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MudMan

@ MudMan @fedia.io

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2 yr. ago

  • me_irl

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  • Isn't that the idea?

    I used to live in a place where they just don't do ice in soda at all, and it's like licking a can of dried out syrup. In the local Imax they didn't even have ice at all as an option. They looked at me like I was insane when I asked, then calmly pointed out that the soda comes out of the machine chilled. I just had to learn to watch two hour movies while sucking on a tub of lukewarm, full-strength soda like a deviant.

  • Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading

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  • That's interesting, but considering this note:

    We recommend the GameInput API for all new code, regardless of the target platform, because it provides support across all Microsoft platforms (including earlier versions of Windows) and provides superior performance versus legacy APIs.

    For games developed on the GDK for Xbox One, GameInput is the only input API

    I'm really not sure this would do what we both want it to do. If everybody has had a GameInput version of their controller support since last-gen and we're still getting limited to the XInput feature set I don't think it sorts out gyro-on-Xinput at all. I am not familiar with the behind the scenes of how modern engine controller code is handled, but this sounds like maybe it's how games with native PS controller support are doing that, but not necessarily a new standard that will allow the default XInput PC setting of new controllers to pass gyro input to games detecting them as an XInput device. I think it's more like MS's answer to Steam Input as an additional layer between the games and the hardware, regardless of what the hardware is using.

    It does show that all the tools are in place. MS has control over all the involved APIs. They could expand the Xbox controller API feature set tomorrow, whether or not they add the hardware feature to their base controller model. They just... don't. And Steam could deploy a Steam-independent Steam Input driver or software to just take over all controller support on a dedicated full-feature OS layer, but they also don't (on either Windows or Linux, as far as I can tell).

    Honestly, there are enough workarounds (add games as non-Steam games, use Switch modes and so on), I just bump against the edge cases of it often because I'm both a controller and handheld nerd, so I'm stuck with a GPD Win handheld that insists on injecting their internal gyro as mouse inputs, which confuses the hell out of half the games, along with a bunch of GameSir and Gullikit controllers that do weird things with gyro, like injecting it at the firmware level instead of passing it to the OS. And I mess around with enough emulators to also end up with "oh, this was on DI mode when I booted RetroArch, so now all my buttons are in the wrong places until I quit". It's only dumb for like ten of us... but man, is it dumb.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • I think they probably felt that having SteamOS perpetually be the holder for the "most popular" slot in the Linux category is not what the survey is for.

    But then, they could have also finally provided a historical chart of OS usage, or a different category for SteamOS altogether.

  • Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading

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  • Yes, I'm aware, that's why I'm calling out it's weird that XInput doesn't support gyro, because we're a long way away of it being just based on Xbox controller support and a whole bunch of other controllers with a whole bunch of other features now go through it. If MS doesn't want to add gyro that's up to them, but Windows supporting it natively is way overdue. Of course at that point older controllers would probably need a firmware update, but hey, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

    In practice the situation we're having is games are defaulting to Xinput and relying on Steam Input as an intermediate layer for additional features, so the end result is that gyro is... not NOT supported, but often not acknowledged at all, so you end up with a bunch of situations where you have to config gyro manually per game as a bit of a Steam-level hack, and then your controller is all wonky anywhere other than Steam because the way Switch/DI/PS input modes get picked up in non-Steam stuff can be weird.

    And it gets worse in handhelds where you're absolutely at the mercy of how the manufacturer decided to set up their controller and gyro support, and sometimes need to do a lot of weird stuff to pass it on outside of Steam.

    It's the jankiest part of controller set up left on PC gaming, and it's all down to this weird "mom and dad aren't talking" dance where MS keeps pretending PC controllers are fundamentally Xbox controllers at the XInput layer and Steam is the de facto curator of the controller support but has no interest (and to be frank no expectation or need) to have their controller layer work outside their launcher.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • Oh, hey, it is. Why the hell would it work that way? It seems to be manually excluded from the unfiltered list despite being by far the biggest usage.

    So the data exists but it's weirdly buried for no reason.

