Schadenfreude is priceless; no finite amount of money can match it.

Except... We don't. Our laws, and in particular their associated punishments, are explicitly designed around low-probability enforcement. If every crime were guaranteed to be caught, "sending a message" and the entire concept of rehabilitation become completely irrelevant. There would only be two reasons to commit a crime: Passion / impulse; or, it's worth the price. In the former, fear of punishment isn't an issue. In the latter, the punishment is baked into the ROI.

If we as a society really wanted 100% enforcement, the design of our criminal justice system is nothing short of sadistic.

Never mind the Linux World - For a good example of a well-behaved taskbar, they only need to look as far away as... Windows 10! It handled all four sides of the screen and at arbitrary thicknesses perfectly well.

Much like the start menu. Worked fine from 95 through 10, then how many years did it take MS to finally let us make Win11's behave like, y'know, some kind of "menu" for "start"ing installed programs?

I dare say the only reason people have finally started saying "Y'know, Win11 is halfway usable" is because Microsoft finally started letting us revert the look and feel back in the direction of XP.

And on the other side of that coin, the OCC just accused BOA along with the other eight largest US banks of discriminating against customers based on "reputation risk" rather than clear and objective criteria.

Which is the polite way of saying Trump threw a hissy-fit over being debanked as a 34-time convicted financial fraudster, and decided to punish Moynihan and Dimon and the rest for daring to hold him to the same standards as every other human on the planet. The core accusation itself is the most telling - OCC is primarily accusing banks of using political criteria, which despite what Team Red might want to believe this week, isn't a federally protected class. Refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding? "Right to free association". Blocking a convicted criminal from accessing a company's financial services? Waaah, unfair, make 'em suffer, Daddy Gould!

It's not often I side with banks on any issue, and the much-reviled BOA even rarer; but if they're going to be punished either way, may as well just do what they want and earn the fines.

Maybe AI (AWKI these days) is worth something after all?

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.