Linked List: July 2026

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass Subscriptions ★

Following up on my earlier post on Valve’s righteous objection to selling game console hardware at a loss, I should have noted that PlayStation Plus starts at $11/month (and goes up to $20/month) and Xbox Game Pass starts at $10/month (and goes up to $23/month). One draw of these subscriptions is access to a library of game titles — but another one is that you need one of these subscriptions to play online multiplayer games. Not every game demands online access but many (most?) do. There are very few serious PlayStation and Xbox gamers who don’t pay for a subscription, and within a few years those subscriptions cost more than the (subsidized) hardware. It’s not just about licensing fees for game titles players purchase anymore.

Valve didn’t make any hay over this point, but should have. Because Steam Deck and Steam Machine are fundamentally more like PCs, all you need to play online multiplayer games is a free Steam account.

Valve Explains Why It Doesn’t Subsidize Its Hardware Platforms ★

Valve, in a statement to The Verge, explaining why it doesn’t sell its handheld Steam Deck or new Steam Machine gaming devices at a loss (gift link):

While this might seem like an easy solution, it doesn’t align with our beliefs about how healthy ecosystems are built. If there’s anything we’re religious about at Valve, it’s our belief that open systems are better in the long run, for ourselves and customers. The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation, because anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was able to take a shot at it. When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they’re doing that to build a more closed system, one where you don’t get to choose what software you want to use.

We don’t want that for PC hardware, and we don’t think you should want it either. You shouldn’t feel like you have to buy Valve hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one that makes sense for you. This means you get to decide which device fits your personal tradeoffs around things like price, performance, form factor, peripheral support, and everything else you care about. That’s the strength of the open PC platform, and subsidizing hardware runs counter to it.

Valve published a shorter version of this on their own Steam Machine launch post, but the statement to The Verge articulates their stance more fully.

I’ve long been frustrated by the arguments that subsidized hardware is definitional to gaming console platforms. Microsoft, in particular, has leaned on it as a whiny excuse ever since they launched the first Xbox. Just last week they emphasized the point again when announcing another increase in Xbox prices. It’s a strategic choice, that’s all, and a rather obviously predatory choice at that. So I say kudos to Valve for refusing to play the game, and selling their devices at honest prices. (They just raised the prices for Steam Deck by $250 to $300, due to the rising costs of RAM and storage.)

It’s worth noting that the mobile phone market is sort of subsidized — but by carriers, not Apple (or Samsung or the other lesser Android makers). Apple sells iPhones directly, unsubsidized, so we know the actual cost of each model. And even when sold by the carriers at a subsidy, it’s the carriers, not Apple, who are taking the point-of-sale loss with the intention of making it up over time through monthly service bills that customers agree to pay by contract. I’d be very curious to know what percentage of new iPhone sales are sold at the full one-time payment retail price.

That’s a very different type of subsidy than Sony and Microsoft strategically selling each PlayStation and Xbox unit at a loss. When you buy a PlayStation, you don’t sign a contract to buy a certain number of games to make sure Sony turns a profit on your purchase in the long run. They’re gambling, effectively — and they make more money from a customer who buys more games than a customer who buys fewer games. When a phone carrier promotes something like “Get an iPhone 17 Pro for $0”, they know exactly how much money they’re going to make if you agree to the deal.

The Talk Show: ‘Taking Drugs to Get Fat’ ★

The great John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s hardware price hikes in response to the global RAM/SSD shortage, and some spitballing on what we like about the UI changes in the MacOS 27 Golden Gate beta.

Sponsored by:

Coax: Defeat the tyranny of choice. Channel surf your Plex server. Relax with Coax.
Even Realities: Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code talkshow to save 10% off the R1 Ring and/or Even Clip.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW.

404 Media: Vulnerability in iCloud’s ‘Hide My Email’ Reveals Peoples’ Real Email Addresses ★

Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media:

404 Media is not revealing the exact details of the vulnerability because it can still be exploited as of Monday, when 404 Media verified the issue with one of our own hidden email addresses.

“Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden. We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago. We don’t know why it hasn’t been fixed, but we don’t feel comfortable waiting any longer. Hide My Email users deserve to know that it may be possible for attackers to discover their hidden email addresses,” Tyler Murphy, the co-founder of EasyOptOuts, which discovered and reported the issue to Apple, told 404 Media. [...]

To test the issue I generated a new Hide My Email address and provided it to Murphy. Around five minutes later, he replied with my real email address linked to my Apple account which was supposed to be hidden.

“We don’t know the full scope of the issue, but in our limited tests with volunteers, 100% of Hide My Email addresses were exploitable,” Murphy said.

Not good. Especially the “We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago” part.

(Is this possibly related to the WWDC news that Apple is merging the domain names used for Sign In With Apple and Hide My Email? I can’t see how, but who knows? I suspect the motivation behind the SIWA and HME domain merger is merely convenience, but without an explanation from Apple we’re left to conjecture.)