$14 billion. That’s actually pretty hefty. Go, EU regulators! Do what my regulatory-captured country won’t!

I, for one, welcome our new cyborg mushroom overlords.

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion?

The way I understand it, generative AI training is more like a single person analyzing art at impossibly fast speeds, then using said art as inspiration to create new art at impossibly fast speeds.

chomping at the bit

FYI, the term is “champing at the bit”

Article about it

This is the most succinct, unbiased explanation I’ve seen for this change. Thank you for this! It’s good to know there’s an unintended security improvement in their otherwise brazen attempt to kill ad blockers on Chrome.

Fuck Google.

I wouldn’t be too worried about burn-in. You’d have to display the same static image at max brightness nonstop for a month straight, according to this article.

Good! Tchia is a phenomenal, Breath of the Wild-esque, family-friendly game. My only complaint was its performance on the Deck - at medium settings, it gets 30-50FPS with occasional hitches. Performance wasn’t enough to turn me off from it, but I very much welcome an improvement.

My little one just past toddlerhood has a few games they love to watch me play on my Steam Deck. These aren’t all Verified, but they all run perfectly out of the box. Use ProtonDB for a more accurate idea of a game’s Deck compatibility (Verified status has failed me in the past).

• Donut County (already mentioned, but a great one worth mentioning twice)

• Everything (one you unlock all the powers, it becomes a sandbox game where you can do things like gather a large group of caterpillars, make them dance, and turn them into streetlights (which can still dance), or turn an entire planet into a planet-sized space caterpillar, or turn a dust mite into a microscopic building, etc. In my save, about 20% of all matter in the universe is caterpillars.)

• LEGO Worlds (basically LEGO Minecraft with less survival, more control, and smaller worlds that can be swapped between at any time. Can be very fun for little ones to use the free DLC vehicles to blast holes all over a world, make tunnels, etc.)

• Tchia (Zelda BotW mechanics with very little combat (and the only combat is with enchanted scraps of cloth) and the ability to jump into and control any creature (dolphins, birds, cats). It’s got some nice family-friendly options, like infinite special meter, no death, and family mode for cutscenes (though there isn’t anything too bad, regardless))

• Webbed (a 2D platformer where you play as a spider with Spider-Man-esque movement. Fun for kids unafraid of spiders to make big, climbable webs, and maybe good to help kids become less afraid of spiders, as it’s pretty cute)

I wasn’t upset to begin with. Was it not obvious that I was making a semantics joke? I mean, sure, the post I was replying to could be perceived as racist, since it was itself a reply to someone calling out racism, but it was clearly directed at wealth horders, not white people.

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One extremely important factor that this article neglects to address: Valve is a private company - it’s not publicly traded in Wall Street. That is the reason Steam has remained the best in the business; it’s not beholden to shareholders’ short-sighted meddling. It’s also the reason Steam is effectively immune to enshittification.

Ooh, I like this. No more accidentally waking my Deck because I nudged my Switch Pro Controller.

I’m not sure if it’s the same with a Steam Controller, but for Xbox controllers, you have to ‘forget’ your controller in Bluetooth settings then reconnect it every time you restart the console to get wake on Bluetooth to work. An annoyance, certainly, but you shouldn’t have to restart your console very often, except for OS updates.

Or you can switch your SteamOS branch from Stable to Beta. That bug is fixed in the Beta branch.

Really interesting stuff. Just goes to show how one person really can make a difference.

Speak your mind without fear or judgment. Post your thoughts anonymously and be part of a community that values individual expression.

Oh wow, a place without judgement, where I can finally discuss my controversial thoughts!

a post that receives a set threshold flags is automatically blurred, more flags means it is then automatically removed

Unless those thoughts are controversial.

Seriously, what’s the point of this? Just to have a database of popular opinions? It certainly won’t result in any meaningful discussions, since anything that doesn’t jive with the hive mind gets culled.

The UI was immediately very off-putting, feeling like a 90s sim game, and not in a good way. Definitely didn’t translate well to Steam Deck.

Additionally, the lack of any direction whatsoever was very unappealing to me.

Maybe I just don’t like sim games. It’s been decades since I was really into them, after all.

My most pleasant surprise on the Deck this year has been Shadow of War. It plays on high settings at a smooth, consistent 60FPS, even in big battles. As a fan of its predecessor, Shadow of Mordor, I’ve been loving it!

Worst was definitely American Truck Simulator. I’d been interested in the game for a long while, and finally decided to buy it when it was only $5. I got about halfway through the tutorial before I refunded it and added it to my Ignore list.

Only the new OLED decks have the Bluetooth chips with wakeup. If you have an OG deck, you’re plum outta luck, I’m afraid.

The official Valve dock has connectivity issues, but there are plenty of third party docks that are cheaper and work better.

Using the default system settings, I’ve never had any performance issues with it docked compared to handheld.

It’s important to note that unlike the Switch, docked mode does not improve performance. Trying to play a game at your TV’s native resolution most definitely will cause performance issues, but again, default system settings work perfectly.