• 11 Posts
  • 283 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • I don’t think you’re talking about the Outlook I am talking about because I’m talking about the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, not the Office ones. And that’s fine and dandy about proprietary software and all but frankly I haven’t really seen any non-proprietary mail apps that look aesthetically pleasing. But that’s besides the point, it’s a matter of personal preference when it comes to visuals after all.

    … I am not just talking about little details and preferences here? Windows products are increasingly broken and dysfunctional at every level. Features don’t work, features are randomly changed and broken, nothing is consistent, core features of the computer are made opaque, any given Linux package manager is about 1000000 times more trustable than the ad ridden, sketchy, bloatware filled Windows store where you have to hunt for actually useful and trustable tools. One of my old bosses had his work windows computer update to a new windows OS without really asking him (technically it did, but then it just kept scheduling an OS upgrade until he missed it). It didn’t break his computer, but he had thousands and thousands of hours of cad drafting work on that computer and Windows could have EASILY fucked up in the update process, or the old software we were using could have EASILY not been compatible. Windows basically flipped a coin for whether they were going to utterly grind my bosses business to a halt and cause utter panic or just have the computer update. This is not “user friendly” software design, this is not “easy to use software made by an extremely competent software company”.

    I’d also like to add, nowhere did I ever mention using laptops. All my experiences are with desktops that I had a hand in building from scratch. So I’m not sure what you’re even getting at with those assumptions.

    …because for 99% of people who are going to be using a computer for light email, research and text editing work they are going to be using a laptop? I don’t really understand what about my argument doesn’t apply to windows prebuilts that have good driver support for linux…?

    It’s somewhat concerning that you have such a strong obsession over the topic that you would go and whether intentionally or unintentionally offend people and I hope that you are a much more pleasant person to converse with outside of this topic or even this site.

    I think it is completely reasonable to be upset when someone is condescendingly foreclosing the possibility that something can happen when the evidence they are using for it is outdated and they refuse to update it in their heads. The only response at that point when someone refuses to re-evaluate their position and continues to “speak for the group” when they really don’t represent the group anymore is to make it even clearer that they don’t speak for a group, and I am sorry if my method offended here, I believe your heart is in the right place but please stop trying to tell us about how stupid and unwilling people are to learn new things. Please please please just keep your mouth closed, it doesn’t help anyone, period. Even if you were right, there would be nothing to change in our actions as it would just be hopeless to even try?

    This isn’t 2015, a good Linux distribution is as polished, easy to use, and easy to explain to a newbie computer user as Windows is. If you aren’t ready to accept that shrugs I mean fine but don’t push your outmoded narrative into conversations that might actually convince someone who doesn’t know about Linux that it isn’t worth checking out as a serious alternative. You are actively doing damage to the future of this software movement by dismissing it offhand like this.



  • Outlook is atrocious what on earth are you talking about? Just trying to use it at work it is so frustrating and the UI is horrendous for everything. Truly even basic things like trying to read when a meeting actually starts just from looking at the calendar is a headache, and because all of this is proprietary unlike with Linux, tough luck, that is how things are and you can’t do shit to change it. Neither can an experienced computer user trying to help you.

    I am sorry you really don’t have an accurate handle on the state of things anymore, I think you are stuck in your ways and stressed out by life and you don’t realize that emotion and lack of mental plasticity is leading to you assume everyone else is as stuck in their ways as you (including your future self when you are able to feel less overworked and stressed).

    Windows is atrocious at this point, search doesn’t work and purposefully confuses new computer users about where is being searched and what is being searched. Ads pop up everywhere in the UI and will continue to spread like a terminal cancer in the UI.

    Search on windows also just sucks and takes ages with the default settings (an inexperienced computer user will be using).

    The file manager on windows in most marquee windows programs like word, excel etc… all open up an entirely different file manager half way through the process of saving a file in perhaps the most insane UI pattern to keep from the mess that was Windows 8 (even though I actually really liked the core idea at first).

