Fun fact: your “fun fact” is a myth. Artificial banana flavor is not “based off Gros Michael”. The flavoring is not some sort of recipe that was based off of anything. It’s a single chemical found in all bananas. It’s a coincidence that Gros Michael tastes more like fake banana flavoring than other bananas, but all bananas contain that same ester: isoamyl acetate. It’s just that Gros Michael has more of it.

However, if you dig in to this tale a little it soon becomes clear that there is little or no verifiable source that artificial banana is based on Gros Michel. “It sounds very, very unlikely to me,” says synthetic organic chemist Derek Lowe.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140829-the-secrets-of-fake-flavours

So please stop repeating this myth.

In addition, you’re completely wrong about artificial vanilla flavor. It is the exact ester found in real vanilla, and it is by far the most dominant flavor in real vanilla. It tastes exactly like vanilla minus a few extra subtle notes.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Then I guess the meme is right. That’s all I was saying.

Only 100? That’s like 20 ISOs.

“Into the breach!”

You have to keep an eye on the docs? WTF? I just want to use my PC, not constantly watch out for impending doom from running an update on the wrong day.

God that article is annoying to read.

It’s a recurring column called “Word of the Week”, and it’s discussing the origin and classical usage of the word “parasite”. What’s so hard to understand about that?

I just watched that movie.

I never check my email. I just learned I missed the Steam Machine purchase email 10 days ago. I didn’t even think I was in the queue! I got the original “you’re not in the queue” email. I must have been close to the top of the waitlist.

In any case, I don’t really want it anymore. It’s basically not upgradable, and even adding RAM is hard. It’s a cool looking machine that takes up little space, and it’s neat that companies can make new faceplates and stuff for it, but as a computer, I’m just not sure it’s the best value.

Instead, I’m looking at mini PCs that feature an Oculink port. It lets you connect to an external GPU with a cable. Something like the GMKtec K12 has an integrated Radeon 780M, which is good for lots of gaming, but you can add a GPU for high end gaming. And then the GPU is upgradable.

I have an old RTX 3060 12 GB sitting around (which I’ll keep for CUDA tasks like photogrammetry) but I’m looking at maybe a Radeon 9060 XT or 9070 XT for gaming. I don’t have to decide now, and I can upgrade later. Turns out the 3060 is almost identical in performance to what’s in the Steam Machine but has the advantage of 12 GB of VRAM.

Maybe I’m not the average potential Steam Machine buyer. I happen to already own a GPU and an ATX power supply, so I only need to buy these things:

• $689 GMKtec K12 (32GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe SSD)
• $110 Minisforum eGPU dock
• $25 Oculink cable

$824 total

But that’s because I already paid $250 for a used 3060 12GB years ago, and ~$80 for a power supply.

So the real total for buying this system from scratch right now is about $1,150 but you get an upgradable GPU and 32 GB of RAM. The CPU is also better. Sadly, you don’t get a Steam Controller.

The big downside of Oculink is the machine has to be powered off before you plug it in. It’s not hot swappable. It’s literally just external PCIe. However, some eGPU docks support USB-C or Thunderbolt 4/5, which are hot swappable, and there’s even new tech on the horizon called MCIO which is like Oculink but has 8x PCIe lanes instead of 4x. Not that 4x is much of a bottleneck for gaming. Gaming just doesn’t require that much bandwidth.

Anyway, I just figured I’d share my thoughts because I’m sure other people are in the same boat: wanting a Steam Machine but can’t get one, or they want something a little more upgradable, or they just dont want to wait all year for it to ship.

Aw man! Now I want to play “Pacman Galaxian” and “Donkey Kong Moon Patrol”.

Those things don’t apply to most crimes. The whole “pressing charges” thing is a trope or meme, except for a few specific cases like minor assault, minor property damage, defamation, certain sexual offenses (varies greatly between municipalities), etc. The vast majority of crime is prosecuted by the state without needing the victim’s consent.

Even C needs external libraries

You can compile a C program while statically linking the libraries, thereby producing a single binary with no runtime dependencies. Just because Go can do this, too, doesn’t mean it’s special. It’s just that most libraries for Go ship as source code and not as compiled libraries. But as soon as you import some actual library like Sqlite, OpenSSL, GTK or whatever, using some wrapper code, you’re going to have the same dependency issue.

Doesn’t that describe most languages?

Yeah, it’s a blurry line whether to call it rust-like if it borrows features, when actually most syntax is more like ECMA Script or Python. So I shouldn’t really have said “OP was wrong”. But they also kind of are. I dunno.

It’s not Rust, OP was mistaken. It’s ECMA-Script-like with Rust-like features and also Python-like features.

I think the idea is, you can develop Amber scripts “at home” then deploy them on any machine that has Bash without needing to install anything. This benefits system admins.

Amber compiles directly to shell code, so you can:

• Leverage existing shell tooling and pipelines.
• Deploy a single script without installing a language interpreter.
• Benefit from shell‑native features (process substitution, job control) while enjoying high‑level syntax and safety.

Is Amber production‑ready?

In the the project it is production ready because it is already used in this context because the shell code generated is tested and confirmed that works, the language is evolving with the tooling set.

Well, their FAQ isn’t exactly production ready.

is_half = True
is_third = True

Yeah, just a typo. You’ll notice I said “humanely” a sentence later.