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You probably could really help gaming by setting up an incubator fund to help indie developers.
Other ways a little bit of money could go a long way is by contributing to open source development of projects like Godot.
Finally, contribute to games preservation. This could take a couple of different forms, but just a fund to back something like the Free Software Foundation or Archive.org, maybe to set up an Abandonware project.
The guy is a mega-billionaire. He could accomplish some very positive gamer related things for a fraction of a fraction of a percent of his wealth.
I used the old Stardock/Impulse/GameStop game platform as well! I’d mostly switched to GoG (and Steam) by the time it shut down, but there are certainly some games that were lost to the platform shutting down.
I don’t think I even signed up for Steam until 2010 or so. Certainly it was pretty clear that Steam had “won” by the time I made an account
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is considered a classic, but it’s been 20+ years since I read it. I’m curious how well it holds up.
I was trying to recall some points from C&B and I realized I was muddling much of it up with The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen from the same era, so apparently that made an impression as well.
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting by “Values of the Fediverse”, but I was pleasantly surprised! It focuses on what over the decades seem to be the core values of Open Source software movements, such as openness, independence, and freedom to use the software how you choose to use it. Just applied to the concept of social media. Which makes sense.
My main home account is on Lemmy.ca not Lemmy.ml ( or another Lemmy instance) because that is how I’ve chosen to associate, and I can. And I could spin up my own instance, and federate or de-federate with whomever I choose.
This isn’t a novel concept, OpenSource.com has a page on “The Open Source Way” which espouses transparency, collaboration, “Release early and often”, inclusive meritocracy, and community. I remember reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” back in the day, and Eric Raymond seemed to extrapolate several values or principle from the open source model.
The free software movement does implicitly have positions on “political” topics. Right to repair, DRM, and privacy come to mind immediately. These shouldn’t be seen as being “Left” or “Right”,
If you can get one of those cassette adapters, you can test the tape deck of interest first.
Technology Connections on YouTube had an episode on those tape adapters, but I can’t remember the reason why she some tape decks don’t work with those cassette adapters.
So far I’ve only had that one tape deck not work.
Yes… in the cassette players that work with those adapters. Annoyingly, the old stereo we have set up at work in one shop doesn’t work with those casette adapters or the Mixxtape.
Also, if you use it in a tape deck, it doesn’t use the spools as inputs. You just set it playing and pop it in. Similar to my old Digisette Duo Aria.
I will admit, I have rarely used the tape deck function, but it has been useful on occasion.
I use the Kickstarter version of the Mixxtape. My wife uses the newer version, which offers some improvements.
It’s fantastically retro, but you will need to use a micro-SD.
Similar. Had a Colecovision when I was a kid, followed by a second hand Commodore Vic-20. Hands down the Colecovision had better graphics, but all you could do is play the games you bought or shared. Next was a Tandy 1000 TX, and I don’t think I ever looked back.
I did have an original Gameboy, that I bought with my own money, and that was pretty cool, but still it was simply a matter of playing the games they sold you. In the shareware scene of the 90’s, even the Gameboy was horrendously limiting.
For me it’s never been a performance issue. Most of the time I’ve been using old PCs, and the latest console would technically be more powerful (back to Colecovision vs. Commodore Vic 20). It was a matter of flexibility and variety.
Have you looked at the Stop Killing Games campaign?
I was 95% k+m until the Steam Deck (the 5% being my old Saitek Flightstick).
Since the Steam Deck I’m probably 90% controller.
I will say that k+m offers superior speed and precision, especially in FPSes, but the biggest improvement that I noticed was that I was getting a sore shoulder from repetitive strain sitting too much time in front of computers. Controllers are more ergonomic.
For sure. Easily half (likely more) of my unplayed games are Bundle games from a bundle I got primarily for something else. There’s a few gems I’m sure.
There are a few games I bought on sale to play later as well (I’ll get to you!) but the other glaring flaw I see is a selection bias. The people who use this service or similar services are going to be the heavier Steam users with collections in the hundreds.
