definitemaybe

You mean the person who posted 3 hours after me?

But, clearly, a Google Home or Amazon Alexa needs cloud connectivity to function. And short of Stop Killing Games regulations forcing companies to release software to keep purchases functional after server shutdowns, there's going to be no alternative when they shut down the servers.

But where do we draw the line?

A smart fridge should obviously keep working without cloud connectivity, since cloud features aren't relevant to its core functionality.

A ~~spyware~~ house-scanning vacuum robot, on the other hand, that stores video of your entire house on web servers "to map your home" may not have the processing power to model the home based on its ~~surveillance~~ video recordings. So, is it reasonable, then, that these break when servers go offline?

Without any regulations, the answer is just "consumers can go fuck themselves", which clearly isn't a good answer.

Good point. I remember seeing one about a monitor that can give edge-of-screen glow to indicate proximity of enemies in LoL or DOTA2 based on minimap information.

Exactly. There are two methods that bypass kernel-level anticheat fairly easily, and there isn't really any way around them.

You can run the game in a virtual machine, with cheats running at the hypervisor level. This level is more privileged than the virtual machine's kernel, and can thus read or modify the active program without detection.

The other way is to load the hack into the bootloader, so the cheat loads before the kernel and, again, can thus be in a more privileged permissions state.

The only effective solution is to detect cheating server side, or change the game engine so cheats don't work (like loading all models with no line of sight behind the player, so wall hacks and modified game models don't matter.

GabeCube is what I'm calling it forever, now. That's great.

I don't think I'll get one (I have 2 Decks, a dock, and a gaming ex-Windows now CachyOS PC) but I'm excited for the controller. Couch play sucks without touchpads on so many games. Steam Input even makes games with massive numbers of keybinds work great; with nested radial menus, you can have hundreds of commands on 'em.

You're joking, but the reverse of that is essentially how early retirement works. Funding a 30-year retirement costs almost the same as an infinite retirement, due to the effects of compound interest. So, if you can increase your income while keeping your spending low, you can afford to retire very early and live off investment income forever.

Yeah; the response should be that a "reject all" button must be displayed next to the accept all button with equal prominence, and define prominence to mean the same size, with similar contrast to the accept all button and clearly labelled.

Exactly. The American 2-party system is between right and alt-right.

That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.

How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?

One can dream.

• I'm assuming a split because game development and sales don't really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.

How does someone beating a game on "story" mode reduce your enjoyment of beating it on "nightmare"? I don't get it. We can have both in the same game; isn't that just better?

(Assuming we're talking about single player, obv.)

Eh... Even better to tax wealth or increase income taxes at higher tax brackets.

It's a shame that the Liberals backed off increasing capital gains inclusion above $10K (iirc?) to ⅔ instead of ½. That would have made a big difference on its own, and the cost to implement that change would be very low, presumably—people are already responsible for calculating their capital gains; this would just make it a 3-step calculation instead of a 2-step calculation.

Sorry, I thought the context of that quote was clear:

I was referring to raising a contrasting political opinion in defense of Albertans, as that's the context for this entire discussion.