pteraspidomorph

As an Index controler and Pico user: The back straps are pretty much essential for any serious use; the controller purportedly includes finger tracking (capacitive) but you can't really open your hand without dropping the controller unless you have the strap.

If as I currently intend I end up purchasing this device, I will definitely endeavour to obtain the controller straps as well as the top strap for the headset at the same time, and I recommend others do the same.

As a current and frequent user of this form factor (Pico 4, with the top strap, which the Steam Frame will also have as an option, over Virtual Desktop) I can assure you that it's quite comfortable over long periods of time (several hours). Of course it will ultimately depend on the specific design decisions made for this headset, but this all looks really good to me.

Full color passthrough would have been nice though. Not necessarily for XR, but because it's actually quite useful to be able to switch to a view of the world around you with very low friction when using the headset.

Yes, while VRChat does a lot of things right, the VRChat company definitely doesn't seem trustworthy in the long run. It's an aggressively walled garden where the company has full control over both content and narrative, and we're starting to see more aggressive pushes for revenue, with the major new features in recent months being subscription-gated or addiction bait (stickers, baubles, random reward boxes, etc). I'd love to see an open, federated VR social environment, but how do you get people to use it? Many VR users aren't technologically savvy at all.

There are currently two much smaller competitors that are perfectly usable but lacking community buy-in. Chillout, which is similar to VRChat, with some improvements the community has wanted for years, but missing some of VRChat's (admittedly excellent) homemade functionality, such as better IK code, better bone dynamics, etc. And Resonite, which is more similar to SecondLife, possessing a cross-world inventory system and in-game content authoring tools.

Conceptually, it reminds me of DropMix by Harmonix. The physicality of it was really cool, but it also ended up being really unsuccessful, and I can imagine why: - Compared to a traditional board game (well, most of them), it was expensive and hard to procure; - Compared to a pure videogame, it had many moving parts that are more difficult to transport, manage, store, etc; - Since it was a multiplayer experience, that created added friction on top of everything else (everyone needs to be in the same place as the rare, expensive gadget and parts).

The issues seem exacerbated in this idea, however I think it's just as cool. I would love to play on it.

> There is no target audience in this planet that benefits from less options or less features.

I'm currently involved in UI design and, to my frustration, adding more options or features seems to send a vocal minority of the user base into a foaming-at-the-mouth violent rage. It's like any change resets the entire contents of their brain, and it's our fault we're making things so confusing for everyone...

And let's not get started on how we're wasting time adding things that they don't personally need, and therefore no one could possibly need, ever. No, clearly by adding this sorting method, we must have directly stolen development time from the feature they want, which is a personal attack directed at them and every member of their family going three generations back.

I'm happy they didn't choose to go full authentic with quirks mode and table-based layouts, because Firefox has some truly ancient bugs in nested table rendering... that'll never get fixed, because... no one uses them anymore!

Speaking as someone who has been running discord servers since 2015 - plus I maintain my own discord bot and am deeply familiar with the API - it's absolute garbage as an issue tracker. People really need to stop using it for that.

I think part of the problem is that they confuse the semantics of nomenclature. "Servers" are not really servers, "forums" are not really forums, and so on and so forth.

Can you please restock the Dr Pepper already?

I read that and my mind filled in "...from outer space?"

I thought they used to aggressively ban users on custom clients. They even got rid (years ago) of their API for non-bot clients. AFAIK they are currently against their terms of service.

Oh boy, I didn't even notice until I read your comment!

It probably depends on whether there have been hundreds of thousands of severances in the industry in recent years or not... People would probably quit if they didn't have to compete with an insane amount of people to get a job at this time.

I live near Lisbon and the tasty tomatoes from my childhood are now completely gone. Anything you can buy in any supermarket is absolute garbage, so much so that I only ever use prepackaged chopped tomatoes these days (those still taste decent).

One of these days I should get in my car and drive all the way to the Douro just to fetch a bunch of tomatoes, I guess.

I appreciate the dig at Sierra games and their reliance on missable items. But he wrote that puzzles should make sense, and went on to give us the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle!

It's getting pretty expensive to rent one IPv4 address per domain these days. You also don't always control every address in a block, which means there may be nothing you can do about your reputation no matter where you go.

I pasted the lyrics for Mission Statement by Weird Al. I got ten bullshits (including synergy) and four bullfuckingshits, which were for: globalization, downsized, and paradigm shift (x2).

> Notably, these browsers have never implemented support for VBScript.

This reads mildly accusatory and got a chuckle out of me.

I'm surprised it took them this long!

Wisdom of the ancients: Always make sure your domain services are completely independent from your other service provider(s), regardless of whether Cloudflare is involved. (Sorry, no recommendations at this time.)

Unfortunately it's difficult and expensive to scale those traditional solutions to the modern world of billions of internet users located all over the world. It's still quite slow to access a server on the other side of the globe. It's less noticeable for an american user accessing an american company's resources.

> consolidate everything into a small set of core titles

This already happened in the early 2000s. If you were around back then, you might remember how everything was sequels and rehashes for a while. Diversity of ideas returned to the industry only after it became practicable to publish and monetize indie games (post-Braid).

Microsoft and Embracer recently bought the whole industry. Now they might be about to light a match and set fire to the whole thing. OK, but fortunately, all the talented passionate people with the ideas and drive to create new things still exist in the world. I believe many players will find their way back to them, no matter how sufficent "garbage" is for the majority of people. If milking the uncaring baseline consumer was all that mattered to videogame creatives, they'd all be making ad-driven smartphone shovelware.

Here's the funniest misbehavior I got out of it: https://www.myshelter.net/istanbul.png

(I added a green rectangle around the desired information.)

Nevertheless, good job so far!

ALso keep in mind that if you get a huge box full of text it's getting cut out by the UI and you can't reach the buttons!

> Go to Reddit, you'll get tons of helpful information.

Depends on the subreddit. The subreddits for certain hobbies are even worse than stack overflow. But yes, I agree with you that there are still helpful communities.

Many of the most interesting people did, which also affects the ratio of useful to recycled content. A lot of people are comfortable with the current state of the platform - good for them that they're happy where they are!

Far enough down the line, it will all end up in EU regulation. Doesn't everything?

Or if Meta doesn't become strong enough to be considered a monopoly, you always have the choice to go with their competitors (as is currently the case). I can still install anything I want on my Pico 4.

I noticed this on Relatives died (thus far).

I got the first one in a single guess and now I'm afraid it can only go downhill from here...

This is just bad journalism. The subject doesn't matter; you'd expect news reporters to put some effort into fact checking and generally telling the truth.

Assuming I don't die too early, Portugal will have existed continuously for 900 years during my lifetime (founded in 1143). It was administered by a governor appointed by a spanish king for 60 years at one point, but never stopped being a distinct country.

The one crash I regularly experienced about a year ago had to do with saving and reusing effect stacks. I'm not sure if that still happens as I stopped using that feature entirely.

Far less regularly, I've seen crashes when replacing video files used in the project.

I also recommend setting the framerate of a project first thing and then never touching it again.