SD was only successful because most users don't need to do things Linux is still poor at, such as printer compatibility, sound driver compatibility, and specialty software like music and video editing. The stroke of brilliance is having users buy an additional device instead of replacing their daily driver.
Its success seems to be about 5 million units (of which 2 were mine, mind you) as of last estimation. Given how reticent they are to reveal the price of Steam Machine, I doubt it would do better. I think they just bought a bunch of junk from AMD because that strategy worked for Switch 1 and Steam Deck. And even if it's successful I think it's odd to frame it as an example of monoculture breaking when Valve/Steam is a veritable monoculture. It's like a modern Apple user still thinking they're the guy throwing the hammer at the screen.
The article begins with video game consoles, but then doesn't address the fact that video games are the biggest counterexample against the thesis, because it's just collapsing into a PC (and Steam) monoculture. The fact that you're buying FPGAs and old cartridges doesn't mean anything when 2/3 console makers are just making PCs, and even mobile games need to be on Steam now.
I think this just reflects your changing tastes and perhaps increase in disposable income.
I'm a very casual and very occasional gamer, so I can't deeply about this topic. But, is gaming in a dire state?
Platform exclusives seem to be rare (outside of Nintendo). I have an xbox (which I'm told is the wrong console), but I can play nearly everything a PS5 can. Most major titles seem to be very cross platform (PC, Xbox, PS5, and sometimes Nintendo). If anything, they stagger release dates, not access.
Steam's market share has held relatively steady at 75%. And in fairness, it does not seem like Epic is trying at all to improve their product, so I'm not sure they're deserving of more right now. GoG continues to have ts cult following (I had never heard of it until recently, but now see references to it frequently).
And it seems to be easier to game on Linux (and even Mac) than in the past few years.
I have no way of verifying this, but Perplexity states that ~5% of Steam games are exclusives. Have they exerted monopolistic pressure on the market in other ways?
The hardware itself used to be exclusive. We used to marvel at what the Cell processor, N64 MIPS, etc. could do, but now PS and XBox are just commodities that we could say is equivalent to a 58XX + 20XX. Even the Switch 1 became a commodity at the end of its life, if we count emulation.
Personally, I would define the lack of exclusives outside of Nintendo's shrinking sphere as a monoculture. At the same time, I don't have a verdict on whether this is good or not. On one hand, everyone on the globe can theoretically play anything now, as opposed to what countries some American and Japanese companies can find on a map, but on the other hand, this monoculture has also completely erased our ability to truly own or trade games. Gamers now need to periodically assess if they need to upgrade hardware, and it has directly connected this hobby with the turbulence of the global economy.
On an emotional level, the erosion of console boundaries has made the world feel smaller, and that makes me inexplicably sad. Imagine if your local playwrights or board game makers feel like they need to put their works on a global marketplace, tailored to the tastes of the biggest markets.
Of course, I too have a lot of blind spots. For example, I have no idea what games are brewing on Roblox or itch.io nowadays, some of which might be on a top 10 play-hours chart if we could aggregate all platforms together. When I see one of them like Juice World/Galaxy leak out of their containers, I'm filled with joy that there's still a pocket of this world that I haven't explored.
I can't speak for everyone but I've lost more wired inventory to cable damage (before ca. 2020) than wireless earbuds from just losing them. It seems that now they're not the only game in town, replaceable cables are suddenly a standard feature instead of a luxury, so the moral I've taken from this is that the competition was good.
It's also not like the problem is the audio equipment itself, because the problem most people have is with phones removing 3.5mm and being theoretically unable to charge (with cable) and listen to music at the same time. I think it's another example of a false tech culture war that the original article wants to exist.
Now, I wish we could go to 2 USB-C ports instead of holding on to 3.5mm. Not all DACs are created equal...
Other than merchant transactions, the CapitalOne MC card was one of the recommended cards for overseas ATM withdrawal, so the transition to a different network with almost zero international coverage has been very jarring.
I'm overseas and have a Capital One MC card which I've never had a problem with regarding ATMs and frictionless payments, so I find this news fairly alarming. Wait—they're planning on killing their MC card and converting all their card accounts to Discover?
He has more modern versions in Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin. But most of the failures or misfortunes they experience are quite mild or temporary, all things considered.
From Stephen Fry: "You know that scene in Animal House where there’s a fellow playing folk music on the guitar, and John Belushi picks up the guitar and destroys it. And the cinema loves it. Well, the British comedian would want to play the folk singer. We want to play the failure."
Homer and Peter Griffin are idiots but they smash the guitar. Charlie Brown gets his guitar smashed.
First of all not everyone wants spectators and gawkers on all of their conversations. As for open solutions, IRC didn't provide chat history for the common folk (no, most users are not able to host their own Pi Zero bouncer, especially back in 2017), and Matrix development was too slow (Elements implemented message pinning in 2022), so the rest was history. There was just no alternative to Slack or Discord.
Getting it up and running is fun but I find maintaining some services a pain. For example, Authelia has breaking configuration changes every minor release, and fixing that easily takes 1-X hours every time. I gave up for 4.38 and just tossed the patch notes into NotebookLM.
I've been mostly using it as what I would call a "medium scope search engine". Instead of searching "$topic" or "$topic site:wikipedia.org", I can pick a few dozen links from different sources (wiki, documentation, tax code, papers, videos), toss it in NotebookLM, submit my search query in the form of a question, and look at the linked source. I see it as an evolution of doing research through library books, Internet search, and Wikipedia. I didn't know I wanted something like this until I used NotebookLM this way. It also seems to handle multiple languages reasonably well.
That argument is a lot less convincing now that Brave (by their previous CTO) has seen exponential growth the last few years while Firefox has just cruised. It turns out Firefox just kinda sucks.
I used to roll my eyes at fictional settings like LotR and Starcraft (Protoss) that pit orthodox/"white" magic versus forbidden/"black" magic, but now I've woken up to see this industry split into such a moral schism in multiple ways. (Aside, of course, from white/gray/black hat hackers, which is more about actions rather than knowledge)
Its success seems to be about 5 million units (of which 2 were mine, mind you) as of last estimation. Given how reticent they are to reveal the price of Steam Machine, I doubt it would do better. I think they just bought a bunch of junk from AMD because that strategy worked for Switch 1 and Steam Deck. And even if it's successful I think it's odd to frame it as an example of monoculture breaking when Valve/Steam is a veritable monoculture. It's like a modern Apple user still thinking they're the guy throwing the hammer at the screen.
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