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

You can argue whatever you want, the actual common definition of a patent troll is what I described, a person/entity that did not invent, but owns or purchases or otherwise legally acquires as many patents as they can, then goes around trying to sue or legally threaten people they claim are using it… as a form of making money for themselves.

Patent trolls operate much like any other company that is protecting and aggressively exploiting a patent portfolio. However, their focus is on obtaining additional money from existing uses, not from seeking out new applications for the technology.

The fact stands that you in your original comment just broadly described basically the entire concept of patents and patent law existing… as a specific subset of activity enabled by that system.

Which you described as ‘not completely negative’.

No, it is completely negative, it is a form of parasitic wealth accumulation only available to the wealthy, and it only has negative effects for everyone other than the patent troll.

You can just make up a new colloquial meaning and sure, that’s valid in the sense that the meanings of words change overtime… but like, this is specific, technical/legal/academic term with specific meaning.

Apparently it’s not the Rothschild family but an independent patent troll based in NY?

Its not an independent patent troll that is different from the guy named Rothschild.

Is the guy named Rothschild a member of /the/ Rothschild family?

I am not 100% certain of that, but I am certain that the guy named Rothschild and the patent troll in NY are the same thing.

… Somewhat strangely, despite there literally being a https://leighmrothschild.com/ where he glazes the fuck out of hinself… there isn’t very much publically available info about the guy.

The rich guy, who just lost a lawsuit because he / his legal representatives confidently lied and provided false information to a judge.

Who prefers the term ‘patent accumulator’.

The guy who has a personal website that says:

Rothschild leads a well-rounded life, pursuing a variety of personal interests that reflect his multifaceted personality. He has a deep passion for traveling, exploring new cultures, and broadening his global perspective. Whether it’s visiting remote destinations or experiencing the world’s most iconic landmarks, Rothschild’s love for adventure fuels his creativity and sense of curiosity.

“I am a well rounded person and my real passion is travelling.”

… Uh… huh… yeah…

Apparently he got his undergrad degree at the University of Miami in 73, was born in 1952… and… managed to get his first patent in 73 as well.

How many people have the resources/connections to get a patent while doing their college education, by age 21?

Not saying he didn’t, I am saying that sure seems like he’s had connections and money from a young age.

I can’t explicitly tie him to /the/ Rothschild family, not with just 30 minutes of searching.

But he certainly is one of the most obnoxiously arrogrant, blue-blooded asshats I’ve ever encountered, and… I had a few econ and poli sci professors that regularly attended CFR meetings, or took a sabbatical from working at Goldman Sachs and Black Rock to work as a finance professor, shit like that.

My guess?

Former AI guy’s job is to figure out how to make AI make video games, and in the meantime, figure out how to cram AI data scraping into absolutely every possible element of … whatever Xbox Live is called now.

The first will almost certainly fail, the second is much easier and will make the division more profitable untill it gets axxed after the first thing totally fails.

EDIT:

Erp, its AI gal, not AI guy.

Asha Sharma.

But… her recent LinkedIn history outside of MSFT is:

Board Member of Home Depot (ongoing)

Board Member of Coupang (ongoing)

(A Fortune 200 tech platform and South Korea’s largest e commerce company)

COO of Instacart (2021-2024)

Headed up, among other things, data science.

She was also apparently a VP at Meta/Facebook, before that.

Oh hey, I’ve done data analytics, I’ve done data science!

I’ve even also done lower level grunt work at MSFT!

Yeah I am 100% certain of the second part of my guess now.

Less certain about the first part, as she has literally no background with game development, as far as I can tell.

IMO, she is absolutely going to be put in charge of squeezing every last possible drop out of Xbox, which MSFT will most likely just transition to being basically a publisher only/primarily, given how many big IPs they own…

…and they’ll probably switch over to a new person after there’s basically nothing left to squeeze, after they’ve essentially functionally randomly fired at least 50% of the people working for the studios they now own, and essentially randomly reorganized the remainder of those people into different or new studios, see Ubisoft.

“Best” case scenario, after the AI bubble pops, she manages to figure out some kind of partner ship with either Nvidia or some remaining firm that has a bunch of AI datacenter GPUs, and then we get Xbox’s attempt at Google Stadia.

