I’ve watched a video of hers before. My takeaway was that Microsoft is a heavily bloated company that suffocates internal development but with the OG Xbox and early 360, they were like a side bet that didn’t have a great deal of oversight from MS Windows/Office/Server mega money eyes.

They didn’t have a great deal of internal dev studios but they were really good at identifying third party exclusives to pursue and early on managed them and the few studios they did fully acquire well. It worked well for the first Xbox and first half 360. It differentiated the Xbox/360 from Nintendo and Playstation

Then I guess success led to changes in leadership aimed at growth and using Xbox as a platform to push more MS services and they lost the focus and ability to identify and secure great third party exclusives. That coupled with not having internal game dev teams in numbers and experience like Nintendo and Sony meant if they didn’t hit with their living room smart device dominance ambition, they’d just have a worse PlayStation. That’s what they ended up with with the XOne - a worse PS4. Then it happened again with the XSX because of lack of execution with their internal studios. An XSX just became a PS5-lite library-wise

Pitchford is the only person in the industry that seems to love the smell of their own farts as much as Tim Sweeney

The reaction of diehards wasn’t close to golden. You had the lore-aficionados that found the game as whitewashed, the shippers thought every relationship was shallow and role players thinking it jumped the shark even more than previous games with anachronism. The game was stable. Not buggy. That is its elevator pitch for why it’s good

Canceling NordVPN was a pain. It took numerous emails across numerous days for them to cancel and remove my credit card info. Lesson learned, I only pay with PayPal where I can revoke permission for recurring payments or pay with crypto. Went expressvpn to the cheaper nordvpn then to proton unlimited

I have one. I think it’s too big. It’s fine if I’m playing with my elbows rested on something but anytime my elbows aren’t backed by something, it’s not ideal. And then whenever I travel, with a case it is bulky. I got a Switch 2 and that feels great to carry around regardless of less ergonomic hand grips

Real just need Steam Deck performance and screen size but like 100-200 grams lighter. I’m guessing once AMD starts churning out 3nm UDNA APUs will be the time for PC handhelds to go a lot more mainstream. FSR4 will be a great boon for low powered gaming

I’m pretty sure people have been playing Tales of Berseria on Steam Decks for 3 years and it still says unsupported. Seems perfect to me

I think DC Universe Online went free to play before the PS4 came out. Don’t recall any other. PC had a lot of free to play games during the PS3 era though. Shooting games like Crossfire and Americas Army. A ton of free to play MMOs and I think it came out like halfway through the PS3 era, League of Legends

It’s nice. Today I was playing it with a friend. The larger display and detachable joycons are great for easy socializing activities. Besides Nintendo first party games I have no intent to buy any single player games for this console. But anything local multiplayer, I’m all over that. Ya I hope someday PC handhelds can become ubiquitous local multiplayer machines that weigh about the same as a Switch 2. I just don’t think they’re there yet. Eventually someday but it’s a nascent developing form factor for PCs. For now I’m happy to have a Switch 2 and a Legion Go

Some years ago there was a documentary called Mayor about the mayor of the de facto capital of Palestine. I remember they had mediators from like Germany in the negotiation for the Palestinians to build a cemetery and the Israeli negotiator and German mediators telling the mayor that he needs to compromise and satisfy the Israeli demands. Some compromise.

The gist is that there wasn’t really a compromise to be made. The Palestinians wanted to build a cemetery in their city so people could have a place to bury loved ones and the Israeli military that say these people are free and independent are saying no to the people to build a cemetery for non-specific reasons.

There wasn’t anything the Mayor and the people of the city could do to be able to build a cemetery and not be attacked by the Israeli military that had in years past invaded and we’re occupying. It was more like they didn’t want anything built for the local population at all. They were effectively living in captivity with no real self-governance. Freedom could only be had in lands away from their home and that very well may have been the purpose. Before this direct genocide, the method in cool periods was to make life miserable for the native people’s to push them out for Israeli colonizers

Professionally I do use VS Code but at home I have Lapce installed. It opens really fast. I don’t do anything extensive at home so I haven’t explored the plugin ecosystem yet but it’s fast. That’s most of what I care for at home

Reading this stuff reminds me of earlier in the 2010s when Iranian weapon systems press releases were always met with mockery, I live in region with heavy military tech development companies. I had a feeling back then that progress is progress and eventually they’ll be at a point of close enough to make the risk calculation too high for the US to operate so far from production/maintenance compared to whatever country is the current target for invasion/bombings and their weapon sources. I think we’re getting to that point

Operate and lose equipment that cost a billion+ to make equipped with ammunition that are hundreds of thousands to millilions of dollars to resupply that also need to be serviced for extended periods of time and major parts replaced after only a few uses. Parts of the US intentionally let costs run away. Whether they thought the technolical advantage actually made a justifiable enough difference for the poor production rate and maintainability cost is another question

100% numerous people in the US military know that they’re sitting on extremely expensive ships/aircraft/vehicles that are with modern enough weaponry, easy to destroy. A question of whether they have the power, for enough time required, to fix the bloat

Difficult and expensive to develop, manufacturer, maintain. Trapped in service contracts with completely single source suppliers, no alternatives. If it wasn’t so expensive to maintain, even just the ammunition, maybe it wouldn’t be such a panic situation but well after pretty much constantly being at war since the countries inception, the US is sitting on an albatross of a military. Not just all the equipment but how much employment is tied to supporting the albatross. Albatross multiplied hard with Iraq and Afghanistan paired with all the tax cuts since Reagan. Without Afghanistan and Iraq, probably wouldn’t be so wallet concerned for for a good amount longer

I was sceptical on how good it could be when it was first announced. Steam Deck 2 will be day one for me though

Good. I saw an article the other day that kept referring to protesters against Palestinian genocide as “agitators.” They already lost conservatives to thinking mainstream news media was corrupt. Maybe they shouldn’t operate in a way where leftist also abandon them and possibly get hostile like conservatives

Nice. I think now since like 2003 IE, is the most interested people may be in using something besides the current most popular option

Vietnam is like a cultural a bridge between East Asia and continental southeast Asia. Long term they’ll gain a lot from this US blunder. Even before Trump term 1, China, South Korea, and Japan had established a business presence in Vietnam

I’m a bit torn, I got a Switch first month and loved Zelda but it did take a couple years for releases to really become frequent. Eventually got a Steam Deck and now I go third party on Steam and the Switch has been a Zelda machine. That being how my purchases have been, I may wait until a new Zelda before buying a Switch 2. Maybe not until a fully exclusive Switch 2 Pokemon. Right now hoping for the inevitable PC handheld that is as strong as a Deck but way lighter/smaller

Friends and Mario Kart+Mario Party will be the final determiner of when I guess

Insane to me with how much competition there is that are just as good along with all the free stuff available. It’s not like early YouTube growing an insane amount of content before it started monetizing heavily. OpenAI is one of like a dozen, probably more, generative AI companies that are all close to each other in quality

Downloading the app just because of this