https://venturebeat.com/games/valves-gabe-newell-talks/

Some of what Gabe Newell said:

I think there’s a strong temptation to close the platform. If people look at what they can accomplish when they can limit competitors’ access to their platform, they say, “Wow, that’s really exciting.” Even some of the people who have open platforms, like Microsoft, get really excited by the idea that Netflix has to pay them rent in order to be on the Internet.

That’s not how we got here, and I don’t think that’s a very attractive future. So we’re looking at the platform, and up until now we’ve been a free rider. We’ve been able to benefit from everything that’s gone into the PC and the Internet. Now we have to start finding ways that we can continue to make sure there are open platforms. So that involves a couple of different things.

One, we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives. Our perception is that one of the big problems holding Linux back is the absence of games. I think that a lot of people — in their thinking about platforms — don’t realize how critical games are as a consumer driver of purchases and usage. So we’re going to continue working with the Linux distribution guys, shipping Steam, shipping our games, and making it as easy as possible for anybody who’s engaged with us — putting their games on Steam and getting those running on Linux, as well. It’s a hedging strategy.

I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space. I think that we’re going to lose some of the top-tier PC [original equipment manufacturers]. They’ll exit the market. I think margins are going to be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, it’s going to be a good idea to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality. But when you start thinking about a platform, you have to address it.

That’s Hoodwink: https://www.dota2.com/hero/hoodwink

The title seems to be missing important context: this is specifically for NVK.

Anyway, pretty cool to see the progress on this!

Having globally routable IPv6 addresses for each device doesn’t prevent you from running firewalls.

Yeah, if you just want to use it personally, you should click Sign In in the menu, then Open Element Web, which brings you to https://app.element.io/.

Alternately Get Started then Download the app.

Either gets you to a client where you can easily create a Matrix account (on matrix.org).

On the tech side of things, the environmental impact of running traditional, centralized services is inherently lower than running any cryptocurrency off of a blockchain. To overcome the technical limitations would be to create another centralized service.

But yeah, there are almost certainly ways that traditional currency can reduce their environmental impact, too.