Another day, another hitherto unimaginable cyber security crisis, brought to you by ‘AI’.

… maybe one day they’ll find the seahorse emoji.

You don’t know what patent trolling is.

You are describing patent enforcement.

Patent trolling is when a small company/firm solely, only exists as a kind of legal container that currently owns … well, usually a broad array of all kinds of patents that they bought from some other person or company at some point.

They then go around and do nothing other than see who they can shakedown for money, via threatening all kinds of lawsuits, which would be extremely expensive and time consuming to fight, so most companies just fold and settle.

Nintendo suing Palworld over copyright and patents?

That’s not patent trolling.

Yes, the existence of patents and how IP law works is a complex and contentious topic, in general.

But… patent trolling?

It is a specific thing that occurs because of the current state of IP laws in the US, and basically everyone from any kind of relevant and related academic and/or legal background agrees that it is terrible and Congress should really revamp the laws to at least specifically fix it.

Patent and IP law are complicated.

Patent trolling is completely negative.

The patent troll is literally named Rothschild, and theire whole thing is he runs a network of matryoshka-esque shell companies, that do the patent trolling.

One of the major points of this legal battle is that Valve is saying ‘look, this dude has a network of shell companies, he is submitting blatent bullshit in the form of actual misconduct during legal proceedings, to the court, we want to sue him personally for damages.’

https://dockets.justia.com/docket/washington/wawdce/2:2023cv01016/323951

The case that this article is about mentions this, has that link right there in it, but, that particular case is not the one that was decided, that the article is primarily about.

The case that the article is primarily about is the one with so many egregious instances of legal malpractice that occured during it, that Valve started the suit in that link, to literally sue Rothschild for damages.

Like uh, in the proceedings of the case the OP article is about… the Rothschild shell company sued Valve for things that Valve already had a valid contract with them to use.

The Rothschild lawyer/legal team literally said ‘oh oops we didn’t realize that before I sued you.’

This is an insanely stupid thing to do.

The Rothschild lawyer/legal team also submitted to the court a bunch of hallucinated AI references to ‘precedent establishing cases’ that either did not even exist, or, were massively misconstrued, as the actual cases were nothing like what the Rothschild legal team described.

This is also an insanely stupid thing to do.

Manueverability matters less when you can fire a missile that will hit your opponent before they even know you are in the airspace.

Like I’m not trying to say the F35 is perfect, its far from it…

… But dogfights almost never happen anymore.

Air to air combat is basically # of missiles, range of missiles, threat detection/target acquisition vs stealth cpabilities.

And as we are seeing in Ukraine with drones, its very likely to become … nearly Battle Star Galactica (Newer Reboot) style realtime cyberwarfare battles.

Like, if we ever get to the point of ‘Space Battles’, they’re gonna be as much remote hacking contests as they involve any kind of physical weaponry.

So basically, its enshittification.

… but with a multi role stealth aircraft.

Its very funny to me that all the people who make all the decisions and rules around how software should work… are finding out that when everything hss software in it, well, everything has software in it.

Personally I’m waiting for more custom ROMs or whatever for cars.

Oh yeah this car is unlocked, you just actually get all the features, no need to pay Ford or GM or BMW on an perpetual basis for your heated seats.

Well I mean such data does exist, or easily could, assuming its possible to just turn on an FPS counter in a game on a Mac, or overlay one, and I don’t really see any reason why it wouldn’t be possible to run at least basic benchmarking on the same game on Win/Lin/Mac.

Many games just do those things inside themselves in either a benchmarking mode, or have a console command that will display basic info like FPS.

I don’t have a Mac though, and Mac users broadly don’t appear to be interested in even basic benchmarking.

But also haha no I would not be surprised that using a KVM switch is generally a giant goddamned hassle and its generally easier to just have a few devices you move around, I have discovered that as well!

See I just grew up as poor white trash in the US.

I guess just more technically inclined than much of my fellow white trash?

But yeah, exactly… why pay for something you can get for free, safely, if you know what you are doing?

You do it because you either really, really want to support a particular game or developer, or, as Steam/Valve has been saying for like 20 years now… because the version that you are paying for is actually substantially better, is substantially easier to access.

Basically, if official market prices are so high that the risk and hassle of using a gray or black market is less than the differential between gray/black market price snd official price… you use the gray/black market.