    Still, thanks for the pointer. I genuinely didn't know they had it set up that way.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • I mean, you do you, but I don't see any of the things that you want requiring active surveillance. That all seems very attainable by having decent search, filtering and categorization tools.

    If anything, I find myself now seeking "hidden gems on Steam" despite Steam knowing everything about my gaming habits. And that's on Steam, which does have a semi-decent crowdsourced tagging and categorization system. Their main page recommendations for e have consistently been either generically popular shovelware or insistent recommendations for games I do like but already own in other platforms that I can't tell Steam to stop shoving down my throat.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • Is it listed? Do you have a link to that? Checking the latest survey the Linux section shows

    "Arch Linux" 64 bit 0.32% +0.01%

    Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 0.24% +0.04%

    Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 0.14% 0.00%

    Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit 0.12% +0.01%

    I don't see a SteamOS segment listed as a non-Linux OS anywhere, either. If they do provide the info I'd love to see it, but it doesn't seem to be shown at a glance in the OS Version category.

    Tracking game use by device isn't any more or less "crazy" than anything else they store. It's just telemetry. It's noteworthy that they share it in the format that they share it.

  • Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading

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  • It's hard to fault Steam's controller layer, but I really wish they finally found a way to parse gyro data from third party controllers without having to run them on Switch mode. That goes for Microsoft and their own drivers. At this point it's weird to keep pretending the Windows controller APIs are supposed to work on their first party Xbox controllers only.

  • Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading

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  • I'm almost entirely sure that PS4 and XOne controllers did get upgrades at some points. Definitely Switch 1 ones, which matters or not depending on how you split the gens. There were definitely revisions in older controllers, though. Some were labeled and had obvious new features, some were quieter. And PC-side drivers got updates all the time, obviously.

    Also, your current gen controller will also keep working indefinitely without an update. In this case Valve is annoyed about a particular dependency where THEY need the upgrade to happen for a feature compatibility thing, but the controller proper will work if you plug it in.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • Nnnnah, the hardware survey is a wildly different number. That's what OS each account was using when they filled the survey.

    This shows they have data on what OS each user is using at the time of running each game, on both a per-game and a per-hour basis and that they can tie all of it to each account across games and OSs. Which raises the question of why they run the hardware survey OS numbers in the first place, but I suppose if you're sharing the survey results you share the survey results, even if you have more accurate data on the same stats elsewhere.

    That'd be a very interesting, very different stat, though, because it means they know what percentage of Windows/Linux users go back and forth, and CAN separate Linux usage from Deck from other OSs, which they very pointedly do not do on the survey, where SteamOS doesn't have its own entry. That's unsurprising but notable, along with the fact that they don't really report on their own hardware sales, either, despite being a main source of info about GPU and CPU vendors.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • I'd say I'm more lenient about big data profiles than most people around here. I'd also say I understand why the reaction to the very real, very obvious overreach in the process of creating and using those profiles is radically opposed to any sort of personal recorded info.

    The part that's weird is the cute little exception we make around the December holidays to get weirdly invasive infographics to share on social media.

    For the record, I'd dispute that I prefer personalized recs to general ads. I already know the things I like that I want to buy. I'd much rather get a poke on things "I'd never consider".

    I was on some social media site today and noted that there are some controversies going on where I only ever see the pushback and entirely infer that the people holding the opposite stance do exist, but they never show up in my channels. This is not unexpected in an algorithmically curated info landscape... but it's kind of bad and dangerous.

    Ditto for only ever being served media based on the media I already like. Again, obvious but important: that's decidedly NOT how I got to like the media I already like.

  • Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases

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  • I've said this elsewhere, but December is quickly becoming the time of the year when all the corpos tell us just exactly how much they spy on us and we all collectively go "Cool!" and tell each other about it for some reason.

    FWIW, the median number of games played is four. Not forty, not fourteen, just four. If we're going to get spyware stats, at least let's put them in context. As it turns out, half of all Steam users are only playing the one game (given the numbers we know on concurrents, that'd be CS2/DOTA/PUBG or Apex, in most cases).

