I imagine it would make a huge bump if Valve were to announce “Wait no longer, SteamOS is here!!”, even if their release is just an overnight reskin-fork of (Bazzite/CachyOS/PopOS).

I say this as someone who tries to tell people, stop waiting on Valve, and try out a few of the options. I’m glad I found a distro that works for me, but I didn’t enjoy the original search. I certainly got pressured into it as Microsoft really put as much effort as they could into making Windows as terrible as possible; and it was not “Everything works 100% out of box!” But the move was worthwhile.

It’s always “one little thing”, and often an OS-local feature that many wouldn’t be aware of.

eg, You go to your grandma’s to help with her computer. She mostly uses her web browser to check on news. BUT, she has one specific home-network file operation she performs regularly, using an old network drive that got set up decades ago by who-knows.

That’s one tiny example, but there’s hundreds of others around, and not from tech nuts. Someone has one specific VPN app they must use, on their personal device, infrequently, for work. Someone runs one app that still mentions Windows 95 compatibility. Someone with learning disabilities is very very used to the pattern of logging in, so much so that they’re confused and ready to call IT when they don’t get a Ctrl+Alt+Delete prompt.

Thankfully, those are often exaggerations, and it’s good that most people’s use cases for niche stuff has migrated to web apps. You’re right that a lot of people really do only rely on their web browser. These days, even Edge is “sorta” available on Linux if someone is that dedicated to their list of bookmarks. Just don’t expect it’s always as simple as people not finding the start-menu-equivalent.

Yup. I’m using my terminal every day, but I program for work and don’t mind a keyboard-friendly interface for a few forms of tinkering and program updates I’m doing. But even I wanted to prefer the GUI for common actions.

The stupidest reason I started going back to my terminal was, my GUI package manager didn’t have a “Select All / Select None” button for package updates, so if I only wanted to update one app at a time, I had to do it from the terminal. That’s not “terminal being awesome”, or “terminal being my preference”, that’s just lazy UI design.

YouTube has done a lot of malicious removal, but I’d be surprised if Windows 11 was one of those intentional targets. YT is run by Google, purveyors of Chromebooks; I’d think they’d generally benefit from a move off of MS/Windows.

It is extremely rare - I do it when I have some form of dedication to the developer, or their rare variety of ambitious game. I may not have even done it once this year.

So I think that matches the OP’s feelings of buying early in support. Largely, it doesn’t matter.

Aren’t the waiting rooms mainly for the non-paying customers? I thought as soon as you subscribe, you jump way ahead of most other users.

Surprisingly, if they have such waiting times, it seems to indicate they do have people using the service.

(Original comment for posterity:)

I always disagreed with the world a bit on Will Smith’s big slap. I think he shouldn’t have done it, but I also think it was over-demonized. I recognize the preceding conversation as basically Hart making fun of a woman for having cancer. That doesn’t deserve a slap, but I understand why it happened. People have brought up prior drama in the Smith family but it always felt irrelevant to me.

The other bit to it is the feeling that “Violence is never the answer. Ever.” That’s a good sentiment to have when a parent is angry at their children. But there are some really horrible people in the world. People who don’t react to logic, reason, or emotion; and who pretend that they do in order to get what they want. When pushed past all reasonable limits by some people, violence should be the answer. A lot more people in this world deserve to get slapped. Whether Kevin Hart is one of those? I don’t know. I certainly don’t think of him as a saint.

EDIT: Yup, so I misremembered a LOT of details on this, and did not think to fact check them. I remember having all the facts at one point (as several said, it wasn’t cancer, just hair loss) and forming my opinion back then; and forgot a lot of details since. I still very much deserve downvotes for that of course, just admitting my ignorance.

One of the recent examples of pulling more mindsets to your side is the “copy paste” trick with the Epstein files.

Some have theorized that the person who redacted them knew this, and that they were achieving malicious/minimal compliance by highlighting in black. It’s likely that no one would have risked such an act if they didn’t already believe such a large number of Americans would be on their side.

They might not believe that if protests were so rare that the administration’s control of journalism allowed them to pretend them absent.

I’ve heard old stories of people doing No Kings protests in red states, and getting more on the next go; because the dissent was already there, but needed a bit of public encouragement.

I suppose kids tend not to be afraid of the normal punishments, hence people would invent the worst ones they’d be familiar with.

“If you’re bad, Krampus will install a filter that prevents you from going to that horrid Roblox website!”
“Okay mom. There are guides online to get around those.”

One issue is that men won’t start that conversation by shyly admitting there’s an issue they have a problem with, as some personal internal struggle. They’ll start by “complaining” about some external thing as the source of their problems. Women do this too, and it’s often readily accepted even if the other party doesn’t totally agree.

A 100% empathetic society would take time talking it out until it boils down to the internal issue, therapy-style.

Ark seems to fit into the same niche that enjoys Roblox, Fortnite, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. That might make a statement about how much money they have.

I develop JS for a living, but for my personal site I faced the burden of PHP to load it directly, and kept minimal JS. I’ve had people note to me how quickly it loads.

Scroll bars are way too fucking thin now. When I have an app on one monitor, and try to scroll it, I’m battling the move to the next monitor with the teensy tiny scrollbar.

I’m even someone that knows how to use the mouse wheel and page down keys. It still has its place and so many refuse to acknowledge that. Sometimes I can’t even tell where on the page I am because the scrollbar activated its Octocamo.

Private, but don’t they serve a number of government contracts?

This is basically the government bailing out Tesla directly for a shitty truck.

The breaking point for me was Reddit’s assault on accessibility through API changes.

I’m not even disabled. I just work with accessibility features at some of my jobs and it gives a nice clean feeling of standards compliance.

A Rose in the Twilight. Pretty unexciting and quiet puzzle platformer with a main character that’s slow and hard to control and dies easily.

Then past the main credits, it pulls out a secret final boss fight with this banger.

Getting arrested for being black is still a thing. The world hasn’t finished blending all Nazis in a bloody soup. There are black communities down south where they ended up forming their own armed militia just to keep community members safe from racism.

STOP FUCKING SAYING RACISM IS GONE. This is just the violent shit you directly see. You can’t even prove the little ones, that deny someone a job, or a loan, or healthcare. To say nothing of denying them votes through gerrymandering.

It’s a quandary that blasts the very question.

There is no good reason for us to define, or seek out, the “worst games of the year”. Only outrage culture wants us to direct hate towards known bad games like Black Ops 7, even though by any practical analysis it’s a better game than hundreds of ignored, pretty bad asset flips, and even some high-effort low-thought indie games that have come out.

Yeah, quite often the games themselves have needed broad changes to account for how people tend to shoot on controllers.

For instance, PC games will typically penalize your accuracy or sway the scope if you strafe around, which is terrible for controller players as you describe. Other times, the “aim down sights” action became very standard in a world of gun-at-corner hipfiring, because it lets them snap aim onto enemies for at least the first shot.

Again: This is not a cake. This is a recipe book and an oven. Scenario’s demo reel showcases models they have finished training, and vouch that you can make one from scratch. I am asking you for a finished AI model you have ready to use.