People weren’t banned for criticizing them, they were banned for encouraging others to misgender people if they don’t like them. I don’t think anyone was banned for not using “personal” neo pronouns.

And drag was banned from BZ for telling people to KYS, then they went and made a new account on a different instance and have continued pissing people off, now the new acount is being banned from stuff because they’ve continued the kind of behavior that got them banned in the first place.

Nor will it even work, because, like, it takes two to tango. Ukraine can just… decline to sign what ever agreement Putin and trump cook up.

It’s short sighted and obviously doomed to fail. Europe and Ukraine are not on board, so all this will really do is give the trump administration a way to kill aid and support for Ukraine to make Putin happy.

Previously there was an obvious cap on the value proposition to scaling data centers, mainly, that they needed population centers nearby who would need storage or processing for thin film devices. Latency is important for these kinds of things, so they need to be near to the demands

Now they think they can make value regardless of demand from local population, through training weights for models, or running models and sending the output to population centers. So suddenly the cost of power to run the systems is what matters, and the most profitable (not the cheapest or most efficient) is fossil fuel.

They see dollar signs with the opportunity to turn power directly in to value without the need for people nearby.

It’ll be really embarrassing for them as the consumer market continues to fail to show interest in the outputs they’re making.

There definitely has been some scalping, but also, just, not a huge amount of inventory available (like sub 100 units available across cities with populations in the millions). A bit of a paper launch TBH.

TSMC only has so much throughput available and NVIDIA has other products they’re selling that they can make better margins on than consumer GPUs. I’m a little surprised they launched at all given how few they’re shipping.

I wonder how much of launching now was to generate buzz to get studios to adopt methods of rendering that work best with with software, make it harder for competitors to compete on hardware.

At this point systems that need it are probably a couple decades old at least.

But I’m sure there are people out there who are using some ancient system/program because it does what they need and don’t want to buy a new license or pay for a subscription. Guess they’ll just have to stick with the older versions and keep their systems offline to avoid security issues. Or just emulate an older system when they need it.

I mean, I think he knows that, but, is being diplomatic and not trying to create undue fuss with someone he hopes to coax back in to being an ally.

Is he naive in that belief? Perhaps. Is he choosing not to pick a fight because he’s already got a big enough one on his hands? maybe.

So, thing is, photos don’t prove anything about the relative movement of the aircraft, and people are notoriously bad about judging such things from the ground.

Now let’s apply Occam’s razor, it’s 1990, what secret diamond shaped objects might have been flying along side a RAF harrier? Perhaps, say, an F-117 night hawk from the USAF doing joint training? A highly secretive aircraft that only flew its first combat sortie in 1989 and wouldn’t be widely publicized till the 1991 gulf war. An aircraft that likely would have been flying along side the RAF in the case of a hot war with the Soviet Union, and thus would have had reasons to have joint exercises with a harrier.

That might be a bit niche to pursue. Like the mobile gaming device market isn’t that big, and devoting their limited resources to a niche product seems unwise.

Would be cool if they did, especially if they partnered with Valve to launch it with steam OS, like valve did with Lenovo.

I can’t imagine they’d release a new chassis unless it was something radically different to their existing form factors, and even then, it would have to be a fairly big market sector, since they’re not really big enough to target anything niche.

Replacing an existing chassis would require that they continue developing and releasing new upgrades for the existing chassis in addition to the new one, or make all the internal parts interchangeable with one of the existing chassis, both options seems like an R&D nightmare for such a relatively small company. If they just dropped upgrading the existing chassis… well… that would kind of be counter to their ethos.

They’re probably not releasing a whole new model of laptop, and if they are, it’s probably a specialty design, like a steam deck or a surface as other’s have speculated.

If it’s new components, you can probably drop them in if they interest you.

but, steam does not fit the definition of a monopoly under US law, as that would require them to have “restricted commerce or trade” to achieve their dominant market position.

Under US law, yes it does matter, that’s what makes something a monopoly under US law, otherwise it’s just a dominant market position.

For them to be prosecuted as a monopoly, or be considered one legally, it would have to be shown that they achieved or maintain their dominant market position by preventing or undermining competition. Say by having a bunch of exclusivity deals to keep big name titles only on their storefront, or by buying out any competitor that gained traction.

Monopoly isn’t about being the biggest seller in a market, it’s about being the biggest player in the market by undermining competition and restricting commerce.

Edit: want to clarify there is a distinction between the legal meaning of monopoly (see the Sherman anti trust act and other subsequent laws and rulings) and the colloquial usage (Only seller in the market). Steam is nether.

I really do want to see risc V succeed in the desk top and laptop space. The fact that there are only two major architectures and both are owned by companies is a serious potential issue. Especially if they both ended up being owned by one company somehow.

Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of JRPGs, Some I’ve enjoyed, but rarely will I ever play them twice.

Also I think there’s a fair argument to be made that if you cannot play a role, if there are no choices to be made on how you play it, it’s not really a role playing game. It’s action adventure if it’s a linear story with only one way to play it.

I hadn’t even thought about preferences for photorealism being a streamlining thing, but it does fit the idea.

I think it’s also a risk aversion thing as well. Few people will complain about a game looking realistic, so it’s very low risk from the point of view of publishers/investors/marketing. Most people will prefer a unique and stylized look that meshes with the game, but investors and marketing teams can’t be sure in any given case, so it’s written off as a risk.

For me, what I like to see in an RPG, is the ability to play a game multiple times and have notably different experiences, both in terms of play-style and narrative. It should make me want to go back and play again to see what I missed or how else I could do it.

The idea of having multiple ways to deal with a quest, and having that impact further story beats in meaningful ways is what I want to see. What i don’t want to see is meaningless scale full of nothing but filler.

I don’t think dagger fall is the best example because much of its size was just procedurally generated landscapes. The ability to actually specialize and complete quests in unique ways, as well as a branching story, is great. Mindlessly massive map, not so much.

I think, at this point, most of the nostalgia is for Skyrim, despite being the newest one in the series, it is nearly 14 years old now and way more people have played it. It had issues, and lost a lot of what was great in Morrowind, but it’s a beacon of quality compared to what came after.

It’s started to impact their success though, starfield has only sold like 3 million compiles so far, compared to the 12.5 million of fallout 4 on launch day. Hell, Morrowind has sold 4 million copies, albeit over 23 years.

It’s probably to late for Bethesda to turn things around, but, it’s a great example of what not to do for other studios and publishers.

It’s a question of longer development time with smaller teams, or short timelines with big teams. A small team working on content in series is more cohesive, but, requires a longer timeline. A big team can do a lot in a short time by making content in parallel, but this necessitates that content be siloed to prevent needing constant revision. A few long quest lines with lots of outcomes, or a bunch independent quests with simple outcomes.

A small team working longer will cost the same as a big team working shorter (generally speaking). But the priority is short timelines, for the sake of chasing trends and packing the latest greatest tech in. This same kind of priority also leads to spectacular failures of long timeline games, like “black flag” or “duke nukem forever “. The issue there is not the long timeline, but the constant changes in priority to chase trends.