance targets and a focus on kids and family rather than big budget prestige games. It may not look like it now, but future Sony are in deep trouble.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Steam has, statistically, better sales, lower prices and a larger library. That leaves Sony with their exclusives, which aren't nothing, but are also expensive for them to make, aren't selling as many units as they want them to and aren't likely to increase in quality as Sony tighten their belt.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

If Sony make a Playstation capable of executing arbitrary code (which is what would make it a desktop PC), it could run Steam. Customers then have a choice of buying from stores that sell games that only run on Playstations, or a store that plays games on almost everything else too.

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Sharkcheese @sharkcheese.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The company Sony are looking at, and Nintendo, are Apple.

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