Posts by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
(DIR) Post #B0Gq2asWQafpGxlhr6 by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-14T23:26:15.052711Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
Linux fans get annoyed when I compare Valve to Apple, but the comparison is more accurate than they want to believe.Apple’s OS core really is open source. That’s Darwin: XNU, large portions of BSD userland, networking subsystems, and low-level components released under Apple’s open-source license. And when Apple rolled it out in 1999, Eric S. Raymond stood on stage endorsing it because Apple wasn’t phoning it in—they were pouring real engineering into BSD.And those contributions weren’t theoretical. Apple pushed hardware drivers BSD never had the resources to build: networking, storage, USB, FireWire. They drove kernel modernization: Mach scheduling upgrades, serious VM improvements, better SMP support. They introduced security models that rippled outward—MAC frameworks, sandboxing ideas, privilege separation strategies. They improved networking with IPv6 work, RFC compliance, Wi-Fi robustness, and mDNS/Bonjour. And Apple’s early, heavy funding of LLVM/Clang didn’t just benefit Darwin—it became the modern BSD toolchain because Apple paid for the hard parts.Those contributions were real, substantial, and transformative—even though macOS itself stayed proprietary at the UI/framework layer.And that’s the point.Valve is doing the exact same thing. Their Linux work is real—Proton, Mesa pressure, kernel scheduling, shader pipelines—just like Apple’s BSD work was real. But the thing Valve protects is the thing that gives them leverage: Steam. Closed. Central. Non-negotiable.Apple open-sourced the scaffolding and protected the part that mattered.Valve open-sources the scaffolding and protects the part that matters.Same strategy. Different era.https://atomicpoet.org/notice/B0FbIBlMXv9kTiW27c
(DIR) Post #B0Gq8b1anSxtSosCdk by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-14T22:51:35.651296Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
The comparison to Apple is only ugly if you believe Valve’s move into open source is rooted in altruism. But make no mistake—their core product is closed and proprietary.Let’s not kid ourselves. Steam is the gravitational core of Valve’s entire ecosystem, the thing they’ll bleed to defend. Their sudden “we love Linux” enthusiasm isn’t benevolence, it’s strategy.If openness were the mission, they’d pull a GOG and ship everything DRM-free. They don’t. Because that’s not the point.Open source isn’t Valve’s destination. It’s their moat. The same way Darwin OS—also open source—was Apple’s moat.
(DIR) Post #B0JlN2xpnb8jsF4BQu by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-13T22:34:46.511773Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
Valve isn’t just the biggest force in PC gaming, and they’re not just the newest console manufacturer swaggering into the arena. They’re morphing into something far bolder: the Apple of Linux.If you’re not a gamer, that might sound unhinged. Maybe even a little deranged. But if you’re already deep in the Steam ecosystem—if your library scrolls so far it needs its own municipal transit system—you know this isn’t wild at all. It’s practically destiny.Let’s rewind. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he didn’t reinvent the wheel. He just drew a big cross on a whiteboard and said: four products. iMac, Power Mac, iBook, PowerBook. Four neat squares. Four clean market segments. And everything Apple built slotted neatly into that grid.Apple didn’t suddenly leap to 30% marketshare. They barely scraped 3%. Didn’t matter. Because the money wasn’t really in the hardware. It was in the ecosystem. Buy a Mac and suddenly you’re buying OS upgrades, iLife apps, office software, music tools, the whole glittering Cupertino starter kit. That stack of software made the hardware profitable, and that hardware made the software inevitable. The loop fed itself.Now fast-forward to Valve. Look at what they’ve assembled.Four core hardware pillars:Steam ControllerSteam DeckSteam MachineSteam FrameFour segments. Four use cases. Four doors into the same house.Already have a PC? You grab the Steam Controller.Want your library in your backpack? Steam Deck.Want it in the living room? Steam Machine.Want it strapped to your face? Steam Frame.And the moment you buy any one of these, something interesting happens: the rest of the ecosystem starts making sense. Buy a game on Steam and it works everywhere. Your save files carry across devices. You can stream titles between them. The more hardware you add, the smoother it all feels, and the more the ecosystem pulls you deeper in.But here’s the part I really want you to notice: I didn’t say Valve wants to be the Apple of gaming. No. They want to be the Apple of Linux.And that’s where this gets concrete. Their hardware ships with Linux that isn’t locked down or lobotomized. It has a real desktop environment hiding under a slick