I guess we’re all too busy watching number go up to actually manage anything. For them it’s their stock prices, for me it’s my seed ratio!

They do often talk about “it needs to be new,” but for the most part the things they release don’t actually follow that philosophy. Artifact was trying to follow the likes of Hearthstone. CS2 is a glowup of CS:GO. DOTA2, League. Deadlock is the closest they’ve come to something genuinely innovative in at least a decade, but even that is still following on the heels of MOBA/FPS hybrids like OW and Paladins, just taking more elements from MOBAs.

And the “not caring about money” thing wasn’t true in 2008. They were probably getting to that point around 2012, as Steam began to turn into a money printer and their microtransaction games took off, but that wouldn’t have been until after HL3 had been cancelled at least once. At some point Valve talked about the difficulties in selling Portal 2 (I think it might have been in the dev commentary? Idk it’s been years) and one of the points they bring up was how even a huge success like that game wasn’t living up to their other titles. They tried to implement microtransactions with the co-op mode, but they learned lessons about how that model only worked in bigger multiplayer games. One of the big stories they tell in both the HL1 and HL2 documentaries were the troubles they ran into with funding, and I guarantee they were not looking to repeat those experiences by continuing work on a game that had far less potential for return on investment. Again, that might have changed by 2012, but by then the momentum was already gone.

I’m not sure I believe that Valve ran out of ideas for HL3. That’s clearly the image they want to project, and maybe even what they tell themselves, but judging from the ideas they did have for Episode 3 they showcased in that documentary, there was more than enough to justify releasing a game. Certainly there was as much or more new stuff than there was for either EP1 or 2. I think it’s much more likely they simply decided their other projects at the time–CS:GO, DOTA 2, even TF2–had way more moneymaking potential. And I mean, they were right! They made a ton of money off of lootboxes and cosmetics for their multiplayer titles. I don’t think Steam had totally taken over the market yet, so they were hedging their bets on multiplayer microtransactions.

I dunno. The whole “it needs to be new” philosophy they constantly espouse to hasn’t really been true at least as far back as Portal 2. Even Alyx wasn’t particularly revolutionary as far as VR titles go. Maybe doing that type of design was new to Valve, but the only standout features that distinguishes Alyx from other games are the graphics and the (genuinely very good) grabbity glove object pickup system. Pretty much everything else is several steps behind other VR shooter games in the name of Accessibility™, from movement to weapon selection to the painfully dumb AI.

They didn’t run out of ideas. The movement FPS genre is alive and well for a reason, even today: there’s lots to be done. They just lost interest in it themselves, and I believe the reason for that is primarily monetary.

Next week: Trump claims to be an Eldritch being that coalesced out of Jesus’s anger while up on the cross over 2000 years ago

At the point where we’re making lab-grown dinosaur meat, I suspect the cool factor is way more important than silly things like efficiency. T-Rex meat all the way babyyy

Because as everyone knows, political change only happens spontaneously, without any organization in the lead up, and people are famously fired up by sitting around at home until we all get the magic signal to go cut politicians’ heads off

I’m not disagreeing in a general sense, but it’s funny to make that argument here when this info basically fell into the journalist’s lap. Very little actual journalism went into making this story possible

7 years??? To me that sounds like it never goes away, people just stop reporting it because they’re used to it

I got down to my last egg like a month ago and keep thinking about when and how I should use it. Technically I could afford to buy more but it’s the principle of the thing; not so much about not being a Spoiled American but I really don’t want to support the companies price gouging these things. But I was also making a loaf of challah almost every week and I don’t think my flax meal substitute will work for that…

My solitary, lonely egg. Just chillin in the fridge.

Maybe I should start my morning with an egg sandwich tomorrow.

Uhh I guess it’s kinda like that, minus you knowing you farted. Imagine the dog barked and ran but you genuinely had no idea why that happened. As a joke you go “dang that was like I farted so bad even the dog couldn’t stand it!” But now everyone heard you say you farted, so any time a dog barks and runs away they call it “Rowbot’s fart.”

Dark matter may not literally be matter of any kind at all. All we know for sure is that objects with a certain amount of observable matter are, for some reason, behaving like they have much, much more. But also not with any consistency; some of them act like they have 30% more, others like they’re twice their size. We just call it dark matter because “dang it’s like there’s a bunch of matter we can’t see.” But we don’t really know what’s causing the discrepancy.

To be fair, it’s not like we’re totally clueless about it, but as of yet no single hypothesis has any concrete proof.

Like I said, watch her video. She goes into lots of detail and gives a much better explanation than I could ever hope to. But here I go anyway:

The gist of it is that “dark matter” isn’t really an attempt to explain anything. Like, theory of gravity, we have some good rules, things accelerate depending on mass and proximity to other things. Theory of dark matter? Not so much.

Dark matter is a problem in the sense that it’s an observable phenomenon we can’t really explain. When we observe really far away stars and galaxies, they interact in ways that imply far larger amount of matter than what we are actually observing. So where’s that matter? We don’t know! Dark matter! But unfortunately that nomenclature and the many ideas surrounding what does cause the dark matter phenomenon have deeply clouded the conversation.

Dark matter is not a theory of how things work. It’s a problem to be solved.

Watch her dark matter video. And the follow up. But for the love of God, dodge the comments. SO MANY people read the title of the video and then went to make comments calling her wrong, even though she spent like an hour specifically addressing the arguments they make.

Dark matter is not a theory. It’s a problem. Fuck!

I’m pretty sure musk is still the richest man in the world (at least on paper, who knows what people like Putin have hidden away). Until that changes there is a .00001% chance of trump and musk’s relationship deteriorating

Just like basically every mental attribute, ADHD is a spectrum. I’ve been diagnosed ADHD but don’t have it half as bad as many of the people here seem to, and yet I’ve also had a variety of bad reactions to every medication I’ve tried. Other people may have a few symptoms but not enough to bother getting a diagnosis, as it may not affect their daily lives at all.

But also I’m another person who has too many favorites to ever properly read through, so this is a definitely real, medically valid internet comment diagnosis that you undoubtedly have ADHD

it’ll probably be the vulnerable and the enemies of the MAGA.

Well, it’s starting with ours. It’ll end with theirs.

I’m not sure there’s any situation where trying to appeal to Trump won’t end in conceding to Russia. For God’s sake, this admin just ordered all cyber operations in relation to Russia to cease. There is no low they won’t stoop to. Any time spent trying to make Trump see the light is time wasted where in the end Trump will try to make you give up everything.

I’m honestly surprised Trump didn’t try to have Zelensky arrested and deported to Russia.

it literally happened to me but ok

I did a quick install of windows (last year I think?) and it sorted everything into a onedrive folder. documents, pictures, videos, downloads, all that stuff, looked normal from the file explorer, but was sneakily placed into a onedrive folder. it went something like c:/users/me/onedrive/. didn’t realize what it had done until like 2 days later and it gave me some popup about not being able to upload. i don’t even have a onedrive account; it just decided that was how it should be done. no idea what, if anything, it actually uploaded.

now if i have to install windows i have a script from privacy.sexy i run before doing anything else. havent had that happen again yet. still, probably best to assume anything on a windows machine is not private.

I’m just surprised it seems to actually be in c/users instead of a OneDrive folder

Am I missing something? 320/3203 is more like 10%