I honestly agree, and said as much shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. Based on the world’s assessment, they should have just steamrolled them, and didn’t. I also said it would behoove the world powers to reassess their nuclear capability and got a lot of downvotes. The facts as they stand now, though, is the NK can’t get a nuke to American territory, not even Alaska (let’s not talk about Guam and Samoa, even America barely acknowledges they’re part of America). Russia, on the other hand, might be able to, and we don’t know for sure they can’t. All they need is one good sub with working missiles. None of this really matters for Europe, and even 10% of their stockpile working would be devastating for the world, or at least the people living on it. I’d like to think that Putin put more effort into maintaining their status as a nuclear world power, but I would have thought the same of being a military world power, too.

Yes, those things can be done, and they’re good ideas. One key difference between the U.S. and North Korea thing is that Russia can, or at least is believed to be able to, use a nuclear response anywhere in the world. North Korea couldn’t threaten the U.S. with nuclear reprisal. But, yes, removing the entrenched and uncompromising leader is the first step, and that is much harder against a nuclear power.

Of course, none of that is possible against a nuclear power, because it first relies on unconditional surrender. I also don’t think any leaders in the world have to political will to do that, either.

Shit, these are all the things I’m looking for. Now I have something to do this weekend. Do you run SteamOS beta? I do, and it’s been pretty good, but I’m not sure how the plug-ins feel about it.

Interesting, I’ll have to look it up. Not having times isn’t world-ending for me, but I do like having them. And achievements are nice, too.

The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?

It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.

Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.

If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.

On an unrelated topic, I used to work with someone who could type just fine with winter gloves on. She would do this all thentime because the office was so cold.

I do the majority of Steam browsing on my deck, with much of the rest being following links in Lemmy, etc. on my phone. I also expect I’m not their typical user.

Those spoilers deserve an upvote.

Having played it, it works pretty well. I would be happier if more games with 6 DoF used the same control scheme on the Deck, but that’s my biggest concern.

“Technically, if your computer breaks and you can’t recover those games after Valve decides to close its doors, those games are gone forever.” Yeah, and? Is there a storefront that doesn’t apply to? Just how long do you think CDs and floppy disks (and the hardware to access them) last, if you haven’t lost them already? Is it more or less than Valve’s lifespan so far?

Buying prerelease is always a big gamble. Buying before there are reviews from trusted sources is also a bit of a gamble.

Buying games 7 or 8 years after release is generally a pretty safe bet.

Space is almost free, and it’s a good cue to what you’re going to find. It’s how I tell my PerfectDark posts apart.

Performance is really a key factor, and gives rise to now being a time when truly competitive handheld is possible. Like this chart shows, there was a quadrupling of power between 2016 and 2020, but only a doubling of power between 2020 and 2023, with stagnation for the last couple years, largely due to technical limitations. RAM and storage have also seen massive boosts followed by stagnation, as well as a closing of the bandwidth gap between RAM and storage (from about 6 orders of magnitude to 3 orders of magnitude difference with solid state storage). The GPU front is still increasing in performance, with more watts and/or transistors giving more power, with raw performance increasing by a factor of 8 over 10 years.

Now you take those base values for performance, and a few things come together. First, storage has become low-energy, and is more performant, especially in the mobile market. Second, lower power CPUs are reasonably competitive, which means longer battery run time at an acceptable performance level. Third, while there is a bigger gap on GPU performance, smaller screens mean fewer pixels to drive so something a little older and less power hungry can still give satisfactory results. Put those all together, coupled with the steady and constant improvements in battery performance over the last 30 years, and you can make an acceptable mobile computer platform with decent results that’s able to play all but the most demanding of games from the last few years. Certainly, you can’t compete with the power of a desktop gaming PC, but you can get good enough. And then, with a few design tweaks, you can get a little better.

So, until and unless serious changes happen in the CPU or GPU market, mobile PC gaming has a chance to be good enough for a lot of people. I currently do over 90% of my gaming on the Steam Deck, but I’m also aware that I have little interest in playing the newest game as soon as it comes out so the Steam Deck is particularly suited to my tastes.

There are legitimate uses for this. People with neurological conditions, spinal injuries, etc. Would I sign up for this? Now? No. Am I willing to say the same in 30 years? I can’t give a solid answer on that.

I only got my deck last year, so it think I can hold off until the Deckard. Kind of okay paying 3 times as much for VR to not have it tied to Meta/Zuck.

