mimixco
The point I'm making is that normal folks will not dock it or goof around with touchscreen compromises in order to run Windows, which they will also have to install themselves! This is the opposite of a smooth, integrated, pick-up-and-play experience.
Since MS makes hardware now, what's to keep them from making a handheld that runs the Xbox version of Windows?
Using Windows on Steam Deck (not using Steam on Steam Deck, using the Windows OS) is going to be difficult because the device lacks a mouse and keyboard on which Windows is dependent. Fixing this for Xbox required making an entirely new UI (for the OS, updates, sign-ins, everything) which Steam has not done for the Deck.
What I mean was that Steam simplified the selling, installation, updating, forums, mods, everything else -- the store that Microsoft really wanted to have with Games for Windows that never took off.
Instead of a venue where multiple options are presented for review by the reader (along with editorial comment, of course), we now have platforms which are nothing but editorial. Not only individual people but individual comments are called out for censorship. This is not how news reporting was done in the past.
It's sad because today, there isn't a single website where a curious individual can review all of the views on a subject (or all of the comments of opposing politicians, for examples) without the platform weighting or simply removing views it doesn't like. This is a loss of objective information and is detrimental to education and intellectual and social advancement.
Instead of journalism, each "platform" now picks and chooses stories and voices that amplify its overlords' goals and nothing more. There is no truth to be delivered, only "my" truth as seen by my platform owners.
It's a sad day.
Steam didn't build a console UI that works from the boot state, like MS did for the Xbox version of Windows. If it were up to me, I think I would have picked that approach rather than adding an emulation layer (Proton/WINE) in-between.
In a democratic society, the elected leaders need to communicate their ideas, however wrongheaded. If they aren't allowed to communicate, how do they reach their electors and how do they tell potential voters they're right (or wrong)? When you are at the platform level like YouTube, you have a responsibility to carry information from the government even if you don't like it because you didn't elect Ron Paul, his constituents did.
I see this as a victory for all software makers.
Steam managed to create the Windows gaming environment out of whole cloth. Microsoft's attempt to control gaming for PCs failed horribly, leaving Steam the victor. But, by the same token, Steam has no console presence, which with subscription models like Xbox Game Pass, can be very profitable.
What kind of console can they do? Not a home one. It's almost over for those anyway. So, a portable. What OS can it run? Not Windows. Steam isn't going to write an Xbox-like UI for Windows that would look good on the Deck, something Microsoft addressed back in the days of Xbox One.
The Xbox UI (and its integration with the PC) have only gotten better since then. So much so that many games are now "play anywhere," meaning you can buy it on one device, play on another, and pickup and play later on a third via streaming. This is remarkable and fantastic!
Will Linux on the Steam Deck enable this kind of "play anywhere" model? Hmmm.... Maybe. It will be a hard road. The article mentions that the "top shooters" don't run on Linux. That's pretty bad. Those are the games that have heavy user bases and you need them onboard.
Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://service.denigma.app/explain/demo/. (Reason: CORS header ‘Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ missing).
Uber is an attempt to mechanize the human aspect of driving by turning people into machines that produce for them. Unfortunately, in the fever dream that led to its creation, no one stopped to consider why "Big Taxi" wasn't a thing already.
Uber's overhead in misbelieving they are a software company rather than a taxi service has only added to the expense, not saved anything.
Because taxis rely on cheap fleets, centralized and cheaper maintenance, and volume fuel agreements, they simply don't scale.
const addOne = function(someNumber) { return someNumber + 1 }
The "explain" box shows nothing.
This site makes bold claims which, so far, I don't see backed up by anything. Even the "join waitlist" dialog is broken!
Next...
Back to Haagen-Daz for me!
1. The Van Allen belts are filled with lethal, impenetrable radiation. An attempt to "clear them out" using a bomb (called Starfish Prime) only made it worse. In 2021, there's still no fix for this nor a launch module that can carry the shielding that would protect people.
2. The computer technology required to plan and command a space module simply didn't exist at the time. Too much math is required too fast for realtime control, especially given the delays caused by the distance.
3. Werner von Braun, the primary proponent of the moon launch, did not believe that the moon could be reached directly because the necessary rocket would be too heavy to take off. There's no fuel that could do it and get there. From the beginning, he proposed a "build a base nearby" approach, not a direct moon landing. When that was rejected, he quit the program.
4. Video and photo evidence is highly suspect and contains many anomalies which, with contemporary computer-aided evaluation, can be shown to contain lighting and reflections which could not originate on the surface of the moon unless ancillary lighting was carried there, which NASA says it was not.
5. NASA has been historically obtuse on contemporary answers to many of these questions. If the landing took place, the answers should be public and obvious.
6. In 2021, there is no battery or air conditioning technology which would work for the times and temperatures required on the moon. Since it doesn't exist today, it probably didn't exist then.
7. Any developed technology gets easier and cheaper. Moon landings have not only not gotten cheaper, they've never been "repeated." No other country has made an attempt to send humans. Being as old as it is, space tech should be mature, cheap, and easy and it's not.
8. It's enormously difficult to send people even into Low Earth Orbit, as evidenced by the problems with contemporary private attempts and even with the ISS. There is no evidence other than the moon landing to show that people could leave earth's orbit and return to land safely.