UI. Which means Valve can evolve SteamOS in ways Apple never aimed to with macOS. Apple built a general-purpose OS that occasionally supported games. However, Valve built a gaming OS that can naturally branch outward into media, creative tools, and productivity. “Gaming-adjacent” doesn’t require a conceptual pivot. It’s the next logical step.What might that look like?A native media center built directly into SteamOS—think Plex or Jellyfin, but officially blessed and seamlessly integrated.First-party creative tools that take advantage of Proton and GPU acceleration—video editors, music tools, asset creators.A productivity layer—file syncing, cloud storage, collaborative apps—that piggybacks on your Steam identity.A SteamOS app store that isn’t just for games. Apps, utilities, editors, streaming clients, the works.They’ve already dipped into this with Big Picture Mode’s media features, Steam Link, Steam Input configurators, desktop mode on Steam Deck, and Proton opening the gates for thousands of non-gaming applications. Nothing stops them from extending that further.That’s why Valve—private, secretive, and small enough to fit inside an Amazon lunchroom—is still one of the most valuable forces in the entire industry. Not because they sell hardware like Apple, but because they’re building an ecosystem like Apple. Except this one runs on Linux.If you’re a PC gamer, none of this is news. But if you’re outside the gaming bubble and this future arrives exactly how I’ve described, just know: it didn’t come out of nowhere. You just weren’t looking in Valve’s direction.
(DIR) Post #B0OqGLFpF3R6gma6YC by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-19T09:32:57.414774Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
OpenAI buying Proton Mail would be the corporate equivalent of lighting yourself on fire to stay warm. Proton’s entire pitch is “we don’t track you, we don’t mine you, we don’t peek at your inbox,” and OpenAI is… well… the company everyone already accuses of being a data-vacuum with a GPU addiction. The moment OpenAI’s name appears on the cap table, half of Proton’s users will flee so fast they’ll leave Swiss-shaped smoke trails behind them. And for what? Proton’s encrypted data is unusable, the business is low-margin, and the regulatory blowback would make the EU reopen GDPR just to add a special chapter titled “Absolutely Not.”Even the synergy story fails. OpenAI can’t mine Proton’s data without detonating the brand, and if they don’t mine it, all they’ve bought is a Swiss ISP with a fanbase that already hates them. Culture clash? Terminal. Proton’s engineers would quit before the ink dries and spin up “Proton-but-even-more-Proton” within six months. Competing with Google by buying Proton makes as much sense as Nvidia competing with Netflix by buying NordVPN. Wrong layer of the stack, wrong economics, wrong audience, wrong everything.From a fundamentals standpoint, the risk is high, the reward is microscopic, and the strategic logic is basically “what if we spent a fortune to make everyone distrust us more?” If OpenAI wants a privacy narrative, they should build auditable privacy features, not acquire a brand whose entire identity depends on OpenAI never coming within fifty kilometres of it. Buying Proton Mail wouldn’t be bold. It would be suicide.
(DIR) Post #B0cDoZjAJn7oBe8VNI by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-25T16:50:04.699967Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So you’ve decided not to use AI. Good for you—most people haven’t.OpenAI already has 800M users which is a faster adoption rate than any other online service—ever. That toothpaste isn’t just out of the tube, it’s currently base-jumping off the CN Tower.And this is why the moral victory speeches don’t land. You can personally reject AI, boycott it, block everyone who breathes near it. That’s a lifestyle choice, not a societal plan. The rest of the world has already moved on, including governments, corporations, schools, media, finance, and the bored teenager who just generated 900 anime raccoons at 3AM.So the real question isn’t “Should AI exist” because it already does. The real question is “Now what.” Now that the technology is here, scaling, and unlikely to be uninvented, what do we build to make sure it doesn’t bulldoze everything in its path.That means regulation, consent frameworks, licensing systems, labour protections, antitrust scrutiny, transparency requirements, and energy standards. It means figuring out ownership, compensation, authorship, cultural rights, and community control. It means deciding who benefits and who pays the cost.History gives us the same homework every time a transformative tool appears. Pretending we still live in the world before the tool never works. Responding strategically sometimes does.So stay opposed if you want. That’s your prerogative. Just don’t confuse a personal refusal with a plan for the future. The future is already happening. The only question left is whether we shape it or get shaped by it.
