That’s such garbage!

From tiny companies of five people, to huge companies of five hundred thousand, I have never worked in an office where you couldn’t get a brew.

But then, I am British. Take the tea away and it’s riots (or at the least some quiet complaining)

I agree with all of that, pretty much.

If Asus or whoever else dropped a “steam deck killer” I’m pretty sure Valve wouldn’t even blink.

Valve didn’t make the deck because they wanted to make money on hardware. I expect very much they made it specifically because they wanted to encourage the move of steam gaming from the PC to the couch, and they needed some hardware to prove their point with - like with the Steam Link where they tried this before, and that time failed.

If it later ends up being other companies in the long run who make the hardware then no worries, the mission was already accomplished.

This is a tricky one, honestly, because the steam deck straddles the line between PC and console.

If you were a Sony fan, you’d be rightfully upset if Sony released a new PlayStstion every year, and made new games only for the new hardware. It’s just not long enough to feel the hardware has ran its lifespan, and you feel cheated.

Conversely in PCs, the expectation is that the hardware slowly improves constantly, and new hardware doesn’t stop you playing all the latest games on your old hardware; the only limiting factor is how far your old hardware can be pushed before the performance is too poor. And that is YOUR choice as a user, not an artificial choice imposed on you.

I’d expect that any Steam Deck 2 is going to be more like the PC model - it won’t create exclusives or stop people playing the new games on their old deck, it will simply be better and faster.

So on that basis I wouldn’t personally have a problem if Valve put out a deck every year.

All that said however, I think waiting several years is the smart business move. People have longer to enjoy their hardware while still feeling like they have the “latest model” - it’s psychologically better from the consumer perspective.

There may also be an argument that longer release cycles makes things less complicated for devs (less devices to test on) and also keeps the hardware going for longer, because devs will be incentivised to optimise performance for the current deck (which they might not be as much after a new one comes along)

I feel like it’s also an outlook/mentality thing.

I personally am happy to take a few extra seconds parking, because I see it as spending time to make life easier, faster and safer for my future self when I come to leave.

Zooming in forwards is like “I care about now more than I care about later”

Your spreadsheet will pierce the heavens

Not quite, I don’t think. Enshittification is driven by profit motive, which means if there’s no money at all involved, then there’s no motive.

I guess you chose your words carefully though because the terms ‘product’ and ‘service’ pretty much imply that money is involved somewhere there.

It’s a “choccy (chocolate) coffee”

If a tree falls in the woods…

Why is “helicopter” commonly shortened to “helo” rather than “heli” ?

Yay!

This may be a nonsense suggestion but is the game trying to activate the headphone mic?

If so this could be switching it to a different mode and cutting your headset audio quality in half.

EDIT: two other people suggested the same thing at the same time, never mind :)

I also got “Pattern on the beach towel is wavy lines rather than straight lines” but now I’m not certain it isn’t just image compression artifacts.

Slow motion bullet takes about 30 seconds to reach the target during which time we get the inner monologue of every character

“It’s going to miss! But wait, what’s happening? The bullet is bending in midair!!! Look at his incredible pose! Did be put spin on the bullet!? This must be Free To Play Ojiisan’s legendary hidden technique!”

Totally. This would be great.

If you want to watch an amazing show that actually exists, try Ping-pong the Animation. Art style takes a bit of getting used to but it’s just such an engrossing show.

Then I think I was wrong, and you are right.

As someone not from the US I knew of zelle but never used it, and believed it was a direct competitor to Venmo or PayPal.

The reason I thought it was its own thing was because it has its own app, and a catchy silicon-valley-startup type name, and a brand logo, and all of that.

Contrast that to the UK where the ability to send free person-to-person payments has been integrated directly into the banking system for decades, and does not have it’s own brand, or app or anything.

That’s just a different third party, though.

Thanks for the context. Here in the UK I never experienced a website that didn’t take payment via credit card directly as a first option - that’s always been there default, with some sites offering PayPal as a second or third way to pay.

And about punching the numbers manually then well, sometimes a bit of Mechanical Turk works just fine lol! :)

I don’t understand the PayPal one either.

Who is the ‘first party’ in this case? eBay, or like, the banking system as a whole?

If it’s the whole banking system then I’m not sure how that’s solved, because as I understand in the US it’s still not easy to send money to another private individual via the banking system. And there are Venmo and cashapp and such now but they are just other third parties.

Meanwhile in the UK here it has been possible for decades to send money between bank accounts directly, and free. I use PayPal though, because my use case for it isn’t sending money to individuals, it’s being able to buy things online without creating an account and without giving my card details.

Maybe people are thinking in phone terms, and the first party is “Apple” or “Google” and the solution is Apple Pay or Google Wallet?

I heard about the diaper thing, it’s garbage. Definitely illustrates the point though; Amazon don’t care at all because whether they act or don’t makes no difference to their bottom line.

Someone comes to Amazon looking for a reusable diaper, they will search and usually buy whatever is near the top of the first page, because that’s just what people do. Amazon make a sale and are happy, they don’t care who the vendor is.

And oh - Amazon retail has more turnover than AWS but AWS makes more profit.