AI is starting to get really smart

That does sound quite a bit different, although without the actual details of the internal situation it’s hard to say.

Stardew doesn’t bother me because the updates are free. As soon as there’s more content for the game, I have it. If I feel like playing Stardew again, the new content is a reason to jump back in to playing it again.

However with Dead Cells, whenever I think about going back and playing it I think about all the new content that I haven’t bought for it. It feels like my options are spend money for the current complete game, play an incomplete version, or just don’t play it right now. I’ve been deciding on “don’t play it right now” for years now.

The original designer of Dead Cells, Sébastien Benard, formed a new studio and has a new roguelike game on the way called Tenjutsu in which players take the role of a renegade yakuza.

Earlier this year, Benard called the decision to end Dead Cells development “the worst imaginable asshole move”.

I’m curious about how others feel about this. I think Dead Cells is an incredible game, but the amount of continued DLC releases has actually turned me off of the game somewhat. I’m actually glad development has ended in a way, so that I can rebuy the “complete” game and have everything.

The game already had tons of content, I don’t think it needs perpetual new content additions.

Favorite: Steam Deck, it’s my favorite piece of gaming hardware I’ve ever owned. The controls are fantastic, it’s now frustrating to use other controllers that don’t have back paddles, gyro, or track pads.

Least favorite: cheap off-brand controllers, with bad tactile buttons, sticking buttons, analog sticks that drift, analog sticks that only register 8 directions, etc.

Also, Wii U. I have some mixed feelings on it because I have some good memories with the system, but the hardware never paid off. Their were almost no games that made use of the gamepad screen in a way that wasn’t just a gimmick, generally the only real advantages of it were being able to play on a handheld screen while the TV was being used (a feat that the switch and steam deck so far better) and being able to have split screen multiplayer where the players can’t see each other’s screen (limited because you only have 1 game pad, and the deck struggles to do two different rendered screens for many games, with games like Hyrule warriors having to cut the enemies in half when doing split screen).

Persona 5’s combat is really good, although I feel like it’s less fun against bosses where you’re not constantly getting weak point resets.

The Xenoblade games have fantastic combat, I’d probably rank them XBC2(late game)>Torna>XBC3>XBX>XBC2(early game)>XBC1

After using Kagi a few months I’ve switched to Brave, and been pretty happy with it. It can be low on image results, but for regular web results I haven’t needed anything else.

Kagi was pretty good, but it didn’t really seem good enough compared to Brave search to justify $10 a month.

Problem is that regular Google results are also getting worse. Google has to change something about search, and they’re most worried about chatgpt being a better alternative to Google search.

Brave does have an option to use anonymous Google results as a fallback if their index doesn’t return enough results, but it will ask you before it does it.

I’m torn between my dislike of the CCP, and really wanting an EV for $12k.

My understanding is that a locally hosted SearXNG instance doesn’t really give you any privacy, unless you “dilute” your searches by letting others do searches from your instance too.

Yeah, the older I get the more I appreciate solutions like this.

I’ve long heard arguments in favor of laser printers, but after finding out that every laser printer is printing yellow tracking dots on every page it prints, it’s made me question if I actually want one. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation that inkjet printers have tracking dots. It’s very possible some do, but in comparison it sounds like every laser printer does.

I currently have an Epson ecotank, to refill it I just pour ink in from a bottle. The ink is super cheap (at least compared to regular inkjets, and there’s no way for them to restrict what brand of liquid ink I use. Honestly it’s a very decent printing experience, and I’m not sure I’d be better off with a Brother Laser.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Polybius is an urban legend about a government experiment in the form of an arcade game set up in Portland.

Here’s the wiki article.

Polybius is a fictitious 1981 arcade game from an urban legend. The legend describes the game as part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment based in Portland, Oregon. Gameplay supposedly produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Supposedly, all of these Polybius arcade machines then disappeared from the arcade market.

It’s a fun tale though, and there are some good articles and video essays on it.

