mrmaplebar

Fair enough. Drunk 20-somethings military dudes getting a walk-in tattoo in some random country probably aren’t going to be making many smart decisions. It was clearly not a well thought-out tattoo.

Nevertheless, I don’t think the debate is about whether this guy got a bad tattoo or not, it’s about whether he is a nazi or knowingly got a nazi tattoo.

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…

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

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.

It’s hard to know if GoT counts as “controversial” because it seems like everyone unanimously hated it.