mrmaplebar

I agree with you.

Keep in mind that as the American civil war was winding down President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and so his Vice President, Andrew Johnson rose to power.

Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Johnson became president. Johnson’s Reconstruction policies were lenient compared to those of the Radical Republicans. This dispute represented the conflict that many War Democrats faced, in that they supported the Union but did not wish to severely punish former Confederates or strongly protect the rights of former slaves. In the 1868 lead up to the first post-Civil War presidential election, President Johnson was a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination; however, he finished second in the 22 ballots cast at the Democratic Convention, and lost the nomination to former New York Governor Horatio Seymour, a former Copperhead.[4] Lincoln appointed other War Democrats to high civil and military offices. Some joined the Republican Party, while others remained Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Democrat

(Note: keep in mind that the “democrats” and “republicans” political alignment flipped around the time of the New Deal, so during the time of the Civil War, it was the Republicans (like Lincoln) that represented the northern Union states, while the Democrats represented the southern Confederate states. “War Democrats” (like Johnson) were democrats who supported the Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System)

And now for a bit of Civil War conspiracy theory…

The events of the [Lincoln] assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards with Johnson’s private secretary, William A. Browning. The message on it was: “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.”[121] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson

Make of that what you will!

It’s wild of you to say I’m “fixated” on anything, considering this is the first time I’ve even commented on this story.

To be fair, just look at all the people who have Chinese words written on them that say something that they weren’t trying to say. How many of those people have had those tattoos for many years without ever learning that they were incorrect or fixing them?

I wouldn’t go this route personally, but I know enough about tattoos to say with a high degree of confidence that many people just pick something out of the books on the day of the walk-in because they think it looks cool. I could totally believe this guy and his marine buddies said “that’s a cool skull, let’s get that”.

It’s like, how many people have Punisher stickers or t-shirts but have never read a comic book in their lives? Probably most of them…

He truly is one of the dumbest people I’ve ever witnessed.

All signs are that we are getting the new VR headset first.

Yeah :(

And it is probably in Valve’s best interest to let other people drive the HTPC consoles. They are not going to be cheap since “1024 at 40 FPS” doesn’t scale all that well to a 50 inch 4k display. So let other integrators deal with that. Just release the steam controller 2 already.

I’m not sure this is a good idea, personally. The original Steam Machines and the ROG Xbox Ally are pretty good indicators that it’s not very smart to rely on OEMs to drive major change in the PC market.

The current gen consoles are basically already just standard AMD x86-64 PCs that just happen to be running locked down proprietary OSes. So it really seems like low hanging fruit to me for Valve to just put out a price-competitive Steam Machine “console” akin to the Steam Deck that boots into SteamOS and otherwise is a normal PC that with a normal UEFI bootloader. That seems both technically easier and cheaper to do than putting out yet another prohibitively expensive VR/AR device.

As a fan of Linux and FOSS, my main concern is that Valve misses a big window of opportunity by failing to capitalize on the current weakness of Xbox and Windows during this awkward transition period from traditional consoles to PCs.

When Valve put out the original Steam Machines, people didn’t understand why they would want a computer in their living room that didn’t run Windows. But now the Steam Deck has shown people that Valve can deliver a console-like PC gaming experience that gives people the best of both worlds. SteamOS has a compatibility disadvantage, but a huge UX advantage. They’ve finally sold people on the concept that Windows is not the alpha and omega of PC gaming. But I think Microsoft understands that too, and the only reason that they’re doing what they’re doing today is because they clearly see SteamOS as a huge threat in the living room.

But as the saying goes, you gotta “strike while the iron is hot”.

So if Valve sits back and allows Windows to continue to catch up to SteamOS in terms of gaming UX, then I think it’s very possible that Microsoft could sell a lot of Windows-Xboxes, killing a lot of the interest in Steam Machines.

And I’ll say that you can get a really nice AMD NUC HTPC for under 500 bucks that can handle “steam deck games” on a TV. And I THINK I have a way to get Display Port -> HDMI 2.1 that I need to sit down and test.

True, I can build my own Steam Machine by just throwing Bazzite on just about anything that’s reasonably capable. I’ve been tempted, I’m just waiting to see what Valve has up their sleeve.

But it’s not me that I’m worried about. Mass appeal comes from a company like Valve or Microsoft putting out a dedicated gaming box for a decent price that comes preinstalled with a gaming OS. I just hope it’s Valve and Linux, and not Microsoft and Windows…

And while we’re at it, Haiti and the DR too. :(

Hopefully he croaks before the year ends. 🐸

It’s still happening in some cases. Like Balder’s Gate 3 getting a recent Linux port, for example.

I’m not sure if they really have standing for that.

But even if they did, Microsoft don’t have the guts because cracking down it would be akin to a direct attack on Valve and Steam. And at this point I think we can all agree that Microsoft needs Steam more than Valve needs Windows.

Uh oh… Good luck Jamaica.

Para meterme con el sistema, a partir de ahora todas mis publicaciones de serán traducidas automáticamente al español. jajaja Chupa mi churro HIELO.

BREAKING NEWS: Guy who said he wanted to be a dictator and that you will never have to vote again intends to stay President for life.

If they can afford to buy Trump gifts, they can afford to pay taxes.

Keep in mind that the President of Ireland is really a symbolic and ceremonial position with very little direct power, as it should be!

Putting aside my ethical and cultural issues with training generative AI for a second, I have no idea what the appeal of this stuff is as a product.

Like, if they want me to pay a monthly subscription, what do they expect me to do with it? I have zero interest in chatting to a computer that’s not thinking and is just stringing together words based on probabilistic bias, and I have zero interest in making or consuming AI-generated media. I don’t want an AI “girlfriend”, nor do I want an AI to play a video game for me. Finally, I don’t see the value in having an AI tell me things that it summarized from various internet sources when we all know that the chances of it “hallucinating” (aka: making shit up or generally being totally wrong) is extremely high and basically unavoidable.

So, aside from the basic novelty of talking to your computer, what the hell is the point of all this?

Personally I wouldn’t pay $2/month for LLMs, let alone $200/month…

If the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that the civil war never ended.

Many of today’s Republicans would be perfectly happy to bring back slavery, but just like they wouldn’t cop to Project 2025, they just don’t feel that the overton window has shifted quite enough yet to be comfortable admitting it.

It’s starting to get annoying waiting for Valve to announce a Steam Machine and having to listen to Microsoft’s future Xbox-as-a-PC plans instead.

Once they start squealing, that’s a bad sign.

1. A competent government would see Ticketmaster and LiveNation as the effective trust/monopoly that they are, and break them up into multiple smaller, competing companies.
2. To his credit, Biden passed executive action to ban bullshit “junk fees” that get tacked on to ticket prices (among other things). I’m honestly not sure what became of that rule once Trump got into power, but it is absolutely a rule that we need.
3. We need like 50x more scrutiny on corporate mergers and collusion of corporate entities to jack up prices.