garciansmith

It also lists some "castles" that no longer exist, e.g., Fort Detroit, which was where downtown is and very much not extant (and not to be confused with Fort Wayne to the southwest of downtown, which does exist but isn't on the map). This is just some AI slop wasting our time.

What is microtx? I see some Oracle product called that but I don't get what it has to do with games.

This article is just a summary of one from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-17/valve-...

If Windows continually supports third parties installing malware (without your consent and through Windows update, not some third party updater), at what point can the OS itself be considered malware?

The selling point, for me, is that it's a console in both form factor (not a PC tower, smaller than small PC cases) and easy of use (you plug it in, you play games, no shopping around for parts), yet because it's a PC you have control over it (load non-Steam games, use the desktop to do whatever, install a different OS even).

Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).

SteamOS uses KDE Plasma for the desktop mode, not Gnome.

Not only do you have to build them, but in all those builds the cases are several times larger than the Steam Machine, so they are not actually equivalent. If you care about the form factor, there is nothing directly comparable.

The author of this article is way too kind to LG.

They write: "I think the terms and conditions are an attempt at corporate ass-covering rather than something sinister: the preceding paragraph talks specifically about when 'a product with voice recognition functionality is used' and it's possible that 'family members, guests, children, and bystanders" might be overheard; if you're choosing to activate AI-based voice features then of course voices are going to be captured and processed in order for those features to work.'"

All of this is sinister. Opting you in by default to being spied upon is sinister. Using Windows updating mechanisms to automatically install adware is sinister. Designing features on your TVs and monitors that will violate eavesdropping and wiretapping laws unless the end user seeks consent from those present around the (some people cannot ever consent!) is sinister.

Note also that this doesn't just affect new monitors and TVs. The Gamer's Nexus video linked in the article (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM) also notes that a Windows box with a 3-year-old monitor plugged in suddenly received the adware.

This is also about monitors (as per the article, even the title...). Those are dumb and can't connect to the internet, but as soon as you connect them to a Windows 11 PC software is automatically downloaded.

"As Gamers Nexus reports, some LG monitors appear to be installing adware on Windows PCs without asking for permission: in addition to the LG Monitor App Installer, they also install McAfee Scam Detector."

Tired of adware and spyware on TVs? Get a monitor that doesn't connect to the internet... and Windows will happily install spyware for you.

N.B., the title here is wrong, this is about computer monitors, not TVs.

Plus: (1) the security camera footage is constantly overwritten. (2) the video from the glasses is being uploaded to Meta.

How would permanent DST matter in that regard? Are people going to bed at like 4 pm in the winter and now upset they'd have to wait until 5? DST is already used in the summer (and 3/4 of the year).

I've definitely talked to people that though daylight savings time is the time used in the winter, since that's when there are the fewest daylight hours and you need to "save" them or something.

I mostly just want the time change to end, but I definitely prefer DST since the afternoon sun is something everyone can enjoy in the winter. I don't get how dark mornings (when a non-trivial percentage of the population is just asleep anyhow) are worse than a dark afternoon, especially when you'll probably wake up in the dark regardless. Plus sunrise even earlier in the summer is useless.

Kids already go to school in the dark in the winter (at least where I'm from). I can see how in the 70's it was more of an issue to increase the number of dark days because many more kids walked to school than they do now (another poster noted it's 10% of children compared to 50%, not sure if that's correct). And DST would be better for afternoon commutes. Plus DST has been pushed to being used during more and more of the year: the spring switch was in late April in the 70s and early 80s, then early April in the late 80s, now early March (since 2007 I think). 75% of the year is DST, let's just make it 100%.

But hey, the morning people out there are never going to be pleased with year-round DST, just like how people like me will never like standard time. But either is better than what we have right now.

I don't know how people can even manage to read through this stuff, much less upvote it. It's even more depressing to me that a comment her got flagged for pointing out this was slop.

Skin Deep by Blendo games, which came out in 2025, used Id Tech 4 (despite its age). Super fun game with a ton of personality!

My PSP, maybe five years ago, had a swollen battery. A friend a couple days ago was complaining that his PS4 controller's battery held no charge at all.

I am not aware of a case where they disabled an already-playable game via a firmware update.

But they do require certain firmware updates to play games, at least they did in the PS3 days. If you hadn't updated to that firmware (say, because you didn't want certain features you used like the OtherOS installation to be deleted) your new physical media would not play. I bought Dark Souls on a disc and could not play it on my console.

I view the killing of physical game media as having two aspects that, while intertwined, are separate in some ways.

