I have a mini PC running linux on my living room, which I use like a more powerful steam deck. There are distros designed to boot into gamescope modes of that's your thin, so. "steam machine" experience is definitely doable.

Valve should look at bringing back real steam machines because the software is finally there to do it well thanks to Proton.

It is but it's also one of the few options available to devs. They can sign up with a big publisher and then be beholden to them financially and creatively. Or they can try the kickstarter route, or they can take out huge loans or investment and be beholden to them. If they're lucky they can get grants from governments but that is sporadic and uncommon. Or they can scale back projects to reduce financial risk.

Some devs can self fund once very successful, but even a successful dev like the makers of Subnautica won't have lots of money on hand. Plus even if they have cash, it is also about risk and sharing that so they don't go completely bankrupt on one project and all their employees lose their jobs.

Early Access has its down sides for definite but it does allow game devs to get revenue in while developing, and also (if done well) focus on delivering a game the players actually like. The biggest benefit is definitely that it allows devs as much independence as feasible.

Of course for the players, it can be hit or miss but that is the risk with any game. And no one forces anyone to buy an EA game - if you don't like it, don't buy and wait til 1.0. That's no different than waiting for any game to release so not sure what the problem is from that point of view?

For players in terms of a pure "investment" then of course it's a bad deal - the only return you get is the hopeful 1.0 game, and you get no share of any profits. You're actually just another customer, who has been tapped very early. But again, it's a choice and gamers can just not buy early access.

I've bought quite a few games via kickstarter and EA routes, but only games that I'm passionate about and are relatively niche (like small indie projects, or genres that don't get much mainstream action now like Adventure games). As much as I enjoyed Subnautica, I personally wouldn't buy its sequel on EA except maybe if it was very close to release.

May be less Nobara and more KDE. I love KDE but 6 defaults to Wayland and that is not a good mix with Nvidia in my experience. I am on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed on my main gaming desktop and had numerous problems at the beginning of the year when KDE 6 launched but since switching to X11 have had no issues. I have tried Wayland a couple of times since KDE updates and it has improved but remains flaky in my view. On a separate home media PC I use Nobara with an integrated AMD GPU I've not had any issues with KDE and Wayland.

When it comes to immutable desktops, I like the idea but be aware they do have their downsides. Installing custom software relies on universal formats like Flatpak (which have their own overhead and downsides, and not all of the packages are "official") and if what you want is not available then it can be a pain having to use virtualisation and containers for a less locked down system, especially if dependencies for software are complex. They can bloat quickly but storage is dirt cheap these days so might not matter to you. I still find it too much faff. These are not insurmountable and may be worth it if concerned about the security and stability benefits. For me that's particularly problematic as I like to try out niche programmes and play with the latest versions of emulation tools. If you like to tinker then immutable can get in the way.

I must admit though, I am someone who is (generally) quite happy to reinstall if I break the system. However the purported stability and security of immutable systems does make sense if you want a good system that "just works".

Overall, in my experiences with Nobara and separately KDE and Nvidia have been good, as long as you avoid Wayland. May be worth a relook if the immutable nature of Bazzite isn't for you.

Edit: should say I did consider Nobara for my desktop PC but opted to try OpenSuSE first. I really like it and haven't had issues setting it up for gaming so I've not bothered switching. But Nobara in my media PC in my living room has been super convenient as it "just works" when it comes to controllers and all the gaming set up, so I also haven't bothered switching that to OpenSuSE. Both are good.

American problems. Not experienced this is in well over a decade in the UK an travelling.

I'm no fan of religion but religious freedom goes hand in hand with freedom generally. It is no surprise to see China oppressing freedom of religion, but it is a surprise to see a (presumably) western atheist celebrate it.

Sorry if this misunderstands the problem, but on searching it looks like the settings have moved to System settings > lock screen (previously found in energy saver or battery).

OK today I learned I may have aphantasia.

It suffices to say, the follow up questions were bizarre to me.

That is a good point. I have moved to Proton mail but I keep my Gmail account as a backup and it's part of my still used Google account. Can't see myself ever shutting it down completely just in case, as much as I avoid Google as much as possible now.

I work in the NHS and I can attest to the problems of the outdated infrastructure.

However the biggest problem is easily the lack of standardisation across the NHS. It's split into 100s of NHS trusts running hospitals and 1000s of GP practices, and many have their own individual software systems.

It's gotten a little better in recent years with some regional purchasing to some extent but it's still a mess.

Where I live, one big trust procured a top of the line EPR and the neighbouring trusts have all got individual old systems that don't work with it. There is no single patient record yet patients move between trusts all the time.

The NHS needs to coordinate it IT better. Instead of trusts buying their own EPR (electronic patient records), the NHS needs to procure on a national or regional scale.

The same issues happen with PACs (picture archiving systems for storing the images such as radiology), RIS (radiology information systems for storing information about radiology) and Pathology systems.

But the single biggest thing government could do is stop stealing the capital budget (the money set aside each year for investing in buildings and IT). NHS trusts are forced to set this money aside for future investment in estates and IT but the tories have used it every year for the last 10 years to pay for day to day operational costs. That is why hospitals are crumbling and infrastructure is out of date. Financial mismanagement has been imposed from the top down so the Gov can say "we've put billions more into the NHS". Instead a large chunk of that has been sleight of hand lies and it's built up the mess we have now. They have literally mugged Peter to pay Paul.