(DIR) Post #B0dAkxH8ihpBMBZMlk by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-11-26T07:41:39.427862Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Whenever someone says, “Peer pressure will stop tech adoption”—I laugh.When has social disapproval ever worked?It didn’t work with those very “educational”, very adult websites. People visit them not despite shame—often because of it.Shame didn’t stop cheese-in-a-can.It certainly hasn’t thwarted SUVs from taking over freeways.Peer pressure isn’t a technological deterrent. It’s a marketing campaign for that thing you don’t want to happen.
(DIR) Post #B0q4JngaBzbF7tcMOu by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-12-02T07:05:51.864154Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Cisco is on the verge of doing something genuinely absurd.It’s inches away from reclaiming its March 27, 2000 intraday all-time high of 82.00. This is the price level everyone swore would remain frozen in amber forever. Yet here we are. Twenty-five years later, the chart is knocking on the same door it slammed into during the dot-bomb. If it breaks through, that’s a quarter century of history closing like a tab no one thought would ever get paid.And the significance is massive.Cisco was no mere casualty of the dot-com bubble. It was the mascot. The crowned king. At the peak, it briefly became the most valuable company on Earth. Then gravity kicked in, the bottom fell out, and Cisco lost more than 80% of its value in record time. For years, analysts pointed to Cisco as the archetype of speculative mania. It became shorthand for “brilliant idea, terrible valuation.”Now, right in the middle of a brand-new hype cycle—the AI gold rush—Cisco is quietly about to remind us all of that ancient trauma.However, the conditions today are nothing like 2000.Cisco is no longer the poster boy for speculation. Its forward P/E is roughly 18.72, its PEG is 1.82, and it’s been paying reliable dividends since 2011. You don’t get a 2.16% yield from a company powered by hype. You get that from a slow, heavy, cash-generating machine that investors treat like infrastructure—because that’s what it builds.Which means we can’t say Cisco’s return to its dot-com high is necessarily a bubble signal. Perhaps it’s fundamentals finally catching up to a price investors placed on it a generation ago.Thing is, the dot-bomb valuation wasn’t ridiculous because Cisco’s future never materialized. It did materialize. The internet became the foundation of the entire global economy. Everything runs on networks now. Cisco’s hardware is the plumbing of modern civilization.What investors got wrong wasn’t the future. It was the speed.The market priced in 25 years of growth and adoption as if the whole thing would happen in 5. The vision was right. The timeline was fantasy.And that’s why this moment is historic. Is Cisco the canary in the coal mine for yet another AI bubble? Or is it proof that sometimes the world really does move in the direction everyone predicted—but not necessarily on schedule?If Cisco finally clears 82.00, I don’t think it will be a warning. It will be closure. A full cycle completed.And the final proof that the dot-com era wasn’t wrong about the internet. It was wrong about how long it would take to turn prophecy into cash flow.
(DIR) Post #B17ASrXj7iEP6jUyRc by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-12-10T18:33:57.553317Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
When I was younger, I used to consume two energy drinks a day. I have no doubt that they may have contributed to my later hypertension—and I now must use medication to manage it. Well, this is what could happen if you go wild with the energy drinks right until middle age.https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/a-healthy-man-suffers-a-stroke-and-permanent-damage-after-consuming-numerous-energy-drinks/
(DIR) Post #B1LpW76qWKs6aY27aS by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-12-17T20:46:48.496849Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
This is the Super A’Can video game console.Never heard of it? That’s because it was released only in Taiwan, with a limited run in China. It was a massive flop.This was a 16-bit console launched in 1995. The worst possible timing. The Saturn and PlayStation had just arrived, and in Taiwan especially, PCs were already pulling ahead. In the 90s, Taiwan was a global hub for PC hardware. Consoles were about to lose relevance fast.The Super A’Can never had a chance.It failed so badly that the company reportedly lost USD $7M in production costs. To stop the bleeding, they destroyed the manufacturing and development equipment and dumped the remaining units to the United States as scrap.Only 12 games were officially released.There were still a few standouts. The only console release of Sango Fighter. The RPG Super Light Saga – Dragon Force, if you could read Chinese. And the solid platformer Speedy Dragon.What’s more interesting is what never shipped.11 completed or near-completed games were cancelled. Demon Island was one of them. Even if you owned a Super A’Can, you never got to play it.Funtech, the company behind the console, was a subsidiary of semiconductor giant UMC. After the failure, UMC pulled the plug. Funtech shut down in 1998, just 3 years after the Super A’Can launched.
