This just looks like they want to see how much ram prices soar so they can see how much they can ask for the thing

Charging more to cover their costs is NOT the same thing as maliciously price gouging (which is what was alluded to here).

If the cost of materials goes up, the cost of the device goes up. They’re a business not a charity. I think we both fully agree that they are waiting to see where prices land closer to launch to determine the final pricing of the device. But I don’t agree that they’re optimizing for profit. They already know what margin they expect from this device and might even be planning on eating some margin to keep the price competitive.

The Steamdeck, pre-RAMpocalypse, was maybe one of the best values in gaming hardware, in part because they were subsidizing the price like Sony and Microsoft do for home consoles. Any other handheld PC on the market was 2-3x the price. They can’t be expecting that same kind of sales volume from the Steam Machine, so the amount they can afford to subsidize will be lower for sure.

Of all companies, I think Valve deserves the benefit of the doubt. You’re ascribing business practices to Valve that I have no memory of them using.

Sure, even if it has never turned downwards - then constantly rising prices still makes the point.

It’s only suspicious if you haven’t been watching the wildly swinging RAM pricing. It would be a far worse experience for Steam and for the consumer if they set a price and had to keep jacking it up before the product had even been released.

I’ll bet you that Walmart is selfinsured, and this absolutely hits them directly.

When I went to Montreal, I’m not exaggerating when I say that every single service worker I interacted with opened with “Bonjour, hello!” You would only have to fuck that up once if you didn’t realize what was happening there.

No? He turned 18 years old and enlisted 5.5 years ago, has now served over 5 years.

Don’t be a pendant, you know what they fucking meant.

Edit: actually, it’s not even pedantic, it’s just wrong. Before the internet existed, there was never an internet shutdown.

This is why I bought Ubiquiti. Self hosting is the ONLY way I was ever buying into a camera syatem.

Software decoding has clearly been sufficient.

Precisely. Everyone is bitching about shrinkflation, and it’s probably just a vending machine owner cheaping out and buying multipacks at the grocery store instead of 20oz at a much higher wholesale price.

I’m using a 15 year old i5 and a GTX 970, having no issues with AV1 video. Curious what hardware you’re running.

Is there really a limit for how much hate he deserves?

They got Capone for tax evasion.

And yet that is all it takes to grind this government to a halt - they ask for basically nothing at all and still, they are given no quarter. They should almost all be fired, the red hats should be just as mad at their idiot congresspeople for accomplishing nothing.

Case in point, 80 year old woman in San Francisco going 70 in a residential area kills family of 4 waiting at a bus stop, including children aged 1 and 3 - and the judge gave her 2 years probation. And the REALLY good news is that she’ll be back on the road in 3 years! Justice!!!

Diana Cowern of the Physics Girl YouTube channel is a great example of the impacts of long COVID - she was bedridden for 3 years, and still cannot function normally today. There are a handful of videos on the channel from throughout her struggle if you want to understand better.

Not from THEMSELVES, never from themselves.

Time better spent rotting your brain on the internet with the rest of us.

I will concede that the YouTube Music app started (and might still be) worse than GPM was in the end. But I’m not sure it could be considered enshittification. Yeah, the YTM app itself was kinda shit, especially at first - but they didn’t make the service materially worse and charge more for features they took away. They didn’t jack up the price to coincide with the “new” service, they just consolidated the two separate services into one. They didn’t introduce ads. They didn’t silently take down a ton of the music offered and leave the price the same - they still have the same 100M tracks as the other guys, and you ONLY get music from those other services.

I agree and get where you’re coming from on this example - but I think people use the term enshittification more broadly than it’s actual definition, and in my opinion this doesn’t fit.