Has to be either free or have a free way to get it

There are good games out there, but outside of a few exceptions you can’t get a good mobile game for free. If you have netflix, the netflix games selection has some good games, I’d especially recommend Into the Breach. If you have google play pass, there are a lot of good games there was well. As far as truly free good games go, Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Hoplite are the only ones that comes to mind.

If you’re willing to spend some money to get something worth your time, I’d recommend Slice & Dice (has a free demo), Reventure, Super Hexagon, VVVVV, Dicey Dungeons, Dead Cells (plays surprisingly well on mobile, play pass includes all DLC), Krumit’s Tale, King of Dragon’s Pass, and Star Traders Frontiers.

I get that the term doesn’t line up age wise with actually Boomers in terms of calendar years, but also video game generations are shorter than social generations. We’re currently on the “ninth-generation” of video games, and Doom came out at the beginning of the third generation of video games. So you could consider Doom-likes to be 6 generations old, and baby-boomers to be 4 generations old. So in terms of “generations”, Boomer shooters should maybe be named after an older generation such as the “Greatest Generation” (6 generations ago). Therefore I propose we call Doom-likes “Greatest Shooters” instead of “Boomer shooters”.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/n031vq/you_voted_and_were_excited_to_chat_about_waymo/gwhqc1t/

From a reddit ama 3 years ago.

And here’s where they discuss what their operators do: https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/n031vq/you_voted_and_were_excited_to_chat_about_waymo/gwhnzib/

Cruze has had a lot of self driving issues.

Waymo also has some human operators for if their cars run into issues, but they report that one ops team member is able to cover multiple vehicles.

I thought this was a pretty good write up, and made some good points. For anyone wanting a short version, the most important part to me was this:

There’s absolutely a future where these silly-looking headsets could replace a laptop or a tablet for some people, while giving you more screen space than either of those devices.

There’s one big problem, though: the Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest headsets are incredibly locked down. They are more restrictive in the software they can run and less interoperable with other hardware than almost any other modern productivity device. I understand we’re still in the early days for these devices—the first Quest headset was released in 2019 and the Vision Pro is brand new—but Meta and Apple have been historically reluctant to open up their other platforms.

Meta’s Quest headsets are more like video game consoles than productivity tools, which makes some sense when gaming is the primary use case and work is an afterthought. The Vision Pro is a more general-purpose device, with much better apps and productivity features than the Quest, but it’s even more locked down. I can’t really use my iPad for work without serious compromises, and the $3,500 Vision Pro is somehow even further away from that.

Yeah, weird to see someone who appreciates the end key but not the home key.

The recent UI update to Discord’s mobile app has me increasingly convinced that I don’t want UI updates unless the old UI has actual issues.

This price hike is for people who signed up for YouTube premium early (before it was combined into YouTube music). These people weren’t promised a low rate for life when they signed up, their price was always going to increase eventually even if the service didn’t merge.

I think the $8 Play Music All Access was advertised as a lifetime price, that it would be what we paid forever. I really hope that’s the case.

I was promised $8 a month for life when I signed up for Play Music all access, and thankfully they’re still honoring that.

Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years

Supposedly he’s doing this with his son. Only time will tell though.

This could be something different, but apple often feels like they intentionally hold upgrades back and instead release them in small improvements over multiple releases.

There is a full desktop mode available, it runs Linux so any game that can be made to run on Linux will work.

The battery seems like better than a marginal improvement. Valve claims 30-50% longer battery life, but some early reviews are reporting better improvements than that (IGN reports that Cyberpunk went from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours, same settings).

Honestly I’m hoping Blizzard will release all their other games on steam as well. If they get review bombed and Overwatch does poorly though, it will lower the chance of that happening.

And they come with the same warranty coverage as the regular steam deck, which should make them safer to buy than most refurbished products.

Might become a problem if Microsoft starts making all their games windows store exclusives. Doesn’t seem to be their strategy right now, but it’s always a danger.

This is a big part of what I like about the steam deck, being able to stop instantly is huge, especially on a handheld.