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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Is there a reason to use those over Steam Link?

    I have a AMD cards in all my desktops, so Moonlight is out. I could never even get Sunshine to run properly on my desktop, let alone stream.

    Steam Link just… Works. It’s an official Valve thing. There’s a ton of options to dial things in or work around weird issues, but for the defaults are usually fine. It handles non-Steam games just fine. All sorts of resolutions and refresh rates- I stream to my 4k TV in my living room, my 1080p tablet, various phones, and the Deck. My only complaint about Steam Link is that, for some bizarre reason, it’s not on the steam store. It would be a lot easier to just install it from the store in Gaming mode on the Deck, with a default controller profile. The picture is good, the latency is fine unless I’m on wi-fi and getting really far away from my router b


  • FYI- you can also stream from your laptop to the Deck. Technically you can do it on a per-game basis through Steam (which you may have already noticed), but I find it’s even better to install Steam Link as a non-Steam game, similar to what you probably did with Chiaki. As long as you have a good local network it’s great and uses way less of the Deck’s power.

    I have no idea why Valve hasn’t added Steam Link to the Steam store. That would make things so much easier, and you get way more settings and fewer bugs that way than doing the per-game streaming option.




  • Oh yes I was not commenting on any of that. Data privacy and the reliability of computer hardware and software over time are separate issues.

    I was just speaking from the basic-level user experience of operating a vehicle- touch screens are terrible. Pretty much everything you want to do in a car should have 3 requirements:

    1. Keep your eyes on the road. Controls need to be in consistent locations and have some other way of communicating what they are and what their status is non-visually. Dials, knobs, buttons that lock in-or-out, switches, levers, sliders. Anything close together needs to be differentiated- buttons with different textures, shapes, or resistance for example. This is very difficult and almost antithetical to touchscreens. The strength of the touchscreens is their flexibility- they can have deep menus that re-use a small amount of space efficiently, but the trade-off is that they need the user’s vision to work.

    2. Non-visual feedback to the user for their activation. Touch screens CAN do this with haptics and sounds. And there are physical inputs where this can be a problem, like regular buttons or knobs with uniform shapes. Levers, sliders, switches, and dials have this as inherent properties

    3. Response time. Touch screens on vehicles are usually underpowered and seem to take seconds to register an input, then apply it. If the music changes and is suddenly way too loud, it’s annoying to be subjected to that for 5 seconds while navigating the touch screen and waiting for it to work, in contrast to a regular old volume potentiometer that operates basically instantly. Really any music or audio controls can get really annoying with delay, though I’ll admit those are a luxury. Things like the lights are not.

    4. Not a requirement, but cars should be judged on whether these things FEEL good. Touch screens have improved slightly over time with better materials and haptics, but that only applies to higher-end ones and still isn’t great. Cheap physical inputs can suck too, though they are usually still better than touch screens.



  • Yeah it’s a fine line to walk. There are people who are non-functional, who spend their entire lives unable to take care of themselves and function.

    My older sister was a genius who, every couple of years, would have mental breakdowns and need to be institutionalized until she was diagnosed in her mid-30’s. Before the diagnosis I always considered myself a milder version of her- smart but not on her level, introverted but functional. Others in my life, without knowing about her have said they think I’m on the spectrum. So that’s a round about way of saying “there’s a good chance I’m on the spectrum too, but I don’t like self-diagnosing and haven’t had enough reason to get diagnosed.”

    I think the real key is giving people the freedom and technology to choose. I could envision a world where people move along the spectrum from day-to-day based on what best serves them. And I think a lot of non-autistic people would find a bit of the spectrum helpful. But that’s probably just a utopian dream.




  • Definitely sucks for the people who thought they were doing the right thing by going electric and ended up driving Swasticars.

    I know there’s an argument that those folks should have known what they were in for by the time the Cybertruck in 2023, but some people just don’t pay much attention to current events.

