The shame is that they won’t care. These people will just find another scapegoat and punt the ball down the line.

That’s just it, I’m a white male, I know I’ll be comparatively fine. It’s not really me I’m worried about.

It already well on it’s way depending on your province. People have moved out of Quebec because of the intolerance going on there. Hell, I know a streamer who moved because someone threw a fucking brick through their window at his wife who moved there from the USA. Not because she’s black or colored either, because she’s white as a piece of paper.

It’s not just that, people are acting like things are better in other countries. Like, name ONE country that has not gone off the deep end and ended up on the right recently. One major player. I’ll wait. There is no utopia waiting for you in those other countries because they don’t want you there and acting like you will be accepted as a refugee is foolhardy. The USA is a shit show right now, but we also don’t know the future. It looks bleak right now because of the information we have RIGHT NOW. If you want to move out of the country, be my guest, but don’t act like it’s going to automatically be better, it’s just going to be a different kind of shit show.

I wish I could argue with you.

We have been long past that point, it just took this election to make it obvious. This is who America is, and who it has always been. Denying just leads us further down the same hole.

And there it is. Already learning the wrong lesson. I really wish this wasn’t so predictable.

Why can I only think of The Simpsons right now?

The best part about the “they control the weather” theory is that they are posting an old military patent on social media. What’s funny about it is that, American patent law being what it is, even if it was real it would prove nothing. I could file a patent for a working dragon; that doesn’t mean I have access to a fucking dragon. It just means I have ownership of any dragons that work like the patent I submitted. A patent is only to show ownership of an idea and nothing more.

I mean, I agree that the form factor isn’t what matters, that’s not what I was saying. When you boot the Steam Deck it actively hides that it is a computer. Let’s be real here, all consoles are basically just dumbed down PC’s at this point. They have slightly modified AMD chips with AMD GPUs. The only difference is that you can’t access the file system. You can on the Steam Deck if you want to, but Valve tries to simplify the experience by presenting it as a console. My argument has nothing to do with the form factor and everything to do with the default presentation.

I just want to say I’m right there with you, and I was trying to make that clear while still explaining my thoughts on why the Steam Deck isn’t really a “gaming PC”. It could just be the old man in me, but the Deck PRESENTS itself as a console on startup, and to do anything beyond that you have to restart the device. For the general public restarting the device is a huge barrier. Again though, I’m happy the Steam Deck exists and hope that game companies in general will get their head out of their ass and start making more games run natively on Linux. Even with devices that have better performance and look like an upgrade I immediately discount them as an option the moment I see they are running Windows.

My post was not meant to take away your points, and honestly I tend to forget about the Steam workshop because, as you said, I and many other general PC gamers don’t mod games that much. I’m not trying to be negative about the Deck, just realistic. Unfortunately for me, my general lack of optimism can be seen as inherently negative. The Steam Deck has already succeeded in its goal as evidenced by the, inferior in my opinion, knockoffs from Asus and Lenovo. The main point I was trying to make is the very fact that if or when people try to install a mod they immediately run into the barrier of having to reboot the device. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does tell many people this is not the main way to use the device. Remember that for the general public defaults are the most powerful thing on their device.

For transparency, I have a gaming PC. I have a Steam Deck. I love the Steam Deck to death and would never give it up. For many people, it is the closest thing they will see to PC gaming. I can say without a doubt that the Steam Deck is a PC in the same way a chicken is a wild bird. Can you do 90% of PC related tasks with the Steam Deck? Yes, but with a lot more work, and much more required knowledge. It’s not even because of the OS, which is great because it’s just Linux based. It’s because the Steam Deck does not put necessary parts that average PC users need as forward facing concepts.

The Steam Deck is a console first, and a PC in a pinch and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s the reason I love the device, but also use it less. A good example is modding Elden Ring for Seamless Co-op. You can do it, and it’s not HARD per se, but you may have to find files in the OS to make sure Steam knows to open them, and because of how the file tree works in Linux vs Windows it isn’t really a simple case of “type the file name in search”.

I’m okay with that. I don’t want some program I don’t control having access to the kernel of my system.

Breaking news, people on the Internet have no concept of nuance.

At this point Everything Search is goated.

Yes and no. The theory is that each instance is supposed to be more specialized, kind of like the old BBS that used to be rampant on the internet. If you are moving to an instance just because people disagree with you instead to have more discussion over a specific topic that is not really in line with the purpose of the fediverse.

I mean, they’re the biggest instance, of course there is going to be circle jerking, but it also has more dissenting voices to push back against people who are just plain wrong.

So demure so mindful.

I feel like you are taking this way more personally than it’s intended. Most companies write stuff like this so the government can’t sue them. Basically, Microsoft is just covering their own ass.