    Windows is buggy AND windows is constantly playing head games with its user by trying to force them to use the edge browser. It is very very confusing to a new computer user what the hell is even going on.

    I mean, Windows illegally changed the entire operating system countless people had without getting consent because it would look good for their numbers.

    Seriously you are WAYYY out of your league if you are going to claim a nice Linux distribution on good hardware with good driver support (such as some dells or thinkpads) is categorically wayyy worse than trying to use a windows laptop in 2024….

    …please get your head out of the sand :)

    I mean do you want to get into the massive security vulnerability at a tactical and strategic level that Microsoft’s co-pilot represents? This is endgame for business security, Windows is in a worse spot than it has been in probably a decade at least and they deserve it. IT people and corporations have to seriously wonder if Windows even cares about following the law, which makes trusting Windows for the software relied upon by their company a complex question indeed……

    It used to be that Linux was better ideologically because it gave you agency over your computer, but now things have gotten so much worse that the reason is practical and no longer ideological.


  • Honestly I don’t think I will ever be financially stable enough to drop ~1200 extra JUST for another computer monitor that is only compatible with 5% max of video games. I just have a lcd steamdeck, I can’t even afford a full gaming computer, asking if I have VR equipment is like asking a starving person if they have been taking any cooking classes at the expensive Italian restaurant nearby lately.

    To be honest I don’t like the idea of video games being made ONLY for VR unless they are extremely focused on being a quirky unique VR experience as this whole “revolution” in video gaming feels like from the beginning it was meant to provide exclusivity like a status object not a gaming device.

    Unlike other gaming revolutions that perhaps started with high end gaming requirements and then evolved into broader contexts and other games that worked on potato computers, from the beginning VR has felt like the point was to become part of an exclusive rich people club.

    I will take VR seriously when VR heavy games developed by developers with access to multi-thousand dollar high end VR equipment actually begin to have a serious adult conversation about the barriers that requiring VR equipment creates for players (that they ignore hanging out play testing their game on a VR headset that costs more than my car), and the spirit of inclusivity that violates. Come up with a way for the rest of us to play, integrate gyroscope sensors for a 2d tablet, phone or steam deck screen so it can be rotated held out in front of you like a “window”into the VR world. If your solution longterm is “well maybe people without VR headsets just shouldn’t play my game” then I will not give you money, and I think your game design goals are misguided at a fundamental level whether I own a VR headset or not.

    I know that isn’t the point and that people love VR because it is cool as fuck, but it is real hard for me not to get that vibe from VR I guess?

    I did get the non-vr marineverse cup though, I honestly can’t tell if it is basically the same as VR regatta or an outdated version of the same engine, it is very hard to tell just from the steam listing and stuff lol. Which again… why??! I feel like they are just assuming if I want to have the real, current up to date experience I will have already purchased a VR headset.

    My understanding I got was they are basically the same game at the heart of it, but that vr regatta has a bunch of VR stuff bolted on top of it, but if that turns out not to be the case I will definitely ask for a refund if the non-vr game is clearly being ignored in favor of development only for the VR game. I don’t think that is the case however, on the contrary a lot of people seem to mention the dev being really friendly and genuinely inspired to spread awareness about sailing.



  • Oh damn I never knew that, see in games like that I never even bother to jump in a sailboat when I see one because I know chances are it is going to be lame and make me sad and the sailboat wasn’t put there as a drivable vehicle to make me happy but rather the programmers just made it so you could drive all the boats even if some of them were painfully boring and oversimplified to the point of being an utter waste of time and honestly kind of a middle finger to sailing. Like Saints Row style comedic games should just have the character go down into the cabin, come back up with a chainsaw, cut the mast down and then turn on the outboard to make it into a motor boat, that would be way less horrendous than programmers spending a bunch of time animating totally fake sails that just magically spin the wind direction every which way they go (it hurts my brain a little just trying to explain it from the standpoint of actually understanding the very barebones basics of sailing).

