Probably why I actually leave multiplayer on in No Man’s Sky. There’s people around, stuff happens, but there is no need to engage if you aren’t in the mood.
Plus, if you are feeling sociable and want to, you can go to the anomaly and team up for bonuses.
I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are “mainstream” “beginner friendly” distros, right? I don’t want anything too advanced, right?...
This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my “old man distro” so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.
I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!
For sure. Easily half (likely more) of my unplayed games are Bundle games from a bundle I got primarily for something else. There’s a few gems I’m sure.
There are a few games I bought on sale to play later as well (I’ll get to you!) but the other glaring flaw I see is a selection bias. The people who use this service or similar services are going to be the heavier Steam users with collections in the hundreds.
So heavier users, with lots of bundle games and sales. I’d divide that total by 10 at least
Apples to apples, I wonder how much that holds true…
When a console launches, buying off the shelf equivalent parts is probably a fair bit more expensive. After a couple of years though, the latest and greatest whatever is at least two years old.
I’m sure console manufacturers flatten out these prices by making long term contracts, but still a 4 year old machine is still 4 years old. AMD has released new chipsets since that are in turn themselves coming up on 2 years old.
Granted, console games are optimized for a specific platform, but that will likely be very game specific.
Written by Robert Dimitrieff, chief executive officer of Patriot Forge Co., a metalworking company in Canada. He also serves on the International Economic Policy Council of the C.D. Howe Institute....
Other than newsprint (and maybe bond) almost all pulp & paper products seem to be only increasing in demand. It’s just that new mills are being built overseas.
In BC though, between beetle kill and forest fires, fibre has gotten a little tight, although there is still enough to export whole logs.
Depressingly, Canfor just idled one of their Prince George mills (Northwood IIRC), joining a long list of mills that have closed over the last few years.
Curiously, the nitrocellulose they talk about in the article comes from the"Red Liquor" process (IIRC), and the last mill in BC that used that process was Port Alice which closed a few years ago as will. And IIRC the mill was sold to a Chinese company as well. Skeena Cellulose in Prince Rupert was originally built in WW2 just for gun cotton manufacture, although all their Red Liquor digesters were idled years before they shut down (around 20-25 years ago IIRC).
That oat milk is more expensive than cow milk always seemed like “virtue pricing”. An acre of oats makes more oat milk than an acre of dairy cow feed makes cow milk.
Arguably one of Canada’s greatest contributions to WW2 was our production of the CanPat trucks.
“Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics” was the quote from Gen. Omar Bradley IIRC, and I imagine in any conflict we become embroiled in (or wish to dissuade someone else from becoming embroiled in) we can contribute greatly to the logistics side.
I’d like to see a Canadian version of the US’ Army Corps of Engineers. Right now, it could help with natural disasters, and could also help with infrastructure projects. In a conflict, they could prove invaluable in actually getting fuel and supplies to the conflict zone.
Coastal patrol and Arctic patrol are two other areas where I think Canada has to stand alone to some extent.
Yep, can confirm. I used Xubuntu primarily for years, and never had an account on the official XFCE forums or Git, because why would I? I’m just a user, the software is very stable, and stuff tended to just work.
Still, Indie games continue to be developed. This will be gaming’s salvation when the big studios are fully committed to squeezing every loot box/DLC/microtransaction out of “Live service” forever games.
I don’t think Clash of Candy Shadow Tanks is going anywhere, but there will always be the next Stardew Valley passion project.
On that note, I think Indy’s have embraced a retro aesthetic because you don’t need a whole art team rendering your graphics. Combine this with AAA games being rather formulaic (can’t risk a big studio budget trying unproven ideas) and I think you have an audience willing to accept older graphics in retro games.
Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and “appification”.
Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it’s not as smooth as I remember.
In BC’s case, we have passed legislation to move to permanent Daylight Saving Time… when Washington State, Oregon, and California do. The hold up is that US Federal law allows the states to stay on Standard time, and stop switching to Daylight Saving Time, but not the other way around. It has been before Congress a few years now, but the US isn’t really good at getting things done, and this is low priority.
Technically we (BC) could just go ahead and do it. Or Washington, Oregon, and California could all just stick with Standard Time instead of Daylight Saving Time^1.
