Hard disagree. Sure, I might be okay with doing that, you might be okay with that, but the success of the Steam Deck hinges on its accessibility and ease of use.

The people on a Steam Deck Lemmy community are not representative of most users, and I recommend the Steam Deck frequently to others based on its ease of use, not it's moddability.

I will concede that Steam's support of parts and upgrades also has long term positive implications, even for people that just buy it to play games. Even if the average user never cracks it open to swap out the hard drive, they probably know someone who could. A broken screen for a Steam Deck is a repair, not a replacement for example.

Good to know!

I can't really complain to much though, mine is around 1 1/2 years old and still works.

I've been using the JSAUX ModCase since the hub variant was first offered. A ModCase with a hub is pretty much a portable dock.

Coming up on two years of heavy use and I do have some observations on the ModCase.

#The kickstand is not very heavy, but I find I usually have it off and in my briefcase when I am playing on the Steam Deck. After it was broken in a bit, it could flop around a bit, and although not particularly large it is fairly heavy duty and having it off saves a bit of weight and avoids the flopping around.

#The kickstand is fairly heavy duty, but there are two small hinge pins that the foot levers out on. One of the hinge pins broke on mine a few months ago, and the other is wearing fast. I made a quick repair with a bit of wire (actually from a paper clip) but the size isn't quite right, so the hinge is still pretty loose. This is a simple device, and is a wear part. I could order a whole replacement ModCase, but it would be nice if you could just get a replacement kickstand. Likewise, although it hasn't happened to me (yet), when using the ModCase, you sometimes put the removable cover down somewhere ill advised. I would assume that the cover is lost or broken more often than other parts of the ModCase. The ability to buy just a replacement cover would also be good. The clippable band has been pretty useful for just attaching any random device to the ModCase, more bands would also be a useful purchase. The only extra part is adhesive pads, which I guess is a partial replacement for the attachable band.

#The hub in the hub/ultimate version is a little bulky, and not really much more useful than the cheap one I first got off of Amazon. It works mostly fine (external video cuts out briefly now and then), but the cheap Amazon one is around half the size, and the external video doesn't cut out.

Overall, I highly recommend the ModCase.

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.

Veritasium just released a video about people picking 37 when asked to pick a random number.

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.

On the topic of games with an online component, wouldn't it be great if they could run indefinitely?

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Can't you use Proton on Mac? I'd think that would solve most compatibility problems.

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.

The classic joke:

Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. "Herr Altmann," said his secretary, "I notice you're reading Der Stürmer! I can't understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?"

"On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we're on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!"

I accept no credit, I simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia.

Wholesome thread of the day, thanks all! As an anonymous internet stranger, In hire it works out!

Just finished an "About Here" video looking at the absence of new "small" single-lot apartment buildings in North America.

Thought it was another interesting take on how zoning can contribute to housing prices.

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.

I'm just honoured to be considered threatening enough to bother with interfering.

Doesn't matter. We can change the schedule instead of changing the clocks.

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

The developer of another game distributed by WB, Fist Puncher, commented on the Ars Technica story about this.

Found it, it's the "Promoted Comment" now.

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

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/its-kind-of-depressing-wb-discovery-pulls-indie-game-for-business-changes/

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.