So heavier users, with lots of bundle games and sales. I’d divide that total by 10 at least
Apples to apples, I wonder how much that holds true…
When a console launches, buying off the shelf equivalent parts is probably a fair bit more expensive. After a couple of years though, the latest and greatest whatever is at least two years old.
I’m sure console manufacturers flatten out these prices by making long term contracts, but still a 4 year old machine is still 4 years old. AMD has released new chipsets since that are in turn themselves coming up on 2 years old.
Granted, console games are optimized for a specific platform, but that will likely be very game specific.
The classic joke:
Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”
“On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”
I accept no credit, I simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia.
But Steam is pretty dominant. Steam is also pretty well behaved and privately owned. If they ever went public, I could see all sorts of hijinx Steam could pull with their PC gaming dominance, between exclusive release deals, leveraging publishers to use Steam exclusive tools, etc.
That’s all hypothetical though at this point, but I still like to buy stuff on GoG and Humble Bundle at least sometimes, even though with my Steam Deck, and just Steam’s Linux support, Steam is by far the best and easiest way to buy games.
I think as long as Gabe and actual Steam employees continue to run things, we are okay. It’s when the venture capitalists and such get in, that they start to “maximise profit”, and everything gets enshittified, the service tanks, becomes a shell of it’s former self, and yet the vultures all take off with mad stacks. Steam has earned my trust, and they seem to continue to deserve it.
Hah! Missed that one. Steam OS is the Steam Deck’s secret sauce. Even when you have to go into Desktop Mode, it’s okay without a KB+M. I wouldn’t want to use it as a laptop replacement without KB+M and maybe an external monitor mind you, but it’s usable.
I haven’t test driven an ROG Ally, but the though of Windows on a handheld fills me with dread for any interaction that devolves to the desktop.
It’s not just that Steam OS is Linux, is also that Steam OS has put lots of thought into working well on a handheld.
Desktop mode on the Steam Deck is usable, and being able to use Desktop Mode is great, but Game Mode is what makes the SD great.
Now you can do something similar with Windows (q.v. Big Picture mode), but from what I’ve heard about the Asus Ally, it’s a bit clunkier. Asus and Lenovo just don’t have the access to the OS to do a true Game Mode equivalent.
Considering that XBox is apparently “Windows without Windows” under the hood, I’m sure it could be done, it’s just not as easy.
It’s more that MS has leaned into the subscription model with Office 365 and such.
Windows is already kind of a “Freemium” OS, so I’m expecting them to continue in that fashion. Your are right, the article is mostly pointless speculation that was refuted anyways, but I’ll admit it sounded a bit off to me anyways. MS wants people to be running Windows, so they can seem then GamePass subscriptions, Office365 subscriptions, and whatever other services they can think of. As such, I expect the core OS to be very free. Just what constitutes core functionality versus Premium features might change.
Heck, Truth Social uses Mastodon, IIRC.
Ultimately, it’s software. Even if my home instance does a good job of enforcing it’s CoC, and every instance it federated with does as well, someone else can spin up their own instance, load up on whatever, and I’ll never know or even be aware if it’s never federated with my instance.
Women’s reproductive rights are strongly supported in Canada, but that doesn’t stop one of the main national parties playing coy with a commitment to not reopen the debate.
To be fair, it seems most Americans support women’s reproductive rights as well, with a referendum in Kansas passing with 59%.
It’s gerrymandering and the Supreme Court that are changing things down there.
Found the quote:
The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just what particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.
Stephen G. Breyer, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
It’s used around 4:40 in the Don’t Take To The Police video.
I remember that from Don’t Take to The Police. Since gotchas I can think of is touching an eagle feather lying on the ground (endangered animals plus a market for poachers). Point being, that it’s essentially impossible to say with certainty that you’ve broken no law.
For sure. In the right hands you could do so much. Even without a plot as such, or much lore, just imagine the material for a “Game Theory” video. Why is the “Mad Forest” now a dumping ground for evil? What was it like before the vampire? Does the Astral Stair connect to the Tiny Bridge? What is the Legacy of Moonspell? Where is the fried chicken?