The most widespread contemporary viewpoint among moon deniers is that the project was originally intended to succeed but, when that was proven to be impossible (first by the Soviets), a PR plan based on movies and photos was delivered instead. It's not unreasonable given the era and general beliefs at the time. A moon PR program delivered many national benefits and changed the way we view tech, both of which are good things.
Many moon deniers hope that some of these issues will come to light specifically so that real space exploration can move forward and free man from a sci-fi fantasy of the 50's.[0]
To be a Delaware corp, you must have a registered agent with a physical office in Delware, and these guys are right across the street from the Dept. of Corporations. You can get a physical office lease and have them open mail, forward it, or scan and send it to you. It's pretty cheap and this is all they do. Good service and good online portal, too.
I've put lots of hours in that game and it's amazingly subtle and complex. There are many, many ways to achieve whatever you want, but also several hard constraints that you have to work around.
If you want to be rich (treasury over $1M, for example), you have let people live in shacks while you build up foreign relations until you can get ridiculous prices for your goods. If you don't have several contracts at 70% over standard price, you can't really get big. You also can't be totally arbitrary in what industries you decide to develop. If you get in good with a country and your island can produce what they will pay (extra) for, you kind of have to do it, regardless of whether it makes your island ugly or puts people in shacks to work there. If you don't give in on the natural resources and foreign demands, you'll never have enough in the treasury to really help people. Kind of a disturbing realism there.
Getting those contracts means you have to give in to foreign demands, like building a $2,000 embassy for China when you'd probably, as a person, think you should buy houses for your workers. Turns out, they'd rather have bread and circuses and a strong economy and you're better off pleasing your betters until you have lots of steady cash flow coming in every month.
And this is just one scenario. There are many ways to play the game that aren't even about the economy. You can run it as a prison island, a military scenario, a spy vs. spy setup, or any combination of these. I think the best thing about Tropico is that, rather than one goal, you as the dictator choose what kind of goals you want and that leads to entirely different kinds of island setups and gameplay.
Private communication, even for business, is a human right. I was not suggesting that some authoritarian arm "shut them off," but rather that a profusion of businesses and individuals simply chose to ignore them. Death by recission.
It's also one's right to choose to be in an ethical business or not. I've rejected many customers and employers because I didn't want to help in their aims.
I was among the people who protested IBM's continued involvement in apartheid and it did end before I left. Companies can chose to "not be evil" or they can just say that.
And yes, sadly, everything changes human behavior. What I was going for is that ethics is a practical phenomenon as well as nice one for other people. I still believe that more can be accomplished through volunteerism (including volunteer agreements about money and work rather than coercive ones) than through violence. Perhaps that's naive or hopeful but I hope a few of us persist in keeping the idea alive.
When I was a mainframe programmer at IBM, one of they first things they taught us was how to stop the processor of a System/370 machine. If you can do that, ladies and gentlemen, you can bring down Bank of America, the US Army, the Social Security Administration, etc. So everyone there knew how to be a "black hat" hacker if we wanted to.
Was there money to be made in that? Surely. More money than IBM ever paid anyone! But the reason neither I nor any of my colleagues would ever dream of using our skills to hurt people is that last part of the sentence: it hurts people.
Yes, IBM did some awful stuff from helping Nazis to keeping apartheid alive in South Africa (over employee objections while I was there), but overall, the "corporation" provided valuable goods and services to real people who had to slog on in real jobs every day to get the world's real work done.
Oil companies are in the same boat. The world runs on oil and some ransomware attacks aren't going to change that. The idea that terrorism (and black hat hacking is absolutely a form of terrorism) is a useful way to change corporate behavior is so ill-informed that it's pathetic.
When asked about taking a "white hat" approach and selling legal pen testing (or even PTaaS), these developers declined saying they probably couldn't monetize their skills at the same level that way.
Well, I say, too effin' bad. If everyone optimizes solely for himself, there will be no one left. It's appalling to me that criminal organizations now recruit, have price lists, and get PR placement. These people and their products (and their communication channels) need to be turned off ASAP for everyone else's sanity and self-preservation.
Bob Gurr, a famous Imagineer, said of his boss Walt Disney, "Walt was the greatest dictator ever. People went along with him because he was always right."
Whether actually right or not, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can be said to have had this effect.
It's also notable that the NYT did not mention any of the differences between US and French or Belgian "comics."
In the US, comics are considered by the masses to be the bane of pubescent boys or puerile adults obsessed with superheros and cosplay.
In France, graphic books (they're not all novels) are an elevated and widely-used cultural resource. They're found in educated bookstores, museum shops, libraries, and basically everywhere. And you know what? They're terrific!
France (and Belgium) have access to wonderful historical series on every period you can name. Tons of biographies of famous, real people. And beautiful, illustrated tomes which they can use to spark their imagination and learning.
It would be more accurate to say that Americans aren't spending money on graphically illustrated books because that's not an accepted part of our culture here, rather than to try to slam the French for something cool that works well for them.
See also: Scott's McCloud's Reinventing Comics [0] and BDfugue [1], a terrific online store for bandes dessinées.