(DIR) Post #B1hMs07YpRbgYmKDuS by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-12-28T00:42:18.584183Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Correlation does not equal causation. Okay… maybe it does.
(DIR) Post #B1m81XblAOztVDLDPs by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2025-12-27T11:10:40.489070Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Columns is often framed as SEGA’s answer to Tetris.The comparison usually starts with hardware marketing. Columns shipped as the pack-in for Game Gear. Tetris shipped as the pack-in for Game Boy. Narrative complete. Except it isn’t.SEGA actually made its own licensed Tetris first. It ran in arcades and on the Genesis. That particular version just never landed on Game Gear. An unofficial Game Gear Tetris showed up in 1991 anyway, because of course it did—Tetris is everywhere. What’s more interesting is how closely the two games rhyme under the hood.Like Tetris, Columns began life on an obscure system. Jay Geertsen built it in 1989 on HP-UX as a personal project while learning X11, using HP corporate hardware. Like Tetris, it found traction on computers before consoles. Ports to MS-DOS, Macintosh, and Atari ST circulated before SEGA ever touched it. Like Tetris, it hit arcades first, then exploded outward to home systems.By 1990, Columns was a top-grossing arcade game in Japan. It launched the Game Gear in Japan. It landed on Genesis, Master System, MSX2, FM Towns, PC Engine, and eventually even a late Super Famicom release in 1999. HP sold commercial rights to SEGA, donated the proceeds to charity, and kept the original X11 version freely distributable. This whole story is quietly absurd and very on-brand for the late 80s.The real legacy, though, is mechanical.Columns is the first mainstream match-3 game. Not a prototype. Not a footnote. The template. All the modern ingredients are present: jewelled pieces, colour alignment, chain reactions as score multipliers. That entire design lineage runs straight through Bejeweled, Treasures of Montezuma, and Candy Crush Saga whether people acknowledge it or not.This version is the Columns release on Genesis.It still holds up. The jewel designs are clean and unmistakable. The soundtrack is relentlessly catchy. The rules are simple, but the scoring system rewards actual thought instead of panic.It never reached Tetris-level ubiquity. But its DNA is everywhere. That’s a bigger win than it gets credit for.
(DIR) Post #B1zceqVENEAv4pQNMm by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-05T22:42:55.375561Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
David Rosen, co-founder of SEGA, just died. He was 95 years old.Wait. He wasn’t Japanese?That’s right. SEGA started as an American company. The reason SEGA is capitalized is because the original name was Service Games. And the “Service” in that name refers to the American military—its first customer base.SEGA remained largely American until the 1980s, when David Rosen—along with Japanese business partners—bought the company from its parent, Gulf+Western, which also owned Paramount Pictures.This initiated one of the most innovative and creative periods in video game history. SEGA produced classics like Space Harrier, OutRun, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, and Virtua Fighter.For nearly two decades, SEGA was the primary rival to Nintendo, separating itself through speed and attitude.Along with Atari, it was one of the companies that defined my childhood.R.I.P., David Rosen. May you enjoy that great arcade in the sky.https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jan/05/sega-co-founder-david-rosen-dies
(DIR) Post #B1zo0dilfv9nImLp1U by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-06T02:08:10.858130Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
I’ve mentioned before my love for Korean video games, especially DOS games from the 1990s. What makes them special is Korea’s fascinating political climate—which basically ensured DOS would become the platform of choice for gaming.See, Korea has a complicated history with Japan. They banned Japanese video game consoles from entering the country. So what did they do? They made games for PCs instead. A lot of these games borrowed heavily from Japanese titles, which makes sense—South Korea, being a former Japanese colony, shares plenty of cultural DNA with Japan. But because these games were made for DOS, they have quirks. Quirks that make them substantially different from their Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo counterparts.They made tons of RPGs, the occasional adventure game, but there were also a ton of Korean platformers. One that really stands out to me is Super Trio, released in 1995. Apparently it started as an arcade game, but I haven’t found a single reference or screenshot of the arcade version—which is wild. What we do know is Dong Sung ported it to MS-DOS in 1995, and it’s genuinely fascinating.The plot is clearly Dracula-inspired, yet the game features these adorable miniature animals walking through bright, cheerful domestic spaces. You’ve got incongruent character sprites too—like a tiny Robocop. Obviously they didn’t have the rights to Robocop, but when you’re only releasing games in South Korea, Hollywood