TheTon (u/TheTon) - Readit News

TheTon commented on The realities of being a pop star itscharlibb.substack.com/... · Posted by u/lovestory

Insanity · 23 days ago

It was interesting and a fun read, but not a “good piece of writing” in my opinion. Apart from some spelling mistakes, the sentences droned on and it read more like a semi-coherent rant than a thoughtful piece on “being a pop star”.

TheTon · 23 days ago

I admit I started reading with some skepticism. It didn't read like PR, so I assumed I was reading fanfic. By the midpoint, she managed to convince me otherwise.

I think the author is walking a tightrope between convincing the reader that she wrote this herself and that there's more depth to her than what we see on stage or in pop media. Writing this blog is definitely a tougher assignment than doing podcast interviews or behind the scenes videos.

You are right, of course, a good editor could make this better, but I think she's deliberately avoiding that here. A pop star is unwise to fire a good producer without a better replacement, but sometimes they have to bring out the piano and do an acoustic performance live.

TheTon commented on Steam Machine store.steampowered.com/sa... · Posted by u/davikr

imp0cat · a month ago

Try for yourself. I get 4k120Hz when connecting my laptop directly via HDMI.

TheTon · a month ago

Yeah I have tried it for myself. I am limited to 4K60 when using the HDMI 2.0 port on either my M1 Mac mini or M1 Pro MacBook Pro and LG B2 TV. I do get 4K120 with VRR with newer Macs with HDMI 2.1 as well as my Xbox Series X. It has been my understanding that 4K120 with HDR and VRR requires HDMI 2.1, which is why those HDMI 2.0 limited systems don’t work. Not having a Steam Machine myself, I would assume its HDMI 2.0 port would be similarly limited.

Edit: I should add, I do get 4K120 VRR and HDR on the M1 Macs when connected to a monitor via Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt to DisplayPort adapter, and I would expect a Steam Machine to be similar using DisplayPort, but my TV only has HDMI input and so can’t work in this mode (and a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter doesn’t work either).

TheTon commented on Steam Machine store.steampowered.com/sa... · Posted by u/davikr

max-leo · a month ago

After commenting i looked up the actual capabilities of the port and it turns out while the port is officially only HDMI 2.0 it actually still supports 120Hz, HDR and VRR anyway. So basically it only doesn't support Display Stream Compression for 144Hz and beyond.

I quickly tested this by connecting my PC running Linux with a RX 6800 to my TV (LG C4). 120Hz, VRR and HDR were all available.

TheTon · a month ago

At 4K? Or are you limited to a lower resolution due to bandwidth constraints?

TheTon commented on Steam Machine store.steampowered.com/sa... · Posted by u/davikr

rkozik1989 · a month ago

Yeah, I am pretty sure most heavy gamers in 2004 were knee deep into MMOs and FPSes.

TheTon · a month ago

There isn’t a single one way to be a dedicated gamer.

Inevitably everyone has finite time and access to games and has to make choices about what to play.

As a Mac guy, I always found the game platform wars weird because even on the weakest gaming platform there are still more good games than anyone can individually play. And even on Windows, probably the strongest gaming platform, you’re still missing out on many significant games.

I totally understand buying a system because it has some game that you absolutely must play. I bought an OG Xbox back in the day because I thought I desperately needed to play Deus Ex: Invisible War when it didn’t come to Mac. Got burned on that one, but at least I had Halo before it came to Mac (and was in the end much better there than on Xbox due to expanded online multiplayer).

What I actually don’t get is folks who have to play the hot game of the week every week. Just seems expensive in terms of money, time, and space for different systems, and you only scratch the surface of the games.

TheTon commented on Steam Machine store.steampowered.com/sa... · Posted by u/davikr

max-leo · a month ago

> HDMI 2.0

The HDMI Forum yet again rearing it's ugly head by continuing to block GPU manufacturers from implementing HDMI 2.1 in the Open Source drivers

TheTon · a month ago

This is a big miss for me. I can’t use my TVs 120Hz VRR mode without HDMI 2.1.

I realize the Xbox Series X is beleaguered at this point, but apart from playing games that are on Steam but not Xbox, I can’t see why I would prefer the Steam Machine.

TheTon commented on 987654321 / 123456789 johndcook.com/blog/2025/1... · Posted by u/ColinWright

jedberg · 2 months ago

This was by far the most interesting part to me. I've never considered that code and proofs can be so complementary. It would be great if someone did this for all math proofs!

"Why include a script rather than a proof? One reason is that the proof is straight-forward but tedious and the script is compact.

