Steam also supports local file transfers for game downloads. Like if your PC has a game downloaded and you start to download it on your Deck, the Deck will ask if you want to download it directly from your PC. It means your download speed is primarily limited by your LAN and PC hardware, (which is probably at least gigabit these days), instead of whatever arbitrary speed cap your ISP has implemented.

But technically speaking, carrying an SD card across the house would likely have higher data speeds. The latency sucks, but the bandwidth is only limited by the size of the card and how quickly you’re able to walk across the house. Hell, if you have a stack of large hard drives and it only takes you a few seconds to walk across a small living area, your total measured bandwidth could be measured in tens of terabytes per second. There’s an old joke that a carrier pigeon flying across town with a stack of SD cards would have higher bandwidth than any modern network.

In modern cars you’d need to actually rip the dashboard apart and cut the power to the built-in eSIM cellular antenna. Cars these days use cell towers to phone home, not just Wifi. And oftentimes, disconnecting that cellular connection will also disable major features of the car (like the radio and Bluetooth, which you claim will work just fine) because it’s all integrated on the same circuit board.

In some cases your car will even fucking throw error codes that will cause you to fail a state inspection. Meaning you’re forced to reconnect it before you can pass inspection and update your car registration. And nobody wants to take the time or effort to rip their dashboard apart every year for inspection. Auto manufacturers know this, and it’s exactly why they do it as a deterrent.

There’s always a trade-off in some way, though. For instance, Toyota is one of the best in regards to keeping physical controls. But they’re basically the worst offender in regards to data privacy. “Insist” is fine on paper, but (unless you’re a millionaire who can afford a custom-built car) you’re inevitably going to have to purchase one on the existing market. And the existing market is all about digital controls and privacy violations.

Saying “just don’t get one that has those things” is a little like saying “just don’t get a house that catches on fire” after a wildfire rips through an area. It’s not exactly up to the customer, and the average person could never hope to afford the custom work that those kinds of requirements would entail.

While I want to agree, getting it into the zeitgeist and public debate has value. This has the potential to get some of her “I didn’t really care about Musk before” fans to look into it further, which can only help sway opinion against him. It won’t sway his supporters, but that’s not really the point. The point is to target the fence-sitters, and to engage those who haven’t engaged yet.

It’s not news for people who already like or dislike Musk. It’s news for those who don’t already care.

To use this court case as an example, the issue wasn’t that the drugs were addictive. The issue was that the company lied through their teeth about it. The company already knew from the medical studies that the drugs were horribly addictive, but decided to lie to doctors and tell them that the drugs were perfectly safe. They had massive advertising campaigns aimed at doctors, to get them to prescribe increasingly high dosages, and to write prescriptions for much longer periods of time. The company actively worked against any kind of safety nets or support to help people come off of the addictive drugs, in order to keep a lid on the addictive properties as long as possible. Because the company wanted to sell more drugs, and the executives realized that getting people hooked would sell more in the long term.

That doesn’t mean the drugs should be illegal. Criminalizing the drugs only pushes them underground, where addicts will be left without any kind of support or safety nets. Instead, they should be available in controlled environments, with drugs that were manufactured in regulated lab settings to ensure purity/avoid lacing. They should be administered by staff who are knowledgeable about the full suite of potential side effects, overdose symptoms, and withdrawal effects. Staff who can monitor the addicts and ensure they don’t overdose, while also being able to provide resources, support, or even alternative medications (to control the withdrawal effects) for those who are looking to quit.

The drugs you mentioned are actually a great example, because very few people started with those. Those aren’t something that the first-time user sought out. They likely got a laced batch of something else, (because the drugs are illegal, the production is not done in controlled lab settings with guaranteed purity), which fucked them up hard.

Donald Trump owned teen beauty pageants and you think hes just an end consumer of Epstein’s child sex trafficking?

