[–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

Ah, my favorite kind of metric: unreliable correlation.

Let's see, how many new users has Steam got this year, compared to 2025? No idea? Oh well, then that "new games with 100+ reviews" already looks off. Say, doesn't steam treat early access games that get fully released as "new" in the same year? Welp, that's another thing that's not accounted for, but hey, AI is totally helping, trust me bro!

Let's see, what about the Flathub packages? Oh, just a "1k+ downloads in the last 90 days"? I'll go out a limb and assume it's "packages first published in the last 90 days that got over 1k downloads since". What was linux' userbase growth again? Irrelevant? Oh. Can you at least give a rundown of categories of said apps? No? Uh... What about at least checking if the repo of said app says if it had any AI use? Not even that, eh?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 weeks ago

    I think that's something that hasn't been fully "solved" in any MMO. Money gets created out of nothing and, with enough time, prices inflate into absurdity. Even with auction house taxes and other sinks that forces players to spend their money, they still end up creating more money than is destroyed.

    Trying to implement a wealth tax system would be hard, as players could easily find loopholes in order to avoid paying most or all of it, whether by using alts or keeping most of the money as things that wouldn't enter the math for their "net worth". Not to mention that, depending on the setting, it would create a massive shitstorm.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Article is from Jul 14, 2026

    So why are our video games slipping out of our hands now more than ever? To understand that, we need to understand DRM.

    Ackshually, we need to understand the internet and our general preference for convenience. First, people stopped listening to their CDs and were listening to their ripped MP3 files. File sharing programs like Napster and Kazaa made acquiring new songs extremely easy and convenient. Some time later, people stopped bothering with downloading the songs and just went with listening to Spotify.

    It was similar with videogames, starting with the X360's Xbox Live Arcade. The games you bought there were digital only, some can now be considered "lost media". Yet, it was extremely convenient, you're just sitting there, you just select the game, pay and boom, done. The writing was on the wall even back then, more people with faster internet meant more digital sales.

    Regarding DRM proper, there was also the case of Capcom putting shit Enigma DRM in several games of theirs post release

    the only format those aforementioned games can currently be found in if you didn’t purchase them digitally during their available window

    Many games still live on in 🏴‍☠️ seas. Thank ye, me mateys!!

    IO Interactive shipped a physical disc [of 007 First Light] containing only the first mission, requiring players to download a hefty day one patch to actually make the game they purchased playable.

    Not the first time a company pulled that shit, either. Activision pulled the same shit in 2015 with Tony Hawk 5, the day-1 patch was larger (7.7GB) than the entire fucking game (4.6GB).

    In this current day and age, I think the ideal moment to release a physical copy is at least 6 months after the digital release, so a good amount of patches have already been released.

    An online hub filled with individual user storefronts operated by players themselves – like a digital yard sale, players could browse one another’s wares, combing through for a good deal or a brand-new gem they’ve never heard of.

    No. Just no. The first problem that will happen is NFT 2.0, "asserting digital ownership" that can be accepted anywhere and transferred to any 3rd party. The second problem is ensuring said hub doesn't devolve into another Amazon, because you can't just pop up "digitalgameyardsale.com" and tell people to sell their existing Steam or GOG games there - you need to integrate with Steam and GOG for them to validate the users and their games.

    publishers and developers could take a percentage of each sale in exchange for ensuring that ownership exchange of each digital title begins with the player handing it over and ends with the player purchasing it.

    Small publishers and devs might accept that. The big ones won't, because "why accept spare change when I can force people to buy new and profit more?"

    Another problem with this is about expired or unknown rights holders. For instance, who currently owns the rights to Crazy Drake? Or Mig Alley? This isn't as simple as finding the author of a book

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    A 2023 study at MIT made this discovery, which could be a boon for storing electricity.

    The team calculated that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is 45 cubic meters (or yards) in size — equivalent to a cube about 3.5 meters across — would have enough capacity to store about 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is considered the average daily electricity usage for a household.

    3.5 cubic meters of material ought to be enough to make quite a comfy house

    There is a tradeoff between the storage capacity of the material and its structural strength, they found. By adding more carbon black, the resulting supercapacitor can store more energy, but the concrete is slightly weaker, and this could be useful for applications where the concrete is not playing a structural role or where the full strength-potential of concrete is not required.

    They talk about making roads with the material, but I suspect electrical posts (utility poles) could also be made of this, which would certainly last much longer than roads and be cheaper to maintain and fix

     

    23 games + 1 DLC^[I nearly bought Blades of Time Limited edition, then I saw that I already had the base game in my library. It's one of the things that pisses me off with GOG, it won't say you own the game if you have the base/deluxe/platinum/definitive/whatever edition but are looking at a different version, and will gladly let you buy it again] for R$180 (~32 USD)

    I know some of those aren't exactly bangers, or might just barely be considered good, but I won't even play them all anyway^[I really need to get my shit together and start playing instead of just buying] enjoy looking at subpar games from time to time

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