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Quoting: Doktor-MandrakeSo is there any confirmation if steam-input/steam is required for it to work?

Might get one on my next payslip, same time I'm pretty happy with my 8bitdo 2c ultimate which is a fantastic controller especially for the price

I would guess that Steam would be required. At least at launch.

I didn't own the original Steam Controller so I could be wrong. But from what I understand it was initially tied to Steam. A separate driver did eventually surface, to use it as a generic HID USB gamepad. But it was developed by third party, not Valve.

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Quoting: JarmerSo basically a guarantee SD2 will be arm based? Especially with their recent advances in fex?

This would make so much sense. It works unbelievably well already. I dont even own a retro handheld with a snapdragon kit (mine has a mali chip and was way cheaper), and even with that it is astounding what you can play on it with some cobbled-up settings on GameNative. The ones with the snapdragons... they just run. ARM is so power efficient, its fantastic.
So yeah - i have no doubt the next Steam Deck will be ARM based.

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So is there any confirmation if steam-input/steam is required for it to work?

Might get one on my next payslip, same time I'm pretty happy with my 8bitdo 2c ultimate which is a fantastic controller especially for the price

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Well, if I were the Blender people I'd happily take the money. I'd think of it as hastening, ever so slightly, the bursting of the AI bubble. Maybe Anthropic will go under five seconds faster because of this.

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Quoting: EWGGreat. Help me rename, tag, and sort all of my photos and other images.

Same with text files and other documents. Fix my Markdown mistakes. Convert MD to basic HTML to post on forums. Provide a TOC from headers on longer articles I've written.

Help me manage my workspaces and windows. Prompt me with sensible window rules automatically and nudge me to be organized. Take a look into which Librewolf profile I'm using and ensure it stays in the proper Activity.

There are simple, useful usecases for more advanced, personalized computer help tools.

Some of that is stuff I wouldn't do, and the rest sounds absolutely horrible. I do not want some idiot AI deciding how stuff gets named and sorted.

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Since Blender is one of my main creative tools it doesn't feel right at first. What if Anthropic asks for implementing their tools to Blender or removing the donations? On the other hand Blender said they use it towards for the core features, so they are hopefully not interested in these features.

I think it has another, but similar reason. LLM tools are available since around 2022 for Blender in form of plugins and Anthropic may just has an interest to deliver their own plugin. I was using one of these FOSS plugins myself at the very early time to learn more about neuronal network tools.
In this case I fully support the donation, because the money will be used in a good way and Anthropic could create such plugins with or without donations. So better getting something back.

...

I just researched quickly and found [Anthropics statement](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-creative-work):

The Blender developers have created an MCP connector, which is now officially available for Claude. For example, 3D artists can use the Blender connector to analyze and debug entire Blender scenes, or build custom scripts to batch-apply changes to objects in a scene. And using Blender’s Python API, the connector lets Claude add new tools directly to Blender’s interface.

Anthropic has joined the Blender Development Fund as a patron to support the Blender project as they continue to develop their Python API, which makes integrations like this possible. And because the connector is built on MCP, it is accessible to other LLMs in addition to Claude, a reflection of Blender’s commitment to open source and interoperability.

That underlines my plugin theory and I am fully fine this way. As told, LLM for Blender as third party tool was a thing from begin with and it will stay anyway, no matter if Anthropic also creates third party tools or not. As long as these stay third party, there is no reason to complain about.

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Huh. Epic Games and Netflix make sense. Why Anthropic? Are they working on an LLM to generate 3D models? 🤔

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Quoting: mattaraxiaIf you're them, having something like Blender, that collects no licenses, crush something like Unity, that does, is great.

Because then the money shops were spending on Unity . . . goes to agents instead. See they weirdly want all royalty free development platforms too, just . . . maybe not for good reasons . . .

They may also just be burning cash at an absurd rate and want their logo out there, it's just marketing. They think it will create goodwill with people who will become customers.

Unity isn't a 3D modeling application, it's a game engine. That would be if they were funding Godot.

I don't know much about the commercial/licensed 3D modeling programs though, so I can't say I'd make a better comparison.

Anthropic supporting open projects when their whole thing is "AI can't be open because then crazy idiot hackers will end the world with magic computers" is hypocritical. If you look up "Anthropic open source" on DuckDuckGo, they have a program to let open source developers use their AI...the AI itself in that case is all gratis, no libre. They want to be in control.

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Anthropic's brand is the "nice" AI company. They're arguably crazier than others in some ways with the emphasis on AI doomsday talk, and they still have the TESCREAL ideological connections, but it's still unusual for any large corporation in 2026 to care about their reputation at all, so they do succeed at being "better" compared to companies that will reliably do the wrongest thing available to them.

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At least if they pay in cash and not in tokens...

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€240k per year is nothing for Anthropic that constantly raises investments in the $8-30B range.
They probably spend more than that on espresso capsules.

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Quoting: mattaraxiaThey think it will create goodwill with people who will become customers.

I think that this sums up the "why" quite nicely.

