… What?

Thanks! I learned something new today, and that makes today a good day. I’ll strike out a few relevant parts of my answer when I get a minute to open the beast.

I mean… DX 9, 10, and 11 were all released prior to Nadella being CEO/chairman.

But in software, it’s very commonplace for library versions not to be backwards compatible without recompiling the software. This isn’t the same thing as being able to open a word doc last saved on a floppy disk in 1997 on Word 365 2024 version, this is about loading executable code. Even core libraries in Linux (like OpenSSL and ncurses) respect this same schema, and more strongly than MS.

Using OpenSSL as an example, RHEL 7 provides an interface to OpenSSL 1.0. But 1.1 is not available in the core OS, you’d have to install it separately. 1.1 was introduced to the core in RHEL 8, with a compatibility library on a separate package to support 1.0 packages that hadn’t been recompiled against 1.1 yet. In RHEL 9, the same was true of OpenSSL 3 - a compatibility library for 1.1, and 1.0 support fully dropped from core. So no matter which version you use, you still have to install the right library package. That library package will then also have to work on your version of libc - which is often reasonably wide, but it has it limits just the same.

Edit because I forgot a sentence in the last paragraph - like DirectX, VC++, and OpenGL, you have to match the version of ncurses, OpenSSL, etc exactly to the major (and often the minor) version or else the executable won’t load up and will generate a linking error. Even if you did mangle the binary code to link it, you’d still end up with data corruption or crashes because the library versions are too different to operate.

DirectX 12 was released in 2015 with Windows 10, so it’s unlikely to have been ported back to 8.1 and lower.

MS usually only does current+ with compatibility - so for example FF11 (DirectX 8.1 I think) still works (mostly) on Windows 11, but DX12 won’t work on W7

DirectX, OpenGL, Visual C++ Redist and many other support libraries in software programs typically require the same major version of the support libraries that they were shipped with.

For DirectX, that major version is 9, 10, 11, 12. Any major library change has to be recompiled into the game by the original developer. (Or a very VERY dedicated modder with solid low level knowledge)

Same goes for OpenGL, except I think they draw the line at the second number as well - 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4.

For VC++, these versions come in years - typically you’ll see 2008, 2010, 2013, and the last version 2015-2022 is special. Programs written in the 2013 version or lower only require the latest version of that year to run. For the 2015-2022 library, they didn’t change the major version spec so any program requiring 2015+ can (usually) just use the latest version installed.

The one library that does weird things to this rule is DXVK and Intel’s older DX9-on-12. These are translation shim libraries that allow the application to speak DX9 etc and translate it on the fly to the commands of a much more modern library - Vulkan in the case of DXVK or DX12 in Intel’s case.

Edited to remove a reference to 9-on-12 that I think I had backwards.

Who let out 426?? I thought I was supposed to be in a windowless room!

(/j)

I hear it’s also bad to get into a battle of wits with a Sicilian - especially when death is on the line.

I work on an open source project in my free time. Officially we support Linux, Windows, and macOS.

I had to change ~2 lines of code to port the Linux/Mac code path to FreeBSD. Windows has a completely different code path for that critical segment because it’s so different compared to the three Unix/Unix-like.

This is a very specific example from a server side code that leaves out a lot of details. One being that we wrote our project with the intent that it would be multi platform by design. Game software is wildly complicated compared to what we do. The point here is that it should be easier to port Unix to Unix-like compared to Unix to Windows.

Voyager PWA, but I think see what it did now.

It’s processing as markdown, and ignoring the first tilde strike marker since it’s sandwiched next to the URL brackets. So the only valid strike through is in different spots than you intended. Superscript/subscript I think is being processed correctly because it’s small.

Edit: I just noticed the other guy has the same app, so that would do it.

Edit2: I think I need to mentally review how markdown works there are wires crossed in my brain

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

The letters of CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 appear normal, but there’s extra stuff between the characters where the spacing and hyphens are

How did you make the creative commons license punctuation look zalgo like?

As someone who has not played the original, what do you mean “removed crowns”?

Instant gratification I guess?

One the other side I’ve seen a friend Xbox stream Starfied to PC Chrome, when I originally saw the title I was expecting something more like that from Sony

I guess we’re not allowed to have nice things :(

Edit: instant not insurance, thanks autocorrect

The top comment is a meme, but the free trial indeed is not time limited. It’s kind of like a “free to play” version of the game.

Most of the limitations are purely social - can’t send friend requests, party invites, or trades and similar. (There’s a full list somewhere) But, you’re still on the same servers, you can still use matchmaking, party finder, and paid accounts can send friend request and party invite to you.

What is there is going to be basically 100% of the story, side quests, and raids up to the level limit. And it will all be completable through the various matchmaking systems or NPC parties (where applicable).

It’s just a mild bit harder than the regular game (since, as an MMO, it is a social game) - and much of the issues you can “solve” if you know someone that has a paid copy, or make friends in game. For the party invite specifically, I know I’ve seen requests go by occasionally for adding two free trials to a party - which the paid account can make and doesn’t have to stay. In my free company (guild) there’s a few random free trial players we’ve “adopted” and have in the chat linkshell, but who can’t accept invite fully.

Source: I’ve played on both free trial to level 50 and paid to level 90.

As an IT engineer, it sounds like a tier 1 response template.

Bethesda probably needs to issue specific guidance to their support folks about what to say in that situation.

He already did step down as CEO of LMG ~2mo ago

https://youtu.be/0vuzqunync8