NuXCOM_90Percent

Yeah... that may be the video I was mentioning as being very clearly inspired by pewdiepie... That approach where it is clear they are emulating children's shows because they want an audience with the attention span of a goldfish.

But it also isn't even really a good one for showing off what Faugus actually brings to the table? Installing ubi and ea is definitely nice. But he spends more time telling people he pirated games than actually showing off anything Faugus provides on the individual game front. And the reason why Lutris took off so much is that those community scripts actually were REALLY nice for not having to care what settings to use in wine or what TPLs are needed and so forth.

Which gets back to it feeling like more of a replacement for Bottles than Lutris.

Being drafted is different than doing chores or working in care roles. Everyone capable should be responsible for the defense of those who are not in times of war regardless of sex.

And working in factories, taking care of kids, and just existing are very much part of the war effort. And their lives are very much at risk during a war. Just ask Ukraine.

It is one of those knock-ons from (especially) WW1 and 2 where draft dodging and "conscientious objectors" were such a risk as more and more people came back from the front with grotesque wounds and mental trauma. A culture of "only cowards don't go to war" was built up VERY rapidly... and caused immense issues as young men were unable to fight due to physical ailments or mental trauma so bad that even the 1910s/40s cared.

Except also Rosie the Riveter and all that.

It all ties into the "myth" of "civilian targets" during a full scale war. EVERYONE can agree that blowing up a hospital is evil. What about a factory that makes shoes? What about one that makes boots? Shells? Similarly, EVERYONE can agree that blowing up a residential area is how you go to hell. Now about about a residential area on a military base? Now what about the barracks on a base? Are you only allowed to attack the enemy once they step foot off base?

And going back to that hospital... what about a power plant? Because a LOT of lives are lost when hospitals have extended outages. But those plants ALSO literally power the war effort.

Which is the reality of things. When you just have a massive global north military destroying a country in the name of "counter-terrorism"? Yes, the reality is that a lot of the terrorist/guerilla cells are going to fundamentally be in residential areas and next to hospitals both for optics and convenience. But there is a LOT of "oh... there were some hamas soldiers in that children's ward, sure" evil.

But when an entire country is mobilized for war? The distinction between civilian and military becomes INCREDIBLY murky. Which... we can very much see in Ukraine and russia.

Because, yes, you need people on the front line. You also need people on the backlines for logistics and support. And... you need people just living their lives so that there is something worth fighting for. Rotating troops back for leave is immensely important for morale and... if they return to a skeleton crew raising children in abandoned dormitories? They can never recharge from The War and that leave stops mattering. Which leads to rapid desertion and even worse mental trauma.

And... The Enemy is very aware of that.

Sexist is debatable but... yeah

But everyone worshiping the rich? Yeah, that is Switzerland in a nutshell. A decade or so ago I spent a week in Switzerland on holiday and... even the state funded museums kinda felt like "And then so and so developed a really cool technology that saved countless lives. AND THEN THEY GOT RICH!!! FRANCA FRANCA BILS Y'ALL!!!! And here is what they bought with it and the house they lived in and how much paper it takes to print out their monthly statement and... Oh, the tech? Whatever, nobody cares about that"

There is also the emprical evidence that women make less over the course of their careers. An extra year or two of work experience can help to offset that.

Obviously not everyone falls into those gender norm buckets. But... they are "gender norms" for a reason. And while I don't know how our trans friends impact that (or if Switzerland acknowledges their existence...), it isn't the worst way to break things down to having roughly half the population on the frontlines and the other half keeping the country running.

But this is the kind of thing that brings out the MRA tendencies in everyone as a kneejerk reaction.

At best you can argue that Valve will not protect you. Hence, not your friend.

It varies.

There are definitely cases where the latest update outright breaks the game and that is bad QC.

But what people generally refer to here are games with a modding scene. A vocal part of the userbase rely heavily on mods and/or custom DLLs. So when the game updates, all of those break until the modders and tool writers are able to catch up.

There are a lot of implications to this for games with (meaningful) online components. But for predominantly SP games? It is a fun time when you sit down to play a game in the evening and see it was updated and know you can't go back to that save/game for at least a few days. And there very much SHOULD be a way to opt out or freeze a version for those.

