I'm not trying to be an apologist for Steam here, but am I missing a key detail in this story? We're talking about the launcher here, nothing to do with the content itself.

"Cold start to store" is a metric that I literally couldn't give a subjective opinion on, because once Windows starts, Steam is just there and ready to go. And "to store"? Seriously? Give us "Tray icon to loading a game" and we can have a discussion. "Thing that doesn't happen to thing that only happens rarely", not so much.

If Facebook wants access to European users, Facebook will be paying for EU-based data centers to comply. Same goes for Amazon, Google, and the rest.

This isn't a condemnation, it's an admission by the Megalomaniacal Seven that they have zero interest in building out EU versions of the very infrastructure their "services" require; an admission that the money is only supposed to flow in one direction, and it ain't East.

Saudi Arabia is our friend!

which could make running out of gas mid-journey a doubly-frightening thing.

From @sif@cathode.church (fediverse):
7" Apple Watch just dropped.

Even worse, this is an initial hardware release from Apple. Apple does eventually keep their hardware updated for a fairly long time... on the third or fourth iteration. But the early versions tend to see only a couple of years of updates before Apple drops them.

You can see that with the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV: their original versions only received a couple of years of updates before Apple demanded people update to the newer ones. The original hardware in all of them was also severely underpowered compared to the versions released a few years later. And if you look back to the original iPod, this is hardly a new thing with Apple. When the iPod was first released, it was pretty lame. It only became popular once USB support was added several hardware iterations later.

Which means that the traditional device holds: don't buy revision 1 Apple hardware. Wait a few revisions until it appears to stabilize. Or don't buy it at all if they just drop it, like the original HomePod (note the new one is part of the "HomePod Mini" line) or Apple Vision. (Where's the non-Pro version, Apple? I'm assuming that was planned at one point.)

The best thing about all these AI stories is they give people a lot more chances for a FP.

I was one of the haters on initial release, but Hello Games 100% redeemed themselves over time and are still actively maintaining the game with new content - free new content, not paid DLC - every few months. And today, I'd rate NMS as one of my favorite games of all time.

That said, from the two comparisons you made, I suspect you're thinking of NMS as the wrong kind of game here. It's not an "escape room" style survival game, and base building is mostly meant to be a simple place to keep / display your stuff, not Factorio-in-space. There is no real plot or long-term goals beyond what you set for yourself and a few "story" missions to encourage you to at least leave the starting planet and check out the neighborhood.

If you haven't seen it since 2016, it's a radically different, and better, game. And if you have - Hey, it's not for everyone and that's okay. Some people like open world exploration, some people like puzzle games, some people like FPSs.

There's effectively no difference between single and multiplayer in NMS. Multiplayer isn't so much a distinct mode of gameplay, as merely hanging out in the game with another player. Think "playing Legos with a friend". Same activity, just more than one person. There are a few features intended to focus on multiplayer, like the nominally co-op Nexus missions - But I'm not aware of any exclusively multiplayer content, and even the Nexus missions are IMO easier to solo than trying to coordinate with someone else. And even in purely single-player mode, you can still see/visit bases/etc from other players, you just won't see the other players themselves.

I suppose a proper answer to your question depends on what you really mean by single-vs-multiplayer, though. There's a core storyline that's honestly more like a long tutorial mode, and they put on events roughly every two months (which are again often about showing off new features); but there's not really anything you'd call a proper "campaign mode". It's fundamentally an open-world exploration / survival / building game, from start to there-is-no-finish.

And just in case anything I've said here sounds negative - NMS is a mind-blowingly good game. Strongly recommend, particularly in VR.

The PC as a gaming platform died when GPUs broke $1000 for an entry-level GPU. And that's just the baseline. If you want a gaming-capable PC you're looking at spending $4000 right now. That's just not happening. This article covers the death of consoles.

You ever talked with children? Even teenagers? There are three big games right now: Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. And that's it. All those run on phones. That's where the kids play. They don't understand how to use a controller and don't really understand how to use a laptop, let alone a desktop computer. They're at home on phones and as an extension tablets. It's what they grew up with.

It's where the future of video games is going to be, because that's what the next generation is comfortable playing on.

Sure, we'll just assign "master all things x509" to engineer #78 of 205... in our four-person shop.

Everyone in this conversation seems to be assuming every company has a massive IT department with folks just standing around picking their noses waiting for real work to show up and break the monotony. Outside Silicon Valley and Fortune-500s, that's an extreme rarity.

There's also an implicit assumption we're all running major-vendor enterprise-grade software written within the last twenty years; rather than an actively automation-hostile "best of a bad breed" industry-specific solution cobbled together by the nephew of a paranoid former CEO around the time I was graduating high-school, and it's sadly still the top tool of the trade.

Those who enjoy the luxury of never needing to leave Entra to do their jobs should stop throwing stones, take a step back, and realize their world isn't representative of the real world of IT.

They are. The future of gaming are cell phones and tablets. That's what kids learn to game on these days, and when they grow up, that's where they're going to game.

There's a reason the Nintendo Switch is essentially a weird tablet. PC gaming has been dead for a while and console gaming pretty much died thanks to shortages at the start of the pandemic. There's a good chance GTA6 will be the last major console game.

But everyone has a phone. Kids see their parents using them, and they tend to be the first devices kids learn to use. That's where gaming will be in the future - small things people play on their phones.

You realize you don't have the power to "press charges", right? Whether or not Flock is happy with the situation, they have zero ability to compel the police to do a damned thing about it. Now... Sure, nobody can promise the feds won't investigate (though they wouldn't even have jurisdiction without abusing something like interstate commerce), but most colleges "are" their containing town, including the local PD. Remember why Cornell is currently in the spotlight for how poorly a particular investigation went down? Why would a purely external police matter reflect poorly on Cornell?

As for what I'd tell anyone who did investigate - Nothing at all, because 1) read the above, 2) absolutely nothing we ignore our fifth amendment rights to say will be used for our benefit, and 3) we'd need to be a complete moron to show our faces while cutting down a flock pole; and while I may be no genius, I'm also not a complete moron.

The poles are 20lbs of high-quality aluminum - Ironically, jokes about letting tweakers know about the gold in the e-waste Flock keeps leaving on the side of the road aside, the poles themselves are the single most valuable part of an installation (as scrap).

More importantly, a simple hacksaw will go through them like butter.

Maybe not, but this is a college campus. Simply make it known nobody's going to investigate their disappearance, and they'll be gone by morning.

I'm actually surprised this played out as long as it did - Had the same battle taken place at my alma mater, I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.