^1 I really don’t care, PDT or PST. All arguments about “I like an extra hour of sun in the morning/evening” are pointless. The numbers are made up, and we can change start and end times. Do the kids need an extra hour in the morning for sleep according to the latest study? Set the school start times an hour later. Changing the clock against which all these times are measured is like changing rulers instead of using different measurements.
Ever notice how touristy places have seasonal hours? It’s possible. Just stop changing the clocks instead of setting different times.
I have profound technical reasons to hate the time change. You know how you cell phone automagically changes the time? It’s not magic, and it comes with technical consequences in Industrial Automation.
Also, large organizations. North America and Europe start and stop DST on different dates (thanks Bush). The northern and southern hemisphere start and stop DST in different directions. On top of that, most countries don’t change the clocks. There’s a reason you’ll see references to UTC on the Internet.
The developer of Fist Puncher has an insightful “Promoted Comment” now on the Ars Technica article:
therealmattkain I’m one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.
This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users’ libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to “double dip” and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).
Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am
I stopped distro hopping around a decade ago, and just use default Ubuntu LTS releases. No shade from me.
I’m not going to pretend that Ubuntu is the coolest, hippest, trendiest distro around, but it’s good enough, stake enough, and gosh darn it I’m just used to it.
It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve used Linux and Mint seems to be the recommended distro for people who aren’t all that familiar with Linux like me, but I didn’t know if there was anything I should know with this ThinkPad model that anyone is familiar with. My searching around shows people saying everything from it...
I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.
I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.
Problem is that once you are wealthy enough you can move around the world. Similar to how Microsoft Ireland is somehow where most of Microsoft’s profits occur. I think there is a big role for international treaties here.
I’m pretty sure that the people that want to “fix” LGBTQ people with violence don’t differentiate between being forced to submit and be silent versus actually being converted/fixed/whatever. It doesn’t matter if you are satisfied with your role in the hierarchy, only that you submit.
Correct. When people say “ChatGPT isn’t real AI” they mean it’s not AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). The term “Artificial Intelligence” has been the proper term for the study of machine learning since the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop.
It’s all AI, from the computer player in Battlechess to ChatGPT. It’s not all using the same techniques, or have the same capabilities.
Canada is sending another $40 million in aid to organizations that are helping Palestinians in Gaza after pausing funding to the UN's relief agency in the region.
As a staunch critic of Hamas, and having been long dubious of UNRWA, I think having a smaller organization looking just after Palestinians as opposed to using the UNHCR was always kind of weird. Hearing overwrought pundits proclaiming how only the UNRWA can look after refugees, when the UNHCR is already running refugee services all over the world, including for Syrian refugees in Jordan seems nonsensical.
Why not just dissolve UNRWA and hand their responsibilities over to the UNHCR?
But still, what is the difference between a Syrian refugee in Jordan being served by the UNHCR and a Palestinian refugee in Jordan being served by UNRWA?
A parliamentary petition has been started to try to encourage the Canadian Government to join the Fediverse. If you want to support this petition, follow the link to Chris Alameny’s post where you’ll find links to both French and English versions of the petition. You have to be a Canadian citizen to sign the petition. We...
I’d be happy to have an “official” Mastodon instance. If individual politicians want to engage with their constituents, they can use any old Mastodon (or Lemmy, or whatever) instance. But having government agencies use a Mastodon instance for official communications would provide some insulation from the whims of capricious corporations.
First computer was a Commodore Vic-20. Second was a Tandy 1000TX. I remember dialling into BBSes pre-internet, but not on the Vic-20 of course.
I can still remember the feeling of seeing my first computer in person. Even in the late seventies it was rare to see even things like Atari 2600’s. By the early eighties most of my friends had an Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 400/800, Coleco Adam, Commodore Vic-20/64, Apple II, Tandy Coco, etc. By the late eighties most of the people I knew had PCs of some sort (Tandy 1000TX in my case), Atari ST, or Amiga. Modems were still rare. It was the nineties when modems and BBSes seemed to really explode, quickly displaced by the Internet. Granted I remember connecting to Gopher before I personally connected to BBSes.
I look back on how things changed from 1980 to 1989, and it seems so much more sweeping than 2010 to 2019.
I used to use PlayOnLinux for exactly this thing. It’s a front end/manager for WINE. Heroic and Lutris are similar, but have carried the concept further.