This is a pretty well understood concept in actual, academic economics, but in the US we have an insanely corpo/finance slanted public representstion of what ‘economics’ even is.

If the fundamental framework of IP laws and market practices is inherently biased against the consumer… obviously, people are going to broadly not like that, and other people are going to just skirt around them…

The main difference between the US and Russia in say, the 90s, is that everyone in the US knew they were destined to become a millionaire (economy doing quite well) where in Russia, things were just generally being gutted and sold for scrap, under the table (economy doing quite bad).

Its the Always Sunny in Philly scene, oh you’re new poor, its easy to tell… see, we’re old poor, we know how to do this.

I’d say there is a reasonable likelihood that the broad, ongoing economic collapse of living standards for 90% of Americans will lead to a cultural tone shift.

What is the Russian term, schmekalka, something like that?

Basically: Coming up with an improvised solution based on what you already have, as opposed to figuring out how to buy some new thing for the task?

A lot of the US is going to have to think a lot more like that, otherwise they’ll just become literal debt slaves.

Like, shit, I still refuse to pay for any fixed location internet plan that charges for datacap, data limits. This is now common and widespread in the US, but is completely bullshit and unjustifiable from an actual ‘what does this cost the ISP’ perspective.

We largely lost that fight over a decade ago, but I’m still pissed about it.

Boomer behavior would be much more like being on a bus or train and taking a phone call on speakerphone.

Or just watching a video of playing music full blast without a headset or ear buds.

Which is actually something that is common amongst zoomers, very common the closer they are to an alpha.

As well as just being a shit disturber live streamer, and also streaming and driving a car at the same time.

… So yeah, I don’t think the brainrotted zombies understand ‘societal norms’ very well.

Right, as evidenced by the Stop Killing Games movement getting over a million EU citizens to do a direct democracy, all on a shoestring budget, setting up multiple NGOs to counter lobby gaming lobbyists, and pursuing a broad swath of legal avenues to secure better consumer rights and/or actually have existing consumer protection laws actually be enforced, around the planet.

Oh, wait, no, thats nothing like just whining and then acquiescing.

Sure, yeah, there are a lot of hypocritical whiners.

But there’s also a lot of people who are a bit more serious.

Alternative outcomes:

Gaming bifurcates.

Indies and certain AAs aim for the ‘good ending’, realize fancy graphics are not only harder to produce, but you’re actually just shooting yourself in the foot in terms of potential customers.

AAA on the other hand continues to double down and enshittify, figure out new ways to turn gaming into leasing and renting.

… but, as always, mostly marketing, ad campaigns, paying off “journalists” and “influencers”.

3rd potential outcome:

Something akin to lan parties/netcafes/arcades recurs.

Rent out a space, run a local to global network solution and also a miniature rendering farm.

All the actual PCs (or maybe VR headsets) are connected to cheap, thin client local machines that are then networked to the mini rendering farm.

4th potential outcome:

… nobody can actually stop people from emulating or running old, good games. ‘Piracy’ becomes as normalized in many other parts of the world as it is in Russia currently.

Hrm.

Ok.

FPS? No idea. I don’t play games for the visuals at all, and if you gifted me a high end gaming PC I still wouldn’t. It’s not a question of superiority or inferiority, it’s just down to taste.

So as I said, we would seem to agree that Mac Gamers do not have very high graphical standards, compared to PC/Linux/Console gamers.

Like uh, let me put it this way: Calling 40 FPS in Cyberpunk 77 ‘good’ at 1080p is an actual joke to me.

I can do better than that on my Steam Deck at its native resolution, and … thats a portable device.

‘Good’ to me would be over 60 fps at 2K / 1440p, like an average around 75 fps.

I’m not trying to say that games must have absurdly good graphics to be a good game, hell no, far from it.

But… when you’re actually just talking specifically about advanced graphics … it seems that you, a Mac Gamer, just don’t consider them much.

So your standards there are lower, because you just don’t value them as much.

Like how you could compare two cars for practical usefulness, and conclude car A is an overall better choice, but if you’re specifically talking about which car can go from 0-60 faster, well now car B is a the clear winner there.

