While I do (somewhat begrudgingly) agree that Matrix isn't really a Discord replacement...

Quoting: Liam DaweOh, and people keep bringing up this privacy stuff about age laws as if they only apply to Discord. Any serious chat app will also have to do similar things if they plan to run any services in countries where those laws apply. Thinking otherwise is daft, burying their heads in the sand level stupid.

I noticed this, and Matrix acknowledged it in their "welcome, sudden rush of interest from Discord users!" post. People do NEED to acknowledge it. I do think that "everyone will have to deal with age verification" is a reason to be even more careful and picky about providers. Corporations like Discord seem content to turn it into an unsafe surveillance tool...

I trust the Matrix Foundation's thoroughness and ethos to handle age verification in the least-bad way possible, whereas I'm concerned that some of the more "friendly/casual" alternatives like Stoat or Fluxer won't be as prepared even if they're well-intentioned (there are things I don't like about how either were presented to me, but it's partly projecting my feelings on Bluesky vs. Mastodon...).

My personal recommendation to friends has been to move our main chat/communication base to Matrix first to keep in contact safely, then to use more specialized services for specific things. Community game night? We can do it through Steam. I think that's better than having an "everything app"...but yeah, that's not going to happen for most people. I know. 😫

Edit: Forgot to mention as to the article's subject: I just use the Discord web client in a pinned tab. I think that cuts out a few features I don't use, but I'd recommend that to anyone who finds the desktop app troublesome. Or if the annoying mobile app changes are also in the desktop app.

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Quoting: JesTechThey could have also tied serials of these controllers to steam families for the first year too, so that scalping resulted in a brick if sold.

There's loads of options to stamp out the rampant scalping, but I think companies know it's in their best interest to have their stuff be scarce for the first year if they want to make money, and this controller is priced to make money unlike some past hardware releases.

Serial number DRM and remote bricking?
HELL no. Can't imagine you were hoping for anything but outrage posting that on a Linux site, but it's certainly outrageous and needs to be condemned outright, it should be as socially unacceptable as age verification, etc.

Also, scalping doesn't make manufacturers money, unless the company is doing something VERY illegal that would be discovered very quickly.

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I'm sure with this first run, people were ready to just keep buying until it sold out.
I assume the next batch will be more normal.

Maybe they should just charge extra for the first run with full transparency that the price goes down after. People who want it NOW can pay, and scalpers are told upfront "you are going to lose a lot of money".

Probably still a bad idea for a lot of reasons. If it was an easy problem, I'm sure people would've had a fix for it by now.

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Already out of stock. Expected as much, but thought maybe the extra wait was so Valve could get enough stock lined up to prevent a first-day sellout.

Some part of my computer just started failing and that has me waiting for a replacement part and spending money, so I don't mind waiting for it to come back in stock. Maybe there will even be a sale.

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Bureaucracy is how society learns, remembers, and improves.
We need to systematize and create lasting institutional knowledge, or we'll just continuously make the same mistakes on every project and process. Part of that is learning to make and improve standards and processes. Learning how to learn better.

Actually, it's funny. "Learning how to learn" is one of those concepts the "superintelligence" doomsday guys are really scared of...

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I'll accept "no more news yet, we hope to have some soon" as an update on the Steam Frame! It feels a lot better than actually hearing nothing.
I guess "your call is very important to us" exists for a reason.

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I feel like platforms like Roblox have outlived their usefulness in a lot of ways with how game development and publishing keeps getting more accessible. The people who would've made a Roblox or flash game 10+ years ago can make something better in Godot (or Unity, etc.) and publish on Steam or Itch, and that's why there are so many neat small indie games.

Maybe s&box will find a useful niche, assuming it can overcome its current roles of making me hallucinate broken text formatting and reminding me where the ampersand key is. That's gotta be bad for word-of-mouth.

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Quoting: mattaraxiaIf you're them, having something like Blender, that collects no licenses, crush something like Unity, that does, is great.

Because then the money shops were spending on Unity . . . goes to agents instead. See they weirdly want all royalty free development platforms too, just . . . maybe not for good reasons . . .

They may also just be burning cash at an absurd rate and want their logo out there, it's just marketing. They think it will create goodwill with people who will become customers.

Unity isn't a 3D modeling application, it's a game engine. That would be if they were funding Godot.

I don't know much about the commercial/licensed 3D modeling programs though, so I can't say I'd make a better comparison.

Anthropic supporting open projects when their whole thing is "AI can't be open because then crazy idiot hackers will end the world with magic computers" is hypocritical. If you look up "Anthropic open source" on DuckDuckGo, they have a program to let open source developers use their AI...the AI itself in that case is all gratis, no libre. They want to be in control.

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Anthropic's brand is the "nice" AI company. They're arguably crazier than others in some ways with the emphasis on AI doomsday talk, and they still have the TESCREAL ideological connections, but it's still unusual for any large corporation in 2026 to care about their reputation at all, so they do succeed at being "better" compared to companies that will reliably do the wrongest thing available to them.

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I don't mind it, but I also don't use Ubuntu. Honestly, the thing that put me off most in all of this was the mention of Snaps, since I've followed the seemingly popular opinion that they're Flatpaks with a vendor-locked store, etc. I am more averse to Snaps than open source, open weight, carefully-used AI.

The best way to get most people to use less AI is to make them understand it. There are strong reasons that the bigtech AI firms target low AI literacy and try to get everyone hooked.

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