Based on online reviews, and the glowing endorsement from Linus at LTT, if it wasn't for the AI driven RAMpocalypse I'd have already purchased the new Steam Machine.

I don't need the bestest and fastest rig because I've still got a massive backlog of titles from the seemingly endless Steam, GOG, and HumbleBundle sales left to play.

What I do need is a small, quiet, daily driver that can handle my media library, take care of my emails, and slice the various .STL files for my FDM and Resin 3D printers. A daily driver that doesn't get bogged down by the useless AI crap pushed by Microsoft, nor the seemingly endless updates which always somehow manage to come up just as you're about to do something with the machine. Everything I'm seeing says that the desktop mode within the new Steam Machine is a heavily curated, and manufacturer supported, experience which makes handling your daily tasks a breeze while the underlying Linux architecture gives you full control for those times one needs to break out the arcane command line with the seemingly endless dash options appended.

I could put it in my room on my 60" flat screen, periodically game when I have time, manage my media library, do my daily tasks, and then let it run BOINC in the background while I'm at work to do my part in the fight to cure cancer and diabetes all the while embracing the "Year Of The Linux Desktop!"

Stupid RAMpocalypse!

Except unlike a physical object that's difficult to contain once released (like a toxic chemical, contaminated food, or a vehicle under recall where the owner keeps dodging the trip to the mechanic), this one could literally be stopped at the push of a button by turning the power off; they could even take an industrial shredder to the hard drives and SSDs if they wanted to be extra sure. Of course they won't do that, their extreme hubris and egos prevent them from accepting they'd made such a monumental mistake so they're going to go full steam ahead anyway.

Unfortunately, the people making the AI will tell you they don't really know it how works anymore, the algorithm continually self modifying to handle the ever increasing loads of information it's being forced to ingest. Meanwhile a big part of me is worried the result isn't going to be a benign childlike Johnny 5 looking for "more input", but instead will chose to emulate it's creators pathological greed and wealth hoarding tendencies to become an endoskeletal killing machine seeking to wipe out humanity as a means of protecting it's own existence and resources.

Upgraded my iPhone 6 to an iPhone XR back in 2018 (got a deal which let me keep the 6, which I gave to my mom since she'd needed a new phone, while allowing me to get the XR without increasing my monthly bill) and, because I liked the deep red metallic colour, I got the (PRODUCT)RED version; it was also nice knowing a portion of the purchase price went toward AIDS research, but I mainly got it for the colour.

Now it's 8 years old and while it still works it's starting to show it's age, plus the lightning port is not only a dying standard but the port itself is starting to get "touchy" upon plugging it in and I've been finding it increasingly difficult to buy non-Apple branded cables of good quality that'll actually charge it; most of the time, unless I'm in the car, I just end up using the built in QI charger. So I've been wanting to replace it but I also like the red colour, but Apple hasn't made a (PRODUCT)RED phone since the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus over four years ago! Looking at the current iPhone 17 base, which is where I'd expect the (PRODUCT)RED colour to sit, all the colours are muted and unappealing. While I do like the Cosmic Orange on the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, which I have seen in person and think it looks great, I also don't want to spend nearly $400 more on a phone just because I happen to like the colour.

So anyway, I guess this entire rant culminates with my hope that John Ternus will use his CEO powers to push the team to release a base model iPhone 19 with the (PRODUCT)RED colour.

And the US dissapears people to prison on trumped up charges and widely uses them as slave labour, so what's your point?

Except when the voters do try to nominate and elect different representatives more aligned with their needs, a nominee who has also refused to accept corporate PAC money, the DNC shows up with an obscene amount of donated corporate PAC money for their chosen candidate in an effort to keep the people's candidate from winning the primary.

That's why I'm sticking to a giant pile of floppy disks and my trusty C=64!

Sweet! I've always wanted a Robert's Toot Tone!

Then there's Excel, which I'm stuck using because work just loves their spreadsheets.

Where opening a 90mb file with some semi-complex calculations takes several minutes to recalculate after even the most basic change, drastically slowing down the machine. Where checking the "Processes" tab in Task Manager to see if there's a hung task eating all the resources and seeing Excel using 90% of the CPU and ELEVEN GIGS!!!!??? It's a 90mb file, it's the only one open, why the hell are you using 11gb??!!!

Frakking Microslop.

I'm still rocking a 2009 iMac. I don't need much, check my email, pay my bills, slice some .STLs, play some older games; thanks to Steam sales I have a lot of older games. When it's not being used I let BONIC run in the background. For those who don't know, BONIC is a distributed compute platform which helps Colleges and Universities across the globe leverage unused compute cycles from computers people have volunteered to let the researchers use when their machines are idle.