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Not affected myself, but to share a different opinion:

TTS and STT are great tools for accessibility and for people who rely on such tools, they should be installed by default in terms of accessibility. However, free software communities should rely on free software tools, which big tech AI is not (even if it is open weight, it is not open source nor free software). Respecting licenses and users is the way to go:

• Train AI on texts that allow the text usage.


• Name all authors of original texts in the way licenses are telling.


• Pay speakers or ask for volunteers for the speech training and add them to the credits.


• Specialize TTS and STT tools and run them locally in an efficient and private way. They don't require a lot of computing resources and also no internet connection.

And it may is a good idea to give users the choice to install them or not on Ubuntu-installation process - even if it is just for the trust.

Such neuronal network tools have pros and cons and while slops and energy consumption are huge concerns beside others, TTS and STT are actually useful applications if done the right way. All bigger FOSS communities and companies should just work together to create such tools to not rely on proprietary "open weight" models or worse. These tools are not bad by default, but they are created and used in a bad way most of the time, because hype and money are never good innovation drivers, but calm minds that are looking for the best solution and behavior are.

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Quoting: Renzatic Gear

Quoting: Liam DaweWhen I eventually get one, it will be the true size test. I have tiny hands.

In the meanwhile, Linus Tech Tips did a review of it, who also has small hands. The size itself is roughly comparable to an XBox controller, but he did complain about the span between the edge of the controller, and the analog sticks.

It's not a dealbreaker for me (I have regular non-gnomish hands), but I could see how it could be an issue for some.

I can guarantee I have smaller hands 😆🙃

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Linux version 0.100 runs like a charm, everything works well.

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I've installed the demo, I just have to find the time to try it out.

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Quoting: BrandonGeneNot being open source (and especially being based on Unity) makes this almost DoA, doesn't it?...some of those features are pretty neat, but that seems like a very odd choice in today's emulation landscape.

Really? How many games are people running that are closed source? I'm not gonna say "all of them", but unless we're talking about niche gamers, I'd say the vast majority of them are.
I'd rather have things opensource, but it's not like I'm putting all my personal documents in there. It's an emulator.

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Quoting: KimyrielleTheir first post was clear enough - local, optional and easy to shut off. The sad part is really where they thought their second post would stop the rage coming from the same people who already didn't read the first. It only takes "AI" somewhere in the first line to make these people go reach for the pitchforks. Objectivity and reason has left this discussion a while ago.

I don't know which post you're referring to, but the original post by Seager on Apr 27 was NOT clear in any of the ways you mention. That post doesn't say anything about only having local models - it says future integration will have a "local bias". It doesn't mention opt-in or opt-out at all, only saying that in future we'll see AI features land in Ubuntu as snaps. It doesn't talk about "easy to shut off" or even that this is optional, only that they're snaps, which might infer as much.

It's no wonder to me that this manic backtracking is required. As I said before, it's wild that Canonical think this timing, so soon after Microsoft's own desperate u-turns on Copilot, makes ANY sense.

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I recently had to go back to the 580-series because of a crash that would happen when I lock my screen and the monitors are put to sleep. When I came back to my PC I could see the backlights of the screens would be on but the picture was all black. When this happened the PC became completely unresponsive and I had to reach for the physical reset button. This doesn't sound like it fixes that even though it's in a similar ballpark. Anyway, now I'm on 580.142 which doesn't seem to have this problem.

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Quoting: AllyTheProtogenI wonder what it is that they're getting at here. If I had to guess, they're bleeding money into the red like every other AI company, so wtf is up with sending out even more? And to Blender of all things?? Seeing how they're amoral enough to support AI in the first place, I highly doubt they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

I suspect it makes sense in a sort of complicated way, it's fraught, sort of a my enemy's enemy thing from the POV of an open source project.

What Anthropic wants, is to be the tool for all development everywhere.

If you're them, having something like Blender, that collects no licenses, crush something like Unity, that does, is great.

Because then the money shops were spending on Unity . . . goes to agents instead. See they weirdly want all royalty free development platforms too, just . . . maybe not for good reasons . . .

They may also just be burning cash at an absurd rate and want their logo out there, it's just marketing. They think it will create goodwill with people who will become customers.

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The original zsnes took some years after release before coming out FLOSS, so fingers crossed?

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Quoting: Liam DaweWhen I eventually get one, it will be the true size test. I have tiny hands.

In the meanwhile, Linus Tech Tips did a review of it, who also has small hands. The size itself is roughly comparable to an XBox controller, but he did complain about the span between the edge of the controller, and the analog sticks.

It's not a dealbreaker for me (I have regular non-gnomish hands), but I could see how it could be an issue for some.

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I wonder what it is that they're getting at here.

People use Blender to make creative stuff. They need the creative stuff to feed their models?

Either that or the PR department had money to burn, looked at the list of previous sponsors and felt excluded?

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Quoting: mrdeathjr

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: mrdeathjrThis d7vk version in my case work ok with mesa 26.2-dev

That's a surprise. The top picture is the original Dungeon Siege (one of my faves). I thought it used DX9.

