I don't think Microsoft hates Linux as much as some people believe.

Don't forget about Microsoft's Three E's:

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

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Ah, yes, the good ol' days of HP where you could buy a printer for $20, but The ink cartridges cost $50 and were designed to register as empty after a specified period whether they were actually empty or not.

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One wonders what would happen if Microsoft ever wised up and created a version of Windows that was specifically designed for handheld PCs.

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On Steam Deck Civ7 is garbage, because there is no mouse emulation...

No mouse emulation, but the game is designed to be played with a controller, and this works very well. You can click the left stick/touchpad to toggle tooltips if they get in the way, and this patch (finally!) added the ability to center the cursor in the middle of the current view with the click of a button (not sure which button because I haven't had an opportunity to try the game with the latest patch), so no more having to drag the cursor across the map.

Steam Deck performance is also excellent, although I wish they'd use Steam Cloud to sync saves instead of having to use 2K Crossplay which can only be accessed from within the game.

Personally, it's the most fun I've had with a Civilization game since Civ IV.

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I am 100% on board with this. I have a son who is Deaf, so subtitles in games is very important to me. Thankfully, a lot of games get it right, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

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...keep in mind that unions wouldn't be needed if not close to 100% of all companies wouldn't treat their employees like crap.

Most companies don't treat their employees like crap. That would be counterproductive. I can honestly say that throughout my career, I've worked for around half-a-dozen employers, only one of which treated me like crap, so I did the sensible thing and left. Not surprisingly, the company ceased operation less than a year later.

So in my experience, if you're competent and reliable, you'll be well compensated for your work without having to make a union boss rich.

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The average union in the US nets their employees an additional 10-20% in wages while taking about 1.5-2% in wages for fees every year. I'd say that's a pretty good return for employees.

That's not even accounting for the benefits that aren't wage related.

It depends. Some unions charge more than others, and there are often additional fees on top of the annual dues. Many unions also have a significant upfront cost just to join.

Personally, I've never worked for a union, but I have worked with unions, and in every case, they have made the working experience worse. The union members have, without fail, been entitled and lazy (because they're protected by the union from being fired, they have no incentive to work hard); they'll routinely send four people to do a job that only requires one; if you tell them a job needs to be completed in four hours, they'll take four hours to do it in order to avoid being given more work; if their lunch break is one hour, they'll demand an additional 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after so they have time to wash their hands, get their lunchboxes from their lockers, etc., meaning their lunch hour is really 90 minutes; and so on.

In short, my experience is that unions are bad for business.

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"Where does this money go?"

In theory, to the workers. In actuality, to the union bosses who take a generous cut in the form of compulsory union dues and other fees.

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To be honest, I've seen unions cause more problems than they solve. They tend to cost companies more while doing little if anything to improve the quality of work, and it becomes much harder to fire unproductive employees. The biggest gimmick of unions is that they promise to stop the little guy from getting screwed by fat cat CEOs, but that's only because they're getting screwed by fat cat union bosses instead.

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It's the visual equivalent of remastering a music album and turning up the EQ and compression to make it sound "modern" resulting in something generally inferior to the original.

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The only reason Microsoft would consider releasing a handheld gaming PC is to take a bite out of Valve's market share by locking customers into the Microsoft ecosystem, but a handheld gaming PC that doesn't support Steam will hold no interest for the overwhelming majority of PC gamers. The only customers who might find it enticing would be Xbox owners who subscribe to GamePass exclusively, and that would be a tiny market.

So I'm not sure what Microsoft's strategy is.

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