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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?

    It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.


  • Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.

    If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.



  • There are some interesting cases. It took a long time for men to break into synchronized swimming, where women typically have the advantage. Archery still has some strength elements that could be relevant, but shooting should be pretty egalitarian and is still split, as far as I know.

    I have never been particularly into sports, and stopped watching the Olympics very much when the amateur requirements were relaxed (when hockey was dominated by NHL stars). There may be some nuances I’m missing, and there is also the aspect of making a sport/competition more welcoming to women, such as women’s chess. While those are interesting social/cultural aspects, they have much less bearing on capabilities of a given sex/gender.



  • Imagine a lake, say the one below Niagara Falls. Water flows in, and water flows out. It seems impossible that lake could ever flood bases on the puny efforts of humanity, doesn’t it? But, if you upset the balance, either adding too much water, or taking away too much, that lake will flood or nearly disappear. And it doesn’t take the volume of Niagara Falls to make that happen, just more, or less, than the existing system can handle. And it may not happen in a day, or even in a year. But that’s okay, we’ve been putting carbon dioxide from fossil fuels into the atmosphere for a couple centuries.

    Our planet has had volcanoes since it had a surface for volcanoes to erupt from. The carbon in that oil hasn’t been interacting with our atmosphere for a long time. And it’s true that the planet, and life on it, will continue if we released all of it. But evolution is generally very slow at adapting, and when it’s fast it’s usually because the things that can’t handle the change die off to make way for species that are more fit for the new environment than the current ones. One of those creatures that could die off, or have a massive die-back before recovering, is humanity, and I’d rather my species not have to go through that.

    And no, your single car doesn’t produce much. A single mosquito doesn’t kill many people, either. But there are millions of cars just like yours, just like there are billions of mosquitoes spreading disease to humans, killing millions every year. So, even though a barrel of crude oil is only the equivalent to about half a ton of atmospheric CO2, those 35 billion barrels of oil per year gives us about 16 billion tons of CO2. All of that above and beyond the relatively stable environment we’ve had the last 5000 years or so. And by the way, volcanoes are estimated to emit about half a billion tons of CO2 per year, whereas humans emit about 35 billion tons, about half of that from oil alone. Sure, your little car doesn’t look like much, and the smog in a big city isn’t that much compared to what a volcanoes puts out on a good day, but that’s mostly because that volcano is doing all that emitting in one place. Oil wells would look pretty impressive, too, if we burned everything we were pumping as soon as we had it out of the ground.




  • The whole point is to look at places that already have the policy you’re considering to see what the results would be if you enacted that policy locally. In large part, people are very similar throughout the world. If you think Canadians having the same access and attitudes towards guns as Americans wouldn’t lead to similar outcomes, you’re denying reality.

    And yes, there are people living in areas where wildlife risks are not compatible with gun safety, or where law enforcement is too remote to be a viable option as protection from criminals, but these people are a tiny minority. Anyone who feels like they need a gun for protection while in their home in a city is operating from a position of fear, and would be the type to shoot their pregnant wife or a delivery driver who went to the wrong address. Just like we see in America, which has enshrined the idea of needing arms for self-defense.



  • I have never seen the inside of a Tesla, yet I can recognize them from a block away. The door handle may be something their owners notice, but it isn’t what makes them recognizable to passersby. This is like saying people recognize iPhone because of the triple tap functionality. It’s unique, but isn’t what makes people recognize them at a glance.

    There are perfectly good reasons to not like Teslas, safety and giving money to Elon among the top. Don’t dilute your message with irrelevance and inaccuracies.