They did not go for an ITX build but an mTX build. Ultimately you only lost HDMI CEC and some of the gazillion antennas in the Steam Machine, but that did not seem to matter that much. It's a cheaper build, but not one using problematically cheap parts imo.

It also wouldn't cost much to get slightly better parts to fix the shortcomings of their version. You'd go over the budget, but end up with a pc nearly twice as powerful. That's what I was referring to with the odd price/performance ratio the Steam Machine sits in.

If your requirements are that it has to be ITX and it has to have HDMI CEC, then the Steam Machine is likely the best option. But if you just want to couch game and don't mind clicking a button first before you pick up a controller, it's just a really expensive cube.

Something is very wrong with Zorin then.

This is easily said but I've personally had issues with Mint, Ubuntu and Bazzite as well. SteamOS has been pretty okay though, but not without its own issues either.

I feel like the issue right now with nearly all Linux distros is that it is too easy to break. Linux offers tons of freedom, sure, but the guardrails that are supposed to prevent you from making critical mistakes are few.

With Bazzite for example, I tried to mount my second drive. The config screen (I'm sure it has a name but I forgot) showed some kind of error, but did not make it clear what the problem was. It also gave no clear indication how to fix it. After I figured a reboot might help, I got completely stuck in an unbootable state, with none of the recovery options suggested online working. Had to reinstall the entire OS from USB. What should have been an easy thing to do ended up inexplicably bricking the system.

Microsoft has invested quite a bit in good automatic recovery recently. Just today, Dell pushed a faulty display driver update to my laptop, which meant no more display at all. After rebooting three times, Windows recovery kicked in, automatically uninstalled the faulty update and got the OS in a bootable state again. It displayed a nice message on reboot explaining what it did, and disabled that update from being reinstalled for at least 30 days. Find me a Linux distro that does that.

Like it's easy to hate on Microsoft (I do it too) but unless we acknowledge why people get stuck on Linux and end up reverting to Windows people just aren't going to switch. Windows contains a smelly heap of garbage, but there's a lot going on as well to prevent the user from getting stuck in technical problems that don't recover automatically.

That's the thing, I do care about all of that. But it's still a very expensive deal for what you get. That's why I was very interested in it, but the price/performance scared me off.

The only thing hard to match right now is the small form factor. But honestly, that's not the primary selling point of this thing that most gamers care about when they're happily purchasing consoles or pcs several times the size.

Everything else it offers is matchable or handily exceeded with a pc build you put together (or let someone put together for you). Just today LTT put out a budget build video that doesn't do anything complex to reach essentially double the Steam Machine's performance, for the same price. If you want to fix the minor things they compromised on you end up maybe paying 100/200 more. Sure it's a tiny bit more expensive, but when you get twice the performance out of it it's an easy deal to make. Especially given that it means you'll make the build last much longer, and it's more easily upgradable making it much cheaper in the long run. And you still get all the benefits that you mentioned that the Steam Machine offers (especially if you install SteamOS on it, which ended up running better than on the Gabecube as it showed an apparent bug with quick-resume).

The comparison to consoles makes the Steam Machine a bad deal for those who just want a console-like experience. For those who care more about PC gaming, it's a bad deal due to the bad spot it sits in in the price/performance curve. This narrows the target audience to a very small sliver of gamers, who then need to be willing to shell out that much money on an already dated system that will be harder to upgrade in the future.

You don't really get enough performance for the AAA games, and there's cheaper out there if you're just an indie enthusiast. Given the pretty overwhelmingly dismissive response from the community, I doubt this thing is going to sell very well.

Fable/Mythos was already shown to not be that much better at vulnerability finding than previous models. If anything this is basically saying that security at the NSA really isn't up to par.

That's up for interpretation. Arguing the AI bubble will burst and that this sets up the company for an excellent position post-pop could be argued to eventually net the most money. But it's a hard sell.

A PS5 pro blows this out of the water for a lower price. This thing has less performance than a base PS5.

Valve targeted a price/performance point that did not exist anymore. They advertised 4k/60FPS, you're just not getting that with this box. They ended up targeting 1080p. As component prices got more expensive they ended up compromising on performance to keep the cost somewhat manageable, but ended up in a very unfavorable part of the price/performance curve. That's why it's so underwhelming to people.

You can build an equivalent or more powerful pc for slightly less than this. But if you're willing to shell out a couple hundred more, you get a multiple of the performance this thing offers. It's outcompeted on both price and performance.

I was quite hyped to get one of these but I'm not shelling out that money for what you get right now. I'd rather spend a little bit more to get something that will actually last and stay relevant for a few more years.

Yes, but mostly because he got into conflict with the Ecuadorian authorities iirc.

Not sure he had a better deal than Snowden tbh.

They're not disputing that the US is the bad guy. They're disputing that it is morally correct to support the opposing side.

it worked as great as flatpacks

Depending on your experience with flatpaks that's not exactly a rousing endorsement :P

I generally like the idea but often ran into issues that only the flatpak versions of applications would run into (stuttering/performance/permission issues mostly in my case). Most of the stuff I have is still a flatpak, but I do occasionally need to use appimages instead.

For those curious, this apple does exist (though it's more of a very dark purple) and it grows at high altitude in Tibet. The altitude gave it its colour.

I mean, the evidence is pretty solid. She gets arrested, the account remains active. She is at a party, the account is actively moderating. She is at home with no known appointments, the account is silent.

The broader premise, that the evidence that it is her is very circumstantial and coincidental is overvalued and that similar evidence that disproves it's her is ignored is pretty compelling.