We also know that multiple girls were recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell while working for Trump. My theory for a while has been that Trump actively used his properties to scout potential victims. He’d find girls he wanted, and use their job to give them a small taste of how the rich lived. He’d let the girls see him and his rich friends living it up on his private resorts, and start dropping breadcrumbs that they could join that same class of elites if they remained loyal. He’d make them feel welcomed, but not comfortable. He would ensure they remembered their place at the bottom of the hierarchy, but he gave them a glimpse of what they could have in the future… All you need to do is remain loyal, and you’ll get your shot.

Then Trump would pass their info to Maxwell, so she could get to work grooming them. The girls would obviously have their walls up around Trump and co. After all, they’re a bunch of creepy old men. Having a woman as part of the recruiting team would normalize the situation and cause the girls to lower their walls. “Oh hey, this rich woman is really nice and understanding, and she seems to be on my side. And if she isn’t creeped out by the gross old men, maybe I was overreacting? I don’t want to miss a good opportunity just because I was overthinking things…”

Maxwell would eventually start the “you’re still young, so you have some time to figure your life out… But opportunities don’t wait, and you don’t want to be a beer girl on a golf course forever. Have you ever considered where you’re going to go from here” type of stuff. The girl has had a taste of wealth, and she’s wondering how to get it for herself. “I just need to be given a chance to prove myself” would inevitably be running through her mind on repeat. Maxwell would leverage that, and start pivoting them towards alternate lines of work. As if she were just helping out a friend. “You’re really pretty. Do you work out? Have you ever thought about modeling? I know some people who would pay a lot of money to have you in a Levi’s ad.” And eventually, Maxwell would invite them to the island for something that sounded benign, like a massage, modeling gig, cocktail waitressing for a party, etc…

When they arrive on the island, Maxwell will continue to normalize the overly sexual nature of the work. If Epstein is naked, Maxwell won’t even flinch. This is just how the rich live, right? He owns this private island, after all. He can be naked wherever he wants, right? This may be your only shot, so don’t mess it up by getting offended over some wrinkly skin.

If you read Virginia Giuffre’s account of how she was originally recruited, it pretty much matches my theory directly. She was initially hired to work on Trump’s property, then got approached by Maxwell. Maxwell was the one who actually recruited her and invited her to the island. And once Virginia was on the island, Maxwell was right next to her, acting completely unfazed and ensuring she didn’t panic when she saw a naked man on the massage table.

But the important part is that it all started with her getting hired by Trump. Trump was the one who scouted the girls and tipped off Maxwell. Trump even joked about Epstein stealing “his” girls, because so many were recruited from Trump’s properties. Trump was the opener, and Maxwell was the closer. Epstein was just the logistics, inventory, and scheduling manager

I mean, even that doesn’t stop aimbots. They’ll just snap directly to the enemy’s head as soon as they’re visible. If anything, this would make programming aimbots easier in several ways, because a big part of programming a good aimbot is figuring out how to prevent snapping to enemies through walls. If the server is already handling that, the aimbot won’t need to bother with it.

If anything, a stupid simple method of server-side aimbot detection would simply be to create phantom player locations. Like randomly generate fake player locations without any character models. Invisible to regular players, but anyone who snaps to that fake location just got busted for aimbotting.

Server side anti-cheat won’t detect things like aimbots or wall hacks. An ideal anti-cheat would run both client and server side, without requiring kernel level access on the client.

Yeah, instant ramen and Hamburger Helper sales have exploded in recent months, which is extremely concerning. But don’t worry guys, the TV told me the economy has never been better!

They’ll sell games for 227, 375, and 510 UbiPoints^TM. The UbiPoints^TM are only redeemable on their online shop, and are only purchasable in units of:

• $10 for 50 UbiPoints^TM
• $50 for 275 UbiPoints^TM. That’s 10% more UbiPoints^TM for free!)
• $150 for 938 UbiPoints^TM. That’s 25% more UbiPoints^TM for free! Our best deal ever!

I’m calling it now: There will be a non-zero number of MAGAts who briefly go gay to own the libs.

