I’d argue Skyrim etc have an “open world” above ground in addition to many “linear worlds” , i.e. the caves and houses behind loading screens. Open world games let you choose where to go and how to get there, as opposed to linear “corridor” games like Half Life or Halo where you literally follow a single path from A to B as you progress from one level to the next.

Then there’s games like original Fable which blurs the line, because technically you choose where to go and how to get there, but each loading area is so small, it doesn’t feel like an open world at all. And also you can’t go off the path.

Btw if you don’t like loading screens, have you tried Space Engineers? You can literally travel from one full sized planet (~40km diameter) to another full sized without a single loading screen. While flying you can walk around the inside or outside of your spaceship, no loading screens.

Xchat with its sleek tab interface was the bomb

I agree after seeing the patent , there’s nothing groundbreaking or novel there.

Replace video for audio then there’s already prior art for both control and synchronization with Sonos (2005). And a plethora of Winamp web interface plugins.

For video there was already the XMBC web interface. Sure there was no “app”, but the patent is vague enough that the web-browser on the smartphone accessing the web interface can be considered the app

After looking at the patent it’s clear it’s way too vague, generic and obvious. It should never have been granted. (I Am Not A patent Lawyer). For one the XMBC web interface from 2009ish is prior art.

Technically the Kodi remote control app would be in violation of the patent, except it doesn’t use any “back end server system”.

If you replace the words “display” and “video” with “speaker” and “audio” then the Spotify app would be in violation as well, as it allows changing the playback device to any of your logged in devices.

Come to think of it, if you use Firefox on mobile to access YouTube, then “send tab to other device”, and send it to a desktop computer connected to a big screen, it could be interpreted as violating the patent as it’s using Mozilla’s “back end server” to relay the message

Depends on what exactly was covered in the patent. The article only says

invented technology in 2010 to “move” videos from a small device like a smartphone to a larger device like a television.

Which is vague and an obvious bogus patent. Prior art exists in both the digital and analogue space

No mention of OCR? Copy-pasting links or data will be a joy…

Proxmox is so good it’s hard to believe. It’s VMware levels of features and convenience, while also supporting LXC containers, no license shenanigans, no enshitification, and the full flexibility of Debian under the hood

The recent-ish addition of Proxmox Backup Server is the cherry on top, with de-duplicated , incremental system image level backups with support for individual file restore

Yes both!

I use Qalc for unit conversions (I often need to convert measuring units without acces to internet) and SpeedCrunch for everything else

Agreed, that sounds perfect for right now.

A certain community I’m subscribed to is very active right now, to the point of almost drowning out all other committees in my feed. A “temporary hide” would be very welcome

And scrolling up and down constantly cause there’s not enough screenspace to show all the information (because 90% of the screenspace is empty or used for enourmous padding)

Have you tried hackernews?

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