I’m running Win 10 Ameliorated on mine. Manual driver installs were the only big hiccup. Works well otherwise, but it’s not my daily driver.

I can’t really use Linux since my work is deeply embedded in Microsoft everything; I need OneDrive to work dependably.

It was offered as a free upgrade for anyone with Wishes 7/8. And you could get free upgrades to those from earlier editions of Windows, too.

Some people haven’t paid for Windows in 2 decades-ish with a legit retail purchase.

Mood.

I’m not going to pay $45 for any game. If I’d known about the “never on sale, price only goes up” model they were using, I might have bought it back when it was $20, but I’ll just never play it now and I’m okay with that. There are literally hundreds of amazing games I already own to play, and if I had 100+ hours to sink into a game like this (I don’t, post-kiddos—for now, anyway), then I’d strike the earth for some Dwarf Fortress !!!FUN!!!, which I know I’ll enjoy.

Or maybe finally get around to beating Baldur’s Gate 1… (I never made it past the early game… BG3 I’ll get to in the 2040s at this rate, ha ha!)

Aside from people who just want to play football/CoD/D4/whatever multilayer game, I don’t understand why anyone pays full price for games. I’m glad they do, mind, since they’re subsidizing the development costs mean games get made, and I get amazing games for cheap.

As a recent example, I nabbed MH Rise for cheap recently, and bounced off it. I might try again later, but it didn’t grab me. So glad I didn’t pay more than $15 CAD for it!

Published Oct 16, 2024

(In case anyone else was confused by the timing of this.)

The ultra-wealthy are terrified of reprisal from Trump. And they control the media (Bezos/WP) and social media (Zuck).

Democracy in America may fail next week. Terrifying to watch.

Isn’t it getting harder to find custom ROMs, now? Used to be basically everything was on XDA forums, but I’ve heard lots of custom ROMs are moving to they’re own websites/Discord servers/whatever.

Meanwhile, Steam is raking it in by continuing to offer a better product than piracy. The Steam Deck is making that even more true; it’s so much more convenient to have games in the Steam library than try to keep a repack updated with new patches/content.

Right, but pirating Disney-owned IP is more moral than paying for it. Disney is the number 1 company in the world for lobbying for copyright over-reach. Every dollar that goes to Disney pays for lobbyists who will continue to push for life-of-author + 90+ years, because life-of-author plus 70 years just isn’t enough time to control our shared cultural heritage.

Similarly for Nintendo and software piracy.

Paying for Disney/Nintendo media is immoral.

If you’d read the article, you’d know that the author isn’t suggesting that.

“Family first” is unidirectional. Parents put their kids first. That’s the job. I signed up for it, and I’m going to prioritize then as much as I can.

Nothing, as far as I can tell, but political opponents have been running attack ads and blaming him for everything that’s gone wrong in the local (and global, for that matter) economy for the last decade.

I think he did amazingly well in the Trump presidency threading the needle of not giving in to Trump but also not antagonizing him, so Canada had limited personal vendettas and attacks from Trump.

He’s very articulate and careful with his words, and his pauses to think carefully about wording are seen as a lack of confidence. And, granted, it does make him a less inspiring/exciting/dynamic speaker.

Contrast that with Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Cons, who’s not at all worried about offending minorities and is constantly telling people how Trudeau has ruined everything, is ruining everything, and will ruin everything, for exemple by letting in immigrants, allowing schools to support trans kids (provincially controlled, not in Trudeau’s jurisdiction), and for long medical waiting times (also provincial), etc. Literally everything.

… he claims there is no point producing proof because they wouldn’t be believed.

He also dismisses any evidence created by others as untrustworthy.

What a load of shit. It’s up to the person making the claim to provide evidence. People have claimed the opposite, and backed it up with “low-quality” evidence. Refusing it would be pretty easy, if it were true; get someone independent to verify in a pre-funded, blind trial.

The only reason not to do this is because they know their product reduces framerate frequently enough to be a problem.

I worry that age verification will backfire spectacularly; users can just tunnel their traffic through a VPN and then once on a VPN, they would also miss all harmful content blocking. Middle schoolers can figure out how to get around school web filters, and they, and everyone else, will figure their way around age verification just as easily.

Pierre Poilievre is going to do the same in Canada, too. He’s been threatening to defund the CBC (Canada BBC, basically). And our current PM, Trudeau, is reviled by so many Canadians that he’s unelectable, so the Cons are going to cruise to an easy majority next year.

It sucks knowing that the country is going to be in a worse place 5 years from now but being unable to do anything about it. At least the US has a 50-50 shot of coming out okay, if the polls are to be believed. (I’m more optimistic about the actual election results, personally, but very concerned about a coup/civil unrest of some sort.)

Attacks on the press are attacks on democracy, and the Canadian press is crumbling.

A friend of mine has (had?) most of the world records in Sayonara Wild Hearts; it’s not as relaxing if you’re going for high scores since you need to get close to collisions for bonus points, but if you just play to beat levels and chill, it’s great.

Brilliant. I should do that. I’m not great at skipping stuff to race faster, so the skull dungeon is really hard for me and I end up save scumming after most runs. I read about people getting to floor 200+, but I can barely get to 100 unless I waste a whole stack of staircases.

Pausing time would make it a lot more relaxing.

I just read the top review on Steam and it answered this question well: TL;DR it’s a shame this is a F2P game since the seasonal cosmetic FOMO is diametrically opposed to the message/spirit of the game, but if you can ignore the cosmetics, then it’s a fantastic experience that’s completely free.

Agreed; it’s funny reading articles like this about massive marketing budgets when I haven’t seen a single ad.

True, but I expect that wasn’t meant literally; it was expressed that way for rhetorical effect.

Most of the capitalist system we’re in has incentivized short-term cashflow over long-term revenue for most stakeholders (annual bonuses, for example), and AAA gaming is almost entirely following those trends, too.

One of them is a literal fascist who has publicly stated they will become a dictator. Pretending they’re at all equivalent is lunacy.