Prepaid debit cards are a decent replacement. Plus those are useful for other platforms like GOG.

Technically pre-paid debit cards will serve the same purpose if you still want to use cash to buy a card to redeem steam cash with. You could also use something like PayPal if you don’t want to expose your card directly.

I got steam gift cards as presents growing up, so I feel ya though.

G2A is a good example of a marketplace where steam games and keys are for sale that were purchased with stolen credit cards (through gift cards to launder accordingly).

It is a shitty situation, but as a former IT worker, this is a massive legal liability and the costs of protecting customers are likely to only grow, not level or shrink.

Also, steam accounts are quite easy to get ahold of that are off Valve’s radar. I’m not personally inclined, but there are things like CS and TF2 trading bot accounts that could be used as vectors to launder items (and like I said earlier, steam keys/games can be sold via gray market websites like G2A).

There is nuance here, and I’d imagine the staff members behind the scenes have more than enough data to make an educated decision (if they didn’t give a shit they would leave the cards on the shelves because they clearly make money).

We’ll keep going - it’s what we do as a hobby and for fun after all :)

Might be a hot take, but vodka is one of the more desperate choices when looking to get drunk on your own time (at least in terms of taste). Rubbing alcohol for wounds is also far cheaper.

Anything personally important data wise has a backup stored in a container that won’t sustain liquid damage (and also acts as a faraday cage).

However, anything that is super-critical should the infrastructure around power, etc fail is just printed out as a physical copy on paper (first aid manuals, food cultivation/preparation techniques, how to construct and maintain water purification systems).

I’d argue that’s one of the least overkill ways to handle potential media restictions and geopolitical/climate disasters in our age, since all you need is a printer and maybe one or two secure cases for backup storage drives.

Let’s be honest with ourselves - if user is required to open privacy and security settings to run games, that is a massive deterrent to the overall userbase to use games and software not rubber-stamped by Apple (even though I am aware that power users don’t have to abide by that).

As someone who has worked as an IT contractor with a required MacBook, I am aware that there are ways to install software not completely endorsed by the walled garden, but that is a single digit or less percentile of the userbase who will even try.

Thanks for highlighting the iOS/MacOS distinction though. It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed the documentation (never published a game but was working with a client who was at the time).

Inca Cola for life! I was stunned when it tasted the same when I visited scotland and tried Irn Bru lol

Shareholders, my guy, it’s always external shareholders (and a central point of hosting).

At least the fediverse doesn’t have that issue (and never will).

TL;DR: Apple’s restrictions on what software you can install and “our way or fuck off” philosophy have doomed serious gaming on their hardware, and ARM is not great for gaming atm.

Think about it this way - Mac’s software frameworks are not the primary focus for the vast majority of game developers (Metal was considered “do not touch” for the longest time for people not making mobile games), and Apple doesn’t have an incentive or true motivation to try to move their frameworks more towards the standards on Windows, Linux, etc.

Also, ARM in general (while it can produce great results when software is tuned for it) is just not a good way to play games designed for x86. Valve is trying with FEX, but to do so on a Mac is sort of compounding the misery (translating the x86 game then translating the DirectX/Vulkan framework to something the Mac can use will eat your performance alive).

Additionally, the 100% self inflicted “Think different™” problem on Mac for developers is the mandatory fees and the requirement to use Apple hardware to build and ship software for people to use in the “official channels”. That might be something a company like Adobe is willing to stomach, but not most game developers.

Addendum: Also Apple’s history with shitty cooling solutions and voltage limits means the CPU/GPU probably wouldn’t be able to perform to their greatest potential anyway compared to a traditional desktop pc.

Scotland

Image projection where the brain combines two separate images into one cohesive picture by filling in the gaps is absolutely 3D video’s territory, and expansion on that concept was at the very least utilized in the development of VR headsets.

Now, they aren’t one to one, of course, but lessons learned from 3D video were certainly used in modern VR development (and perhaps adjacent to 3D video’s at the time).

3D video did serve as a legitimate stepping stone for things like Virtual Reality headsets and heads up displays for vehicles, so I don’t think it was a total waste.

The rest of the buzzwords are relatively obscure in the grand scheme of progress though (unless by The Cloud you mean VPS services/storage solutions, which are almost ubiquitous)

Like the other user mentioned, glass warping/deformation. Although I’d reckon kinetic impacts, tremors, or actual drive failure would occur first (the real question is what are the maximum tolerances before a read/write fails or ends in data corruption).

Wonder how rough bit rot would be though.

KABEWM!!!

Here’s the direct home link, although it’s built into the list on my Waterfox and IronWolf installs.

Another important one. Libreoffice already has an android app available, same with most email clients, and browsers. Only one missing might be a good IDE for languages not supported by Godot.

I wonder if this means android desktops are viable work platforms now…

It’s built in the filters list, under Annoyances>Huge AI Blocklist. There’s two different ones (the larger “nuclear variant” might slow down search a bit).