How does one find out what chips are in what USB sticks? Manufacturers don’t make this information available. At best you just find read and write speeds, usually just the max possible read speed and nothing else.

As much as I like Firefox/Librewolf, Vivaldi still has the upper hand in UI/UX. Workspaces, more feature-rich sidebar, one-click access to recently closed tabs right there in the tab bar, speed dial, tab stacks and other QoL stuff that makes just enough difference for me that I can’t really daily-drive any other browsers. Until FF reaches feature parity (it’s getting close, but still isn’t quite there yet) I don’t see myself migrating anytime soon. Quess I’ll just need to rely more on AdGuard DNS and Vivaldi’s built-in adblocker if uBlock becomes neutered on Chromium…

Windows 11 is easier on the eyes and easier to use. We took the best elements of Windows 10 and refined them to create a soothing place to work and play.

Nah, no, hiding basic stuff behind bazillion clicks in nested menus deeper than hell is not “easier to use”.

Wake on approach. Lock on leave.

Windows 11 can automatically wake up when you approach and lock when you leave.

Why would I want that on a desktop that needs to do work even when I’m AFK? My PC doesn’t even have a password on it—because if a stranger gets access to it, something has already gone horribly wrong and a burglar seeing my furry pics is the least of my problems🤪

3D spatial sound

This technology makes it possible for you to perceive the sources of sound in games. 3 It requires compatible headphones and is available on both Windows 10 and 11.

I don’t use headphones and I already have a bangin’ good surround sound setup with 18" sub and tactile transducers.

Smart App Control

Exclusive to Windows 11 is Smart App Control. It provides a layer of security by only permitting apps with good reputations to be installed. Only available on the latest version of Windows 11.

Why the fuck would I want that? I and only I get to decide what programs have the priviledge of getting installed and what don’t. I bet M$ will deny “good reputation” to harmless code injection mods for games (SKSE/OBSE et al, ENB) because these are basically hacking while allowing data-stealing privacy nightmares like Discord app.

KDE Connect is awesome. And completely cross-platform, and FOSS.

The deceased has not yet been identified

Yeah, you need a DNA test to ID someone who’s gone through a turbofan. I’ve seen pics of an aftemath of such incident. You can’t even tell the species from remains that have the consistency of tomato juice.

Child holding a teddybear.
ED-209: “Put down your weapon! You have 40 seconds to comply!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvqDaFpXeM

Oh, who am I kidding, human cops do exactly the same shit…

Used to play strategy games quite a lot 20 or so years ago. AoE, Homeworld, Red Alert. But I never got very deep into them.

The main reason I don’t like strategy games anymore is that most of them simply boil down to micromanagement and actions-per-minute. That is not how my brain works. I hate micromanaging and multitasking. I love planning tactics, doing recon and analyzing the situation (as long as I don’t have to do statistical analysis with spreadsheets for that), setting goals and executing plans.

Best strategy game I’ve ever played? X3: Terran Conflict. Once you set your plans in motion everything works pretty much automatically—you don’t have to order your traders or military forces around constantly or set up product batches in your factories manually. You set up parameters by which your assets work, and aside from occasional tweaking and optimization you leave them to their own devices. Instead you concentrate on the actual grand strategy or a single battle at hand or putting out some random brushfire that needs your attention without the worry about your “villagers” standing around idle because they can’t figure out there’s a fresh patch of fish 100 meters to the left.

Plus you’re there, in situ, as an actual participant in the world, not an abstract godhand hovering over the map. First-person strategy. Commanding two task groups steamrolling through a sector from the bridge of your cruiser, sipping coffee as turrets put on a massive fireworks around you is epic.

You’re not alone. I’m in the same spot. I love the humor of Fallout and I really liked the TV series; I have played Morrowind, Oblivion, more Skyrim playthroughs than I can remember but I bounced off FO3 pretty hard. For me it was the dreary environment and overall decay of the world.

