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Cake day: Aug 08, 2023

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Maybe, maybe, maybe we’ll finally see another OS take a big bite out of the OS market.

Which OS Market? The are several and the only one that Microsoft dominates is General Purpose PCs (Desktops & Laptops). Every other OS Market has a different major player. Nintendo owns handhelds with Valve as the secondary. Sony is on top in consoles with Microsoft as the secondary. Tablets are owned by Apple with Android as a strong secondary. Smartphones are the same as tablets.

I could type several paragraphs about why MS is still relevant, although less so as time goes on, for GP Computer OS but instead I’ll point out that the reason so many games target Windows OS is simply because it gives access to the largest number of buyers.

IMO opinion the decades of continually increasing DOS & Windows PC based ownership that got the gaming industry to this point is quickly running out. Personal computer ownership has been steadily declining for years as people increasingly use mobile platforms like Smartphones and Tablets. Assuming that trend continue then it won’t be long at all, maybe five years, before gaming companies find that Windows OS compatibility no longer provides a large enough target audience.

When, if, that happens there will be a rapid sea change in the gaming industry. I strongly suspect that this is why MS have invested so much money into creating platforms for game streaming. It’s the only way they can stay in the game, lol, as personal computer ownership declines.


It’s going to be a flagship game that releases with a newer engine.

I’m pretty sure they already said that its going to run the same engine as Starfield.

A less hopeful take is that the success of ESO is going to prevent them releasing anything else in the universe until it dies.

This is what I’m worried about but I’m somewhat encouraged though because Rockstar is finally going to release GTA:6; perhaps the era of local games isn’t dead quite yet.


Intel’s 5 series GPUs are meant for the low-middle to middle range of the market. They are targeted at 1440p (and under) gaming and the B580 with 12G of VRAM will almost certainly perform perfectly fine.

If you are more concerned about performance but are on a budget then wait for the eventual 7 series ARC GPU or grab a 4060ti.


Two days ago BlueSky was adding more users in an hour than Mastodon was per week.


Samsung DeX shows since many years that a Android with a desktop UI is a possibility.

DeX is infuriating. It’s forever almost good enough to fulfill its promise of being a truly mobile desktop but somehow it’s never gotten there. The biggest problem now is that most android apps don’t present correctly in desktop mode, don’t behave intuitively, and / or look like ass.


Of all the “Feature Phones” I ever had, and I had a bunch, the Alias and it’s successor the Alias II were my easily my favorites.


I miss my Samsung Alias and Alias 2. They were good times.


I’ve already read several comments just like that over on .ml.


HANG ON BEFORE YOU HIT THE DOWNVOTE BUTTON!

They don’t need a recall. If your processor ain’t broke yet then the patch will (supposedly) prevent it from breaking and if it’s ALREADY broke then Intel will (supposedly) replace it via RMA.

So what’s the big fuggin’ problem here? That Intel won’t use the term “recall”?


I’m so tired of the “e” word. Most of the people tossing it around, like the commenter up above, apparently don’t even know what it actually means.

Here’s a tip: It doesn’t refer to something that got more expensive and / or moved services around in existing tiers like MS did with GamePass. You can read Cory’s Book or check out the wikipedia page for the actual definition. Go read one of them and then Stop abusing the fucking term!


I’m fine with NPUs / TPUs (AI-enhancing hardware) being included with systems because it’s useful for more than just OS shenanigans and commercial generative AI. Do I want Microsoft CoPilot Recall running on that hardware? No.

However I’ve bought TPUs for things like Frigate servers and various ML projects. For gamers there’s some really cool use cases out there for using local LLMs to generate NPC responses in RPGs. For “Smart Home” enthusiasts things like Home Assistant will be rolling out support for local LLMs later this year to make voice commands more context aware.

So do I want that hardware in there so I can use it MYSELF for other things? Yes, yes I do. You probably will eventually too.


“Enshittification” isn’t simply raising prices and moving features between service tiers.

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


Yeah, it was pretty obvious that this was going to happen sooner or later. It doesn’t meet the definition of “enshitification” though. The platform, Xbox Live, isn’t losing functionality it’s just getting more expensive. There’s also no obvious shift to favor business customers.

It’s a pretty standard price hike with a small side helping service tiers changing features.

I’m not HAPPY about it of course.


When I opened the page in FireFox I was prompted to manage cookies. I clicked on that and then clicked the “site vendor” tab.


I’d like to read the article but holy hell there’s over 700 companies in their tracking cookie policy!

Luckily there’s an archive of it: https://archive.ph/Yrcda



Something tells me that here in the United States of Greed, such a thing is ‘un-possible’, legally speaking.

It’s not only possible it happens reasonably often. So often in fact that the “poison pill” idiom was created by companies who were doing just that.

Here’s a Harvard Law paper on it.


Frankly, I never understood why businesses were invested in the office suite anyway.

When MS Office really took off back in the Office 97 days there weren’t any good alternatives and now MS Office is so embedded that it’s almost impossible to dislodge.


we’ll essentially see Valve vs. Microsoft, as the former would much rather not have to rely on Windows

Valve has been working on exactly that for a decade now. It’s why they created SteamOS, Steam Machines, and Proton. The current high point of all that work is the Steam Deck but it’s possible we could see an official return of console like Steam Machines.

The underlying problem is if games stop getting Windows releases and instead go directly to Xbox / PlayStation / Nintendo consoles only.


You’d need more than 9,000 of the largest hard drives made (32TB) to store the nearly 300 Petabytes of data they have. Still within the reach of an obscenely rich tech bro but not exactly cheap.


145+ Petabytes for a single copy of the archive and they currently have two copies of everything for a total of around 290 Petaybtes.

The largest hard drive I’m aware of is 32TB so you’d “only” need over 9,000 (lol) of the largest drives ever made. I can’t even tell you what that would cost since Seagate doesn’t have a publicly available price for the damn things!



I still don’t see a single actual advantage of W11 over 10.

From the user’s perspective there really aren’t any. MS could have stopped with W10, or even W7, and things would have been just fine.


Still bound to a employer laptop which uses Win11 in a Microsoft collaboration setting

Ask for Windows 11 Enterprise. I know that it’s got the same “recommended” thing going on but it can be completely disabled via Group Policy and / or the Registry.



At the Office it’s my employers problem and at home Mint doesn’t give AF about Windows 11.


Prices of video games and consoles have actually declined over time when accounting for inflation.

https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s

Here’s an example:

PlayStation 1

Cost at Launch (1995): $299.99 Cost Today (2020): $509.19 Average Game Cost (1995): $49.99 Average Game Cost (2020): $84.85

PlayStation 2

Cost at Launch (2000): $299.99 Cost Today (2020): $450.64 Average Game Cost (2000): $49.99 Average Game Cost (2020): $75.09

AAA titles going to $90 would actually be putting them back to PS1 and earlier pricing.