I mean, this is a textbook example of statutory rape. He paid an underage girl $400 to show up to a party with the implication of sex, gave her cocaine and ecstasy, and then had sex with her. The state recognizes that rape can occur even if the victim was otherwise willing. The “statutory” part of statutory rape means the prosecutor is required by statute to assume a rape occurred, even if the victim does not agree with the prosecution.

The state acknowledges that there are circumstances where a reasonable person would determine that a victim wasn’t capable of consenting. To be able to prosecute these cases, the state passes statutes to assign a penalty on the assaulter for statutory rape. This statute allows the prosecution to charge for rape, even if the victim was enthusiastically consenting and/or does not feel like they have been assaulted.

For example, if a cop detains someone, then has sex with them in the back of their cruiser. A reasonable state would recognize the unfair power dynamic in this situation, and a reasonable jury member would acknowledge that the detainee was under duress when the sex occurred. Even if the detainee was enthusiastic and willing, they were legally unable to consent because of the power dynamic that was present during the sex. There’s no way of factually proving if the detainee was/is actually willing, or just playing along because the cop held an inordinate amount of power over them. And thus a reasonable state would assume the latter, and statutorily assign a penalty to the person who held the power (the cop, in this example). And this statutory penalty would be enforced by prosecuting the cop for statutory rape.

And “being too young” is one of the biggest and most (in)famous reasons that someone can’t consent. The state sets an age limit on when children can begin consenting to sex with adults. Otherwise willing children below that age are assumed to be groomed (like a 30 year old “dating” a 15 year old) or under some other kind of unfair power dynamic.

If you’re trying to say that it’s unfair that Gaetz was tricked into sex with a minor, that’s a separate discussion. He took that risk when he knowingly paid a homeless person for sex. He knew there was an inherent power imbalance. If he wanted to avoid the power imbalance, he could have used a legal brothel that has a hiring and vetting process designed to preclude underage children from being hired. Hell, he could have worked as a lawmaker to decriminalize sex work and make brothels legal in his area. He could have ensured that people (including himself) didn’t feel the need to pay streetwalkers for sex, because legal brothels were accessible.

But he didn’t do that. He sought out a sex worker who looked young, fully knowing and accepting that there were no systems in place to stop her from lying about her age, and he was willing to take on the risk of statutory rape by choosing to sleep with her.

We need to find out how to raise boys that cant even conceive of this kind of conduct

While I agree with the sentiment on the surface, naïveté doesn’t solve the root issue. We need to raise boys who violently reject people who inevitably conceive of this kind of conduct. Sociopaths and misogynists will always exist. That’s why it’s important for a healthy society to root them out as soon as they show their true colors.

This was the very first thing I thought of when I saw the headline. I literally thought to myself “oh so she sounds like a pedophile.”

Yeah, I really wanted to like my Link, but it was plagued by random FPS lag spikes that made it unplayable. Sometimes a game running at a perfect 60FPS on my PC would just suddenly drop to like 2-3FPS on the Link for a minute or more. Frame times were suddenly measured in hundreds of milliseconds.

In my router and on my PC’s traffic data, I could see my PC was still sending the same amount of data to the Link. And on the Link’s detailed stats, I could see it was receiving the data. So everything was sending and receiving just fine. But the FPS would just suddenly tank for no discernible reason.

It seemed to get worse over time, (maybe as the hardware aged) and it made the Link completely unusable after a while. And the only real response I ever got from Steam about it was “have you tried updating the firmware on your Link? Or try using the app on your TV instead.” Notably, my TV at the time didn’t have the Link app available.

I’ve considered looking into whether or not I can flash something new onto the Link, to at least repurpose it into something else. I have like three of the damned things knocking around in a box, because my first one worked great and I got a few more. Then they slowly started getting those FPS drops, so I quit using them. Maybe a Bluetooth hub for Home Assistant? Or I could try to use it in a project like a Raspberry Pi.

Yeah, Sony really nailed the haptics with the PS5 controller. The high-fidelity motors feel nice while still having punch, and the adaptable triggers give a nice satisfying squeeze when game designers use it properly.