The first is the loss of the physical item. I like organizing carts and discs, looking at them on my shelves, reminiscing, easily putting one in a console to replay. Same with other media for me: I buy books, only read physical ones. I listen to digital music (generally downloaded from sites like Bandcamp) but for albums and artists I like the most I buy vinyl. I get that this isn't a big deal for most people, but it is something that is permanently lost when you get rid of physical media.

The second aspect is control and ownership. This is indeed intertwined with the physical aspect, since you can do things like resell a cartridge or disc and let someone easily borrow it. But control is possible with purely digital games, they just need to not be locked down with DRM. And companies like Sony want to kill physical games because it allows them to keep those DRM locks on digital-only copies so you cannot resell your games, which is connected to the second point, control.

I also agree that the issue of control is more important. How do we continue to make sure our games, that we bought, aren't just taken away from us? What happens if you lose your account with Sony/MS/Nintendo? What happens if your old console that you downloaded a game on breaks? The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before.

The ways forward that I see are legislation that would do things like force companies to allow people to always download games they bought in perpetuity, regardless of account status, and if the company dies the successor company must do the same or release the game into the public domain. But given the power of large corporations and current intellectual property laws, this isn't happening anytime soon.

Practically, then, the only way I see is to either have a console that is hacked in some way, or only play games on an open platform like PC. And there you can only buy DRM-free games or, at worse, if you lose access to game in some service (e.g., Steam) you can still pirate it (which I'd feel morally fine doing if I bought it already of course, but that does bring legal risks depending on where you live).

And the later option still doesn't address the larger issue of preservation, as the OP's blog post notes: games will be made for locked-down consoles in the future and will be lost forever unless the hardware is hacked or a law demands the game's preservation.

Video games are far more alike to other media like books, not live sports.

Did you read what they are replacing it with? I.e., "best if used by" (indicating the time the item is at its best quality), "best if frozen by", and "use by" (indicating when the food is and isn't safe to eat). Because those seem much more clear and useful to me than the useless "sell by" date.

The oldest game CD-ROM discs I have are for the Amiga CD32 and were made in 1993; they still work. My PSX and Saturn games from the mid-nineties work. To say nothing of cartridges (my NES games from the 80s work), where the only issues I've faced there are that the batteries for save files that eventually die (but can be replaced).

I got my $10 too. I remember laughing at the amount when I got the check. Thankfully after the OtherOS issue people worked to crack open the PS3, so by the time I got that check I had long since installed custom firmware on it.

Games that require an online account, whether physical or not, are all bad, yes.

But a lot of games are playable just fine without any patches, and there are plenty of physical releases, especially of indie games, which come out after the digital release and include all the patches. And putting aside the nice aspect of owning a physical object (often with cool things like a manual or map in the past and still true with many indie releases now) you still have no control over digital downloads unless it's DRM free, and even then you need to keep back up copies because the service you downloaded it from might disappear.

One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, let people borrow them, etc.

This affects less people, but there are also many who like collecting them. Physical objects are nice, especially if you've been keeping all your old games for old consoles.

Which also ties into control of course: you can still play your games, even if the companies that made them and the console no longer exist, buy old games from retro shops, buy new games for old consoles from new indie devs, etc.

Agreed, for sure. Open hardware is the only way forward honestly. As someone who has traditionally played mostly on consoles, it does make me sad, partially because consoles are so much less finicky. But the control is worth it (and work on things like Proton has made playing older games so much smoother).

Now if the RAM companies make it so you won't ever be able to afford your own hardware and every game company pushes cloud-only gaming... Well, we aren't there yet thankfully, but I fear it'll happen.

True, but Steam still controls Steam and they can change their terms whenever they want. But for now it's ok, at least. And their hardware is happily open: I've played a bunch of games I got on GOG, DRM-free, on my Steam Deck, for example.

Yep. I had tons of Sony games across the first three Playstation consoles. I was a grad student with a PS3 at the time and I actually used Yellow Dog Linux on it as a computer to write papers when my laptop broke. Then the update came and I chose to ignore it, but that meant I couldn't play online games. Soon new games required a firmware update (still remember putting in the Dark Souls disc and being stunned I wasn't allowed to play it!).

And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)

My grad school supervisor (requiescat in pace) lamented the decline for a similar, very minor reason: he always thought that getting up, going outside, smoking a cigarette, and coming back in was the perfect amount of time for a class break. Ten minutes was too long, five too short.

So did Microsoft already! They can always do more.