Absolutely, I agree. I think we are likely to see a shift in what indie devs use for their game engines (love2d, Godot, etc.) as PC specs stagnate, and I am of the opinion that GOG will see an increase in sales, too.
The “runs like shit” games have a shrinking market.
Inb4 we get astroturfed “Luddites” telling us to just abandon electricity and live like the Amish.
It’s not a win-win, it’s a silver lining amongst a shitstorm of suck.
Why? Because what if you’re not trying to upgrade but just maintain? What if your RAM fails? Or your GPU? Now you’re out there with the AI tech bros vying for a piece of a production line that you have no influence over, but they do. If you just built your rig, you might be safe to wait a while, but what if you built in 2020? Those parts are getting old, by computer standards; they don’t last forever.
We don’t actually know when prices will normalize, because nobody is calling in the IOUs, and nobody is clamping down on that circular economy; 2027 is just a guess. We might be waiting even longer.
You just described the AAA gaming market almost to a T.
The indie market, on the other hand, typically cares about what they produce, and you’re far more likely to get optimized games there that don’t require extra launchers, internet connections, or a massive GPU—not that it doesn’t happen there, mind you, but it’s going to tend to be more of a skill issue than a profit-driven one.
Also, there’s still very good games in the retro space.
Same. Just feels like uninformed spiritual nonsense from somebody who doesn’t know their history and wants to absolve themselves of the burden of fighting for a progressive society.
Like, if people need a break from the chaos of life, that’s one thing, but getting so deep into philosophy that you lose sight of reality is not the way.
This seems pretty cool. I have an old Android tablet I’d love to try this on, but it’s got pretty weak stats compared to more contemporary devices; I wonder if this could work…?
First off, let me clarify that I’m an agnostic atheist and a pluralist. Naturalistic determinism seems to make the most sense to me, but from a social standpoint, compatibilism seems like the best option.
It would be ignorant to assume that all who believe in God lack critical thinking skills. But belief in God does imply that those skills are not being applied consistently.
Some religions do not have gods, and some are atheistic. Furthermore, polytheistic religions can offer explanations and models for the world that fit what we experience (see Ocean Keltoi on YouTube). I’m currently of the opinion that what we experience with our limited senses/tools is all there is to our reality (how would I know differently?), but I think it would be foolish to assume that our senses are synonymous with all of reality.
You say this is an essay about religion vs. science, but from the get-go, it seems that when you say religion, what you really mean is monotheism.
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Most religious belief is emotional, not philosophical.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to justify this claim. First, I think what you mean to say is that most people who follow a particular religion do so for emotional reasons, but given the varied religions throughout the centuries that do not necessarily promise afterlives or operate upon fear, it is hard to justify why people pick Mysticism over Druidry, Wicca over Heathenry, Daoism over Zen Buddhism, etc.
You might want to cite a source here.
Even if religious belief were somehow compatible with scientific reasoning (and it isn’t), we would still be left with the undeniable fact that religion has caused more harm than good throughout history.
Which religion? Religion is not a monolith. Again, I think you mean monotheism (and probably a particular kind). I don’t recall a single time in history when witches murdered entire populations for not practicing magic. Furthermore, religions like Druidry have a history of seeking wisdom and knowledge; they got a lot wrong, but in a sense, they are early practitioners of science.
If you’re going to say religion in general is a net negative, you should point to examples where it has been beneficial and make the case that examples like the Crusades and Inquisition outweigh the positive examples.
Also as a writing side note, see if you can include negative examples that aren’t the Crusades or Inquisition. They get pointed out as examples every time this topic is brought up to the point that it is almost passé. I think you’d have a far more interesting essay if you can come up with other negative examples.
For those of us with the knowledge, it’s our responsibility to both sell the idea of Mastodon and help onboard people. On top of that, there’s many guides, at this point, about how to get involved, choose an instance, set up your feeds, etc.
It’s true that Bluesky is a much more seamless experience, because many options are hardcoded or pre-chosen for people, but if we can get people over the hump of making those choices for themselves, they’ll find it a much better place long term. Also, it’s strongly resistant to the antics of bad actors, so it’s a much better choice for governments and other groups. Bluesky does not enjoy the same natural defenses.
I would be curious to find out why, honestly. Is there some economic factor? Has Adobe thoroughly captured the market? Is it cultural? I know the comment author speculates that it’s a cultural/political shift, but I’m curious what the data would show!
It’s been a hot minute since I installed Bazzite, but it might even come with Heroic preinstalled. I think it did come with Lutris by default, as you say.
I sincerely mean this: thank you for your sacrifice. I wish there were more people like you who were willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stick it to the big corpos.
I’ll be excited if Linux hits 20% total market share, which is about where Apple sits last time I checked. That would put Linux squarely as a contender for normies.
First tech device I’ve ever bought where I didn’t feel some amount of buyer’s remorse. There’s nothing I dislike about it, and I can even install my own distro on it, if I so desire. Because of the form factor, I’ve even been able to tackle my backlog!
Bad. It’s always bad for the user. It’s good for the people at the top, but the reason for going public is never ever for the benefit of the consumer.
The reason is that even if the initial buy-in helps fund innovation, that will inevitably be replaced by enshittification as the board of investors demand “line must go up.” You can’t be consumer focused and chase profits; they are mutually exclusive.
But with https://unbox.at/ to make it harder for companies (and maybe certain governments) to tie you to your inbox. Also, it’s just generally helpful for managing spam and promotional garbage.
CachyOS has a handheld option, too. You can slap that on there to get a more typical Arch experience, or install Bazzite to keep the benefit of an immutable system but without the A/B system partitioning.
You just described Bazzite. You can literally install the KDE version, same as you’d find on a Deck, and get right to gaming. No tinkering required. Steam is installed by default, Bluetooth works as expected, USB controllers work when plugged in.
The only time you might “tinker” with gaming is when you want to install, say, an emulator or Heroic from the Discovery store (flatpak) to play your non-Steam games, all of which is optional.
SteamOS isn’t going to offer significant benefit, except it might get Valve-specific fixes before they upstream the patches. If you’re waiting around, expecting SteamOS to be some shift in the distro landscape, I think you’re going to be disappointed.
According to the article, it might be a company in China, but that remains to be seen. They could just as easily pivot into AI bullshit to try to get a piece of that pie before the bubble pops.
My city rejected one of these data centers already. They were promised something like $30mil for their trouble and “the creation of temporary jobs!” Thank goodness they listened to the People and their own common sense and unanimously rejected the proposal.
$30mil flat price and a few temporary jobs aren’t worth everyone’s energy costs going up, plus the noise pollution, plus the fact that they’re a fuck ugly eyesore—all for the foreseeable future.
Fuck these technobro assholes. Get the fuck outta our state!
Same. I’m thinking about replacing the PSU, which is one of the original parts, to ensure the rest of the parts don’t fail due to improper power delivery.
At least PSUs haven’t yet spiked in price.