    I have always had a bit of a grudge against Rockstar for not having their sailboats behave like sailboats in their games. They absolutely have the money and they have shown the aptitude to make mechanically superb focused games like the midnight club series or more specifically the table tennis game they made that is… just a damn fucking good table tennis game.

    Rockstar could have made their sailboats behave like sailboats at least in GTA 5 and when people realized that was awesome they could have stupendously easily turned it into it’s own entire separate sailing game built on the GTA engine… from there small rowable sloops for inland waterways useful for running rum covertly to unexpected and unwatched places where cargo could be discretely offloaded would naturally slot PERFECTLY into a Red Dead Redemption 2 dlc focused on swamps and waterways….

    sigh

    No excuses game developers, learn to sail, go play Pancake Sailor, I will not accept this level of extreme sailing ignorance going forward. Sailing is one of the dopest skills humans have ever mastered (and is certainly one sentient aliens on ocean planets all over the universe must have mastered as well, certainly before becoming a spacefaring race if that is even possible right?) and unlike space video games, the moment to moment skill of sailing a ship is fundamentally rich in sensory feedbacks and necessary minute control corrections.



  • I was so fucking hyped when I realized Valheim actually has the fundamentals of real sailing in it, certainly I had already fallen in love with Valheim at that point, discovering the sailboats weren’t half-asssed just reaffirmed to me in that moment that the lifelong partner I had been looking for and never finding in Minecraft was here, waiting for me, with a beard and torch. This whole time it wasn’t me for being weird and always getting really disconnected from the core gameplay loop of Minecraft after the initial rush of revisiting the game after awhile ran off in the way others who liked the game as much as me didn’t seem to… and this whole time I wondered what was wrong with ME.

    Valheim whispered into my ear “honey, you KNOW what you want and I am going to give it to you” and shattered that whole complex in an instant when that shitty raft popped into the water in front of me after I crafted it for the first time.




  • Oh gosh if I wasn’t broke right now I would instabuy Sailwind lol, it looks exactly like what my heart has wanted from sailing games forever, but have always gotten arcadey, shallow action experiences that use the theming of pirate ships as a thin veneer to mechanics that have nothing to with sailing.

    I don’t know when I will get Sailwind but when I do I will play the ever living shit out of it.

    edit well I watched too many Sailwind videos because I was curious and then suddenly out of nowhere I smelled something weird and I realized I had in my excitement for imagining being able to stack cargo in my sailing ship like a kid in a sandbox playing with toys that I had already lit a $20 bill on fire with a lighter I had unconsciously pulled out of my pocket and at that point it would have been a waste not to buy Sailwind so shrugs no way I can win I guess, you got me corned again life.

    Well, video games are a good distraction from being hungry at least!


  • yeah the free pancake game I linked is very very simple in scope,it isnt meant to be a main game or anything (marineverse cup is the nonvr “main” version I think).

    The sailing model is good though and the simplicity is a perfect intro into sailing skills, which I think is the point. Think of it as a simple meditative idle game where you learn a very real skill.

    I am interested in trying other companies sailing games like sailwind, sail forth (arcadey but apparently true sailing in spirit) and maybesome of the more expensive ones at somepoint idk.

    I think I will get marineverse cup for $5 on sale but idk I havent played it yet and other sailing games look really good too (sailwind thoooo).

    What I can say for sure is Pancake Sailor is perfect at what it is trying to be and it is a pleasure.

    I would love to hear other’s recommendations on games with deep and nuanced true sailing mechanics, it is almost impossible to deduce from the outside with a game even if sailboats are everywhere in the theme. I also dont vibe with sailing for the intense racing vibes, more for the experience of wandering, that is what a sunfish always represented to me growing up, I could care less about zooming around a specific track, small pancake sailors are the mountainbikes of nearshore choppy but moderate inland coastal waters.


  • I really wanted to live in the timeline where I grew into adulthood in a society that accepted neurodivergent people and loved them beyond a superficial performance of acceptance.