I have little faith Wes Streeting and labour will be any different.

I've had lots of problems with Nvidia over the years; you're lucky not to. Latest has been with Wayland which are ongoing. That being said Nvidia drivers are much better generally than they used to be, and I've not had the myriad of small issues I used to get.

This is less to do with them being closed source drivers so much as their drivers being poorly maintained in the past. They seem much better maintained but even now the software support lags behind windows - you have to use 3rd party open source software to make use of the streaming features for example.

This is a reasonable question. This is politics - the Harris campaign are putting pressure on Trump to do the same. Harris has a clear bill of health yet Trump is nearly 80 and rambling in his speeches.

The Harris move puts pressure on Trump to do the same. If he doesn't it makes him look like he has something to hide, and regardless it draws attention to his health and mental state for voters.

So it's not "weird" - it's political strategy and game playing that both sides are doing all the time.

I don't know why this is being downvoted. There seems to be a wierd group think around that criticising the Democrat campaign means you support Trump or something?

The article is well written and it's certainly not pro Trump. Instead it's taking a position that the campaign is making misteps that Clinton also made, which might let Trump win.

It opens with a very good point - Democrats seem to believe they ran a good campaign in 2016 and should have won. There seems to be a lack of introspection even now about why they lost and what they should be doing to win over voters.

I think the Harris campaign is better than the 2016 campaign but I do agree there are some worrying elements. A clear one is the uninspired and vague policies - the campaign is running mostly on personality and the idea that Trump is dangerous. That did not work for Clinton, although Harris certain ly has much more personality and likability. It is a risky strategy to retry.

My worry is that they saw the big victory Labour had in the UK and are drawing the wrong conclusions. Labour won because the Incumbent Tories were very unpopular, and they so were very cautious about policies - they kept their mouth shut and let the Tories implode. But that has been tried with Trump before and he is not the incumbent. Also Labour are not popular here - they have not managed to break through, they have merely benefited from the Tories collapse in our first past the post system. Trump has not collapsed.

If they're emulating a UK strategy of letting Trump lose rather than actively trying to win then ti's very dangerous and risky. We have a parliamentary democracy which does not transfer to the electoral college voting system. They should not base anything around UK labours success. It's a mirage.

Just to say you do dream, you are just not remembering them most of the time.

I thought I didn't dream but found that if I'm interrupted during sleep then I am aware of the dream I had. You can also apparently train yourself to remember your dreams with a dream journal and alarms, although I haven't gone too far with that myself. But it intrigues me as it's a route to lucid dreaming.

What you're describing of being sort of aware you're in a dream is a step towards lucid dreaming where you are basically "awake" and in control of your dreams.

As for your dreams within dreams. I have had that - mainly as waking up and getting out of bed, then waking up again still in bed and getting up, then again. It's trippy when it happens.

Yeah they probably should. Problem is there is a lead time on many tech products of years. Even with iterative tech like phones it's likely to be 18 months to 3 years. So Samsung will have limited options in terms of modifying it's roster of upcoming devices. Devices may be ready to go into production in factories already, awaiting the chips. Chips may already be going into the "wrong" devices and it may take them time to focus onto their premiere products. And they likely won't have alternative designs to go for other products without the Exynos chips so no matter what they do this could be damaging for them if this is true.

But it all really depends on how "low" the chip yield is which nether article can quantify.

So stupid. This AI evangelism is getting ludicrous. "Let's burn the planet because the AI will help us solve the problem" is utter lunancy.

We already have the answers to the current problem. To make a new worse problem and hope some magic AI will solve it for us is reckless and madness.

It's becoming increasingly clear how moronic the leadership in the tech world really is. They think they are geniuses because they have helmed companies that print money, but all they have done is ride the cost tails of the technical and creative minds in their businesses and built monopolies with the technologies they've accrued.

Schmidt is an idiot. Musk is a moron. Steve Jobs was a cretin, who died because he thought he knew best about pancreatic cancer. They all believe the success of huge teams of people are their own. Ignore these idiots.

I think a lot of people misunderstand because in so many TV shows and movies it's a trope for someone to get in trouble and be bailed out. The fact that they've got a court case to attend and that's not the end of it is often left out.

The government like your thinking so much, they've arranged for you to be kidnapped by the enemy so they can use your expertise.

I know this is random, but I like your writing style. You manage to throw in flourishes of language and colour, even dramatic biblical references, when talking about nothing more than a broken fridge.

The problem with brands is you have to know the brand to know if you're paying for quality or advertising, or both. There are plenty of big brand name products that are not worth the price, but there are plenty that where the price premium is reflected in the quality of the product.

Unfortunately everything has to be on a case by case basis. I generally favour generics but there are a few branded products that I will go out of my way to buy.

A treat example is Pyrex. It used to be a mark of quality due to the material they used to make their plates bowls etc. Then I got sold to some big conglomerate and they switched to cheaper less heat proof material. Now Pyrex is just a shitty legacy name slapped on crap, but at a premium price.

Control+Shift+H or you can find the link to it in the history menu in the main Firefox menu. Or at the bottom of the history menu from the history button if you add it to your toolbar. Or in the Library section if you use that menu/button.

The sidebar is a cut down overview.

Same for bookmarks, the full bookmark screen has more depth and features than the sidebar.