They have a responsibility to ensure that games they sell continue to work.

How do you figure that? Valve sells you a game, and they publish the system requirements for that game. If a game doesn’t work on your system then they’ll give you a refund as long as it’s within the refund window. Beyond that, they owe you nothing. For 32-bit titles, one of the technical requirements is 32-bit OS libraries. Let’s say Windows 12 removes support for 32-bit software. What do you think Valve will do? I say they’ll mass-update the system requirements of 32-bit titles to indicate that they’re not compatible with Windows 12 and higher. Historical precedent is on my side here, because this is effectively what Valve did when Apple dropped 32-bit support from OSX.

They ship libraries on Linux so there’s a common base, and they should also do so for 32-bit games. GOG does this for older games using things like dosbox or whatever, and Steam should follow suit.

The libraries that Valve ships for Linux support are essentially Proton. They’ve invested a lot of effort into Proton because there’s a strong business case for doing so. 95% of Valve’s customers game on a Windows OS (source: Steam hardware survey), which means that Microsoft could present an existential threat to Valve if Microsoft attempts to lock down their platform. Having a functional alternative OS could dissuade Microsoft from making any anti-competitive moves. Plus, of course, without Proton there’s no Steam Deck. I think making money from Steam Deck is only Valve’s short term goal though, which is why they’re opening up Steam OS to other handheld makers. The long-term aim is to shift gaming away from closed-source to open-source platforms so that Valve’s business isn’t reliant on any one OS vendor.

There’s no business case for doing the same with legacy 32-bit titles. There will be no new 32-bit titles going forward, and there’s hardly any market for existing legacy 32-bit titles. Valve would need to compete with GOG, who’s already doing much the same thing, and GOG is barely profitable as it stands. GOG’s 2024 profits were a paltry 1.1M profit on 199M revenue (source). That’s a profit margin of about 0.5%, which is not a healthy indicator in a for-profit business. 5% is generally considered low, 10% or better is a healthy margin. GOG is essentially being propped up by CD Projekt Red’s Witcher/Cyberpunk money (CDPR has 468M profit on 801M revenue in 2024; a profit margin of 58%, which is wildly high-margin). Valve could prop up a money-losing 32-bit compatibility project with all their income from 64-bit software sales, but I doubt they would.

The Steam client is just a launcher. Why is it Valve’s job to make sure that legacy 32-bit games continue to run? They’re not the vendor of the game, and they’re not the vendor of the OS. They’re just a middleman. If the game vendor doesn’t want to patch it to 64-bit, and the OS vendor doesn’t want to maintain 32-bit compatibility, then there’s simply no more support for that combination of OS and game. Valve isn’t required to step in there.

It may surprise you to learn that Valve already switched the client to 64-bit… for Mac. OSX hasn’t had 32-bit support since 2019, but it still has a Steam client! Valve didn’t do anything for 32-bit-only Mac titles, except drop the “Mac OS compatible” tag once Apple had dropped 32-bit support. That’s all they’re ever going to do for 32-bit-only PC titles, when/if OS vendors completely drop 32-bit support.

32-bit is dead and it’s somewhat absurd that Steam is still 32-bit.

Tell that to anyone who bought a legacy title on Steam and now wants to run it on modern hardware. Leaving the Steam client at 32-bit is simply a low-effort way to ensure that the OS has the 32-bit libraries that will be required by any 32-bit title the user happens to launch.

I must have missed that negative sentiment entirely. I played all three and had no complaints. Did some searching, and apparently a lot of the gripes were related to levels being cut down in size / broken down into pieces to allow for a console release (strict memory requirements). Also I think they changed engines for the 3rd game, or at least a lot of people complain that movement and controls were worse in DS. I guess ignorance is bliss, cause I enjoyed them all.

Do you mean Thief: Deadly Shadows? That was the 3rd game in the series, and from what I understand it was pretty well received. The orphanage level alone is so highly regarded that it has its own Wikipedia page.

Now the 2014 reboot, just titled Thief, that was so poorly received the it basically killed the series. It might have been a decent game, but it was not a good Thief game.

That’s just what happens to CEOs of publicly traded companies when they have a bad year. And Intel had a really bad year in 2024. I’m certainly hoping that their GPUs become serious competition for AMD and Nvidia, because consumers win when there’s robust competition. I don’t think Pat’s ousting had anything to do with GPUs though. The vast majority of Intel’s revenue comes from CPU sales and the news there was mostly bad in 2024. The Arrow Lake launch was mostly a flop, there were all sorts of revelations about overvolting and corrosion issues in Raptor Lake (13th and 14th gen Intel Core) CPUs, broadly speaking Intel is getting spanked by AMD in the enthusiast market and AMD has also just recently taken the lead in datacenter CPU sales. Intel maintains a strong lead in corporate desktop and laptop sales, but the overall trend for their CPU business is quite negative.

One of Intel’s historical strength was their vertical integration, they designed and manufactured the CPUs. However Intel lost the tech lead to TSMC quite a while ago. One of Pat’s big early announcements was “IDM 2.0” (“Integrated Device Manufacturing 2.0”), which was supposed to address those problems and beef up Intel’s ability to keep pace with TSMC. It suffered a lot of delays, and Intel had to outsource all Arrow Lake manufacturing to TSMC in an effort to keep pace with AMD. I’d argue that’s the main reason Pat got turfed. He took a big swing to get Intel’s integrated design and manufacturing strategy back on track, and for the most part did not succeed.

Being a private company has allowed Valve to take some really big swings. Steam Deck is paying off handsomely, but it came after the relative failure of the Steam Controller, Steam Link and Steam Machines. With their software business stable, they can allow themselves to take big risks on the hardware side, learn what does and doesn’t work, then try again. At a publically traded company, CEO Gabe Newell probably gets forced out long before they get to the Steam Deck.

