Yeah to be fair I don’t use it either. These days I tend to just look for editors with good markdown support.

I love orgmode to a point, but when I tried to learn how to do the more complex stuff, that syntax began to make my eyes bleed.

Emacs is available in Android now, right on F-Droid.

The thing I don’t get about these self-host apps is why so many of them exist when the thing they do would be better to implement as a run of the mill offline program.

I just want to auto-import recipes from websites into a cookbook app without any fuss. We do not need to bring a server into this equation!

Joke’s on Nintendo, they already lost me as a customer back in the 3DS days, and I do not own a Switch for them to brick. 🖕

But if any Switch games look interesting enough to play, I’ll be happy to emulate them on my Steam Deck or PC. 🙃

It would, if there were no other options for package management. Package formats don’t have to be either/or. My systems typically end up with mixes of native packages, flatpak, appimages, and you could technically consider Steam a package management system as well.

The problem is they’re making it suck more, by piling their usual proprietary shitware on top of it.

I would love to have a good pair of ar glasses to play games on my Steam Deck with. Connect a controller, and not have to hold up the heavy Deck itself.

But given Apple’s propensity for walled gardens and lock-in, and Meta putting manipulative spyware into everything they make, these hypothetical glasses won’t be coming from either of those companies.

Absolutely my favorite. Just download and go. Super portable.

This will never happen.

15 or so years ago people were saying the same thing about decentralized social media. Yet here we are.

The problem with decentralized stuff is that anyone can put anything, so piracy will be omnipresent there

This isn’t unique to decentralized platforms. Piracy is omnipresent. Yet people still buy stuff. But to address your question more concretely, imagine the store system is designed to be federated. Any instance owner can decide to what degree they would enforce anti-piracy measures. DMCA law requires a good faith effort on the part of a site owner to stop piracy, so any instance owner who wants to run a legitimate shop must properly vet game submissions to make sure they aren’t infringing copyright, and aren’t plagiarizing. They would also have to defederate from all pirate instances, but they would not be responsible for instances that have nothing to do with their own. People who choose to use the instances for piracy would be off on the margins of the internet, just like they are now.

why would you pay for a game when the seller next store is giving it away for free (or much cheaper)

Good question, since you already have that option for virtually all games, why do you pay for them? My reasons are because I generally do want to support the creators I like, as well as because a lot of pirated content is questionable in quality (ie., potential malware). Why do people pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux when they can get the same OS for free, even legally? Continuing support in that case. Point is, people buy because they believe the value of buying is greater than what’s available for free, whatever reasons those might be.

and how would you distinguish between “EA” selling the Sims 1 there and “TheRealEA” selling the Sims 1 there for the same price.

I dunno dude, how do we do this now? A stupid checkmark? There’s gotta be better ways than a stupid checkmark. PGP signatures would probably be a good start. Maybe incorporate a web of trust implementation? How does Valve do it? I’m not an expert on the subject, here’s a Wikipedia page about the topic.

Also decentralized card information is a bad idea, so you would either need a centralized paying hub, setup your card with every seller, or only be able to use crypto to pay, all of those are bad in their own way.

Yeah, let that be a problem for the person who wants to decentralize payment systems. A more practical solution? Just include the popular payment methods that already exist. Except crypto currencies, that shit can fuck off.

You gave all these explanations for why a decentralized game shop couldn’t work, but all of them are not only not especially hard to solve for such a platform, but are also just common challenges for all of the internet. It’s like the 90s all over again when people insisted that open-source software itself couldn’t work. Yet, again, here we are.

Lol. All I’m trying to say is that Vi at least tries to adhere to the Unix philosophy, and knows it’s a text editor. Emacs is more of an Eldritch creature.

I’d like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There’s still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.

One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to “do some searches,” because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.

But people still make new games for these old systems. It’s entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they’re jailbroken!)

I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.

I get the joke, but does it really make sense to even begin comparing Emacs to Vi(m) anymore? It’s almost like comparing a full Linux distro to nano.

I don’t know how it compares, but I’ve been meaning to give Zettlr a try. The thing about notes apps is, to me at least, few digital tools are more personal. For some people it’s their diaries. Because of that I would consider privacy to be such a critical feature that I would never even consider using a proprietary app no matter how many bells and whistles it has, or how many people swear by it.

I love Godot even though I still lack the skills necessary to actually make a game.

If I remember correctly, Blender began it’s life as a closed source commercial product, but then later went open-source under new stewardship.

I guess that would beg the question, how much is it worth to you pay extra to not have additional spyware in your home? Or as others have said in this thread, there is at least one brand of television that still sells dumb tvs.

Simple solution I use: Fuck television sets, get a computer monitor and basic speakers instead. A display should do only one thing and do it well.

Pinta has become my favorite image editing tool. Every other one I feel like I have to fight with in order to do anything (looking at you Gimp), but Pinta is so easy and intuitive it’s a joy to use.

Right, that was always my understanding too, but I do know that there are also anti-circumvention laws that play a more direct role in the jailbreaking scene. I’m just not up-to-date on what’s going on with that these days.

Sacrilege.