The EUR is often worth more than the USD, which leads to complaints when they are given the same nominal price (500 bucks, in this case). Europeans think they're getting overcharged.
One big difference is sales tax. If you remove the 20% VAT and apply the currency conversion, a European Switch would cost an American $472 after these changes. Tax is added here, so it could cost an American as much as $550 back home.
The idea that a stranger would effectively be a free Airbnb host (back when Airbnb actually had hosts) was baffling. Turns out:
1. Travel is expensive in time and money. Hosting someone gives you a travel-adjacent experience without having to leave home.
2. People who are willing to host strangers tend to be cool/open/interesting/friendly people. Opting-in to CouchSurfing is a good filter for someone you might enjoy spending time with.
Burning Man is similar.
One of the mainstays of Burning Man is the Hug Deli. It's like a lemonade stand, but instead of sugary beverages, they serve affection. You can order hugs ranging from warm + fuzzy to long + uncomfortable, each for 2 compliments to your server. Want an extra pep in your step? Add a kiss or a spanking for an additional compliment.
The staff at the Hug Deli are all volunteers. You just roll up, toss on an apron, and start serving. (The guy who started it isn't particularly affectionate. He's a performer from LA who wanted a way to get strangers to try on characters.)
You would never stand in Golden Gate Park offering kisses to anyone who asked. Burning Man is a container that allows experiences like that to flourish, because opting-in to Burning Man is a good filter for the kind of people you might be willing to try stuff with.
Your post literally suggests that a customer spontaneously should kiss the employee. That kind of behavior is goes far beyond an innocent facade of "free hugs."
Consent is involved, everyone is a volunteer and willing participant. If you don’t want a hug or kiss or whatever you don’t get one. I fail to understand how this makes it anything but “free hugs”
I read it as if you pay 2 compliments and then proceed to kiss / spank the employee you would also get a compliment in addition to whatever you ordered. And that compliment would give you an extra pep in your step.
> order hugs ranging from warm + fuzzy to long + uncomfortable, each for 2 compliments to your server
Any one of these is either: 2 compliments from customer. So, it would be assumed that compliments are going from the customer, to the server, for the extras as well. Instead of the whole dynamic switching around halfway through.
> Add a kiss or a spanking for an additional compliment
Customer can add a kiss or spanking to their order, if they give an additional compliment to the server. And the server then decides if they actually want to do it.
Are you somehow operating under the impression that volunteers are being held against their will and forced to give and/or receive free kisses to anyone who demands it?
Would you think it would be okay if someone got raped as long as they weren't being held down against their will? Just because the person doesn't leave, that doesn't mean they consent.
You’ve already managed to completely ignore multiple people who’ve tried their best to clear up your colossal and frankly easily avoidable misunderstanding of this situation. So by all means, don’t let me stop you from crashing out over an entirely imagined series of circumstances.
It's bonkers that some of the most expensive gas you'll ever buy is in SF, and Martinez is right there. You could bike there, if they allowed bikes on the bridge.
I usually use git and open source tooling, but I've been working with our internal tech stack recently. It includes an editor with AI-powered autocomplete, and it drives me crazy.
It populates suggestions nearly instantly, which is constantly distracting. They're often wrong (either not the comment I was leaving, or code that's not valid). Most of the normal navigation keys implicitly accept the suggestion, so I spend an annoying amount of time editing code I didn't write, and fighting with the tool to STFU and let me work. Sometimes I'll try what it suggests only to find out that it doesn't build or is broken in other stupid ways.
All of this with the constant anxiety to "be more productive because AI."
oof. nothing like a home grown tool that gets more in your way than helps!
i especially find suggestions distracting in markdown where i feel is the key place i really dont want an llm trying to interfere in my ability to communicate to other developers on my team
Windows is designed for gamepads to emulate an Xbox controller. All those Steam Deck competitors are implemented as an Xbox controller with a partial keyboard grafted on. That's why you need Legion Space or Armoury Crate to make them usable - they tell the controller firmware what keybindings to send for those rear paddles.
InputPlumber serves this purpose on Linux. Without it, you just get ABXY, start, select, nav, and shoulder buttons - the same layout that's been on the Xbox forever, because games don't understand the random partial keyboard that shares an internal USB hub with the Xbox pad clone. Thankfully on Linux, you're not stuck with one durable keybinding per paddle - once InputPlumber unifies that USB hub back into a controller, you can map all its buttons per-game with Steam Input. This controller brings that same convenience to Windows too.
It's not that Valve is making a proprietary controller - it's that the Windows gaming ecosystem assumes a proprietary controller, and Valve doesn't conform to that assumption. Instead, they provide a fully featured controller and let you configure it per-game in Steam. Considering Steam is the launcher most people use for most games, that's a totally reasonable tack.
Answering a now-deleted answer regarding PS4 controllers working out of the box on Windows:
PS4 controller support on Windows used to be a huge hassle, because you had to install DS4Windows to make it work. Nowadays, Windows automatically downloads the proprietary drivers to make it work, but I'm not sure if that covers the PS4 controller-specific features such as the touchpad, gyroscope, lightbar or if it enables XInput support. I think the PS4 controller situation supports what OP above is claiming.
But then I would have to install Steam, create an account, have it running in the background. And in case of macOS I would have to install Rosetta as well.
It would be better if they released drivers instead.
The Steam client is free and well-supported on all gaming OSes. It also provides Steam Input, which ensures customization parity with Steam Deck. In Valve's eyes, cross-platform support is already here.
A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one.
> A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one.