Market capitalization is just simple math, multiplying a company’s stock price by the number of shares that have been issued. Tesla has issued roughly 3.2 billion shares and is currently trading at around $550, which makes their current market cap about $1.75 trillion dollars.

I don’t understand how the value can be that high compared to all of the other companies, especially China.

On its face it seems utterly nonsensical that Tesla is worth as much as all other auto makers combined, when Tesla only accounts for something like 5% of total US car sales. There are two reasons I can think of why this is currently so:

• Tesla accounts for roughly half of all US electric vehicle sales, and electric vehicle sales are roughly 10% of all US vehicle sales. If electric vehicles largely replace ICE vehicles and if Tesla maintains that share of EV sales, then Tesla will be an extremely valuable company. Investors might be betting on a) electric vehicles and b) Tesla continuing to the win the lion’s share of electric vehicle sales.
• Tesla investors are irrational. Personally, my money is on this one. I think long-term Tesla is going to get crushed by cheaper and better-built EVs, probably from China but also possibly from other existing car manufacturers. Sometimes I’m tempted to short Tesla’s stock based on this belief, but to quote John Maynard Keynes: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

are there games that try to portray life and folklore of people I may not know about?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance might fit this. It’s set in 15th century Bohemia (modern day Czechia), and was designed with input from archaeologists and historians. That may present too much overlap with 15th century Bavaria, though. It’s an immersive sim with at least some jankiness, though I believe many bugs have been squashed since release. It can also be a bit tough in the early going as your character starts out pretty weak by design. Your character gets better at skills as you use them and the game starts to shine more once you’ve established some basic competency.

Are there games that play with this kind of meta mystery (I don’t know what word best describes it) where you have a glimpse that there’s something bigger behind the scenes?

I’d recommend There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. Chock full of 4th wall breaks and meta commentary on games, game design and game development, plus lots of humour and a ton of heart. There is a bit of a mystery component as well. I’d recommend avoiding spoilers if at all possible, I went in blind and I think it made for a much better overall experience.

I’d wait for independent reviews. The first wave of Intel GPUs had a lot of issues, mostly related to drivers. From what I understand Intel has come a long way on the driver front in the past year, but we don’t have a clear picture on their overall state with the new parts. Reviewers like GamersNexus will call out whether the current state of the drivers are good enough for a recommendation, or if Intel still has more ground to cover.

There are lots of wild foods that are poisonous, but that didn’t stop our ancestors from figuring out ways to make them edible. In the case of bitter almonds I can find a reference to baking and boiling being effective methods of reducing cyanide content. Cold leaching might also work but it would take a lot more time.

I have to imagine that dire necessity was a catalyst for these discoveries. I’m guessing the thought process was more like “These are bitter as shit and they killed Bill, but we’re gonna starve to death if we don’t find some food, so let me try boiling these to see if the bitter goes away.”

Yeah, I don’t get it either. What I’ve seen doesn’t look anywhere close to an 8+ out of ten rating. Will be interesting to see the player ratings on this one…

I don’t dislike that art style in general, but to my mind it seems like a poor fit for a Dragon Age game. I guess they’re pivotinf strongly away from the series dark and gritty roots, which is unfortunate because I think that was one of its strong points.

Watching Skill Up’s review now, and oof. That art style… that writing. Don’t know who they made this game for, but it’s definitely not me.

No, the opposite actually! Any amount of exercise will help with GI motility, but intense exercise causes the digestive system to slow down (source).

None of the above. The correct answer is walking. Moving around helps kickstart the GI tract.

Oh I’m streets ahead, I never took him at his word in the first place.

I don’t believe it actually does grow back faster, it just seems that way. The first inch or so gives the impression of growing back faster because the hairs are thicker at the base so they’re more visible and less prone to breakage.

Is there any benefit at all

Maybe! There’s at least some scientific evidence that chemical compounds in mushrooms can have medicinal effects.

Bias disclaimer: I put a lion’s mane mushroom tincture in my morning tea because it may have a neuroprotective effect (source). My father’s father had dementia, my father is currently in a home with profound dementia, the chances it’s going to happen to me are very high. It’ll be years before I know whether lion’s mane mushroom will do anything for me (and even then you couldn’t claim anything from one data point), but I’m willing to try anything as long as it’s affordable and has at least some plausible evidence behind it. This isn’t the only thing I’m doing of course, I’ve also overhauled my diet (MIND diet) and lost 30 pounds (obesity is correlated with dementia).

why can’t you make it your self by pulverizing dried mushrooms of the same variety they use into powder and making the coffee yourself?

You absolutely could. Or, you know, just eat some of the same mushrooms. The benefit to dried products like Ryze, or tinctures like the one I use, are that they’re convenient, easily transportable and self-stable. I’ve cooked up fresh lion’s mane mushrooms several times, but not super often because they’re not in many stores in my area and tend to be pricey for the amount you get. I’ve also grown my own from a kit but that takes significant time and a little bit of daily attention to maintain optimal growing conditions. The tincture is convenient and relatively affordable as far as daily supplements go.

OpenAI on that enshittification speedrun any% no-glitch!

Honestly though, they’re skipping right past the “be good to users to get them to lock in” step. They can’t even use the platform capitalism playbook because it costs too much to run AI platforms. Shit is egregiously expensive and doesn’t deliver sufficient return to justify the cost. At this point I’m ~80% certain that AI is going to be a dead tech fad by the end of this decade because the economics just don’t work now that the free money era has ended.