You think all Steam does is distribute files?

They distribute files, automate one click installs on Windows/Linux/Mac, they automate compatibly for non-Windows installs, they offer cloud saves, and they offer unlimited downloads and installs of games.

That’s a massive amount of infrastructure that makes sure games sold through Steam are playable for decades.

If you remember before distribution platforms you would see a game for sale at full price on disk for 6mo to a year, then IF there were any disks left they would slowly decrease in price until they eventually hit the $5 bin. After that the game was just unavailable to you and not generating any revenue for the developer.

On top of all of that, 30% is the cut that Physical stores take while offering NOTHING to the devs.

Debian > Ubuntu. Less extra stuff shoveled in and while not bleeding edge it’s not a dinosaur.

Right age. It’s my 2010 gaming rig turned server.

Feels

I have a non ti 1080 and every subsequent generation seems to have been worse with everything from firmware issues to actual fires.

I grabbed literally the cheapest HOTAS from Aliexpress a few years ago and it has been awesome.*

*It required tweaks. The stick centering spring was WAY too tough and had to be shortened. And the measured range of motion was only about 80% of the physical range of motion so there were deadzones at the end of each axis. Resistors can be added to each POT to stretch out the measured range.

They took away Lost Coast? I know they removed HL2 2D because of some burned in ads but Lost Cost was 100% Valve material.

I played HL2 when it came out but never played HL1 until around 2018. Some how I never learned about jump-coruching, do you know how much harder HL1 is when you can’t jump onto crates? I had to walk the entire underground train level.

Is this The Onion? It sounds like The Onion.

Our sales specialists have found that adding diamond to the GPU can increase profit margins by up to 30%. And with optional ruby studded HDMI cables we expect out customers to be selling their parents into slavery this holiday season!

That is pretty much why. I took one programming class in high school (2004) and since then alway enjoyed solving software puzzles.

I ran my first “smart” phone for more than 5 years before needing an upgrade. My latest Pixel 8 is less than a year old and now has a row of pink pixels. Never been dropped, never been wet, never fast charged.

App /ăp/

noun

A small program designed to duplicate existing features while collecting private data and monetizing user interactions.

This is a 10 year old house and was supposed to be built with all the latest energy saving tech, except it’s Canada and I doubt it would have passed inspection even on the day it was sold.

Nope, home made sensors and python scripts.

Previous to this the basement was always 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the house because the ductwork was so terribly installed. I spent a week sealing them all up only to find that what feels comfortable has as much to do with the humidity as the temperature so just balancing flow between floors couldn’t fix everything.

The weather outside changes things indoors way more than I expected. By looking at the graphs I can tell if it was a windy day, if it rained at all, if it was sunny and which blinds were open that day.

I noticed pretty quick how much the weather outside affects the inside of the house. When it’s windy the bedroom temperature drops fast. If it was sunny in the day there will be a peak temperature several hours after sunset as the heat soaks through the west facing brick wall. When the outside humidity jumps the inside follows fast but if the humidity drops outside it takes days for the house to catch up.

If I was clever I could probably set up a predictive thermostat that takes into account the next 6 hrs of weather when choosing to run the heat or air.

I just infer from the temp/humi sensors. When either one runs there is a very clear pulse in both readings. The UPS is an APC1400XL, it tells me it was manufactured in 2003, I cleaned out the exploded batteries and put new ones in this year and it worked fine. I think it was only ever used once (until the original batteries burst). I have the UPS supplying my server, NAS and the POE switch that powers a couple of cameras outside.

The shower, we went to bed late. There was also a rainstorm that night which skews things, but it’s curious that the shower will actually raise the humidity of the whole house for hours after it’s been used.

I used AHT21 I2C modules from Aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002613543870.html . I think the one that failed last fall was a bad solder joint but I had a spare AHT21 board and ESP8266 so I just replace the whole unit.