    Instead I got one full of people that poorly hide their disgust for the way I stim and get excited in conversations about a current hyperfocus under a myriad of disguises, I guess the latest one being that I am clearly too weird and inchoherent to be human, the AI thing being an unconscious way to gatekeep what “human” and “non-human” conversations look like.

    I struggle not to hate people like you, you destroy my life over and over again simply because I don’t make sense to you. Then you get upset when people like me react aggressively because it isn’t your fault you didn’t allow space for a mind like mine to exist, how could you have known?

    Maybe you could work on listening better so you aren’t so incredibly lost when it comes to evaluating whether a human being or algorithm is talking. I will not defend myself, I am wordy, annoying, opinionated and holy fuck my sentences run on and on but my oh my it is insulting to your own intelligence to lazily pass my words off as maybe AI generated you fool.



  • Can y’all IT people please stop with the condescending “you don’t know how stupid people are about computers”, it seems like there is always one of you showing up in a comment thread to tell us that we can’t have the future literally all of us want including you all as well… because WE are too stupid and lazy about computers.

    I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.

    Were you as condescending to them in person as you are being in referencing them right now? Why is not knowing how to install a Firefox extension some indicator of foreclosure on the possibility of that person becoming computer literate along whatever metrics you define? There are plenty of smart people out there who can learn how to use a computer for very complex tasks who have just simply never learned about extensions for Firefox. This is a very feasible and normal reality.

    Do you know how to change the oil on your car yourself? Do simple plumbing jobs? Could you run a classroom of middle schoolers and keep them all focused while keeping your eye on the shy sad kid in the back who tends to disappear if you don’t engage them? What about basic healthcare changes or cooking? What about outdoor work or basic small engine maintenance? Do you even know shit about the most basic species of trees in your backyard? Do you know the species of songbirds you often hear outside your window? Do you even pay attention to that? Do you know how to drive a dirt bike extremely fast on a rough dirt road? Do you know how to adjust for the violent explosive power of turbo lag in a car with a turbocharger so that torque oversteer doesn’t launch you off the road? Do you know how to sew and repair basic garments? To weave? Can you even fish? Like could you literally even just catch a fish to save your life right now if I handed you a fishing rod unassembled with no instructions?

    My point is, don’t go looking for confirmation of how stupid or lazy people are or how limited their capacity is to evolve and grow by casting the shapes of their ignorance onto the floor and trying to read some magic language from that.

    Maybe they don’t know because they are hopelesssly stupid, but maybe not? If they are intelligent and they don’t know computers then those are the perfect people to teach linux. Then it is their first language instead of windows, many linux distro are perfectly fine for this at this point.

    See here is the bottom line, legions of IT people show up online always arguing they think they know that the average person is too dumb, lazy and uninterested in computers for Linux adoption to seriously take off in the personal computer market and challenge Microsoft, but y’all don’t know shit about humans. You are experts in computers who think that makes you experts in human potential.

    Go take some theater classes (or get an degree in education) and get educated before you start drawing conclusions about people when you really haven’t spent time closely studying how people engage with their potential and what situations facilitate that in basic human interaction and framing of conversations (both literal and abstract).

    I’m sorry if I snapped at you but I think it is existentially important to recognize here that we don’t know what people are capable of, you can’t know the essential capacity of people to change, don’t try to predict it. Focus on creating the material opportunity for change and the rest may follow depending on what people desire, no matter to us, we desire to create that positive opportunity for change because it is the right thing to do, not because we like the future growth charts of the things we believe are important and vital.



  • Motor Town - I am now on the top 10 leaderboard for taxi driving because I play on my steam deck lots. It is perfect for it. Sometimes it gets the steam deck too hot I need to fiddle with settings.

    Easy Red 2 - just buy it, it runs awesome on the steam deck, and with joysticks you can get a p51 mustang deadly locked in, maybe not quite a joystick but close.

    Operation Harsh Doorstep - free realistic modern shooter with vehicles and modding support with a lot of potential, most maps run decent and scoped weapons arent bad on steam deck with gyroscope on, it really helps with recoil.

    Maniac - yes