… I don’t have BG3, and I tried to look up comparative numbers for BG3 on a Steam Deck, turns out Larian just actually released a Linux native version that’s significantly better than the Proton/Windows version, for Steam Deck users.

https://sportsrant.indiatimes.com/gaming/baldurs-gate-3-steam-deck-performance-guide-september-2025-update/articleshow/126670240.html

So if I had the game, what I would do, on a Deck, is up a few more of those settings from low to medium, get to a generally stable FPS just above 45, instead of aiming for 60, and then the Deck OLED at least will let you lock the frame rate at 45, but the refresh rate at 90, so in most games that are not quite fast paced, that’ll basically just ‘feel’ like 90 fps most of the time.

So you end up with a $550 portable machine that can, at least at its native settings, outperform your admittedly signifcantly older, but $1100 2017 iMac, by way of running basically mostly medium settings with a few at low.

Adjust for inflation thats like uh, Steam Deck for about $585, iMac for about $1450. And you put aftermarket (Or is it more like Bonus with Macs?) ram in it as well.

I dunno, I’m not trying to sound like an ass, I’m trying to do actual comparisons of some kind, but you don’t know the FPS, didn’t indicate a resolution…

Which again, makes sense in as much as: You don’t care that much about those things.

But its hard to do graphics comparison without such info.

I really would like an actual answer here… maybe there is some kind of way to run a graphically advanced/demanding game on Mac?

https://www.macworld.com/article/2852664/cyberpunk-2077-ultimate-edition-review.html

The game includes presets that adjust graphics settings for different Mac models, and there are some useful support pages for the Mac version at support.cdprojektred.com, which will help you to get the best performance from the game. I got a steady 40fps when running the game at 1,920 x1,200 resolution on my MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip, so you don’t need the latest, fastest Mac models to get good performance.

Apparently Mac Gamers do not have the highest graphical standards, if… 40 fps at basically 1080p x 1.1 counts as ‘good performance’.

You’re giving the guy a lot of grace.

Yep, I am.

I haven’t read every other response in the thread.

I dunno, he was able to admit a fault to me, that’s much better than I usually get in such a conversation as this.

I mean, Proton is also open source and… its basically a giant extension/revision of WINE.

So, my guess would be that MacOS (OSX?) is so significantly different than most Linux distros, that you’d pretty much have to develop it to work with Mac libraries, whereas its currently developed and tuned to work with Linux libraries.

Out of genuine curiosity:

What is the most graphically complex game you’ve got working on a Mac?

FPS?

Resolution?

Hardware?

No, you basically cannot use Proton on Mac to anywhere near the degree it currently supports games on Linux.

Long story short, they differ a lot.

Think of like… a bear, dog, and cat all have a single common ancestor if you go back far enough.

… But they are significantly different from each other in a wide variety of ways.

It seems that there are some semi-comparable ways to do more gaming on a Mac.

1. Dual Boot Asahi Linux, then use Proton from Asahi, running Windows games via Proton on Linux, on Mac hardware.

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2025/02/07/proton-asahi-linux-mac-gaming-tutorial.html

Seems to technically work, but basically to me it sounds like where Proton on non-Mac baremetal Linux was around 4-5 years ago, ie, theres a lot of work to be done, but, some things work reasonably well.

2. Port the game to Mac yourself with the Mac game porting toolkit.

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

Somewhat hilariously to me, many Mac/Tech media sites have described this as ‘Basically Proton for Mac’, which uh, no, its not, not even close.

Proton takes Windows hooks and calls and translates them in realtime to execute in realtime on a Linux system. Only non instant thing is building up a shader cache, but I’m pretty sure you do that on Windows too.

This… is porting a game.

Granted, it is impressive that any kind of automated tool/system like this even exists at all, but uh, this is more like a guided recompiling of the entire game binary to something that will run natively on a Mac.

So that is… not any kind of a realtime translation layer.

As best I can tell, results for how well it actually works are roughly:

Most of the time it does produce a valid, working game binary, but performance is often terrible for more graphically complex games.

I guess if any Mac users have more info or corrections to this, I’m all ears.

I know much more about linux and windows than Mac, so I may be missing something or innacurate.

I would assume, though I could be wrong, that by not challenging it, they either tacitly conceeded the point, or, perhaps did not even mean to say it in the way they said it, with the meaning/implication that phrasing has, as they have said English is their third language, not their first.