Recent Posts

2451

Living Room / Re: Looking at an android tablet

« Last post by Deozaan on January 11, 2016, 02:39 PM »

1. Has anyone heard anything about the Chuwi?

http://www.amazon.co...p/product/B019RDTS58

Everything I've seen has been complimentary.. which makes me suspicious.

-wraith808 (January 11, 2016, 01:38 PM)

Where did you hear about it? I've never heard of Chuwi and I see no customer reviews at that link.

But while we're talking about questionable tablets, you can find a few tablets that run both Windows 10 and Android on Everbuying.net. Here's an example:

$79 - Onda V820W Windows 10 + Android 4.4 Tablet PC Intel Z3735F Quad Core 1.3GHz 8 inch WXGA IPS Screen 2GB RAM 32GB ROM Bluetooth 4.0

The low price is tempting me to get one to satisfy my curiosity on how well it performs and how it runs both OSes (e.g., Does it have a dual-boot option or does it just run Android in Windows 10 via something like Bluestacks?), but I feel it's almost guaranteed to be a piece of junk.

2. My other choice I'm looking at is the Galaxy Tab E

3. The third choice I'm looking at is the Nexus 9

It's a bit more expensive.  And I don't know why it's worth the added expense.

-wraith808 (January 11, 2016, 01:38 PM)

The Nexus 9 is simply a superior device.

It runs vanilla Android and not Samsung's customized crap. It has a higher resolution (2048x1536 vs. 1280x800). It has a better processor (2.3 GHz vs. 1.2GHz). The rear camera is better (8MP vs. 5MP). It probably has more RAM (2GB vs ???). It weighs less (15 oz (~0.94 lbs) vs. 1.2 lbs (~19.2 oz)). Etc.

The only places the Samsung Tab wins out is in screen size (9.6" vs. 8.9", but again, a much lower resolution on that bigger screen), front-facing camera (2MP vs. 1.6MP), and battery life (~20 hours vs. ~18 hours, which can likely be explained by the difference in processors and screen size/resolution).

2452

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« Last post by Deozaan on January 09, 2016, 11:20 PM »

New release available:

Build 2016010601

http://forum.unity3d...350256/#post-2453359

2453

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on January 09, 2016, 12:37 PM »

I clicked on Start download now, upgrade later
I got a flash of this window (or something very similar) - but it immediately disappeared:

-tomos (January 08, 2016, 06:18 AM)

I had a similar problem on one device and ended up needing to use the Download tool (linked by others already) to install Windows 10 to get it to do it.

2454

Developer's Corner / Re: Beating Castlevania: Symphony of the Night with assembly code

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2016, 05:54 PM »

Wow. Talk about cheat codes!

2455

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2016, 05:31 PM »

In general, they have to renegotiate to get your business... whether that's just a we're doing this, do you want to continue to use your account, rather than it being automatic.  My bank just merged with another bank.  And we had to OK our accounts being a part of the merger.

-wraith808 (January 07, 2016, 10:00 PM)

I've had two bank accounts from separate banks which got bought out by other banks. One just after the big banking bailout in 2008 or so. The other just a couple of years ago.

In both cases my accounts transferred over. I never had to renegotiate anything. From my point of view, pretty much everything just worked the way it worked before the buyout. I just got sent new debit cards with the new bank's name/logo on them.

But maybe that's down to a difference between a buyout and a merger. (Though IMO that seems to be two words to describe the same thing.)

One thing I don't quite understand though is that if YNAB4 is working fine and might work fine for years to come, why are so many die-hard YNAB4 fans (like Macdrifter I linked to or the above open source developers) looking for alternatives already?

-dr_andus (January 07, 2016, 05:15 PM)

I think 40hz explained this pretty well. But I think another part of it is that for people who have used and loved YNAB, they've heartily recommended it to family and friends. But now they can no longer do that so they're looking for something else that they can recommend. It won't be long before we can no longer say "I recommend YNAB 4" because YNAB 4 will no longer be available to new customers. Sure, I can keep using it for the foreseeable future because I already own it. But I suspect they'll stop selling new license keys to YNAB 4 within the next few months.

2456

DC Gamer Club / Re: No more pirated games in two years, cracking group warns

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2016, 05:21 PM »

Here's an excerpt from an interesting article (which is somewhat related to this topic) about the copy/crack protections used in the Playstation 2 title Spyro: Year of the Dragon (emphasis added):

So you've worked 10- to 12-hour days for the past two years, trying to make your latest game the best ever. You even added copy protection to try to stop the pirates, but within a few days of release there are already crack patches flying around the Internet. Now anyone can help themselves to your hard work, without so much as a "please" or "thank you."

