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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • If you want a preview of an uncaring and anti-consumer Valve, look no further than the company’s efforts on Mac.

    Valve never updated any of its earlier games to run in 64-bit mode… Apple dropped support for 32-bit applications in 2019

    Funny enough, the only platform with a 64-bit Steam client is Mac.

    I don’t disagree with concerns about monopoly, but the author’s key example is Macs. And from the example, it sounds to me like Apple disregards backwards compatibility (dropping 32-bit support, moving to ARM chips) and Valve isn’t investing to keep up. Meanwhile, Windows has a heavy backwards-compatibility focus, and Linux isn’t too bad either, so no wonder they still get Valve’s attention. So who is being “anti-consumer” in this example, Valve or Apple?


  • As I said to him, “in the US you don’t get to vote and get someone better than Joe Biden
    

    Actually, write-ins are a thing, so you literally can vote for anyone else than him and Trump.

    I think you misunderstood the author. You can literally vote for anyone, but the winner of the next US presidential election is only going to be Biden or Trump (barring a crazy twist, e.g. death or criminal conviction). I think the author’s point is that, in any given election, you should probably vote strategically, but getting better options takes a lot of work for a long time to make it happen, so get working if you can.






  • I’m an engineer, and I make it a point to teach young engineers that “a ton” can mean any one of three things:

    • Short ton = 2000 lb
    • Long ton = 2240 lb
    • Metric ton = 1000 kg = ~2204 lb

    And which is being used is often not spelled out, but is just known from context, and usually should be clarified. I once nearly got in trouble by thinking a measurement was in short tons when it was actually metric tons.

    So my own act of rebellion is to use “Mg” when I’m writing my personal notes.