Superhot VR and Half-Life Alix, in that order. Sprinkle in some Beatsaber to taste.
Playing Superhot VR for the first time made me experience actual physical euphoria. I hadn't had that reaction to a new tech thing since I first got a ZX Spectrum as a little kid.
The only downside of starting with these is that it sets the bar incredibly high. But I still recommend it - it's hell of an introduction to a new medium.
Even in the recent past, all the countries dominated by the Soviet Union have gone for a half of century without problems, while a supermajority of their citizens actively hated their government, and by "hate" I mean like really wishing all of them dead.
This was made possible with traditional surveillance.
With the modern surveillance means and with drones and robots, there will no longer exist any way in which even a great supermajority could remove a government.
Sometime in the 2000s I started reading the RISKS Digest mailing list[1] from the beginning. I did it for fun - it's an interesting mix of fun anecdotes and lessons learned, and the 80's and early 90's were before my time which I found interesting too.
A side effect of reading the mailing list in bulk is that a set of common "stereotypes" of failure (for lack of a better word) start to emerge clearly from the stream of anecdotes. These really influenced my mental model of technology risks. I would still recommend the exercise for anyone interested in the subject.
Another thing to appreciate while reading is that Risks started pre-Web, when the Internet was a much smaller place, so PGN's work on Risks was well-known, and presumably influenced the thinking of a lot of people.
As one example, I bumped into Risks in my teens (I think through Usenet comp.risks), at the internship start of my software engineering career. I now think back to things I said and did back then, and the formative influence of Risks is unmistakable.
The MBA-ification of the Internet came later, but before that, PGN helped educate and guide a generation of Internet-savvy people in the best direction.
Same- I slowly stopped reading Risks even though I am still a subscriber (as far as I know).
What's weird was, back then, I thought about geography on the internet even LESS than I do now. It's strange now to realize PGN worked at SRI, just a few blocks from where I'm typing this. And he may have passed away at the hospital my wife's working at right now.
I haven't seen it mentioned here or in the obituaries, but Peter started the RISKS Digest in 1985 partly in response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, "Star Wars") which proposed a space-based anti-ballistic missile system run autonomously by computers [1].
Another response was the formation of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibilty (CPSR) [2]. Peter was an early member, and many early RISKS submissions were by CPSR members.
Peter's letter to readers about the creation of RISKS in Issue #1.01 [3] mentions SDI and CPSR (it's long, scroll down)
> This is the first issue of a new on-line forum. Its intent is to address issues involving risks to the public in the use of computers. As such, it is necessarily concerned with whether/how critical requirements for human safety, reliability, fault tolerance, security, privacy, integrity, and guaranteed service (among others) can be met (in some cases all at the same time), and how the attempted fulfillment or ignorance of those requirements may imply risks to the public. We will presumably explore both deficiencies in existing systems and techniques for developing better computer systems — as well as the implications of using computer systems in highly critical environments.
^ 1985, 2 years before i was born, on-line still had a dash. Man, what a time that must've been.
RISKS Digest got me started too. I think there are some things best learned from the very beginning. "Consider modes of failure" is probably my favourite piece of security advice.
It was blocked from inclusion in the AMD GPU drivers, it's nothing specific to Steam or the Steam Machine.
The HDMI Forum apparently forbids any open source implementation of HDMI 2.1. Although I don't know if they ever offered an official justification, for a group that exists to promote HDMI adoption, they're clearly morons.
It's a group that exists to make sure that the standard works for all the members, including media companies that think they can control the flow of information. They don't need to promote HDMI adoption since their members already control pretty much all the TV production.
It's still not clear why the standard wouldn't work by AMD having an open source implementation. I try to give the benefit of the doubt, but in this case, it's hard not to agree with the parent comment: whoever came up with this rule and the people who agreed with it are morons.
I was in the same boat and literally this week bought a Pixel 8. It's a 2 year old phone but with the extended support period that's no longer a problem, and being old means you can get it new for about €300 or refurbished for even less.
The other option is the Samsung S2x line, which you can apply the same strategy to.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
There were two converging factors: number one is that there was a time where it was considered a sign of sophistication / progress. Definitely a case of form over function, but remember this was the era when everything Tesla did was cool and everyone was chasing them.
The second factor is cost. Physical buttons are expensive to design, certify and manufacture (most people don't have a notion of how high the durability bar is for everything that goes into a car interior). Once you have to have a touchscreen anyway you can (theoretically) remove almost all physical controls.
They don't need to expand capacity to fulfill this contract.
They would want to expand capacity if they believed this increase in demand is long lasting - the implication is therefore that they don't believe it, or not enough to risk major capital expenditures.
You saw the same with GPU makers not wanting to expand capacity during the Cryptocurrency boom. They don't want to be left holding the bag when the bubble pops.
Part of that equation, FWIW, is that certain countries would flood the market with supply to make any new projects suddenly unprofitable.
Which sucks extra bad because if you shut the project down but start it back up you can't just flip a switch. Gotta put together a whole new team and possibly retrain them.
If i'm not mistaken the people behind Spotify were also some of the people behind The Pirate Bay, so they may have had some seriously good insights on how to treat your customers.
To clarify I'm not suggesting owners of what.cd started spotify just some elite members. I happened to join what.cd before Spotify came out and the tracker was shut down. Initially spotify overlapped with what.cds comprehensive library of rare high quality audio significantly and as they moved out of grey market, over the first year or so, some were removed after complaints or contracts were signed with artists. Then what.cd servers were seized for copyright infingement and other trackers tried to replace it. To download that much data from their platform you'd need to have shared a significant amount yourself for years. They probably used pirate bay and other less comprehensive libraries as well, but the high quality lossless audio that you paid for was likely from what.cd. This was discussed on those tracker forums and irc during that time.
I used to be a big digital music hoarder. I hate Spotify, YouTube is the thing that killed music downloading for me. It has pretty much everything worth listening to, it's free, AdBlock keeps it usable, and it has a great diversity of other content.
Playing Superhot VR for the first time made me experience actual physical euphoria. I hadn't had that reaction to a new tech thing since I first got a ZX Spectrum as a little kid.
The only downside of starting with these is that it sets the bar incredibly high. But I still recommend it - it's hell of an introduction to a new medium.
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