sylver_dragon

joined 1 year ago
[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Since the article seems to have failed to link to it, here's the actual data: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe, though if you think about it, the idea is basically:
Hey, we borrowed all this money to buy up lots of companies. But rather than pay it back ourselves, we are going to put all of that debt on this one company we also bought (probably with some of that debt), because thay actually make money.

It's a shell game to allow Embracer to walk away with all the profits and never have to pay their investors back. If Asmodee manages to pay off the debt, that's nice for them. Other than the fact that they will be hamstrung by servicing that debt, rather than re-investing in the company. If Asmodee folds and gets auctioned off in Chapter 7, that ends up having no material effect on the leadership of Embracer who made the decision to take on all that debt. Either way, Embracer is jettisoning all responsibility for the choices the management of Embrace made.

This sort of leveraged debt buyout, loot the company, then jettison the debt tactic has been used over and over to destroy otherwise profitable companies in the name of short term profit for vulture capitalists.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I may be wrong but I figure if it’s on Fox

Oddly enough, polling is the one area where Fox News isn't a complete shit show. 538 has consistently rated them highly throughout the years. In this case, the poll was run by Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. 538's pollster ratings have them at #15, with a 2.8 rating out of 3.0. While it's proper to be skeptical of anything with the Fox name attached, this is one of those areas where you can accept the poll at face value. That said, it's still June and polls this far out are wildly bad at predicting the final outcome. They are better as a barometer of current sentiment and may help candidates to calibrate their messaging and campaigns as we get closer to the election. Also, a 1-2 point "lead" is almost certainly within the margin of error. So, this poll is really saying "it's a dead heat" and drawing anything more of a conclusion is more of a rorschach test than anything.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They really buried the lede on this one. Sure, Embrace paid back a bunch of money using proceeds from the sale of Take-Two. That's pretty normal business. But:

The company is also moving €900 million of its debt into tabletop publisher Asmodee as part of its plans to split into three separate entities.

It sounds like they are about to jettison the rest of their debt using Asmodee. Embracer will walk away with whatever money they have made and Asmodee will end up being crushed under most of the debt Embrace used to make that money. Vulture capitalism at it's finest.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I actually didn't know that about the game, I just linked to the articled to provide details. Given the time the game was written, I suspect it was to make the music a bit more complicated. Game "Music" at the time could leave something to be desired. I played a lot of games with just a PC Speaker, which means that all of the sounds were mostly just different beeps. However, we also didn't know any better at the time and just enjoyed it for what it was.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'll throw out one from my youth that I think would be really good to see updated:
Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. It was a very early space RPG which was way ahead of it's time. Something like the recent Heat Signature kinda reminds me of it, though it lacks the scope and depth of combat.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While Chism may be a worthless leech, he isn't completely wrong. Valve's ownership of Steam does put it in a privileged position, which could be abused in a lot of anti-competitive ways. The fact that it isn't doing that is really only because GabeN isn't the same type of leech which Chism is. He's what a lot of people seem to want, a benevolent dictator. That said, when he finally kicks the bucket, or gets tired and sells the company, the future direction of Steam would be an open question. There may be a very good argument for Valve to be put under the microscope of the FTC for possible anti-trust breakup.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Java is dying in the same way that Linux is winning the desktop war, it's always going to happen "next year" but never "this year". I spent a lot of years as a sysadmin and while I would have been quite happy to piss on the grave of Java, we always seemed to be installing some version of the JRE (though, usually not the latest version) on systems. There is just a lot of software which is built with it. This was especially true when dealing with US FedGov systems. Developers for the USG loved Java and we had both the JRE and JDK (because why not require the Development Kit for a user install?) sprinkled about our environment like pigeon droppings.

That said, don't get too caught up focusing on one language. A lot of the underlying data structures and theory will transfer between languages. What you are learning now may not be what you end up working with in the future. Try to understand the logic, systems and why you are doing what you are doing, rather than getting too caught up on the specific implementation.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's down to the expected use case.
If you have some reason to want portability, like you travel for work or expect to want to game at a place other than you home, then a laptop is likely the right choice.
If you only expect to game at home and don't have a need to constantly move your system around, a desktop is usually a better "bang for the buck".

Personally, I don't travel and don't have a need to move my gaming rig around. I also like having the ability to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion. So, I have a desktop. This particular PC of Theseus has been going for a decade and a half now and shows no sign of stopping.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 79 points 2 weeks ago

By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology....

Ya, that reputation is taking a big hit right now.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

No, it'll just get disabled. Security baselines are a common feature of enterprise IT, this will just be another requirement.

 

My daughter wanted a "Gorilla Tag" birthday. And my wife wanted me to print some party favors for the guest kids. Not my model, but they are churning out ok-ish.

 

I'm currently purchasing a new GPU and specifically settled on the MSI 4070 Super. I'm all set for everything except connecting the display to the card.

Currently, the display I have (which isn't being upgraded for now) only has two input options: DVI and VGA. The new GPU only provides HDMI or Display Port. This isn't really a problem as adapters/cables exist to go from Display Port/HDMI to DVI-D.

But, the question I have is, which is the better option, or does it make any difference? And, are there any "gotchas" I should watch out for when buying the cable?

I realize that I am likely over-thinking this, but I would rather ask a stupid question than make a stupid mistake.

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