My monochrome Brother Laser is around 15 years old. Works great on Linux, as it should on any cups system. It’s still the same printer or was 15 years ago, drivers shouldn’t change.
I think I’m on the 3rd drum for that thing. Lord knows how many pages. Just keeps trucking.
I loved Earthsiege! IIRC I got the game with an expansion card (STI Lightning 128?), and it really was fun playing with my first flight stick, a CH Products flight stick.
What I am searching for is for games that support touch screens and can be played with 1 finger / one hand. No action games with fake joysticks on the screen, just games that work with a single finger or at least one hand while lying in bed and trying to wind down. One very good example is Civilization V, which has a dedicated...
I’ll double check on my Steam Deck, but from what you described, many old point-and-click game would also work, since a mouse input without right clicking should translate well one finger touch input. This might make SCUMMVM and all the compatible classic adventure games potential successes. More modern adventure games might also work well.
Like I said, I’ll have to test, but tentatively I’ll suggest:
SCUMMVM + numerous classic adventure games (Amazon Queen and Beneath A Steel Sky are available for free for the SCUMM project, completely legally).
There are some remakes of adventure game classics out there, Day of the Tentacle specifically comes to mind. Not sure if it’s “one-finger friendly” though.
Got distracted playing Beyond A Steel Sky, and it seems designed more for controllers, with one stick for looking, b add the other for moving. Granted I didn’t force it to use mouse inputs only.
I haven’t built a gaming PC for over fifteen years; I defected to PlayStation in '08 when the constant upgrading got too expensive to really justify, but now I’m looking to come crawling back....
Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t have the best launch (lol). But some of us enjoyed the game despite its flaws. In the time since then, they’ve had nearly two years to patch the issues and add QoL....
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
Obviously BioWare is working to optimize their operational footprint and consolidate production in order to improve their return on invested capital. I’m sure they have made the difficult decision to rightsize their team as part of this effort. Certainly one of the most critical factors they consider when making the difficult decision to reduce their team size is the impact it will have on the lives of their team members, and they are committed to assisting their team with exploring alternate roles as well as providing outplacement assistance.
Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and...
…but I totally get what he means. Some people just aren’t excited about fiddling with settings, hardware, software or otherwise. It’s just a pain. Even myself, I’ve noticed I’ve lost most of my appetite for twiddling with drivers and such so I get it. When I play a game, I want to play the game, not set up the game, tweak the game, etc.
This has always been one of the key advantages of consoles over PC gaming. You can go to Gamestop, buy the game, plug it into your console, and then play. Or at least you used to.
Consoles have gotten more fiddly over the years, and the Steam Deck meets them halfway. If you are okay with online game stores, managing storage space for your games, you are already good to go with your Steam Deck. If you want to, you can tweak your settings for more battery life or performance, or venture outside the Steam Deck Verified games.
In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had...
The curious thing is that there is a financial rationale for maintaining the minimal data, and allowing account recovery. If I bought a game or two via Ubisofts store a few years back, and I remember that game and go through the steps to recover my account… I might see more games that I’d actually rather like to buy.
The cost of keeping a minimal set of account information is a minuscule cost, with a potential upside.
I think they do this to discourage people from letting their accounts go dormant and risk loosing their games. Which makes some sense, lock you customers in, use their sunk cost to encourage activity.
MMOs 'don't give people the tools to build community anymore,' says EverQuest 2 creative director (www.pcgamer.com)
Why does nobody here ever recommend Fedora to noobs?
I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are “mainstream” “beginner friendly” distros, right? I don’t want anything too advanced, right?...
Steam users have spent $19 billion on games they’ve never played (www.pcgamesn.com)
PC Gaming Is Growing Faster Than Consoles, Data Shows (kotaku.com)
China is after Canada’s pulp and paper industry – it’s a national-security issue -- (Opinion) (www.theglobeandmail.com)
Written by Robert Dimitrieff, chief executive officer of Patriot Forge Co., a metalworking company in Canada. He also serves on the International Economic Policy Council of the C.D. Howe Institute....
Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups (thedeepdive.ca)
Ask ChatGPT to pick a number between 1 and 100 (jlai.lu)
Canada unveils updated defence policy, plan to spend $73B over 20 years on renewing military capacity (www.ctvnews.ca)
An Estimate on the Total Number of Xfce Users (alexxcons.github.io)
Steam is a ticking time bomb (www.spacebar.news)
Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival? (www.theguardian.com)
Toronto falls into the pit of urban decline that's plagued U.S. cities (nationalpost.com)
The GTA has been showing signs of the urban ills that are commonly associated with city life south the border....
Proton Mail Finally Releases Desktop Apps With a Linux Beta Version (news.itsfoss.com)
Did Reddit year-end recaps expose Russian interference in Alberta? (www.stalbertgazette.com)
Petition - Stop Daylight Saving Time in Canada - Change.org (www.change.org)
Join the petition to ask the Canadian government to adopt Standard Time all year round....
“It‘s kind of depressing”: WB Discovery pulls indie game for “business changes” (arstechnica.com)
Archive link: archive.ph/168Vn...
Linux hits 4% on the desktop 🐧 📈 (gs.statcounter.com)
I'm relatively unfamiliar with Linux. I'm getting a ThinkPad T460 and want to install Mint on it. Is there anything about the T460 I should know?
It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve used Linux and Mint seems to be the recommended distro for people who aren’t all that familiar with Linux like me, but I didn’t know if there was anything I should know with this ThinkPad model that anyone is familiar with. My searching around shows people saying everything from it...
Let’s Set a Maximum Wage for the Rich | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)
Ontario brewery slammed with negative reviews, abusive calls after hosting Trudeau (toronto.ctvnews.ca)
An Ontario brewery that hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week says it’s been inundated with hundreds of hateful messages since then.
Fans preserve and emulate Sega’s extremely rare ‘80s “AI computer” (arstechnica.com)
Canada sends $40M for Palestinians in Gaza, as Liberal MP decries UNRWA freeze (www.ctvnews.ca)
Canada is sending another $40 million in aid to organizations that are helping Palestinians in Gaza after pausing funding to the UN's relief agency in the region.
Let’s encourage the Canadian Government to join the Fediverse (mstdn.chrisalemany.ca)
A parliamentary petition has been started to try to encourage the Canadian Government to join the Fediverse. If you want to support this petition, follow the link to Chris Alameny’s post where you’ll find links to both French and English versions of the petition. You have to be a Canadian citizen to sign the petition. We...
Get ready to hear more about "pre-internet" times (www.axios.com)
Trying to play my old CDROM games on Windows10 and about to lose my marbles. Could you help me?
Okay listen: I am less than tech-savvy, but I tried so many step-intensive things on my dinky PC, to no avail....
HP misreads room, awkwardly brags about its “less hated” printers (arstechnica.com)
What game company from your childhood do you remember with fondness?
I was thinking about how I remember Maxis fondly, and I got to wondering what other people’s experiences were like!...
Anyone knows about calm Windows games with 1-finger touch screen support?
What I am searching for is for games that support touch screens and can be played with 1 finger / one hand. No action games with fake joysticks on the screen, just games that work with a single finger or at least one hand while lying in bed and trying to wind down. One very good example is Civilization V, which has a dedicated...
Please help me select parts for a "competent" gaming PC
I haven’t built a gaming PC for over fifteen years; I defected to PlayStation in '08 when the constant upgrading got too expensive to really justify, but now I’m looking to come crawling back....
I am so pumped for Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk 2077 v2.0!
Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t have the best launch (lol). But some of us enjoyed the game despite its flaws. In the time since then, they’ve had nearly two years to patch the issues and add QoL....
Not counting games that were unfun because of bugs, what’s the most unfun video game that you’ve played and what made it unfun?
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
An Update on the State of BioWare - 50 roles being eliminated (blog.bioware.com)
^archive.org^...
The Steam Deck is changing how normies think of gaming PCs.
Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and...
'Dad, people are sending me pictures of bears': Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke 'wasn't ready' for the bear sex scene to go so viral (www.pcgamer.com)
When your son's friends start sending him bear pics, you know you made a splash.
Ubisoft Can Delete Inactive Accounts, Making Users Lose Access to Their Games (gamerant.com)
In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had...
Out of the way FROMSoft, Pokémon Sleep is now the hardest game ever created (cdn.imgchest.com)
seen on Twitter...