    I drive a Subaru and couldn’t tell you who the CEO is, although in retrospect perhaps I should have done more research before buying. But even without looking I can guess that it’s some shitty billionaire who donated heavily to both the GOP and DNC. Subaru itself has a history that involves… Being a Japanese manufacturer during WW2.

    You could also look at the Nazi Henry Ford and all of those gigantic pickup trucks clogging the US while also buying fossil fuels. It helps that Henry Ford is long dead, but are they really that much better than Cybertrucks?

    I mean morally. Objectively, Cybertrucks are just badly designed and manufactured vehicles but that’s separate from my point. Although if I may also rant- we already know that he used the Boring company to purposely sabotage high-speed rail projects in the US. We know that he bought Twitter not to make it profitable, but to gain power over social media. When you look at Tesla- the QC issues, the labor relations issues, the missed deadlines, the proprietary charging connector, the complete mess of a car the Cybertruck is, and how he is now very actively supporting a president who seems to be trying to destroy EV’s and prop up fossil fuels… Was Elon EVER actually trying to push EV’s, or was he actively trying to sabotage them? I know this is borderline conspiratorial thinking, but a lot of his madness seems to make a lot more sense in that context.


  • That’s easy for someone who can afford more expensive protein sources to say.

    Eggs used to be one of the best protein per dollar values available. You still have flour (and flour products), lentils, and pinto beans as options. Maybe oats and peanut butter, although that’s starting to transition from “protein per dollar” to “calories per dollar” to make sense. And those other sources will start to get more expensive as people move to them.

    It hasn’t gotten as much press, but the cost of chicken meat rises with the prices of eggs too. That has historically been the cheapest available meat, so I would expect people moving to alternatives to drive up the costs of pork, lentils and beans. Maybe beef and seafood too.

    It’s a significant blow, especially to people who do a lot of physical labor and need that protein. This isn’t just as simple as “don’t buy the videogame that’s overpriced” or “don’t watch the movie with the problematic actor” or “don’t buy the low-quality fast fashion products made by slave labor”. This is messing with people’s food. Go look up all of the long-term ramifications to populations after famines.

    Society is never more than a few hungry days from collapse. This could very well push America closer to that.







    1. They’re way overpriced for what they are, similar to the Apple model. Just charging really high prices and trying to create an aura of “premiumness” to justify it. Not the most egregious offense, but annoying

    2. The app launch. The app now takes forever to open and I often have to retry opening it around 4-6 times anytime I want to do anything. Considering these are speakers, and that often means that I want to pause, play, change the track, or change the volume. Those are all usually functions where having to wait 60-300 seconds is an unbearably long time, especially when you need to lower the volume. Worst of all, I have my living room TV going into the Line In on one of the speakers, and the entire section of the app called “Sources” where I can select that just disappears entirely ~80% of the time. So if I go to watch TV or play videogames or whatever and my wife was listening to music earlier now I’ve got to wait several minutes of reloading the app to be able to just use the direct line-in.

    They also removed the feature to play audio files that were on the controlling device. Other users have complained of other features like alarms that got removed or broken, though I didn’t use those.

    The old version of the app was not particularly great, but the replacement was a clear downgrade and made previously purchased hardware worse.

    1. A bit ago they had another controversy where you could “retire” of devices you didn’t want anymore. What did this feature do? Why, it just bricked the device and turned it into e-waste no one can ever use again! What could go wrong?

    2. More of my complaint for my specific speakers because I don’t know if they’re whole lineup is like this, but really annoying that only 1 of my 2 speakers even has a line-in, and neither of them have Bluetooth options. I’ve got to just hope everything i want to listen to is on a specific supported service, or find a way to get the audio to play on the TV if that isn’t in use.

    They were gifts from my in-laws. I was kind of skeptical about it but they weren’t too bad until the app change. I was even considering maybe getting another speaker to fill out the house before all this. But now I’m looking to get out of the ecosystem- maybe just build my own home theater speaker system for the living room and get a plain old Bluetooth speaker for the bedroom.