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Analogue Pocket Hate Story

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Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#51

Post by zackbloom »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #43
zackbloom wrote: post #3

This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great…

With all due respect, your comment reads like a case of 'I don't know math'-ism. - $10,000 for four months is the equivalent of a $30K/year salary. That would have been low for me when I lived in Tampa, Florida, in 2000; in Silicon Valley in 2020, you could make more than that working at Panda Express. (This is not an exaggeration for effect, I promise.) - doubling it to $20,000 is a $60K/year salary equivalent, righ…

My understanding is the company wasn't paying for her time, it was paying for a job to be done by an ostensibly part-time contractor. I'm not sure how the deadline changing increases the amount of work that was to be done.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#52

Post by matheusmoreira »

zackbloom wrote: post #3

This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great…

They tried to stall the development of an open source GBA emulator. What's constructive about that? Where's the corporation's empathy?

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#53

Post by willis936 »

emodendroket wrote: post #47
willis936 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a long path to go down. Retro gaming is a boutique cottage industry. It's not at all like audio because it isn't snake oil. People perceive differences in CRTs, sound chips, analog video and audio drivers, etc. Does any of it matter? Does anything matter? I like to tinker and I'm a display junkie. Playing retro games revitalizes me by bringing my headspace back to when I was young. Little me loves these toys. It…

People perceive differences in the audio equipment too, right up until you try a double-blind test.

The blind tests aren't even the end-all here. The science of human perception limits and characterizing the error are the two fronts to look at. We've long passed recreating what a human ear can hear. We have targets for frequency range, dynamic range, and group delay. Hit those targets and you've won. There is more on the art side of things to advance, namely in simulating directionality, but that isn't what the Tweeter salesman is usually selling you.

The imperfections of the audio chips in old consoles are easily audible to humans. If the goal is accurate recreation then assuming the audio chips and driving circuitry is perfect is insufficient.

Video recreation is still far below what the Human Visual System can detect. We are not masters of the universe yet.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#54

Post by matheusmoreira »

tombert wrote: post #48
emodendroket wrote: post #10

It makes a certain kind of sense. The marketing for these products has always revolved around denigrating software emulators as total, inaccurate trash, which is completely unfair for a lot of reasons (byuu used to have a great blog post about it but I think it is gone). But of course, you've gotta convince people they "need" to spend hundreds of dollars on emulation when it's available for free otherwise. Turns out…

I remember that post; Byuu conceded that FPGAs will always have an edge latency-wise, but was really annoyed that people acted like FPGA magically made things "more accurate" than something like bsnes, saying FPGAs can still be subject to the same bugs or mistakes as emulators, and are harder to develop. I got the impression that Byuu did not like the Analogue people very much.

Hardware emulation is also just as impenetrable as the original systems themselves. Software emulation serves as documentation for the hardware and is therefore much better at preserving that knowledge.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#55

Post by willcipriano »

zackbloom wrote: post #3

This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great…

> This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working.

Would you similarly recommend that if a employee was to find a way to go the extra mile and really make a impact on the business they should hold back? After all, if businesses think people are going to throw labor at them they didn't ask for, they are going to have a tough time.

I'm mostly joking but people are told as children that they should work hard and can expect their boss to notice and reward them. It isn't their fault that lots of people abuse that social construct, they are just naïve.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#56

Post by emodendroket »

tombert wrote: post #48
emodendroket wrote: post #10

It makes a certain kind of sense. The marketing for these products has always revolved around denigrating software emulators as total, inaccurate trash, which is completely unfair for a lot of reasons (byuu used to have a great blog post about it but I think it is gone). But of course, you've gotta convince people they "need" to spend hundreds of dollars on emulation when it's available for free otherwise. Turns out…

I remember that post; Byuu conceded that FPGAs will always have an edge latency-wise, but was really annoyed that people acted like FPGA magically made things "more accurate" than something like bsnes, saying FPGAs can still be subject to the same bugs or mistakes as emulators, and are harder to develop. I got the impression that Byuu did not like the Analogue people very much.

With all the stuff like runahead and frame delay showing up in Retroarch I'm not convinced that the latency thing is even true except if we're confining ourselves to low-powered devices.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#57

Post by marlowe221 »

donatj wrote: post #50

I think Analogue was more than reasonable here? They offered an entirely reasonable amount of money for anyone who didn't live in the valley (most people), then we're flexible enough to double it when it wasn't enough. They asked the person to sign a reasonable NDA that sounds much less restrictive than anything I've ever had to sign, and they were out? 6 months of non-competition on a direct competitor in a tech job…

Non-competition for what???

The blog author is the developer of the mGBA emulator which is free and open source... There is no commercial competition for Analogue there.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#59

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

tekstar wrote: post #5
izzydata wrote: post #2

I don't even understand the use-case for this device. Who saved all their cartridges, but not their Gameboy? You may as well get a cheaper and more versatile retro handheld. The idea that hardware emulation is somehow better than software emulation when the end results feel indistinguishable to the user seems like a pointless argument.

Not saying this to disagree with you, but there are companies manufacturing new cartridge copies of old NES/SNES (probably GB but I never checked) games for a fraction of some of the more expensive games. A friend of a friend of mine got a copy of Chrono Trigger for SNES from aliexpress. There are a few "tells" to know it's a copy (one of which is that it looks too new!), but it plays perfectly in his SNES. Your poin…

That's more understandable, at least to my retrogaming enthusiast eyes. A reproduction cart is trying to look like the original cart and provide the sense of physical connection to the work[0] that ROMs just don't give you. The Analogue Pocket does not really resemble the devices it emulates, and while it can provide a means to play original carts, one can get original devices for the same or less cost that will also do so and be more authentic.

Which is not to say there's no reason to own an Analog Pocket, it's a set of tradeoffs. I just personally find those trade offs make very little sense.

[0] by which I mean the game, taken as a piece of artistic expression

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#60

Post by madengr »

donatj wrote: post #50

I think Analogue was more than reasonable here? They offered an entirely reasonable amount of money for anyone who didn't live in the valley (most people), then we're flexible enough to double it when it wasn't enough. They asked the person to sign a reasonable NDA that sounds much less restrictive than anything I've ever had to sign, and they were out? 6 months of non-competition on a direct competitor in a tech job…

$25-$50 per hour for FPGA development is unreasonable anywhere. It should be at least $100.
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