I asked my company if I could use a password manager and they said no. So now they get a set of rotating passwords that are the same for all my work accounts. It doesn’t really bother me - it’s their data, not mine.

Hey, that’s a brain worm that might have some upsides. The Bene Gesserit didn’t need to breed the Kwisatz Haderach, they could have just infected the right candidate with toxoplasmosis. Fear is the mind killer, but toxoplasmosis is (maybe) the fear killer.

I’m not sure how this works, but I checked your posting history and it didn’t show up there, either. I guess the great weakness of the fediverse is if the links are interrupted. Perhaps it was due to instance maintenance or something.

I’ve been cheated!

Could not find post in your instance.

I have a Win11 laptop for work, and they changed the Start menu. Now it’s recent apps and recommendations for your starting point, and you have to click an option to see installed apps. Every. Time. There is a setting with 3 options - more recently used apps, more recommendations, or an even split of both, but the option to go straight to installed apps is mysteriously missing…

I will never install Win11 directly onto my hardware. If I have to use it, it will go into a VM of one flavor or another.

If you haven’t seen her other posts, I’d jump on her profile and read it. There are 7 more of these out there!

As a Voyager user, the image load takes a looong time, but everything scrolls smoothly (except for the text jumping as images load).

I’ve seen that anime.

I don’t know how it’s done, but I know images can be inserted. On the plus side, posts, including titles, can be edited, so any failed image attempts can be removed. This post was already enjoyable, but I’m interested in seeing how much more enjoyable it could be.

It’s surprising how well the Steam Deck plays new games and how much support has been added to older games for something with a form factor similar to the Switch and a price point that is lower than most computers or consoles with similar capabilities. It’s a big change to the cost/benefit calculation.

I was going to post that you didn’t seem like you were trying very hard, on day 189, then I open the post and you prove me wrong.

After reading the description, it seems future plans involve NPCs and a story campaign. When or if that actually happens is always hard to assess.

As a person who tends to come from the technical side, this doesn’t surprise me. Without a deep understanding of the subject, how would you come up with an accurate formula or algorithm to meet your needs? And with lighting in a physical space, that would be an arts major, not a math or computing major.

Most of my best work (which I’ll grant is limited) came from working with experts in their field and producing systems that matched their perspectives. I don’t think this diminishes his accomplishments, bit rather emphasizes the importance of seeking out those experts and gaining an understanding of the subject matter you’re working with to produce better results.

It was a pretty good game a year or so in, and has only gotten better. I haven’t played for a while, but I put over 100 hours in first.

I used to think there was nothing more stupid in zombie movies than uninfected humans just leaving each other alone and killing off the zombies. Why would you bother taking guns from other people when you have so many just lying around after 90% of the people died? If everyone just killed 10 zombies, the whole thing would be cleared up. I don’t think that anymore.

Ah, okay, I didn’t get the reference. Pretty sure it was Simpsons MacGyver.

It’s an interesting form factor, and it isn’t like they saved that gotcha for 3/4 of the way through the article.

As a gamer, there isn’t too much I can do about it, except buy games from other stores where the developers offer their games. As a developer, if I’m worried about Valve becoming abusive, it makes sense for me to use more than one marketplace, or a different marketplace than Valve altogether. Since Valve doesn’t seem to have a lot of exclusivity deals, this either means it costs more for developers to maintain multiple distribution channels, or they don’t think it benefits them to have multiple distribution channels. That said, the continued existence of those other distribution channels leaves the option to leave if they don’t like Valve’s behavior.

As a gamer, all I can do is support other stores, and I do.

16% so far!

Remember, if it wasn’t for Larry Ellison, LibreOffice wouldn’t exist. I remember reading about those shenanigans while they were happening and desperately hoping a fork would appear soon. I wasn’t disappointed.

This is an anecdote, but it is also absolutely not speculation. I won’t install Epic, I avoid most AAA launchers/required accounts, prefer GOG, and get most of my games on Steam. Epic and many other studio launcher apps are hostile to the consumers or just a royal pain to use. I have a couple Sony games. Why should I have to be online to play a 20-year-old single-player game that I bought through Steam? So now I check if they have that garbage before I buy them through Steam.

I think Steam could afford to charge less, but I don’t think most smaller companies could get a basic store up for less than they charge (and the big companies have the tools to determine if thos is saving them money), and that still doesn’t get you everything Steam brings to the table, consumer confidence being the most important.

“There’s this flaw with capitalism.”

“No no, it’s a feature!”