The newer God of War games had a few good examples, with the adaptable triggers getting harder on more “difficult” stuff. If Kratos was using a lot of strength for some quick time event, the triggers got harder to pull. It was a nice touch that helped add immersion and suspense to a game that was already very visceral. When Kratos cleaved into an enemy during a kill animation, feeling the trigger relax afterwards was a nice satisfying capstone to the “you just beat the crap out of this enemy” animation.

I actually prefer Sony’s symmetrical design, but that’s probably because the PS1 was the first console I owned as a kid. I played other consoles like the NES/SNES/N64/Saturn/DreamCast at friends’ houses, but the PS1 was the first console that was truly mine. And I went straight from the PS1 to the PS2 in my early teens. The DualShock controller was the one I grew up playing the most, so it’s the one I’m most familiar with using. The Xbox 360 generation definitely tends to prefer asymmetry though, which is really just a matter of preference.

I mean… What is a console, but a prebuilt running custom firmware and manufacturer’s OS? You can literally install Linux on a jailbroken PS5. Old consoles were obviously bespoke pieces of hardware that wouldn’t match any computer OS… But modern consoles are closer to prebuilt PCs than they are to old consoles.

It’s meant to be used with a TV, just like a console is. It’s targeting the console crowd, to try and capture that wing of the market and bring the console players into the PC ecosystem. It’s also trying to give PC players the flexibility to play in their living room, instead of at a computer desk.

That last part is primarily what I use my Steam Deck for right now. And it’s why I’m excited to potentially have something a little more powerful than the Steam Deck for my TV. My partner started to resent my gaming habits. After some discussions, we figured out that it was because they couldn’t cuddle me when I was at my computer desk. They missed the physical snuggle time that we got on the couch. So I got a Steam Deck, and made a point of shifting my gaming habits to be able to play more games on the couch.

Suddenly, the complaints about my gaming dried up. Because they could snuggle up next to me and read a book or scroll on TikTok while I played, which is all they really wanted. I’m still able to play my game to de-stress after work, they get their physical touch time, and we’re both happy. The only real change was in what kinds of games I played, because I had to shift more towards controller-based games instead of Keyboard+Mouse games. So fewer shooters, more hack-n-slash type stuff. But I enjoy playing both, so I just wait until after they go to bed to play the KB+M games at my desk.

And thus far, my only real complaint about the setup has been that the Steam Deck has started to struggle to run newer games. It was never meant to be a super high powered top-of-the-line device. The first consideration was portability, which meant they had to make some concessions on processing power in order to get an acceptable battery life. But with a standalone TV console, that isn’t really a big factor. So the standalone console can be much more powerful, because it’s not needing to take things like battery power consumption into account.

Yeah, I’m genuinely excited about the new controller. My biggest complaint about the Steam Deck has been the lack of touch-enabled controllers for mouse control. Because even in Big Picture mode, there are still some games that occasionally need to use the mouse. Launchers, random in-game menus, emulator menus, etc… I have the original Steam Controller, and use it occasionally, but it has a few big flaws… Notably, the lack of arrow keys, which makes playing certain console games (or emulators) on it difficult.

The PS5 controller at least has a touch pad, but there’s no easy way to scale the mouse sensitivity for the controller’s touchpad, and the default sensitivity is way too high. Barely touching the pad has the mouse cursor zipping across the screen. Hitting tiny options on a “1080p launcher on a 4k TV” drop-down menu is nearly impossible. There’s also the issue where you need to hold the PlayStation button to enable mouse mode, but holding the button for ~15 seconds turns off the controller. It’s a laughably dumb oversight, where you have to do all of your (completely unscaled, way too sensitive) mouse movement in ~10 second increments, or else you’ll accidentally turn your controller off.

I’d actually love it as a detachable accessory for the Frame, just for fun. Have it snap onto the back of the VR headset strap or something. The strap has something on the back (probably a battery pack) so it could just mount directly to that. Sell it as an optional accessory for like $10-15, and they’d be printing money.