This problem is real—you are right to question it.

AFAIK, Rockstar usually releases for PC a year or more after consoles. I believe GTA 5 will run on Linux with story mode, but not online mode due to the anti-cheat rootkit . Is there an indication that 6 will be different?

Agreed, it’s a low bar. Valve is doing it right where it just works if you’re using Steam, but the hardware is still yours to do as you please.

Judging by sales numbers, though, there have probably been a little over 5M Steam Decks sold vs. over 20M Switch 2s, 90M PS5s, etc. These companies have no incentive to offer a more fair deal if the general public will give them money either way. More competition would probably help to your point.

A console used to be an appliance where you insert physical media and it just works. What you can play is limited, but you physically owned the games and had the freedom to sell them, trade them, or buy them used. The hardware was subsidized to make up for the lack of selection and at least you had a bit of freedom.

Now it’s just an expensive, locked down machine that plays a limited set of games that you can purchase, but can’t re-sell and can be taken away at any moment. Oh, and the thing requires an internet connection and is always spying on you.

I’m quite happy to wait years for the few exclusives to be available to emulate while playing the remaining games that will also be released for PC on a Linux machine I own and fully control. Even if the hardware costs a little more, it’s unequivocally worth it, especially since it won’t be just a gaming machine.

Been a while since I saw one of these sedans myself:

Meh, I’m done with consoles. The exclusives will come to emulators eventually, and there will be plenty of PC games in the meantime.

Not only is the shit expensive, but may as well eat a bowl of ice cream with as much sugar as a lot of cereal has. Having cereal for breakfast daily is akin to using soda for hydration. It sure tastes good, but I’ve cut down on my cereal intake for multiple reasons.

For $2000, there are pre-built mini PCs with AMD iGPUs that will run circles around the Steam Machine. Just buy one of those and install Bazzite.

It’s like one of those slapstick scenes where someone throws a pie at the villain and hits an innocent bystander, then the villain fucks off while everyone else gets into a food fight amongst themselves.

Glyphosphate (a known cancer inducing biocide

The US food regulation and agriculture industry:

Hmm, seems ads have quite a different effect on me.

Using copyleft licenses for closed models is clearly against the spirit of the licenses if the users don’t have access to the source code that includes the original copyleft works. Even open weight models aren’t really the source code, and are more akin to a compiled binary. The source code is all the training data and code used to train the model such that anyone can build on it and train new models.

I’m not a lawyer and am not sure how well existing copyleft licenses like GPL or CC-SA would stand up in court to enforce this, but if they don’t, then stronger licenses that explicitly cover works being used as training data need to become more common.

I’ve seen the argument that the models are just learning from the data in the same way a human would. That’s nonsense. It’s not like they’re creating a sentient being with its own agency that can tell them to fuck off if it wants. These companies are running a software pipeline against copyrighted IP to convert it into a derivative work that is now supposedly wholly owned by said company, but the reality is that it’s collectively owned by everyone who contributed to the copyleft training data.

Only 2 doors for the SUV is pretty wonky.

Back when the Steam Machine was first announced, I liked the idea, but wanted something cheaper (I assumed $650 - $800) so I got a $375 off-brand mini gaming PC for the living room with a Ryzen 8745HS (780M iGPU, roughly 2x SD compared to 3x for SM), 512GB SSD and 16GB of DDR.

The model I bought is not available now, but similar specs are going for close to $600, so the price is still roughly proportional. The machine I got cut every corner possible, and for example, I never could get Bluetooth to work reliably with my controllers and ended up getting $20 8bitdo dongles for each controller.

The SM, on the other hand, is a more refined hardware and OS combination where everything just works and that Valve stands behind, and where games will be tweaked and certified for that specific hardware. I am enjoying my mini PC, but I’ve put a lot of time into customizing and troubleshooting to end up with games that still stutter at 4K. For anyone who just wants to game instead of tinkering, SM is likely worth the current price.

Remember that the Greater Israel Project is about the chosen ones owning most of the land in the Middle East and genociding the current occupants. Palestine is the most immediate goal of the project, but the Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc. are also part of the plan.

“Tipflation” is the worst part. It’s annoying as hell when staff tell you the terminal or kiosk is going to “ask you a question” and the fucking thing asks for a tip while they’re staring right at you. It’s gaslighting people into questioning whether to tip for something that typically wouldn’t require a tip, and whether you should tip to avoid having your food spat on, etc. Then the suggested tip percentages are often inflated and if you want to tip lower, you have to fumble around with the “other” button while they continue to stare. I’d say vote with your wallet, but every place does this now.

I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m not always sure when I’m supposed to tip or not, so not sure how anyone visiting from a country with a more rational system is expected to understand our broken system here.

I have a Steam Deck and am not sure what the hype is about with the Steam controller. On my SD, the track pads don’t really work that well (mainly use them in desktop mode as a mouse), and $50 Xbox controllers otherwise seem equivalent, except at half the price with support for Linux distros other than SteamOS. Am I overlooking something critical?

I consider the downvote button to be the “fuck off” button, which I reserve for toxic comments or posts made in bad faith. I try to be generous with upvotes and sparing with downvotes, but some people here go straight for the downvote button and pile on more downvotes when something is already downvoted. If I see someone getting downvoted heavily who is acting in good faith, I’ll give them an upvote, even if I don’t necessarily agree. Otherwise, withholding an upvote is what I consider the correct response when I don’t agree or am not interested.

I do often delete my comment if I’m told to fuck off by too many people, mainly because it’s the first thing I’ll see in my client the next time I login, which will make me less motivated to engage next time.

No, I meant it was me having a debate with the straw man.