Several people told me to skip Consider Phlebas & start with the next one, The Player of Games. I did that & found it perfectly accessible & enjoyable. Haven't read any others yet.

Player of Games features a civilization that is both congenial & incredibly high tech. There is a satisfying exploration of sci-fi board games, including a game with a ludicrously complex board that stretches over several tennis courts. I liked it.

Link didn't work for me. Try this one. https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/unix_surrealism

Sounds reasonable & relatively low risk to me.

What's important is individual choice. You should keep systems that exhaust you at arms length, & integrate systems that benefit you into your life. Everyone should have options for structuring their life to suit their idiosyncratic needs.

Edit: Also, keep in mind that news orgs make money by showing you technological failures.

BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea 1. Not quite hooked yet because ammo is almost too scarce to call it a shooter. But I want to like it.

Also playing Dead Cells, which is great but the higher difficulties are very very hard.

I like the OpenVibe app. That's as close as I've been able to get so far.

Hey, it took 2 & a snake to defeat him, that's flattering in its way.

Oh huh the rules for this came out? I'll have to check it out.

I appreciate that, but I find it a satisfying challenge for approximate algorithms.

You are right, it's easy to imagine the open source standard being a small financial threat. But a similar situation could potentially still happen, just without the malice the previous poster is imagining. Overall, large orgs make the biggest ripples in software development, so their choices of what to support affect what's most available to users.

Exactly

Could be fun to see your character. I doubt it will affect balance at all.