As an American engineer, I see the value in Celsius over Fahrenheit, so I’ve been slowly changing all of my references to temperature, like my weather app, the weather units in my car, etc. to Celsius.

Didn’t take that long to get used to it as long as you associated different weather “feels” with multiples of 10.

0 °C = obviously cold and I need pants and an overcoat

10 °C = chilly on a wet rainy day, pants and maybe a sweater or jacket

20 °C = comfortable, shorts and a long sleeve if cloudy or short sleeve if sunny

30 °C = hot, definitely shorts and a T-shirt

Americans are resistant to change though, so I don’t expect this to take off anytime soon.

No I agree with you on the Steam license thing. That’s why I used quotations in my previous comment.

But Game Pass isn’t any better. It’s worse than licensing games because, again, Microsoft can choose to remove games from Pass at will.

The Steam Deck can do what you describe as well. Some prefer SteamOS for it’s sleekness, where Windows can become bloated over time. Then you also don’t need to factor in how Windows machines need to have the price of Windows built into their purchase price. The SD runs off of SteamOS, which is a free OS provided by Valve. And yes, dual booting to run SteamOS and Windows is possible, allowing users the same game and market compatibility as the ROG Ally.

SteamOS is the key factor for a lot of people here. Linus just did a video on it. Consider giving that a watch!

Game Pass doesn’t give you ownership of games however. Microsoft can rotate games out of Game Pass in a matter of weeks to months. If you want to keep those, pay out CAPEX in addition to your ongoing OPEX costs via Game Pass.

And if those games you liked that you went out and bought have online multiplayer, well then you’re locked into ongoing OPEX via Game Pass Core in order to get at least multiplayer access. This is regardless of whether you use Game Pass to explore new games.

Subscriptions also induce FOMO and create uncertainty costs. Microsoft can choose rotate a game out of Game Pass, which then forces you to make a decision about whether you play it to 100% completion before it’s gone, or buy it. And because Game Pass is a subscription, Microsoft can choose to raise its prices for access to the same games for no real reason.

With Steam, I “own” my games so I know I can always play them for the foreseeable future. With Steam, if some of my games have multiplayer, I only need to pay my telco utility bill to gain access. With Steam, I don’t have FOMO because my games aren’t going away, and I limit my uncertainty costs because I only need to consider my telco utility raising prices and not my telco + Microsoft.

Ultimately though, I think the top comments of this reddit post speak to the pros and cons of both platforms. If there’s an expensive AAA game coming out that you want to play, it’s cheaper to do the Game Pass route to play on Day 1. If you want to own that game long term, you can stop Game Pass payments until the next Steam sale to get the game discounted (else you run into the above issues). Game Pass to try, Steam to “own”. Plus with a Steam Deck, you can dual boot Windows and SteamOS, so you can do Game Pass PC and Steam on the same device. No need to really buy into the Xbox ecosystem.

You’re moving the goal posts. The original commenter posed the question asking why someone would purchase a console in this day and age given inflation. You gave some answers, and I gave some rebuttals.

Whether we can call the SD a console or handheld PC is moot to that conversation.

What’s more important is how you don’t have to pay anything above a monthly internet bill to play multiplayer games, talk, etc. on the SD. With other consoles, you have to pay an internet bill plus network fee (e.g. Xbox Live, PS+, etc.) which raises OPEX costs.

Replying to your original points:

Because you can buy a consol3, plig it into the back of your TV, and be confident that it will work.

The Steam Deck has a dock that you can plug it into and have it hooked up to your TV via HDMI just like a normal console. Plus, any Bluetooth controller syncs with the SD, which makes plug and play even easier.

You don’t have to worry about system requirements, storefronts, launchers, driver updates fucking you up, etc.

No real issue here on the SD either. The main storefront is Steam. You wouldn’t be inclined to purchase PlayStation games from an Xbox or Xbox games from a PlayStation. Pretty sure that’s not even possible unless you do some bootlegging. Drivers aren’t really an issue either.

Power Cable, HDMI cable, and connect to wifi - that’s it.

Same as the Steam Deck - with a dock. Although it does have a USB-C port so you might be able to do this without a dock by using a USB-C to HDMI or DP cable. The dock is probably the best way to go though as this is also how the Switch is marketed to be played while not on the go.

I’ve been PC gaming since the mid-80s, and even I sometimes just want to sit on the couch, push the Xbox button on my controller, and get going. Is it lazy? Yes. But I work 2 jobs and get to be lazy when I get home.

Welcome to the Steam Deck where the only time you don’t have to be lazy is buying the “console”/dock, buying your games, setting shit up, and gaming on. None of the your issues here really affect the SD. I just highly recommend you try it, especially after doing PC gaming for years. Opened me up to all of those games I can’t find on the Xbox store, being an Xbox native myself, while not needed to pay for Xbox Live. Such a great choice looking back

Sadly we would have embraced fascism whether voters elected Trump or Harris/Biden, as we’ve seen with the sentiment towards Palestinians.

With the former, it’s fascism. With the latter, it’s fascism-lite.

Ultimately, we’re going to reach a chilling point that will probably demand a WWIII. When that comes has probably now been accelerated due to Trump winning.

Sanders was our key to fighting fascism. Sadly Obama, Clinton, and Biden all kneecapped him in favor of billionaires and the status quo while claiming no responsibility for the seeds they sewed.

One rebuttal: Steam Deck.

TOPXI

I did

It looks like the recommended Pixelfed instance, pixelfed.social, is running an outdated version of the platform. Aka the instance most new users will login to, and the one I created my account on last year. I guess I could make an account elsewhere, but meh. Hopefully they get that sorted

Fucked up man. Glad I became vegan

Yes

This is one of the reasons why the US federal government wants to ban TikTok, a highly unpopular among the US general public. TikTok isn’t moderated in ways that suit US ideologies and propaganda, which means more leftist content leaks through to the masses.

Probably that orca that killed their trainer at SeaWorld in the US a few decades (?) ago

As moral agents that understand the impacts of letting species go extinct due to human activity ruining native habitats and transplanting invasive species, we need to weigh the odds of reducing their freedom for the sake of conserving the population. Think how the California Condor was revived after being declared extinct in the wild in the late 1980s.

What ends up happening with zoos however is that capitalism sinks it’s claws in and influences these zoos to prefer profit over the well being of the animals, even going so far as to ignore scientist/veterinarian advice in favor of their trainers.

So long as it remains profitable to restrict the freedoms of animals (and humans), it will happen. At least until we do something about capitalism

This is why vegans think that people shouldn’t get pets.

Wonder if a nationalized or state-owned utility would have actually invested those funds properly.

Amazing. I know what my next board game purchase is, if this is still sold that is.

No I think they just show up randomly. You’ll have to look out for Lemmy posts to see if anyone from Mastodon comments. Next to their name is their instance, so if I were on Mastodon, my username would be something like: Resonosity@mastodon.social or something

They just show up in comments or posts on Lemmy. Usually you’ll see people use a lot of @'s and #'s but they show up from time to time. I’m not sure if there’s a way to see comments from Mastodon specifically