doesn’t notice.Here’s what gets me: this game looks like a Super Nintendo game but uses VGA graphics to tremendous effect. You get those chunky pixels VGA is known for, but with gorgeous, vibrant colors—reds, greens, blues, nothing washed out. There’s this childlike innocence to it, despite the whole vampire thing.It’s called Super Trio because you have three animal protagonists: Jake the mouse, Tomi the cat, and Brudo the dog. They’re all tiny, and they all play identically—the only difference is appearance. There’s two-player co-op, too.People compare it to Capcom’s Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers on the NES, but while Chip ‘n Dale had grab-and-throw mechanics, Super Trio uses upgradeable projectile weapons—making it more of a run-and-gun platformer. You’ve got 12 stages with enemies, environmental hazards, power-ups to collect, and a boss battle at the end of each level. It’s just a blast.The one downside? There’s no save function, which boggles the mind for a PC game by 1995—save functionality was standard by then. Sure, the game’s only 1MB and the hard drive had plenty of space, but they just didn’t include it. Annoying.Unfortunately, this game never left South Korea. Though it did get a brief mention on the Korean TV program KBS Game Heaven—except, on TV, they called it Super 3 Musketeers, not Super Trio.I really wish more people would get into Korean DOS games. There’s so much treasure buried there. But the beauty of it is—it’s not too late to discover it yourself.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjARcO_FNvY
(DIR) Post #B256CI3lU9pvc6zcSe by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-06T04:41:35.517297Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
Steve Russell—the man who made the first video game—is still alive. Not a myth. Not a footnote. Walking around, same as the rest of us.In 1962, Russell coded Spacewar! on the DEC PDP-1 at MIT. It spread fast. So fast that it directly led to the formation of Atari. Their first arcade release, Computer Space was essentially Spacewar! shoved into a coin-op cabinet.Russell didn’t stop there. He wrote the first two implementations of Lisp. He later taught Bill Gates and Paul Allen how to use a computer.Video games. Programming languages. Microsoft.Same guy. Still alive.
(DIR) Post #B2A6t6m8HtvErGxjBQ by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-11T03:00:49.844605Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Ever notice how restaurants give you a menu but never a womenu?🤔
(DIR) Post #B2ZeveUXsXnt8VfY2K by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-23T10:37:04.118675Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So it’s not just me.Women really are asking why men aren’t approaching them anymore. This is now a thing. And I don’t know why it’s a thing. I thought the social contract is that a man should not initiate a conversation with a woman he doesn’t know. Like I know women aren’t a monolith and everyone has different opinions. But wasn’t there a consensus about how creepy and inappropriate it is for a man to just randomly strike up a conversation?What am I missing here?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/style/modern-love-men-where-have-you-gone-please-come-back.htmlNon-paywall link: https://archive.ph/WNvVQ
(DIR) Post #B2ZgKaXPock84GSwpU by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-23T11:02:46.837078Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@futurebird My social media feeds are being flooded with these “talks”. I wanted to know if this is because the algorithm has put me in a certain box. So I did some digging, and yeah, it’s become a recurring narrative over the past year. The paranoid side of me thinks this might be a reaction to the Trump presidency. Because it started around the time he got elected. But correlation, causation, all that jazz.
(DIR) Post #B2lhqbPiF885Dcl160 by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-29T06:01:32.742623Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
REMINDER TO AMERICANS:In Canada, Liberals and Conservatives are political parties. As in, that’s their name. They’re not Democrats and Republicans. They are literally Liberals and Conservatives. And no, Liberals and Conservatives are not equal to Democrats and Republicans. Our Conservatives are like your Democrats. And our Liberals are like a whole party full of Bernie Sanders. And our actual left-wing party—who actually loves unions—are known as New Democrats. We also have more parties. Because multi-polarity is a good thing in a functioning democracy.
(DIR) Post #B2lnRJfDhP54ebKvey by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-29T07:21:05.208391Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Saorsa I would really like to not care about what goes on in USA but Trump wants Canada to become part of USA—so if Americans are actually going to try to annex Canada, I’m going to have an opinion.
(DIR) Post #B2q2SaQv71SCthYFvs by atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
2026-01-31T03:12:52.348226Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Folks, I’ve just located Heaven!I’m at an actual 80s arcade. Actual real cabinets—not PCs running emulators. CRTs, not LCDs. I can’t believe my eyes!