That is what the entire industry does though. Imagine if you needed an application running in the background for every peripheral you have, for your monitor, for your GPU, for running a hotspot on your smartphone over USB. Imagine having to install a piece of software to access a thumb drive. And that all those applications also needed user accounts. That is the entire point of having drivers.
For complex gamepads, the entire industry most certainly doesn't do that. It's not a class-compliant device, the preexisting OS-level mechanisms for Xinput and DirectInput do not accommodate anything but fight rudimentary fight sticks. The same goes for the original touchpad-based Steam Controller.
Just checked. Still needs it. I don't have Rosetta installed and I don't want to install Rosetta just to be able to use a game controller with DuckStation or Aethersx2. When I can also connect a PS4 controller and not need any of that.
This appears to only be in the Steam beta - the version available for download still requires Rosetta. There doesn't seem to be a direct download for the beta - you have to opt into it after installing Steam.
Windows supports Generic HID game controllers with 8 axis and 128 buttons already. And a few hat switches. And if your devices needs more than that, you can enumerate as multiple devices if needed. Not sure if there is a HID type for rumble support though. So, there's no reason a Steam Controller couldn't operate without a special driver. Some functionality may require custom software to support though. I have several Virpil controls and the entire setup will function as a simple set of generic HID devices. The only special bit is some software you can optionally run to control advance per-application remapping. I don't have a Steam Controller, so I have no idea if it can show up as a generic HID controller or not.
2 thumbsticks is already 4 axes. Add 2 triggers and it's 6 axes. Add gyroscope and it's 9 axes. That's more than 8. And I haven't mentioned the touchpads.
A single physical USB device can enumerate as multiple virtual devices. This lets you easily side-step the limits *if* the game supports input from multiple controllers at the same time. The games I use controllers for allow you to map to multiple controllers, mouse, and keyboard, all at once. The touchpad could simply enumerate as a HID Touchpad. Apparently Windows already has a Touchpad Haptic HID Profile even.
Honestly, if Valve is making you require Steam to fully use the Steam Controller, that's disappointing because, as far as I can tell, nothing it's doing can't be accessed via HID usage.
It's a bit more tricky, a Generic HID just gives you a DirectInput device, while reasonably modern games use Xinput. Microsoft never provided a way to map DirectInput devices to Xinput. For Xinput to work a Microsoft specific USB protocol is needed, not a Generic HID device. Many third party controllers have a switch or button combination to switch between XInput and DirectInput modes for this reason.
Microsoft has a new API with GameInput that addresses this situation and allows mapping Generic HID devices onto game controller via config file, but it doesn't work retroactively, it only works for games that use the new GameInput API.
Valve could of course provide a way to switch and emulate other protocols too, just like other third party vendors do, but there is no USB standard that makes things "just work" in Windows when it comes to gamepads, you always need extra drivers, USB modes or other hacks.
On consoles the situation is even worse, modern consoles deliberately lock out any unlicensed third party controller. Playstation3 was the first and last console that supported standard USB controller, while PS5 doesn't even support PS4 controller.
Most of them I would assume. Everything from 2006 forward started to use Xinput. DirectInput support only shows up in racing sims, flight simulators, fighting games and emulation. But all the big AAA games have been built around Xbox360 style control schemes for two decades.
But it's all a bit theoretical, since most modern gamepads have Xinput support, and the generic HID devices are mostly flightsticks or SNES-style gamepads that wouldn't have enough buttons and axis for modern games in the first place. Another issue is that most games don't offer input remapping for gamepads.
But with SteamInput and homebrew tools like x360ce there are many ways to make generic USB devices compatible Xinput, so it's not like you can't use them. It's just not something that works out of the box.
That may explain it then. I use flight controllers and driving controllers. Both just show up as generic HID devices and both are easily used in the games I play.
If all the games respected HID and Valve did something proprietary, I would understand the skepticism. The truth is that most games are engineered with platform integration (e.g. for achievements, controller mapping, etc.), and fallback to the Xbox API. It's reasonable for Valve to sell a controller that takes full advantage of their platform.
Also, Valve's primary OS is Linux-based. There's surely either already a module upstream in the kernel or one is coming soon. That is: open source software to take full advantage of this controller. That's not the same thing as a walled garden.
Seeing as the original Steam Controllers kernel drivers were community reverse engineered rather than Valve contributed, I don't know if I believe in them to make one for the new one either: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Controller-RE-Kernel
That spliced in USB hub looks messy. Does a new controller necessitate Xinput? I assume Windows still supports DirectInput, which was used in the past with more complex controllers. I'd recently brought up "JOY.CPL" in Windows 10. It would hinge on whether DirectInput can talk to games that expect Xinput.
> It would hinge on whether DirectInput can talk to games that expect Xinput.
As far as I know, nope.
Some games also get really confused if you have Xinput and DirectInput devices plugged in at the same time - for me, Silksong (and unity games in general) don't work if I have a throttle+stick plugged in.
And it's worse than just taking input from the wrong thing, the game can't recognize input from any of throttle, stick, or controller.
Only controller by itself works.
It's a flavor of 3D modeling called "constraint-based." You've heard the adage that if you give a million monkeys typewriters, eventually one will write something coherent? Constraint systems embody that same idea: There are infinite possible 3D models. You keep adding constraints until you narrow it down to only one possible solution that fulfills all of them.
I've been learning FreeCAD, while it's still more frustrating than Fusion or SolidWorks it's much better than it used to be pre-1.1, and it's FOSS. Also constraint-based, I've been using the new spreadsheet view as the source of all constraint dimensions, with parts derived by binding to top, front, or right-side orthographic "master" sketches. Much like hand-drawn design, where you draw the orthographic views and use those directly to create an isometric view.
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