• 90 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • But I don’t feel that Steam alone accounts for PC gaming.

    If we’re putting the SteamDeck against Nintendo, I’d say the natural comparison is Steam exclusives against Nintendo exclusives.

    Even on my Steam Deck, I use GOG, Epic, and itch.io quite regularly.

    Sure. Because it is functionally just a computer with a Valve-branded Linux distro. But there are PC games ported to Mobile. I’m not going to count all Android phones to the “PC” side of the aisle just because I can install Balatro on my OnePlus.

    The whole reason the Steam Deck exists is to compete as a portable full sized hand-held console comparable to the Switch. If you’re not talking about portable consoles, you’re not really talking apples-to-apples. Anyone crammed into the coach end on an airplane can tell you the quality of life difference between a gaming laptop and a hand-held.






  • So, the landlord can effectively wait a month.

    I guess Michigan could pass a law requiring landlords to accept rent payments every day. I’m not sure anyone would actually want that as a reform.

    So… I don’t get it. You cannot enforce 48 hours unless the repair is requested less than 48 hours before rent is due.

    I guess the question becomes - can you bill your landlord if you are forced to live outside their property, and deduct that cost from rent? If that’s the case, the withheld rent becomes a means by which you can immediately recoup the cost of housing outside the rental unit.

    Even then, just the threat of non-payment is a big deal for a landlord who is - themself - likely paying a note on the property and at risk of default if they can’t use your money to pay their own creditors. The possibility of missing a mortgage payment creates a natural incentive to fix the property sooner rather than later.

    As it stands, this would be a significant improvement to landlord/tenant relations. Which is why it likely won’t pass.



  • So no, Steam Deck didn’t outsell the Switch 2. It didn’t need to.

    I don’t disagree with the sentiment. I would still consider the Steam Deck a “failure” if it couldn’t move enough units to justify its production cost, but it looks like they’re still churning them out, so… eh, it’s not great but its fine.

    I would argue that merely comparing generic PC sales to Switch sales also misses the mark. At the very least, you’d focus on unique Steam installs or Active Steam Accounts if you’re really interested in counting the success of Steam relative to Nintendo.

    Even then, what you’re really competing with isn’t “SteamDeck sales v. Switch sales”. I’d say its “SteamDeck sales per $1 advertising spent v. …” Given that Nintendo spent around $730M in advertising last year and Valve spent under $100M, it seems that Nintendo has to spend roughly $50/unit to move a Switch relative to Valve coming in closer to $40/unit.

    It’s very difficult to compare popularity under two wildly divergent marketing strategies.










  • Human posting of AI-generated content is definitely a problem

    It isn’t clear whether this content is posted by humans or by AI fueled bot accounts. All they’re sifting for is text with patterns common to AI text generation tools.

    There wasn’t necessarily anything stopping people from doing the same thing pre-GPT

    The big inhibiting factor was effort. ChatGPT produces long form text far faster than humans and in a form less easy to identify than prior Markov Chains.

    The fear is that Wikipedia will be swamped with slop content. Humans won’t be able to keep up with the work of cleaning it out.