How about that -- I just checked PCGamingWiki and the API is indeed DX7. It must have been GOG's custom DirectDraw wrapper that made me think it was DX9.

Yeah many think same about dx9 on dungeon siege but in reality this game use dx7

however d7vk results are very impressive

😀

Did you have to do anything to disable GOG's wrapper?

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I wonder what it is that they're getting at here. If I had to guess, they're bleeding money into the red like every other AI company, so wtf is up with sending out even more? And to Blender of all things?? Seeing how they're amoral enough to support AI in the first place, I highly doubt they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

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Quoting: g000hYou can fit a small local model in 500MB, although naturally its accuracy will suffer.

For me, I only want to run models using my own choices of software. For instance, I would not be happy with Ubuntu or some corporation pushing some agentic features alongside the LLM. The agentic side is where A.I. gets into mischief - It exposes security holes, e.g. prompt attacks which can affect backend systems.

Also, agentic features enable Big Tech corporations (Microsoft, Google, OpenAI) to conceal telemetry and other self-serving capabilities (backdoors, etc). Naturally, any built-in agentic capabilities would be the first place hackers will be aiming to exploit.

For camera focus, which is one of the features evoked by Seager, Canon, Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and Pentax had integrated neural network trained using Deep Learning for autofocus in their DSLR and Miroless for around 15 years. This is notably how they greatly increased the number of species on which focusing using the "Focus on eyes" feature works.

So "AI powered" camera focus can use very small models depending of what you call AI powered.

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: PyrateReally hope Mihoyo or whatever they're called now go the Stellar Blade route and make a traditional game for once.

I am afraid they won't. Let's face it, their shady designs are a lot more profitable than traditional games. There is a reason why 100% of the entire mobile market is based on shady designs.

That's why I brought up Stellar Blade. Anything is possible and I wouldn't discount them making a one off traditional paid game, like how ShiftUp did.

ShiftUp are actually even worse off than Mihoyo as in their gacha games are like simple mobile shit, while Genshin and ZZZ are pretty much AAA console games level at least. ZZZ with a radically different design would've been a damn fine $60 game.

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You can fit a small local model in 500MB, although naturally its accuracy will suffer.

For me, I only want to run models using my own choices of software. For instance, I would not be happy with Ubuntu or some corporation pushing some agentic features alongside the LLM. The agentic side is where A.I. gets into mischief - It exposes security holes, e.g. prompt attacks which can affect backend systems.

Also, agentic features enable Big Tech corporations (Microsoft, Google, OpenAI) to conceal telemetry and other self-serving capabilities (backdoors, etc). Naturally, any built-in agentic capabilities would be the first place hackers will be aiming to exploit.

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Quoting: Cley_Faye

Quoting: rustynail

Quoting: Cley_FayeUbuntu's track record of allowing fine control over some features does not bode well. We still have to jump through hoops to remove "ubuntu advantage" on systems it is irrelevant (and no, it's not "completely harmless" to leave it there).

If they go in a way that gives full control to the user, with like a checkbox/prompt before enabling something new, who cares. If they go in a way that forces things on because "it's ok, trust us bro" and "who cares, it's just a little harmless extra nail in the coffin", then no. And, well, with Canonical really liking to force things over… we'll see I guess.

I know there are alternatives out there, but the less people will care about this, the more it will become prevalent. And when every major distro decides that it's ok to do that, we're screwed.

usually I would think that on any linux system managing packages and services is so straightforward that it's hard to truly enforce anything. But then what if you have something like a snap daemon running that basically does whatever it wants on its own like windows does, and disabling it may also have consequences you don't want? hard to say but it's a bit suspicious (also I'm not really sure what people already have to do to "debloat" ubuntu cause I never really used it)

Debloating ubuntu these days is relatively trivial, and the "bloat" part is largely exaggerated. The "bloat" here is an extra package/software manager, and a nagging screen that pops up in terminal, both of which can be removed with relative ease. It's laughably little compared to a windows debloating process: snapd and his ilk can be removed with a few commands, and the ubuntu advantage can be removed by installing a fake empty package instead.

Still, the intent is there; ubuntu advantage in particular is a direct dependency of most metapackage that ensure you get a usable system, and not using these metapackages is a pain in the butt. Since we're talking open source, there's no way to make things absolutely inevitable, but Canonical sure could get very aggressive with extra layers of bullshit, which they did not do so far.

It's not ideal, but even now, I think the situation is relatively fair to everyone. KDE Neon, for example, explicitly built over Ubuntu LTE, have such an empty package to disable this part.

Substituting a package with an empty one already feels like a filthy hack tbh that would take me a while to figure out on my own, like you probably have to build it and all. I guess it works this way because it was more convenient (or like a more "proper" implementation in line with how the rest of this stuff works) for canonical rather than more malicious but it doesn't make it any less annoying

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33 was probably the best episode of the show, so building a game around that concept sounds fun.
As a BSG diehard fan, there's no way I am not trying this game anyway.

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