A while back, I was actually okay with MS being semi forcible about Windows Update.

Most people overestimate their antivirus, and don’t realize that frequent updates are generally the most important way of keeping their system safe. And, to avoid turning computers into zombies for botnets, to keep the whole internet safe. Windows is the world’s most popular OS - it’s good for the world to keep systems secure.

And then MS had the gall to betray that responsibility of only shipping critical security patches by forceful methods. They started forcing people to Windows 11, pushing Edge back in as their browser, pushing popups and Start menu changes, and so on. For a thousand reasons, Windows Update has more notoriety in common with malware than the malware it’s meant to protect you from.

For me, on CachyOS, there does appear to be some fork of the drivers that the OS maintainers have kept up; I haven’t really had any complaints. In my case I don’t use ultrawide monitors or any unusual features, but maybe others with specific use cases would struggle more.

It’s not so much that Republican politicians are racist; they hate all Americans. But to stay in power, they benefit from fracturing movements, making people feel that voting rights, housing issues, wage equality, are things that “only black people” care about, because they “just don’t work as hard”.

Racism is the weapon of oligarchs.

Don’t forget a lot of media is “political”.

Mute “Star Wars”, “X-Men”, “Mark Ruffalo”, “Miles Morales”, Wolfenstein, Star Trek, Warhammer, Helldivers…

Wanna hear something dumb? Not even a sarcastic joke: If you have a loaded revolver with a cocked hammer, and you want to unload it, you must pull the trigger.

Reductive to say it that way, but basically the cylinder locks while the hammer is back, and most hammers won’t move once in position. Ultimately, the trigger’s job is specifically to release the hammer - just normally resulting in a violent impact with the bullet. If the hammer is being tightly held, or even blocked with one’s full hand, the weapon won’t go off.

I don’t own a gun, but I remember it because it’s the stupidest gun fact I’ve learned.

You should probably look down the barrel as you do, so you can watch whether a bullet comes out, right? Otherwise you might miss it.

There’s comics about Superman fighting the Klan, where this element of his background is brought up! For a time, the Nazis believe that Superman is “an example of white aryan excellence” before he corrects them.

I think that joke continues with Office Space and The Office, doesn’t it? Always vague comments about paperwork, but no actual direction.

I’ve been seeing clips of it online, and it seems genuinely hard to replicate the kind of confident, bizarro humor applied with so many of its scenes. Especially helps with how many of the “concepts” players can insert to get muddled around in conversation so many ways.

I’m reminded that we often only see “shounen anime” as the main art style of Japan, but they’re very refined at a wide variety of strange, human and less-human appearances.

It’s not that I love my bike. It’s that I love the hundreds of unplayed indie games I bought on Steam more than I would love a car.

Pretty much every song in Elite Beat Agents. Tbf, they get a very interactive emotional buildup to each song. Some examples:

• September
• Canned Heat
• You’re the Inspiration
• The Anthem
• Jumping Jack Flash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxnvGDK0WGM

I mean…I’m not gonna hate them for researching possibilities (there are none). Most of my hate goes to execs that see one (puppeteered) tech demo and resolve to instantly fire all dev teams.

If a company is at least taking a slow, “let’s see what this can do” approach, my bet is they’ll come back in a year saying “…yup, it’s a dumpster fire”.

Last I checked, people with brains have legs. Unless this happens through mass kidnapping, the best way to do this is to have a good place to live.

Brain drain happened during the Nazi uprising, in 2025 after MAGA took over, and it happens at many game companies that treat their employees badly. But it’s generally poor management and a simple external invitation, not a “stealing” effort.

Back around the PS4, I posited theories that we’d hit the “graphical plateau”, and while it was technically possible to make a stronger console, the returns were not great. I was wrong, and we got the PS5, but I don’t think I was wrong by much. It’s nicer to have 60fps and 1080p more reliably, but there’s really nothing urgent going past that - and if I understand right, there’s still a pretty large install base of PS4 users. It even runs some of the latest - did anyone notice games like LEGO Batman: LotDK and Jedi: Survivor somehow run on there?

I think there’s still plenty of ways to pull people’s interests, but it’s not going to be by the same big E3 reveal of some graphical leap. Not like we have E3 anymore anyway.

(I will admit this is a very anti-consumer move, but honestly, the most logical long-term strategy I could see them going for is returning to making large console-exclusive games)

Call it fracturing the resistance if you like, but I avoid streaming services, and I also avoid pirating. I can find enough through library services, PBS subscriptions, and other free, even ad-free offerings.

I don’t like giving media companies the message of “I really am very interested in watching this thing you made! I can’t resist not watching it! I just want to avoid paying for it if I can.”

especially when steam could legit actually tell publishers they can’t kill their games when it’s sold through their platform.

Steam actually does take a hand in this to a degree. For instance, they don’t apply any mechanisms wherein a player who bought a game simply “cannot download it” anymore. They can’t do anything to force online servers to stay up, but for example: You can’t buy the Telltale Law and Order game anymore. I can still download it to my Steam account on any device, because I bought it when it was around.

Steam definitely did not popularize DRM - there’s a reason GabeN is attributed for the “piracy is a service problem” quote. He made Steam because the most common DRM systems of the time were a huge roadblock for gamers. In turn, he created a system that was appealing for both players and publishers; even if it’s not as consumer-open as GOG.

One of the best pieces of legislation in favor of game preservation is Stop Killing Games. Most people you talk with in /Games urgently support it. So far as I have seen, Valve/Steam have not done anything to stand in its way.

People definitely do defend “lesser evils”.

Like, immigration. A lot of people feel that people should not enter the US undocumented, trending towards high-risk jobs and disengaging from American systems.

But they’d rather have them around, albeit illegally, than hard-push the sociopathic idea we need a Final Solution that uses a masked, domestic terrorist network to collect anyone non-white into concentration camps.

Most sane people focus on solving big-ticket problems in the world, not putting hardline focus on lesser issues. Attacking Steam does not in any significant way resolve wealth disparity across the United States.

I mean, they do that already. You can visibly see how popular PS+ Cloud is. I don’t have exact numbers, but I can see that they don’t do much to advertise it anymore, and that the whole industry saw Stadia and Luna fail.