As a manager of sorts, I already know if people are doing their job: the work gets done. I’m involved enough to know how much time their work should take and see through their BS since I do similar work.

Maybe these bosses should do the same: do similar work and you’ll know when they’re BS-ing you.

Why? Look at how many people here say they want Steam OS, and Lemmy skews heavy toward Linux users. This is that, but OOTB.

I don’t think it’ll sell anywhere near as well as the Steam Deck, but it’s also a less exciting form factor. I do think it’ll sell a fair number of units though.

The cheapest equivalent prebuilt I can find with similar specs (RX 7600 is slightly better than the Steam Machine) is $850, and a DIY build is more like $900 (lots of corners cut), so there’s probably not much margin on the prebuilt. Valve is probably saving some cash with their custom CPU, and they’re probably shipping it with a Steam Controller, hence the $800 target. If component prices rise significantly before launch, I could see $1k.

1. Yeah, I’m guessing $800-1000, and they’ll probably throw in a Steam Controller. That’s about how much a comparable PC would cost
2. I’ve been debating it, but it needs to be something my 5yo can use.
3. And that’s Valve’s target market here, those unwilling to DIY.

Get ready to riot because there’s no way it’s that cheap. My money is on $800-1000.

That’s a rip off, it’ll be more like 1/4 troy ounce, if that

Eh, I don’t particularly enjoy building PCs, but I do it because it’s cheaper, esp. for upgrades. I’m really not the target market for this.

That said, this is the right product for a lot of people. Many don’t want to mess with their gaming system, they want it to just work. That’s why consoles are popular, and the Steam Machine being a bit more expensive than a console and get access to Steam’s catalog is very attractive to a lot of people, especially if it otherwise works like a console.

I see you ignored my entire comment.

No, I responded to the relevant part. I was using segfault as a metaphor, not arguing that it’s actually the same mechanism underneath. If you’re getting panics in production code, I consider that just as much of an emergency to fix as a segfault, and Rust helpfully gives you stack trace info with it. It’s not the same idea as an exception, which could signify an unrecoverable error or an expected issue that can be recovered from.

I don’t know what is more explicit about expect

It forces you to write a message, so most temporary uses will be unwrap(). I use unwrap() all the time when prototyping for the happy path, and then do proper error handling later. This is especially true in larger projects where I can’t just throw in anyhow or something and actually need to map error types and whatnot. I don’t use expect() much (current hobby project has 4 uses, 3 for startup issues and 1 for hopefully impossible condition) but I think it makes sense when there’s no way to continue.

But yes, unwrap() is perhaps the first thing I look for as a reviewer, which is why it’s so surprising that this is the issue. At the very least, it should have been something like expect("exceeds max file size"). I personally prefer explicit panics in production code, but expect is close enough that it’s personal preference.

Yeah, I’ve been guessing $800-1000. That’s a decent deal on a prebuilt with this performance.

I used Linux for regular desktop stuff before I installed Steam on it. Steam got me back into gaming.

Yes, it’s not the same since you get a stacktrace (if enabled) and a message, but it’s the closest thing you get in safe rust (outside compiler bugs). I compare it to a segfault because it’s almost as unhandleble.

Basically, you don’t want a panic to crash your program in most cases. If you do, make it explicit (i.e. with expect()). unwrap() tells me the value is absolutely there or the dev is lazy, and I always assume the latter unless there’s an explanation (or it’s obvious from context) otherwise.

Nah, if there’s one thing they thoroughly test, it’s the spying.

No, it’s a panic, so it’s more similar to a segfault, but with some amount of unwinding. It can be “caught” but only at a thread boundary.

It is unwrap’s fault. If they did it properly, they would’ve had to explicitly deal with the problem, which could clarify exactly what the problem is. In this case, I’d probably use expect() to add context. Also, when doing anything with strict size requirements, I would also explicitly check the size to make sure it’ll fit, again, for better error reporting.

Proper error reporting could’ve made this a 5-min investigation.

Also, the problem in the first place should’ve been caught with unit tests and a test deploy. Our process here is:

1. Any significant change to queries is tested with a copy of production data
2. All changes are tested in a staging environment similar to production
3. All hotfixes are tested with a copy of production data

And we’re not a massive software shop, we have a few dozen devs in a company of thousands of people. If I worked at Cloudflare, I’d have more rigorous standards given the global impact of a bug (we have a few hundred users, not billions like Cloudflare).

Ift is precious and beyond compare. It has tools that most other languages lack to prove certain classes of bugs are impossible.

You can still introduce bugs, especially when you use certain features that “standard” linter (clippy) catches by default and no team would silence globally. .unwrap() is very controversial in Rust and should never be used without clear justification in production code. Even in my pet projects, it’s the first thing I clear out once basic functionality is there.

This issue should’ve been caught at three separate stages:

1. git pre-commit or pre-push should run the linter on the devs machine
2. Static analysis checks should catch this both before getting reviews and when deploying the change
3. Human code review

The fact that it made it past all three makes me very concerned about how they do development over there. We’re a much smaller company and we’re not even a software company (software dev is <1% of the total company), and we do this. We don’t even use Rust, we’re a Python shop, yet we have robust static analysis for every change. It’s standard, and any company doing anything more than a small in-house tool used by 3 people should have these standards in place.

Use something like Backblaze or Hetzner storage boxes for off-site backups. There are a number of tools for making this painless, so pick your favorite. If you have the means, I recommend doing a disaster recovery scenario every so often (i.e. disconnect existing drives, reinstall the OS, and load everything from remote backup).

Generally speaking, follow the 3-2-1 rule:

• 3 copies of everything on
• 2 different types of media with
• 1 copy off site (at least)

For your situation, this could be:

• 3 copies - your computer (NVMe?), TrueNas (HDD?), off-site backup; ideally have a third local device (second computer?)
• 2 media - NVMe and HDD
• 1 copy off site - Backblaze, Hetzner, etc

You could rent a cloud server, but it’ll be a lot more expensive vs just renting storage.

Headlander was surprisingly fun. Probably not my favorite, but certainly up there.

I miss them. But I guess I’m in the minority on that one.

Exactly.

There’s a difference between gatekeeping and being transparent about what’s expected. I’m not suggesting people do it the hard way as some kind of hazing ritual, but because there’s a lot of practical value to maintaining your system there. Arch is simple, and their definition of simple means the devs aren’t going to do a ton for you outside of providing good documentation. If your system breaks, that’s on you, and it’s on you to fix it.

If reading through the docs isn’t your first instinct when something goes wrong, you’ll probably have a better experience with something else. There are plenty of other distros that will let you offload a large amount of that responsibility, and that’s the right choice for most people because most people don’t want to mess with their system, they want to use it.

Again, it’s not gatekeeping. I’m happy to help anyone work through the install process. I won’t do it for you, but I’ll answer any questions you might have by showing you where in the docs it is.

If you have reasonable practices, git blame will show you the original ticket, a link to the code review, and relevant information about the change.

Then just do it in your greenhouse. If you don’t have one, ask your help to build one.