A more general reason that I give computational demonstrations of theorems is that programs are complementary to proofs. Programs and proofs are both subject to bugs, but they’re not likely to have the same bugs. And because programs made details explicit by necessity, a program might fill in gaps that aren’t sufficiently spelled out in a proof."

TheTon · 2 months ago

As a kid, I was marginally decent at competitive math. Not good like you think of kids who dominate those type of competitions at a high level, but like I could qualify for the state competition type good.

What I was actually good, or at least fast at, was TI-Basic, which was allowed in a lot of cases (though not all). Usually the problems were set up so you couldn’t find the solution using just the calculator, but if you had a couple of ideas and needed to choose between them you could sometimes cross off the wrong ones with a program.

The script the author gives isn’t a proof itself, unless the proposition is false, in which case a counter example always makes a great proof :p

TheTon commented on Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 developer.apple.com/docum... · Posted by u/summarity

dagmx · 2 months ago

With the exception of AVFoundation, I’d covered all of those in my comments. That’s not a lot of surface area. Games are typically not using a significant portion of AppKit beyond what I already mentioned, and AVFoundation is likely also a very thin wrapper that is maintainable.

I’m assuming Apple isn’t going to arbitrarily restrict what runs but will remove things to just the subset that they believe are needed for games such that other stuff just implicitly won’t work.

TheTon · 2 months ago

Is it practical for Apple to produce a set of frameworks for Intel that run some useful set of old games but that do not run any useful set of non game software?

I grant it’s probably possible to do, but I think that is a lot more work and more error prone than just continuing to ship the major frameworks as they were.

From Apple’s perspective I’m sure they have a few big goals here:

1. Encourage anyone who wants to continue offering software on Mac to update their builds to include arm64.

2. Reduce download size, on disk size, and memory use of macOS.

3. Reduce QA burden of testing ancient 3rd party software.

These are also the same motivations Apple had when they eliminated 32 bit Intel and when they eliminated Rosetta 1, but they were criticized especially for leaving behind game libraries.

Arguably, arbitrarily restricting what runs gets them the biggest slice of their goals with the minimum work. Devs are given the stick. People typically only play 1 game at a time and then quit it, so there isn’t a bunch of Intel code in RAM all the time because of a few small apps hanging out, and they have less to test because it’s a finite set of games. It just will chafe because if they do that then you know that some unblessed software could run but Apple is just preventing it to make their lives easier.

TheTon commented on Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 developer.apple.com/docum... · Posted by u/summarity

rincebrain · 2 months ago

If you'd like to see an interesting parallel, go look at how Microsoft announced supporting DirectX 12 on Windows 7 for a blessed apps list - basically because Blizzard whined hard enough and was a big enough gorilla to demand it.

TheTon · 2 months ago

That's one implementation, yeah, just have a list somewhere of approved software and make an artificial limitation. But their announcement is so vague, it's hard to say.

And then the next question is why? It's not like they've ever promised much compatibility for old software on new macOS. Why not let it be just best effort, if it runs it runs?

TheTon commented on Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 developer.apple.com/docum... · Posted by u/summarity

dagmx · 2 months ago

Could you give examples at least of what you think that big collective footprint might include?

Bear in mind that a large chunk of Mac gaming right now that needs translation are windows games translated via crossover.

TheTon · 2 months ago

As I said in my first comment, it's at least Cocoa (Foundation + AppKit), AVFoundation, Metal, OpenGL, and then all of the lower level frameworks and libraries those depend on (which may or may not be used directly by individual games). If you want a concrete example from something open source, go look at what SDL depends on, it's everything I listed and then some. It's also not uncommon for games to have launchers or startup windows that contain additional native UI, so assume you really do need all of AppKit, you couldn't get away with cutting out something like NSTableView or whatever.

So my point remains, if Apple has to continue providing Intel builds of all of these frameworks, that means a lot of other apps could also continue to run. But ... Apple says they won't, so how are they going to accomplish this? That's the mystery to me.

TheTon commented on Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 developer.apple.com/docum... · Posted by u/summarity

dagmx · 2 months ago

Games use a very small portion of the native frameworks. Most would be covered by Foundation, which they have to keep working for Swift anyway (Foundation is being rewritten in Swift) and just enough to present a window + handle inputs. D3DMetal and the other translation layers remove the need to keep Metal around.

That’s a much smaller target of things to keep running on Intel than the whole shebang that they need to right now to support Rosetta.

TheTon · 2 months ago

I don’t agree. My point is their collective footprint in terms of the macOS API surface (at least as of 2019 or so) is pretty big. I’m not just speculating here, I work in this area so I have a pretty good idea of what is used.