People in FO3 just didn’t seem to care much about their living conditions and this doesn’t seem like what would happen in actual post-collapse society. People in general love surrounding themselves with art and beauty, rusty scrap metal shacks wouldn’t be around two centuries after the bombs drop. Earthship, stucco and clay bricks are low tech but can be made very pretty and livable. Murals and paintings made using various pigments, colorful textiles, basreliefs, carvings and sculptures of ceramic, wood and stone would be everywhere, sprinkled with surviving pre-war artifacts that’s been restored, maintained and cherished with pride.

Plant life would also recover quite fast and be lush in a post-atomic war world—Chornobyl is a prime example how nature claims back human-abandoned land just decades after a nuclear event. Deserts in FO should not be all dreary brown misery; there would be a thriving ecosystem of both flora and fauna. Two centuries is enough time for the most dangerous radioisotopes to decay away and you wouldn’t really find places where radiation would stop wildlife reclaiming the land. More mutations and birth defects, yes, but life will find a way.

And this overall miserable representation of post-apocalyptic world is the reason FO games never really clicked for me even though the satire and tone hit the spot.

DeaDBeeF sort of is similar but doesn’t seem to have the plugins I need to do a proper full-screen 10ft GUI, Facets-like library browsing, surround upmix, DLNA streaming to other rooms etc.

I have to give Krita another try and see if it can import/export .dds, but my impression from playing with it for a few hours is that it seems to focus more on digital painting instead of photo manipulation (which modding textures essentially boils down to). I also have my GIMP workflow down to muscle memory, it only takes me minutes to do eg a recolor or upscale+fake details via sharpening and noise.

At this point there’s just a few pieces of software that keep me on Microshitty’s teat. Foobar2000 being the biggest one—there simply ain’t no good alternative for Linux, and I’ve tried them all. Freesurround, actual dB scale volume control via Jscript, waveform seekbar, precision spectrum analyzers, modtracker player are just some of the essential plugins, as is ASIO (in addition of bypassing all OS audio stack shenanigans it has the accidental benefit of not only auto-muting , but also auto-stopping auto-playing videos on websites that might slip through uBlock).

Also, Paint.net is so good for converting .dds files. Never got .dds to work properly with Gimp.

Especially with movies, the people who made the thing are already paid by the time it is released. As little as possible. VFX houses are often fucked royally and don’t even break even. Even big-name actors are usally screwed over by Hollywood accounting.

By paying you only feed the leeches who then use their resources to fuck over everyone else.

That’s a very silly morals indeed.

But on the instructions of Judge Chris Hehir they were restricted in the evidence they could bring regarding their motivation for taking part in the protest and mentions of the climate crisis, and told they could not mount a defence of justification.

Kangaroo court.

Nice! Too bad they got caught, though.

No sympathy for cryptobros and trading bots.

They’re not jets. They’re ducted fans. Different things. “Electric jet” makes as much sense as “electric V8 engine”.

PC. Because:

1. Better controller support—I’m not limited to what MS or Sony deem as “certified” or “authorized” hardware. Most of the really good hardware (VKB, Virpil, Arduino) will never be available for consoles and what little is available is bad at best.
2. Best sims are PC only (DCS, Il-2, E:D, X series, Hunternet etc)
3. Sims support 3rd party auxiliary software (TacView, EDDiscovery, OMH, EDMC etc) for better experience and that’s simply not going to be possible on consoles, ever.
4. For other games, modding experience on PC is simply better. SKSE and ENB is what keeps Skyrim going and makes it still relevant 13 years later. Can’t have this kind of code injection and wrappers on consoles.
5. If I ever get into retrogaming, emulation is the way, especially since actually acquiring retro console games in their original physical format is bound to become a very expensive collector’s hobby if you don’t have your own collection from childhood already or don’t have local second-hand options.

Downvotes shall list better headphones.

Moondrop, Truthear, 7Hz.

And from the old guard Shure, Ultimate Ears, Westone.

Vortex is not a launcher, it’s a mod manager. And you don’t have to use it, there are alternatives. But you should use a mod manager, manual installation/uninstallation is really bad practice that can and will break things.

This is good. Modding can turn into the deepest dependency hell ever and not having access to a specific version of mod A can make mod B that you really love unusable. See: Skyrim VR and Unofficial Patch.

At these prices I’d expect at least 32 GB of RAM. 8 GB is for entry level phones and SOHO 2 to 4 bay NAS boxes.