👆What lacking the delta brainwave does to a [G]MFer.

I think the creature comforts of steamos do stand out. Easy menu for system level FSR for example. Resume game from shutdown looks great too.

Sure, but you can (allegedly – I haven’t actually tried) get that on any AMD system, not just the Steam Machine.

and I will likely not have to tinker much to get a solid experience.

I’m sure the Steam Machine will be fine, but I reject the notion that that differentiates it from any other AMD-based PC running Linux. My AMD-based Linux PC as built a year ago (which is faster than a Steam Machine, BTW) didn’t require much tinkering, and neither did my previous AMD-based Linux PC built about eight years ago. Proton didn’t exist back then, but as soon as it came out it basically had zero problems related to the hardware (as opposed to incompatibilities caused by the lack of maturity of the software itself). With AMD, Linux basically Just Works, and has done for many, many years.

(Also, you don’t have to spend a lot to get a reliable 3D printer. You just have to pay attention to product reviews and such. I’ve got a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE, which was generally considered to be the “best” inexpensive printer as of a few years ago, and it’s been fine. The tradeoff for the low price is lack of fancy features like an enclosure or multiple extruders, not reliability.)

Found the backpacker.

They don’t have to rebuild the intersection; they just have to redo the signal timing so that the thru green for the bike lane isn’t in the same phase as the right turn green for the general purpose lane. (Okay, so they might have to add a right arrow signal head too. Still, cheaper than new pavement.)

They just don’t want to do it because it would probably reduce level of service for cars and they don’t care enough about cyclists’ safety to make that trade-off.

IMO that is sheer incompetence on the part of the traffic engineer who designed it.

Also, some people are willing to pay a premium for good looks and/or HDMI CEC.

That seems likely, yes, but you don’t know for sure without CFD or wind tunnel testing. It could be that there’s some weird detail with the fastback that somehow manages to make it worse.

I do if I want to take it on proper off-road trails, mudding and rock-crawling and such.

CarPlay itself, perhaps not. The telemetry, ads, annoying safety nagging, and sometimes even paywalled vehicle features that tend to be implemented alongside it (because the underlying computerization facilitates both the good and the bad) is, though.

Your ISP must have a colocated Steam cache.

This is the exact fucking polar opposite of an oversize truck.

But it will be a real vehicle made by a real company with things like a ‘radio’

That’s a bad thing, because “radio” these days implies “spying and enshittification.”

Slate is the only EV on the entire market that isn’t fucked with that deal-breaker.

I wonder which is actually more aero between the squareback and fastback options?

My only problem with the Slate’s range is that, being a truck/SUV, I would want to use it for overlanding (the kind of use-case where even gasoline vehicles need extra fuel tanks strapped to them, as shown here). Trying to do that with an EV with anything less than exceptional range would be limited and take careful route-planning.

Obviously it’s not a “regular” use and therefore shouldn’t rationally be a deal-breaker, but nevertheless taking a couple of jerry cans is a lot less weird and complicated than towing a generator. (And the fact that I’m seriously considering the latter as an option just goes to show how much I like the Slate truck anyway.)

The Santa Cruz is exactly as much as a truck as the Ford Maverick is (which is to say, they’re both unibody vehicles).

Never mind the low price, not having that shit built in is the killer feature for me, making it the only new car I would even consider buying. (It’s just too bad they won’t have a 4x4 version for another couple of years.)

It is kinda good that there’s an optional module available, though, because it means there’s an interface that, in theory, a third-party module running Free Software could hook into.

No, I was following the human space campaign just fine (although maybe I didn’t go far enough along it for it to take me to alien space “naturally”).

I’ve also picked up at least one non-randomly-generated quest from the

I’ve also made it

It’s just that those last two things I mentioned, especially the latter one, don’t feel all that fleshed out compared to the human campaign.

I’ve wandered through the territories of a couple of other species, but they’re either hostile or I haven’t figured out how to talk to them yet.

My computer has AIO water cooling for the CPU and both it and the GPU fans are pretty decently quiet (probably not as quiet as the Steam Machine, but I don’t know how to measure), so I didn’t count it as a difference in the comparison.

I wouldn’t say the Steam Machine “has it all,” BTW. It definitely has enough for a console competitor, but in terms of mini PCs, in order to “ha[ve] it all” it would have to have a Strix Halo like the Framework Desktop or Minisforum MS-S1 Max. “Has it all” is a completely different market segment than this thing competes in.

It definitely costs $100 or so more than commodity parts with equal performance. However, if you care about the form factor or the HDMI CEC it’s impossible to do better.

I run Steam on Kubuntu on a mini-ITX PC, but it’s 6"x10"x13" instead of 6"x6"x6". It’s also much better spec’d than the Steam Machine (5700X3D, 64GB RAM, 9070XT) and probably cost less than at least the 2TB version of it, but I built it before prices went crazy.