Hacker News: Akronymus

New comment by Akronymus in "CSSQuake"

Akronymus — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 18:06:52 +0000

Id assume "a fun challenge" could be enough of a reason

New comment by Akronymus in "A generic dynamic array in C that stores no capacity and needs no struct"

Akronymus — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:11:14 +0000

That's pretty clever code. Too clever for my tastes.

New comment by Akronymus in "The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)"

Akronymus — Sun, 31 May 2026 21:54:18 +0000

Oh right. Guess the " (2 bits per color? how is that possible)" is what threw me off there, because I read it as 2 bits per colour channel, rather than cga colour. Of course, "indexed" colours can get away with much fewer bits.

New comment by Akronymus in "The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)"

Akronymus — Sun, 31 May 2026 21:43:45 +0000

> (2 bits per color? how is that possible).

this is probably a rhetorical question, but lemme answer anyways: By packing the colour channels into a single byte. So, for example, you'd have RRGGBBAA within a single byte, for each pixel. Giving you 64 possible colours, with 4 steps of alpha.

Or if you don't need to have alpha, you could pack it even further down to RRGGBB in a byte, which leaves 2 bits left over for the next pixel. Via that, you can pack four pixels worth of colour data into 3 bytes: RRGGBBRR|GGBBRRGG|BBRRGGBB (italics for delineting pixels, vertical bars for delineting bytes)

The latter is a tradeoff between compression and a more complex accessing pattern.

A bit of a tangent, some system used RRRGGGBB for colours, because the eyes are the least sensitive to differentiating the amount of blue, so that's another way to use up a full byte per pixel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

New comment by Akronymus in "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion"

Akronymus — Sun, 31 May 2026 06:13:47 +0000

The movement explicitly DOESNT want to force companies to keep their servers running. It is singularily concerned with keeping games playable in some form after shutdown. Be it via patching out the requirement on a server, providing a way to host it yourself or any other option, really.

New comment by Akronymus in "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion"

Akronymus — Sun, 31 May 2026 06:10:45 +0000

Hopefully SKG can serve as a precedent to help consumer rights expand.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:48:11 +0000

Battle passes/mtx would IMO definitely fall under monetary considerations, which would make the excemption not apply. But as is written now, there still needs to be a precedent set for that, to really cement that interpretation

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:26:45 +0000

Gray area, as in it has to be ruled on in court because that's 100% gonna be an avenue for some companies to try and weasel out of obligations.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:01:34 +0000

My comment was not meant as any form of value judgement upon the game at all. Only that it is an example I could think of where the death of the game was communicated upfront and where it was expected.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:47:13 +0000

It's not endless support but more "Don't stop me from playing the game". For example, win xp is no longer supported. You can still use it.

For a lot of games the current situation is essentially the same as "The OS is no longer profitable enough, so the developer prevents you from using it"

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:44:20 +0000

And then lose the rights to those franchises/codebases/etc? I don't think that'll realistically happen.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:42:17 +0000

Then communicate that lifespan front and center. One game I can think of that did that, afair, was "the cube" from peter molyneux.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:35:08 +0000

I doubt it, as that'd not nullify the contract established by people who bought the game before it went FTP.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:33:28 +0000

I can absolutely see how you came to your interpretation. Thanks for being so cordial.

This definitely has to be ruled on to know one way or another for sure.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:27:28 +0000

> Currently I'm heavily playing both a free-to-play with microtransactions title (Heroes of the Storm) and a subscription title (EVE Online), both of which are live service games which would be exempt from this bill by definition, but are both games I would meaningfully like to play even if the companies decided they didn't want to run them anymore. (Yes, I'm aware both games I am playing regularly are old as time itself.)

[emphasis mine]

AFAICT, the MTX would make HOTS not be eligible for the "no monetary considerations" carveout.

Edit, didn't realize you were the same person I replied to on another comment, sorry for repeating myself.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:24:29 +0000

> > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.

I'd argue buying any form of MTX creates a monetary consideration. Though, I guess it is kind of a gray area that's gonna have to be ruled on.

> This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.

I didn't intend to mean additional stuff being free. I meant additional stuff you can buy, resulting in the no monetary considerations carveout not applying.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:20:59 +0000

Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think.

Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:15:09 +0000

No, the reasonable compromise should be that the game remains playable, how that is achieved is up to the dev. Some will release the binaries, some make the spec open to the public for people to implement their own, some will patch out the online requirement, etc...

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:13:41 +0000

That'd IMO count as a monetary consideration, and thus not be excempt.

New comment by Akronymus in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

Akronymus — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:12:09 +0000

As someone in the movement since basically the beginning, this bill is enough in a lot of areas.

Subscription games already always had a "no pay, no play" expectation, so I don't see any problem with that carveout. The only real problem I can see is that in-game purchases in free to play games are not additionally explicitly named. (Though, "no monetary considerations" shouldn't include ftp + mtx)

Also, most gamepass games are available for purchase as well, so I don't see the problem there either, except the possibility that a game is removed from gamepass so you lose access despite paying, but that's something for the courts to figure out.