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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • For the average PC user, the (modern) Steam Machine is a mediocre 3rd-party prebuilt system with the interesting quirk of being Linux native with no Microsoft licensing.

    For the average gamer, the Steam Machine is a console-like experience to a game library stretching back to nearly the dawn of gaming with little worry that the next release will have you purchasing your favorite titles again.

    For the average game developer, the new lineup is excellent reference hardware. Having something real to target helps combat scope creep, whereby a game has fancy features that look nice until you realize the game only runs properly on a $15K machine for example.

    For Valve, they are in a life or death battle to sever their dependency on Microsoft. Their hardware is mostly an excuse to build out their platform capabilities

    • The 2013 Steam Machine coincided with releasing a Linux native version of their client.
    • The OG Steam controller encourages devs to implement their Steam Input virtual control package.
    • The Steam Link upgraded their remote play capabilities.
    • The Steam Deck coincided with the deployment of Proton, so they can make their back-catalog run outside windows on any x86_64 machine. It also served as a testbed for improving their power efficiency and standby mode operations.
    • With the Steam Frame, they’re implementing both FEX and Lepton:
      • FEX runs x86_64 games on ARM devices (meaning that it can run any windows game on any average smartphone/tablet/etc if it’s powerful enough)
      • Lepton is based on Waydroid to run Android apps on Linux, allowing game developers for Android and the Quest to easily import their titles into the Steam platform
    • The Box is an important accessory to the Frame, as the headset is going to be lightweight system comparatively.

  • For a reliable and useful remote control solution, you’re looking for an IPKVM with ATX power control. To setup the power control, you effectively set up a parallel circuit where your power switch connects to the motherboard, letting the KVM effectively press the power button ‘normally’. As a bonus, you can connect to the video and data of the KVM for even more remote control options, like be able to troubleshoot boot issues or load a virtual CD/DVD to upgrade the OS.

    For tinkerers, I recommend the PiKVM, either DIY or Preassembled. It’s important to know that a RaspberryPi is energy efficient compared to an x86. This guy crunched the numbers

    If you’re looking for a product instead of a project, I’d recommend JetKVM.











  • I’d quibble that any organization that acts to spread knowledge qualifies as free in the sense of expanding freedom of choice, and argue thus that if their operational costs as a public nonprofit have to be expressed as an at-cost service (or reasonably priced and used to subside their other related operations) - that’s still a meaningful free in multiple ways.

    But on a more basic level - yeah, it is shameful that libraries (broadly speaking) often have to operate like they’re badly managed businesses. But that arguably in most cases is not the fault of the library itself but on society (late stage capitalism, billionaires and the other usual suspects).

    Tl;dr: You’re not wrong, but also is that really the hill you wanna plant your flag in?




  • To clarify: this is not intentional art. This is an engineering edge case turned real by bad luck.

    Normally 3 buses can use around-about without issue, and there’s plenty of 4 bus patterns that could use the intersection without creating a knot, so bus drivers probably aclimate to having another bus or two in the loop, but this just happened to have the bad luck needed to create the knot.

    (And OP is calling it an art installation tongue in cheek because it’s not going anywhere for a while)


  • Laura Ingraham (of Fox News fame), put out an article that we should all relax, because Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were on average closer in age to 15 than 5, and spouted some technicalities about the definition of pedophile, as if that makes grooming children to sexually exploit and trade access to for favors any less repulsive.

    The timing of the news release is right after a clever procedural move in the US House brought a vote to release the Epstein files and now all the conservative media is trying the “maybe we did, but it wasn’t really that bad” lines.


  • I appreciate that arch’s package manager is a bit of a monster - but that’s also what made it the prefect choice for me.

    In the immediate aftermath of the release of the Steam Deck, there was many hot weeks where arch’s ability to turn on a dime was exactly the tool needed to run all the new things valve released (fast development to deploy is aur’s specialty). This advantage was destined to not last more than 6 months, as that’s the release cycle for other distros.

    Nothing prevents ya from using Arch to install Flatpack, tho. It’s also really well documented at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Flatpak 😅