    The play-everything, strong-opinion-haver user is a fraction of the userbase.

    Also interesting, Steam is telling people how their playtime splits between Windows/Deck/Non-Deck Linux... but they pointedly don't share those stats platform-wide. Sometimes silence is data, too.

  • UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones

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  • I genuinely don't know that I follow that explanation. For one thing, what reasons would there be to ban paid blind boxes, online or offline, while allowing outright games of chance with a monetary payout? In what world is a Magic the Gathering blister more of a problem (for a consenting adult, anyway) than an online casino?

    But also, by the larger point you're making it seems like you'd be fine with a government saying "porn is banned for everybody because reasons" but not with "porn is banned for kids", at least in a scenario where that comes with age verification.

    To be clear, I agree that both of those are... not good. I just don't know that I can wrap my head around the logic of thinking the more extensive issue is more acceptable than the alternative. You could argue that the porn ban is an excuse to add mass surveillance, but at that point we're not talking about the porn ban, we're talking about the mass surveillance.

    Oh, and for the record, there is plenty of will someone think of the children regarding loot boxes. Both on its own and bundled together with a blanket assessment that gambling is immoral and/or illegal. It's actually a fairly close match to the porn issue, where concerns about children are being wrapped around a more targeted hostility around the concept from both sides of the political spectrum.

  • THIS is a real test of how old you are. If you score 20 your future is short

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  • Waterbeds also not a thing.

    Not being American gets you 3 extra... years? decades? life units? Which does seem still accurate.

  • UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones

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  • I... don't know where you're from, but actual gambling is legal here for adults. Are you suggesting that people should be able to place bets on actual sports but not buy a random loot box in a game? That seems incredibly extreme.

    Which still leaves a bunch of other stuff people have used kids to attack on all sides of multiple political aisles, but hey, if that's the one you want to caveat I'm happy to flag how weird the caveat is.

  • Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried

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  • Yeah, I read about some of the tightening at the time and I'm not disputing that there are technical ways of... you know, making your country's Internet a mostly separate bubble for non-techie users.

    The point is it's both hard and extremely invasive to get there. You can't just wish upon a star for VPNs to not be used for a particular application without going to those extremes. Especially if the thing you're trying to prevent is people watching Superman two weeks early or wanking to a mainstream porn page.

  • UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones

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  • It's kind of unfortunate how much this has been encouraged by petty online fights. People were very excited when "will somebody think of the children" was applied to, say, some social media content or gaming loot boxes because the Internet did not like those things, so they were very happy to ignore the pre-existing parental control devices and request blanket bans. Then people remembered that a bunch of old, prudish people on both sides of the political aisle don't like porn and it was too late.

    Man, people love the "they first came for" argument online and I should have guessed the first time it really pays off in the 21st century it'd include the absolute most depressing things possible instead.

    Anyway, this is bad and I don't like it, but UK politics are almost as bad as US politics, so I'm happy to let both stew in their own cautionary tale juices.

  • Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried

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  • I guess that works for VPN services offering servers outside the country. That's not what VPNs are, though, and you still can't ban the concept of VPNs having a connection outside the country. VPN software is available open source and all it takes for it to connect abroad is my phone with a VPN connection to my home computer being abroad.

    I mean, Russia (and even China) still have people using VPNs all over the place. This (and a lot of the push for age verification and comms backdoors) reeks of barely understanding the desired result and entirely misunderstanding how the tech works.

  • Removed

    whatever, it works

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  • See, there's a lot of online chatter about how much sense Linux folder structures make, with everything grouped by type all over the filesystem. And then this happens.

    DOS 5.1 folder structure or bust, I say. Home directories are evil, if your filename doesn't fit in 8.3 characters you're doing it wrong and if you can't find it with dir . /w it shouldn't exist.

  • Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried

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  • How do you "ban VPNs"? That's not how software works, and VPNs are... you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean "ban them to bypass restrictions", but the entire point of a VPN is you can't tell from the outside what it's being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can't enforce it.