Yeah. GoG and Humble (as well as many MUCH smaller stores) have very much criticized the de facto Valve monopoly over the years (... decades?). As have many devs who have criticized just how much of a percentage Valve takes (and how they reduce that for the big games). They just generally are smart enough to say it VERY obliquely because they know they don't want to antagonize a rabid userbase.

Epic... Epic increasingly are poised to "not need" PC gamers as it were. Fortnite is its own platform and Unreal Engine is increasingly used by film and industry. So they are much more willing to criticize Valve (and only occasionally remember EGS is sort of a thing...) which... tends to highlight why nobody else does.

Valve also gutted their LGBTQIA+ content a few months back. And they have had a MASSIVE nazi infestation basically since they set up message boards because Gabe Newell is infamously libertarian.

So... chill a bit with the glazing. They are better in a lot of ways but they are not our friends.

They don't need to sustain it.

They just need to wait until their base gets distracted by something else. And then it is just Leftists who everyone hates and Democrats who insist on "decorum" who will still be talking about it.

Either Scarface has dirt on him or this is just more distraction and "flexing" of power.

Which is why people who actually look at trends tend to compare it more to the Dot-com bubble.

The short version? A few early internet adopting sites (like Amazon...) set up online retail presences. People were ecstatic because you could now do most of the monthly shopping online and even re-buy pants that you know will fit and so forth.

Seeing money, EVERYBODY made an online retailer or service website and EVERYONE wanted to invest in that.

Then the market was oversaturated and companies with no right to exist went bankrupt and it was a bloodbath.

Except... not really. Because while the massively overinflated stock market did indeed "downturn" and a LOT of those scam companies went away, the actual fundamental premise of online first companies was a very sound one. I mean.. just look at "Cyber Monday" and so forth.

And "AI" will almost definitely go the same route. Because, yeah, LLMs are HORRIBLE for accounting and finance. But they are actually really good for replacing the early career folk who translate earnings into reports. And ML in general is excellent at detecting patterns which can mean potentially billions of dollars in investing. But, like all things, it is about verification and caution. You actually need a human to read that earnings report before you send it to the investors. And you only give your "AI" a small portion of your portfolio. Same as with any team.

What you are describing is something different... that is "close enough" to Moore's Law for all but the most pedantic.

The (I forget the proper economics term so) base price of RAM/Storage does indeed go down as new processes and economies of scale are developed. But the cost of a "laptop hard drive" remains pretty steady in the sense that a couple hundred MB was enough back in the day but you REALLY want at least 500 gigs now. The price per byte does indeed drop rapidly but the price per "drive" is far more stable (not fully stable due to inflation and how many people are buying them, but within spitting distance).

Its why a good rule of thumb was to always just spend roughly the same on storage during an upgrade and that would result in faster technologies and larger capacity drives and so forth.

That isn't what is happening with RAM in 2025. A much better comparison is GPUs because... it is the same problem. It is ridiculously high demand from businesses (often startups pouring dump trucks of VC money into their only hope... well, VC money or drug money in the case of miners but they matter a lot less these days) driving this. A quick search didn't yield an easy graph and I can't be bothered to go dig through Gamers Nexus's twelve videos on it, but the price of an "entry level" GPU has drastically changed in the past decade.

But just for two-ish data points?

• The GTX 980 and 970 had an MSRP (probably) of 550 and 330 USD, respectively, back in 2014
• While there is some other bullshit involved, the RTX 5080 and 5070 have MSRPs of 1000 USD and 550 USD in 2025
• Adjusting for inflation, the 980 and 970 would still only be about 753 and 451 USD in 2025 dollars
• And let's not forget that basically no cards were sold at MSRP back in early 2025...

The last point being what is, by all accounts, going to be the new normal. Barring outside impacts like... RAM going through the roof. Vendors will sell the cards for the ACTUAL MSRP rather than the inflated demand prices. And they will still be considerably more expensive as a result.

All of which is to say... my current card is definitely good enough but having a hard time deciding if I do one "final" upgrade for the decade. But I am an AMD boi so those are at least "reasonable" in terms of price per performance.