It sounds like a lot of good thought and design went into it.

The biggest problem was/is always going to be consumers wary of trusting a tech company not to mess it up because of greed.

I think it’s fairly easy to imagine what that would be like, given the limited examples you can see with a VR headset with pass-through. It could be pretty sweet for people to have the option of a digital overlay on reality that’s under their own control.

What’s missing are the extremely powerful but also extremely miniaturized and efficient hardware (imagine just constant inside-out tracking of some kind with the storage to remember the 3D layout of basically everywhere you go, but also with 12-24 hour battery life and not generating a noticeable amount of heat with a tiny surface area), and the open technologies and/or lack of enshittification. Who is going to sell such a device but won’t stuff it with ads, surveillance, and paywalls?

The closest we’ve seen is Apple’s headset that was still just a high end VR headset with passthrough and was thousands of dollars while still being locked down.

I’d say this is more like the middle of the end, with the beginning of the end being the Meta logo on them.

Useful details, thanks.

I’ll just point out that they/we did not have a system like that, but just promises of it from a tech giant. (except of course for whatever they had designed internally up until that time) So even as somebody who doesn’t really sell games, I get why people weren’t thrilled with the idea of microsoft being the ever-present broker in the transactions.

I specifically remember that their plan was essentially CD Keys. You’d buy a physical game and it would have a code inside, or the discs would have unique identifiers that force linked to your account, or whatever.

So yeah, essentially physical media with a digital license. If you were going to be able to resell your game it was going to have to go through microsoft, or maybe you could lend a friend your disc and that lets them buy their own license for a small discount to play it.

It won’t really affect me, but I understand the appeal of a physical artifact servicing as time game’s license for those who like to lend, sell, trade, library, etc.

And those same benefits are why the corporations can’t wait to do away with it. It’s been quite a while since Microsoft tried the same thing and people freaked out enough that they reversed course.

Oh boy, just what we need, corpo-wars to go along with the nation-wars.

It would be nice to see them hurting each other instead of the general populace, but we all know that they do collateral damage to innocents even when weapons aren’t involved.

You love to see it.

Unfortunately, with the state of this country I could also see aggressive militarized private security getting more popular around this shit.

I wonder if there’s any chance of all the tech speculation helping to fund electrical grid upgrades (including grid scale storage for renewables) that actually benefit regular human society after the bubble pops.

Absolutely. I think many people would actually be surprised at how big regular old goldfish can get in a pond with adequate space, food, and water quality.

On top of being in the carp family, they can actually produce hybrid offspring with carp (koi), though I think those offspring are sterile.

Source: have koi pond. Have given away dozens of chonky goldfish to other pond people.

Yeah! I was already concerned that people’s eyes would glaze over and they’d skim the latter 3/4 of my message and miss some important connected dots.

Now we’ve all been trained to detect and reject AI slop for a couple years, so the whole “here’s the whole situation described in a single message” strategy is right out the window.

I even like using em dashes sometimes. :/

At least I don’t use emojis in place of bullet points. The more you know. ✨

The trump administration has determined that it is critical to national security that americans play all new games at medium graphics settings or lower.

Lookin’ good!

No joke though, I currently have my sewing machine sitting in front of the secondary PC in our family room. I have found sewing to be up there with other non-tech hobbies like building things with wood, digging in the dirt, and taking care if my animals as far as brain health and sensory satisfaction.

I’m a middle aged cishet dad of a boy, too. I just bought the thing last year for some fun crafty projects we had in mind.

legal, deliberately stressing you to get your attention shouldn’t be.

I’m thinking of a couple of entire industries that could be banned or destroyed to help people’s brains.

I wonder if anybody has told Micron about what happens when customers sign a contract but then declare bankruptcy shortly after.

I can’t help but wonder if that actually used to be true, but it was because of more accumulated lead exposure over time rather than aging over time.

I’m an old white guy born into conservative religious america, and my entire adult life has been spent sliding to the left as I observe the left being correct and giving a shit about people while the right continues to be disingenuous and destructive and greedy.

Looking at that kind smile, I feel like if I can just get some exorcism of my demons from her while getting my mental health treated by counselor Troi, I can finally get my life together.

I dunno, that might be some immensely relieving news to hear, that all this is not true reality.

Ooh, I think I’ll start using CoPilot to do basic math and unit conversions in addition to doing them the correct way. Then I can note in my goals & reviews how I have been utilizing the AI resource and keeping tabs on its advancement.