I haven’t run into that issue with Firefox on my M1 MacBook Air. Maybe try the Firefox reset feature, it’s possible some extension or other user data is breaking something and needs to be wiped.

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Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.

Also, every game launcher on Windows still puts games in the start menu.

No exclusivity for games

Valve doesn’t need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.

They purposefully made SteamOS open source so that other companies can easily release portable PC gaming products

SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn’t allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can’t be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos

That said, who knows what happens when he dies?

Yes, that’s the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don’t have a business, you have the British monarchy.

Every other major application and service on Mac has ARM-native builds now, there’s not really an excuse for Valve. It’s especially silly when much of Steam is running through a Chromium engine, not machine code or anything else that might be difficult to port.

There’s a difference between Valve deciding to not make Mac games anymore and Valve leaving the Mac Steam client a slow and laggy mess on newer Macs. The former only affects people who want to play Valve games, the latter affects a lot more people.

Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.

I would like to see more collective action, but it’s also incredibly difficult to put your housing situation on the line when the US (and most states) does not give you a functional backup. As you said, it’s capitalism at work.

I mentioned in the article that 5G home internet is not a solution for everyone. The reliability varies significantly by location and network quality—some people have no issues, for others it’s unusable. It’s not a perfect solution that will fix the US’ infrastructure problems, but in the meantime it is making a difference for some people.

I mean, yeah, just leaving it at “china bad” is still xenophobia. Tech companies in the US and other countries can be just as shady.

GIMP is not a Photoshop replacement except for pretty basic stuff. There’s no content aware fill, fewer non-destructive edit options, wonky compatibility with PSD files, etc.

Darktable also isn’t a real replacement for a lot of use cases. Lightroom (the non-Classic version) has pretty great cloud syncing and multi-platform apps, so you can do some work on a desktop and then move to a tablet/smartphone or vice-versa. Darktable doesn’t have that kind of flexibility.

Those aren’t drop-in replacements. GIMP for example doesn’t have anything close to Photoshop’s content-aware fill capabilities, I don’t think Krita does either.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but last I checked the Creative Cloud manager/installer for Adobe apps doesn’t work on Wine, because it uses the windows system webview that Wine hasn’t fully replicated. Only pirated copies or installations copied from a Windows machine work.

Photoshop and Lightroom.

This anti-war candidate? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54972269

The latest versions through GOG and (I think) Steam run pretty well, there’s no more GFWL or other stuff that broke a long time ago.

Okay? It sounds like you just don’t want an answer. Many of those changes are actually very possible if more young people start voting in elections instead of just being apathetic or having that defeatist/“realist” attitude. If you think nothing can get better ever then yeah, every solution is “fantasy.”

If you want a serious answer, there are a lot of options. Closing tax loopholes for corporations, higher taxes for the wealthy, a freeze on additional military spending, stop outsourcing so much to contracted companies that blow through money for nothing (e.g. the reason why most people think government services are bad), etc. Those could all allow UBI to exist without raising taxes on the lower and middle class.