I remember a couple of people making websites specifically for these apps. Wasn't super common, but there were definitely a few Nintendo forums and communities that were built with the 3DS browser's viewport and design in mind.
And while there's nothing official, there are ways to use the built in Switch browser like a normal browser through homebrew as well. I think one setup even allows functionality the default browser doesn't support, like normal HTML video tags.
They should at least be free through the university, given the insane prices students paying for tuition now. Maybe it could be sold for money to those not actually attending a course on a subject, but I hear of far too many examples where it seems the lecturer/professor is basically using the students as a secondary way of making money.
And the online setup is arguably even better for the reasons noted. Perhaps in that case, paying could be something you do if you want a hard copy of the book to peruse without a computer/mobile device.
You are assuming that the actual cost of a textbook on math which hasn't changed in centuries is hundreds of dollars per student per class when in actuality without the profit incentive a 100M could use the same ebook over a decade wherein the unit cost is almost too low to measured even if pay excellent folks to produce a new work.
I'd say it's definitely a big risk here. We've already seen evidence that these AI companies aren't making enough money with the tools they're offering at the moment, and there are already moves to increase the price for things like Claude or ChatGPT.
That's worrying for any company that depends on these things, and we can already see companies like Amazon and Microsoft freaking out about how much they're spending on AI services for employees to use.
And it's also why I'm hesitant to use them too much. Personally, I refuse to use subscriptions for anything unless absolutely necessary, and I'll always either pick an open source option or a one time purchase if it's available. I think that mentality might become more common in future when these services hike up the price.
First, a decent percentage of people enjoy programming for the process itself, and not the end result. For them, the idea of having a computer handle everything and playing QA tester every now and again feels like it goes against everything they enjoy about software engineering. If you're the kind of person who dislikes Dropbox because they can do everything themselves, AI is hardly going to rank any better there.
Secondly, a lot of people here do care a lot more about things like performance, technical debt, code quality, etc. AI probably appeals more to those that don't like to think about said things very much, and that's only a percentage of the Hacker News userbase.
Thirdly, a lot of projects discussed here are on the more complex or at least esoteric side. This is where AI tends to fall short, and hence those people may be a lot more skeptical about its usefulness.
There are also a lot of groups here that have... reasons to dislike AI in its current form. Maybe they're open source supporters that dislike how the biggest companies and most up to date models in this space seem to be against everything relating to software freedom (self-hosting, open source, no controls on content or usage, etc). Maybe they're worried their job is at risk, or are struggling to find a new one in this market. Maybe they like building computers or working on hardware and are finding everything's gotten significantly more expensive now that AI companies are using so many resources.
There are a lot of communities and subgroups here who have clear reasons to dislike the current AI boom, and who probably want the bubble to burst sooner rather than later.
Oh, and there are also plenty of people who hate how much of the site seems to revolve around AI now, and wish there were more posts and discussions about anything else.
Does that mean everyone here dislikes AI? No, of course not. Plenty of people here use it, or see it as a useful tool with a lot of potential.
But there are a lot of people here who have clear reasons to dislike it, either because the way it works is antithetical to what they enjoy about programming, or because their situation could get far worse due to its rise in popularity.
Well, the decomp requires you to provide your own ROM, and doesn't include any of the assets from the original game. So, that's probably okay for the most part.
This browser based version on the other hand, is in far murkier territory. The fact you don't need a ROM means the assets are definitely included by default on this site, and Nintendo would have a way better case for getting it taken down.
It's basically equivalent to those ROM sites that let you play GBA ROMs in the browser through an emulator written in JavaScript or WebAssembly.
But Nintendo's lawyers pay a lot less attention to anything prior to the Switch generation, and the same presumably goes for the Pokemon Company ones. If this project gets a lot of media coverage it's probably toast, but if it's mostly discussed on the odd programming forum like this one, it could survive a very long time.
I'm honestly surprised it's not higher given all the grifters selling courses on making money from automated channels and the rise in AI driven channels in general. Guess that shows just how big YouTube is as a service, and how many videos have been uploaded by actual humans.
I'd say it very much depends on software focused the company/industry in question is.
On the lower end, there are a lot of companies whose sole purpose is to build websites for other small/medium sized businesses that don't care enough about tech to pay for a full-time engineering team.
For those companies and developers, I suspect the increasing rise of AI will be a bloodbath. If your whole value proposition is "we can build your website using WordPress/Squarespace/Shopify/[CMS name here]", then AI can basically do about 95% of your job. I suspect a lot of these companies are going to shutter when clients take the work in-house due to AI, and many others will probably lose about 90% of their employees due to AI solutions being generally 'good enough'.
On the other hand, if your company is tech focused and needs to implement more complex functionality as a selling point, then there'll still be a place for software engineers even with AI. This is where the engineer as pseudo project manager thing comes into play, and where the actual coding side of things is probably going to be limited to things the AI can't implement properly.
Both situations will probably see a significant drop in the number of software engineers employed there, but the latter feels like it'll still have some room for a career.
I think "don't care enough about tech" is a mischaracterization. Software engineers are EXPENSIVE and many companies just can't afford it. Personally I think AI unlocks a ton of opportunity, because things that were just not possible due to the high salaries (justified, of course) of software engineers are all of a sudden very possible. Maybe these small businesses will now be more likely to hire a fresh grad who can not only build them a website in a couple weeks but also a ton of other useful internal software.
If you're asking why people tend not to like folks using AI without saying so, it's because it feels dishonest when someone implies they drew/built/made something themself but had a computer do it for them. And a lot of people don't think using AI for something is real work, and question why they should care about something that its original creator didn't put much work into.
Of course, this does create a sort of catch 22 situation. If you lie about using AI and get caught, people will hate your work because you lied about it. If you admit to using AI, they'll hate your work because you used AI.
This is why you don't rely on AI too much. An LLM may be able to decide what you can do if you run it via OpenAI or Anthropic's servers, but a text editor and your programming language of choice just does what it's asked to.
Alternatively, open source community software run by folks in a country that doesn't have any age verification laws/don't care less about them.
That way if it's AI slop it'll say [AI slop], if it's spam it'll say [Spam], if it's dubiously legal/illegal content it'll say that, etc?
You could use that to decide if you want to give the submission a chance or not.
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