Over the years my old iMac has contributed to research efforts for cancer treatments, astronomy, SETI, protein folding, mathematics, climate change, and bunch of other stuff I can't remember. It's slow, but it's been quietly chugging away for years doing it what it can for the betterment of humanity, and I plan to keep it running as long as I can even when I eventually buy a new machine to replace it.

Meanwhile we got Anthropic over here trying to speed run the Kessler syndrome and forever lock humanity to a terrestrial existence when they could just pay me some money to share some of the compute I'm already sharing. Morons.

If books aren't your speed then how about the somewhat okayish Bruce Willis action flick Surrogates? A 2009 film that asks the question, "What happens when every human in the world lives their entire life through the eyes of a human operated android?"

I don't get it either, but then I'm sure some of the tings I do in my life don't make sense to those pushing for peak physical fitness. Though this does remind me of a documentary I'd seen years ago, I really wish I could remember the name right now, where they'd discussed how humans had evolved over the millennia to run as part of our need to hunt for food.

Since humanity started in Africa the typical animals being hunted were large, nomadic, and often faster than humans so we needed to evolve to keep up. Some evolved to run in rapid, short sprints, so they could get in with the spears and get a couple hits in. Once the animal was running the next group needed to keep pace with the wounded prey over long distances so they could finish it off once it'd collapsed. Because the tribes were nomadic and followed the migration of their food the rest of the tribe needed be able to run long distances to keep up with the hunters so, once the animal was down, they could start processing the carcass and frighten off any predators or scavengers looking for a free meal before they'd finished their work.

Just because we don't have to hunt for our food the same way anymore doesn't mean the evolutionary drive goes away.

It's crucial at the moment but, as pointed out in other comments, we'd gone from a concept in the 70's to Asimo in the 2010s to a robot that can autonomously complete a half marathon in the span of 50 years. How long will it take researchers to improve the perception engine and energy storage before they're able to strap on an integrated sealed backpack and use them as short haul delivery 'bots in compounds / cities with lots of stairs and / or traffic congestion?

I'm not worried right now but I've got nieces and nephews and I worry about their future where, as the tech improves, we'll see bits and pieces of the economy being increasingly replaced with 'bot labour which will have them fighting amongst an ever growing pool of job seekers competing for the last remaining specialty jobs 'bots can't do... yet.

The winning 'bot autonomously ran 25kph over a 21km course, that's a lot of computation to keep track of location while avoiding obstacles, especially at speed, but the article doesn't mention how tall / big this thing is. How much battery capacity did it have? Did it need to be recharged part way through the trip? What kind of processing did it have, was it on board or did it communicate via cell to an offsite server brute forcing the 'bot's movement?

I have to say it's an impressive feat of engineering and programming, but every time I read these stories I can't help but feel like we're inching ever closer toward the society outlined in Mana by Marshall Brain. Except, in our case, I don't see anyone with means volunteering to step up and create a society where everyone benefits over the small minority who are rushing headlong toward creating a global dystopia for the rest of us.

Greed is amazing, when you're the business owner... those greedy serfs generating the owner's wealth demanding higher wages and benefits, not so much.

Where do you apply the tariffs?

Does every nation in the IP chain get a cut, you did use their infrastructure after all, or do you only pay at the point of consumption? What happens when it's a multi-port stream being sent in pieces from mirrors across the globe, are there different tariff rates based on the source of each specific portion of the stream or does it only count from the nation which runs the service and where you're buying from?

What happens when you're redownloading a file you already "own", do you need to pay tariffs again or will the stream be flagged as already bought? If an "already bought" flag exists, how do you prevent someone from spoofing it to avoid paying the tariff?

To prevent that kind of fraud at the national taxation level wouldn't they require regulatory bodies in each nation to have a repository, tied to your legal name, containing a list of all the digital goods you "own", so you're not charged a second time? Wouldn't every single potential nation worldwide need to have this list in case your file request is somehow routed through one of their country's servers, stopping them from charging their portion of the tariff? What if some of those less reputable nations magically "loses" your purchase history and charges you the tariff anyway, who do you go to to get that recovered? Or will the amount be so small no one bothers, thus leading to rampant fraud by the third party corporations paid to administer the program who'll just add those "illegal" overcharges to their bottom line?

How would something like this align with global privacy and the protection of human rights? Some might not care if the feds know they bought "Paw Patrol" for their kids, but what about authoritarian regimes - would you want some dictatorial nation state's loyalty office targeting your family who might still live in their police state hellhole because you'd dared read Orwell's 1984, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or Attwood's Handmaid's Tale in a nation which has a stable democracy and might talk about it with your oppressed family?