I love my Steam Deck, but I hate that it‘s still the best gaming handheld on the market. Valve has been pretty transparent about their process of getting the Deck right. Things like working with AMD to create a mobile APU optimized for gaming, using an optimized OS and an optimized UI, balancing performance and battery life, using and iterating over the controller design, leveraging FOSS and so on.

But somehow no one else seems use all of this knowledge, trying to innovate on top of it. Sure, there are handhelds which take some of these learnings into account, but never enough of them to actually improve on the Deck as a whole. I would have expected other manufacturers to catch up with Valve four years after the Deck‘s release. I don‘t like only getting excited about gaming hardware made by a single company.

If someone‘s looking for an alternative, I‘d recommend Qobuz after trying Spotify, Deezer and Tidal. They‘re European, pay artists very well, don‘t support AI slop, have excellent audio quality and I haven‘t yet stumbled upon any artists or albums missing from their library (though your experience may vary).

Thanks for the additional information!

Here’s the quote from the paywalled article I was referring to:

Bethke hat im Herbst 2024 Anzeige gegen Pascal K. erstattet. In Summe gehe es, andere Forderungen wegen ausstehender Rechnungen in der Bar eingerechnet, um knapp 10 000 Euro. Die Staatsanwaltschaft hat Ermittlungen eingeleitet. Aber auch die Behörden konnten Pascal K. nicht finden. Zwischenzeitlich hat die Staatsanwaltschaft Köln sogar nach ihm gesucht und das Ermittlungsverfahren dafür vorübergehend ausgesetzt, weil er an seiner Meldeadresse nicht gelebt habe, so ein Sprecher. Inzwischen laufen die Ermittlungen wieder.

Translation:

Bethke filed a criminal complaint against Pascal K. in the fall of 2024. Including other claims for outstanding bills at the bar, the total amount is just under 10,000 euros. The public prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation. However, the authorities were also unable to locate Pascal K. According to a spokesperson, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office even searched for him and temporarily suspended the investigation because he was not living at his registered address. The investigation has since resumed.

There has also been another case where there was a civil arrest warrant against K., though that isn’t a police matter in Germany:

Oliver Strank sagt, seit Oktober 2023 bestehe in der Sache ein Vollstreckungstitel, aber K. sei nicht greifbar gewesen. Im Sommer 2024 hat Strank sogar einen zivilrechtlichen Haftbefehl gegen K. erwirkt. Doch die zuständige Gerichtsvollzieherin, die diesen Haftbefehl vollstrecken müsste, habe den Gesuchten nie antreffen können, sagt Strank.

Translation:

Oliver Strank says that there has been an enforcement order in the matter since October 2023, but K. could not be located. In the summer of 2024, Strank even obtained a civil arrest warrant for K. However, Strank says the responsible bailiff, who would have to execute this arrest warrant, was never able to find the wanted person.

Although homophobia is definitely a plausible motive here, it’s important to know that there are multiple accusations of theft and grifting against this guy.

For example, he managed someone else’s bar, threw his birthday party there, and then vanished, leaving the owner with a bill of almost €6,000. He couldn’t even be found by the police. He also never repaid a loan of €3,500 to someone else. By now, about 20 people claim to have been scammed by him. After prosecutors were unable to locate him for quite a while, the investigation is currently ongoing.

He also seems to be quite manipulative, complaining to his followers about not being chosen as a referee for games because of his activism, while actually just not showing up to mandatory training and therefore being unqualified.

(Source; unfortunately German and paywalled)

So, while homophobia might be the reason for this attack, he might also have been beaten up by a victim of his alleged crimes.

Franz Reichelt, the Flying Tailor, seemed to be pretty sure he could fly when, in 1912, he tried testing a wingsuit he designed himself. By jumping from the Eiffel Tower. He could not fly.

Dazu sei auch noch spaceweather.com erwähnt. Verwendet die gleiche Datenbasis, aber ordnet zusätzlich noch alle größeren Ereignisse verständlich ein.

Es sollte aber auch gesagt sein, dass beide Seiten nicht alle Polarlichter vorhersagen können. Die Aurora Forecast hatte beispielsweise für den 19.01. keine Polarlichter für Deutschland angekündigt, obwohl sie ja praktisch im ganzen Land sichtbar waren (ich nehme an, dass das an der ungewöhnlich hohen Geschwindigkeit des CMEs lag). Also wenn man hört, dass die Sonne etwas in unsere Richtung gespuckt hat, kann es sich trotz schlechter Vorhersage lohnen, mal nach draußen zu gehen und in den Himmel zu schauen.

I see what you mean, but your belief that making chocolate from cocoa is „extremely trivial“ is simply wrong. For example, conching was invented in Europe and without it, chocolate would taste and feel totally different. The process is so important and difficult to get right, it often makes the biggest difference in chocolate quality to this day.

I‘d like to add Zotter to the list. Really good chocolate plus they only use ingredients from organic cultivation and pay their suppliers well.

Your point being? This community isn‘t about exclusively promoting products that don’t have any ingredients from outside of Europe.

I think this really depends on the company’s culture and size. From my experience, having only worked in smaller teams, I’d say trying to partake in management duties proactively has probably been most successful for colleagues who wanted to lead.

So when your boss or supervisor has a meeting about your product, ask if you can join. If you have a well thought-out idea on how to improve things, like introducing better processes, fixing recurring issues, introducing better tools or something like that, talk about it. Being visible as someone who genuinely cares about the success of your team, product and company is, in my experience, probably the most important thing.

Just make sure this is actually what you want. Depending on the company, you might end up doing very little programming and lots of spreadsheets and misery instead. Find out what’s keeping your current team lead busy and ask yourself if that’s really what you want to do.