This is what happened to Insomniac's 1999 Playstation release, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. Even though it had good copy protection, it was cracked in a little over a week. So when we moved on to Spyro: Year of the Dragon (YOTD), we decided that something more had to be done to try to reduce piracy. The effort was largely successful. Though a cracked version of YOTD has become available, it took over two months for the working patch to appear, after numerous false starts on the part of the pirates (the patch for the European version took another month on top of that). The release of patches that didn't work caused a great deal of confusion among casual pirates and plenty of wasted time and disks among the commercial ones.

Two months may not seem like a long time, but between 30 and 50 percent of most games' total sales occur in that time. Approximately 50 percent of the total sales of Spyro 2, up to December 2000, were in the first two months. Even games released in the middle of the year rather than the holiday season, such as Eidetic's Syphon Filter, make 30 percent of their total sales in the first two months. If YOTD follows the same trend, as it almost certainly will, those two to three months when pirated versions were unavailable must have reduced the overall level and impact of piracy. On top of this, since YOTD was released in Europe one month after the U.S., those two months protected early European sales from pirated copies of the U.S. version.

-http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131439/keeping_the_pirates_at_bay.php

The above excerpt is taken from a Gamasutra article titled Keeping the Pirates at Bay. Definitely a recommended read.

2457

DC Gamer Club / Re: ShinyLoot shutting down

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2016, 05:06 PM »

ShinyLoot has been pretty "dormant" for a while now.

-ayryq (January 08, 2016, 03:29 PM)

Yeah, in their email they said they took a break for most of 2015:

Both founding members of ShinyLoot have slowly lost the drive and passion we used to break into the market. It became clear that the long hours needed to see ShinyLoot thrive would not be ending anytime soon. Stress started to play a role in both of our lives and we sacrificed other ventures to make this work. So we took a break for most of 2015 to try to reignite the spark with our most recent sale in November, but it simply didn't last. And in that time, the market has grown even more competitive. At this point, we simply don't think managing ShinyLoot as a digital distributor is a significant addition to the gaming community nor the right course of action for us personally or professionally. There are simply too many services that provide an equal or better substitute for our offerings.

2458

DC Gamer Club / Re: ShinyLoot shutting down

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2016, 05:04 PM »

I'd never even heard of this.  Oh well...

-wraith808 (January 07, 2016, 10:01 PM)

I'm not sure how I first heard of it, but it seems it was only mentioned one time on this forum before:

A bunch of games for $1 each at ShinyLoot.com

Personally, I never found their selection to be particularly interesting beyond a scant few games.

2459

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 04:50 PM »

I have a whole year for NANY... maybe I'll give a try at a basic version of this...

-wraith808 (January 07, 2016, 03:04 PM)

I thought I read about it here, but looking through this thread, I can't find any reference to it. Some folks are already trying to organize an open source YNAB 4 replacement called Budget First.

You can join the discussion in the Google Group here:

https://groups.googl...#!forum/budget-first

Or you can follow the GitHub repo here:

https://github.com/B...getFirst/BudgetFirst

2460

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 04:44 PM »

The on difference that I think has to be taken into consideration is the fact that YNAB is not a native compiled application, but a combination of actionscript and flash that runs on a proprietary engine ( AIR), so it's lifetime is tied to AIR.  That conceivably doesn't mean anything different in the short term, but in the long term, could.

-wraith808 (January 07, 2016, 12:52 PM)

While this is true, I believe the YNAB installer comes with all the AIR dependencies. So I don't see why you couldn't also run the included version of AIR for as long as you could run YNAB.

At worst, you may someday require a VM of an OS that YNAB/AIR still run on. But considering that they both work on the somewhat freshly released Windows 10, I don't see this happening for many years.

2461

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 04:32 PM »

I am never upgrading to mYNAB.

from: https://www.youneeda...t.com/privacy-policy

We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy:

To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our Website users is among the assets transferred.

-wraith808 (January 07, 2016, 08:14 AM)

I don't see a problem with this. I mean, that's assuming that you're OK with having your data stored on their servers in the first place (which I'm not). But how can they transfer ownership without also transferring the data they have on you? There'd be nothing worth buying if they couldn't also get the customers along with the product.

Imagine if your bank merged with another bank and you were suddenly without a bank account because they didn't include a similar clause about disclosing your personal information in the event of a merger.

2462

DC Gamer Club / ShinyLoot shutting down

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 04:21 PM »

I got an email today informing me that ShinyLoot is shutting down operations this year:

Today we are making a public announcement to confirm what some of you have speculated over the past few months. ShinyLoot will, in the near future, begin the process of shutting down as a digital distribution service. With this email we will outline our thinking that led to this decision and what you can expect as a customer. We have always strived for transparency in our operations and we feel that you deserve as much information as possible, with as much warning as possible.

Every customer will be provided ample time to download their game libraries and use any remaining credits. As such, there are two important dates to keep in mind. The last date that purchases will be allowed is January 31st, 2016. After this date, all remaining credits will be forfeited. The last date we will be active for downloads, support, or general operational matters is March 17, 2016. We feel this is a fair balance between allowing access to files from our servers and the financial and time cost to us in maintaining operations.

With that out of the way, we would like to go into the reasons why we are following this course of action, our future as a business, and how we got to this point.

We started ShinyLoot with the goal of promoting independent and medium sized publishers through primarily DRM-free offerings using a trait discovery system. Although many games have received thousands of additional views through our service, we never really converted those views into a high enough sales rate. Between the lack of performance and the looming large investment required to continue growing, our motivation has gradually waned.

Both founding members of ShinyLoot have slowly lost the drive and passion we used to break into the market. It became clear that the long hours needed to see ShinyLoot thrive would not be ending anytime soon. Stress started to play a role in both of our lives and we sacrificed other ventures to make this work. So we took a break for most of 2015 to try to reignite the spark with our most recent sale in November, but it simply didn't last. And in that time, the market has grown even more competitive. At this point, we simply don't think managing ShinyLoot as a digital distributor is a significant addition to the gaming community nor the right course of action for us personally or professionally. There are simply too many services that provide an equal or better substitute for our offerings.

As for what that means in the future, we have been in talks with a few companies and individuals to transition ownership of ShinyLoot elsewhere. Nothing ever materialized that made sense, either because of how it affected us, you, our publishers and developers, or all of the above. We have continued to try to do everything the "right way", and that does limit our options. So we will maintain rights to the domain and perhaps try to transition into something that is purely discovery based, without the retail aspect, as that seemed to be our biggest benefit to the gaming community.

So this is where we are at. We know that it's not a great message to receive at the end of the year, and it's not one that's easy for us to deliver. We hope that you understand our decision, and we would be happy to talk with any of you if you would like to respond. Please keep in mind that responses may be delayed depending on the quantity of replies we receive. We wish you a Happy New Year and that this may be only a small hiccup in an otherwise great 2016 for you.

Thanks,

Chris and Sood (ShinyLoot Staff)

TL;DR version is: Download/redeem your purchased games before the middle of March.

2463

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 03:22 AM »

Along with making a backup of the YNAB 4 installer to my Dropbox, I thought it might be a good idea to archive the YNAB Method pages just in case they take them down someday. So here are the archives:

• Rule One: Give Every Dollar a Job
• Rule Two: Save for a Rainy Day
• Rule Three: Roll with the Punches
• Rule Four: Live on Last Month's Income

2464

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 03:14 AM »

YNAB 4 users out there. Would you still recommend for a newbie to buy YNAB 4 at this stage?

What could go wrong when support runs out at end of 2016? Would that mean it may no longer be possible to download account data from banks?

-dr_andus (January 06, 2016, 02:40 PM)

If you think you can run YNAB 4 as is for years (and there's no reason to assume you won't be able to) then yes, I would recommend YNAB 4. That said, the software isn't really that special. It's the philosophy/method that is so awesome. So be sure to read up on that and use YNAB to implement and follow the method.

I don't think importing data from banks would break either, unless they change their format. You just download a CSV, OFX (Microsoft Money), or a Quicken format file of all your transactions from your bank and YNAB can import them into your accounts. There's no reason for that to suddenly break next year.

Someone told me that they'd been using really old finance software for 15 years before they switched to YNAB last year. They expect to continue using YNAB 4 for the next 15 years.

I suspect I will be, too.

2465

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2016, 03:06 AM »

Any tips for upgrading to Windows 10 now?