Mich haben bei diesem Thema zwei Dinge positiv überrascht.

Erstens zeigt das Gift-und-Galle-Spucken der US-Lobbyisten, dass das in Europa wachsende Verlangen nach digitaler Unabhängigkeit inzwischen wirklich ein ernstzunehmendes Problem für die Big-Tech-Konzerne ist. Zweitens lässt sich die Schweiz von diesen aggressiven Lobbyisten offenbar größtenteils nicht beirren und arbeitet weiter auf allen Ebenen an tatsächlicher digitaler Souveränität.

Es ist wahrscheinlich einer der wenigen Verdienste der aktuellen US-Politik, dass im Rest der Welt endlich eine Sensibilisierung für problematische technologische Abhängigkeiten geschaffen wird, wenn auch komplett unbeabsichtigt.

Just don’t try to make this in a country with low food-safety standards, like the U.S. You’ll have a good chance of getting sick!

Mett is so popular here in Germany that some of our strictest food-safety regulations were put in place specifically because of it. So even if Mett is not for everyone, I think it’s still awesome for expediting the establishment of food-quality levels other developed countries can only dream of.

I believe it‘s even more strict than that (insert obligatory I am not a lawyer here).

For military commands, German soldiers must not obey orders that would constitute a criminal offense (§11(2) SG). Outside of that, the respective laws for civil servants are applicable (§11(3) SG). These laws, specifically §63 BBG, contain an obligation to object to illegal orders (Remonstrationspflicht). If a civil servant doesn‘t object, they are personally responsible for their actions.

So it‘s not just an option to object to unlawful orders, it‘s an obligation.

This is a great example of open source adding value for everyone. Users of those GPUs get improved performance, Valve gets to sell them more recent games, and AMD gets a nice, free reputation boost because their older hardware still receives meaningful updates.

So if anyone ever needs to convince management that open-sourcing something could be good for business, point to this!

I wonder where this 15% figure comes from. All the research I can find estimates the probability for these disorders at around 2-4% for first degree cousins. This is about the same as becoming a mother at 40 with a non-related man.

The article only talks about some NHS training documents and is very opinionated in style. Smells like a snappy headline about a controversial topic was more important than proper research.

Ich glaube, drei Punkte sind am wichtigsten:

1. Sei vorbereitet, wenn du Alternativen vorstellst. Schau vorher, ob die gewünschten Use-Cases abgedeckt sind, wie eure Abläufe in der Praxis aussähen und was man ggf. ändern müsste. Umstellungen machen die Managementebene erfahrungsgemäß immer nervös, da ist es schlecht, wenn du auf eventuelle Nachfragen nur mit „Muss ich mal gucken…“ oder „Ich glaube das müsste gehen…“ antworten kannst, vor allem, wenn‘s am Ende doch nicht geht.

2. Demonstriere die Alternative. Den Entscheidungsträgern lange Featurelisten zu zeigen, ist schön und gut, aber ihnen zu zeigen, wie gut das Ganze in der Realität funktioniert, ist noch viel besser. Setz dir beispielsweise den Nextcloud All-In-One Container auf und zeige darin, je nachdem was ihr braucht, die Möglichkeiten der Software. Das ist in der Regel nicht viel Arbeit, räumt aber zuverlässig Zweifel aus.

3. Fokussiere dich darauf, welche Vorteile das Unternehmen durch eine Umstellung hätte. Vermeide übermäßigen Open Source-Enthusiasmus. Besonders wenn du „der Neue“ bist, kann es sonst schnell passieren, dass dir unterstellt wird, dem Unternehmen einfach nur deine Hippie-Open-Source-Agenda aufdrücken zu wollen. Und wenn man erstmal als Open-Source-Hippie abgestempelt ist, wird man das nicht so schnell wieder los, egal wie gut die eigenen Argumente sind. Du solltest natürlich Vorteile von OSS nicht verschweigen, das Management freut sich immer, wenn etwas gratis ist. Aber klinge nicht wie ein Prophet, der den armen Sündern das Licht zeigt.

Well, you could argue that it‘s a valuable learning resource. It was one of the biggest failures in gaming history and to really understand why it failed so badly, it would be best to actually play it. But, like I‘ve said, I personally don‘t think it‘s a good idea to waste the developers‘ time on a game which they know won‘t be fun. I‘d much rather have them working on a new, enjoyable game where they can apply what they’ve learned from Anthem‘s failure.

While that might be true on the surface, I just don‘t think it‘s worth it.

Anthem has had many problems and being a live service game was just one of them. Converting it to a single player game wouldn‘t solve the myriads of other issues like boring mission design, a very samey and needlessly huge world, loading screens everywhere or the complete disconnect between story and gameplay where you get too much story within the main hub having to listen to NPCs babbling for hours, while getting practically no story at all while actually playing the game.

Making the game playable again would be a good thing for preservation, but I really can‘t imagine a lot of people actually having fun with it. I think it would be a better use of the developers’ time to analyze the many reasons for the game‘s failure objectively and learn from that for future projects. I don’t think this former exec has really done that, if he still thinks Anthem is salvageable as a game.

Yes.

Gut, dass Heise das Thema aufgreift. Wäre schön, wenn das in den Medien grundsätzlich auch entsprechend benannt werden würde. Etwa so:

„Wir brauchen mehr Stopp-Schilder gegen Kindesmissbrauch im Internet!!“, schrieb Kommissionspräsidentin Ursula von der Leyen auf der für Deepfake- und Kinderpornografie bekannten Plattform X.

Ist natürlich sehr plakativ formuliert, aber es sollte doch medial nicht einfach wegignoriert werden, dass Politiker eine Plattform mit ihrer Präsenz fördern, die eindeutig und mit voller Absicht schwerste Gesetzesbrüche begeht.