-tomos (January 06, 2016, 02:19 PM)

I'd recommend disconnecting your device from the internet once you've downloaded the update. In my experience, it takes forever "Checking for Updates" multiple times throughout the upgrade process when you're connected. I also had problems with failed upgrades which magically resolved themselves when I disconnected the internet connection during my upgrade attempt.

I don't know if that's necessary or if it does any good. All I know is that it helped me get past failed upgrades on two machines. YMMV.

2466

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by Deozaan on January 05, 2016, 10:53 PM »

UpToDown - A software repository for various OS' including Android, it has a lot of the apps you'll find in the Google Play Store with the added bonus of being able to get and install previous versions.

-4wd (January 05, 2016, 10:16 PM)

Wow. That's cool!

2467

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on January 05, 2016, 10:47 PM »

What happened to the "one size fits all" scheme?  It seems every day on Softpedia the Windows 10 news is about some new specialized release.  Or maybe I was behind the door when they abandoned it officially? 

-MilesAhead (January 05, 2016, 03:52 PM)

It may just be a symptom of the "rolling releases" thing, where the latest version doesn't immediately release to every person/computer/device.

2468

General Software Discussion / Re: [?] False Positive: 'donationcoders.com'

« Last post by Deozaan on January 04, 2016, 08:03 PM »

This is the only specific "problem" I could find with the donationcoders.com domain:

2469

General Software Discussion / Re: [?] False Positive: 'donationcoders.com'

« Last post by Deozaan on January 04, 2016, 05:14 PM »

Chrome gives me a similarly scary warning. Then when I click "let me go anyway" I get an error 403 forbidden.

2470

General Software Discussion / Re: BitTorrent Sync 2.0 Sucks!

« Last post by Deozaan on January 04, 2016, 04:20 PM »

I'm using Syncthing to sync photos of two Android phones to a Synology NAS. What wasn't working for you Deozaan?

-phitsc (January 04, 2016, 06:40 AM)

It has been long enough that I don't remember. I think things just wouldn't sync.

I've kind of just given up on rooting/backups/syncing anything from my tablet as it's become too much of a hassle dealing with all the time, especially now that Android is doing more frequent security updates. For some reason rooting makes it so the OTA updates don't work, and the last several times I've tried manually flashing, I just get stuck on the boot animation and I end up having to completely wipe the device to get the flash to take.

This adds extra hassle because I generally have multiple user accounts on my device, and setting everything up again after a fresh wipe is just too much, too often.

So BitTorrent Sync 1.x is still working great on my PC and on my Galaxy Nexus (which is nearly 5 years old, painfully slow, and still running 4.3 KitKat). But for my tablet I've kind of given up on all that.

2471

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 04, 2016, 12:59 PM »

I wrote an email to YNAB support voicing my disapproval of the new subscription model. Part of the response I received included a link to this blog post which explained why they're changing to the subscription model:

http://www.youneedab...-ynab-business-model

Another part of the response I received said:

we’ll support YNAB 4 officially through 2016 and unofficially for as long as possible after that.

2472

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 03, 2016, 02:03 PM »

Edit: or is this one still a legit way of buying it?
Purchase Budget Software that Will Change Your Life

-dr_andus (January 02, 2016, 08:41 AM)

You can also still buy it on Steam, and get a key that works with the non-steam version.

Any opinions on where this any good for someone self-employed, or is it more aimed at those with a regular income?

-tomos (January 02, 2016, 03:48 PM)

It's great for folks who are self-employed! That is, if you follow the four principles of the YNAB method.

2473

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2016, 03:07 AM »

At the bottom of the front page there is a link that says "older versions"

-Jibz (January 02, 2016, 02:47 AM)

Thanks! I specifically looked for something like that at the bottom of the page, but I somehow overlooked that link.

2474

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2016, 02:44 AM »

http://www.youneedab...04_4.3.656_Setup.exe

-PhilB66 (January 02, 2016, 02:30 AM)

Thanks. I downloaded this and went to put it in my Dropbox and saw that I already had a copy of a newer version in there. While I was at it, I see that there's yet an even newer version of YNAB 4 available, which I now have an archive of.

I'm currently running YNAB 4.3.820, which I see has a new "Migrate to the New YNAB" option in the file menu.

I also have a copy of YNAB 4.3.729, which is the version I was using before this new YNAB-as-a-service business began.

2475

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2016, 02:15 AM »

Anyone got a download link for the most recent, working, buy-once, non-cloud-as-a-service YNAB?

I need it for my archives, because I love(d?) YNAB but I'm definitely not "upgrading" to the subscription model.