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Retro Homebrew ROMS?
  • If a homebrew game is popular enough, such as Micro Mages, you can sometimes find them in romsets. Unfortunately some cartridge-only and less popular ROMs take a while to get uploaded; took me a year to find a specific Genesis ROM that was cartridge-only.

  • China's Xi accused the US of trying to trick him into invading Taiwan, but said he won't take the bait, report says
  • Given the economic imperialist policies Chinese Communist Party in South America and Africa, let alone the lack of democratic institutions when compared to Taiwan, the CCP's interest in Taiwan has far less to do with 'liberating' it than taking control of its substantial economic base.

  • Biden's Middle East Policy Is Horrific. Trump's Would Be Even Worse
  • Republicans don't either, something that such statements should reflect. I wish there were a better nominee to vote for, but given that Republicans have benefitted from protests on issues that would be handled even worse by them, statements critical of current policy shouldn't be made without the context of what would instead be done if Trump wins the presidential election.

  • Biden is on track to beat inflation and lose the presidency
  • The problem is that anything less than unwavering support for Israel would be spun by well-funded propagandists as left-wing at best and antisemitic at worst. Regardless of how unjustified those claims are, and how detrimental they are to the wellbeing of oppressed Palestinians, a switch in foreign policy tactics now just for Netanyahu to wait for Trump to be elected is not worth it, as any short term benefits for the Palestinians would be undone tenfold should Trump be elected. Beyond that, a similar or worse fate would await Ukraine should that occur, so it's ultimately better to wait until the election is over to consider major policy changes.

  • Biden is on track to beat inflation and lose the presidency
  • While it would be great if the US weren't unilaterally supporting the actions of the Israeli government, unfortunately a major shift from that foreign policy position would likely only receive substantial support from the people already likely to vote Democrat, or anti-Trump at the very least. It would likely be spun by media outlets that are either generally conservative or simply biased in favor of the Israel government in such a way that would push moderates towards Trump. As Trump would only increase the country's support of the Israeli military, it's more important to avoid him being elected to avoid a worse situation in the long run.

  • Steam owner Valve accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers
  • Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not excessive. In contrast, Apple's implementation of a 30% cut is even worse, since with an iPhone you can't just install an app from another source (and even when you can in the case of the EU, there are recurring costs for doing so). Since Steam accounts for the majority of PC video game sales, with AAA titles only not releasing on it when they have a clear financial motive not to, Valve's use of a price parity clause effectively makes it the arbiter of what the industry standard markup on PC should be.

  • Epic won’t update Fortnite to run on the Steam Deck. Tim Sweeney says Linux is ‘a terrifically hard audience to serve’ (2022)
  • Valve could still operate as it currently does, including having sufficient profits to account for R&D and long-term costs, at a lower cut of platform sales (as another commenter mentioned, Gabe Newell's billion dollar yacht collection is demonstrative of the platform's profitability, especially when one considers how much it costs to maintain ships). Products such as the Steam Deck make money for Valve too, as Steam Deck users (myself included) statistically buy more games on Steam as a result. I don't support profiteering efforts by game publishers either, such as the Factorio price increase attributed to inflation, $70 game releases attributed to inflation when digital releases have reduced their costs, and micro transactions in general. In any case, however, given that cost increases are always the consumer's responsibility, cost decreases should not simply be a means for companies to bolster their profit margins.

  • This is a question from the N-400, U.S. Application for Naturalization. Good question? Still valid, or a holdover from the cold war?
  • While its implementations thus far have been totalitarian, technically true communism (something even the leaders of the USSR admitted to having not achieved) wouldn't be totalitarian, so in an academic sense, focusing on it when asking such a question doesn't make much sense. The question itself is sensible, as people wishing to become American should respect the country's democratic institutions, though in asking it perhaps there should also be a greater effort in improving the quality of those institutions to be closer to those of a true, rather than flawed, democracy.

    Also, in my opinion at least, framing it as 'good' or 'bad' moral judgement reflects an outdated view that morals should be regulated, and thus should be restated as simply being in agreement with the principles of the US constitution.

  • Epic won’t update Fortnite to run on the Steam Deck. Tim Sweeney says Linux is ‘a terrifically hard audience to serve’ (2022)
  • Just because there's an outdated industry standard doesn't mean it should be perpetuated, let alone supported, for eternity. Valve's server hosting costs on a per-installation basis have fallen substantially since they first launched Steam, so there's no reason why the 30% cut is still necessary; even 20% would leave them a sizable profit margin. I'm not a fan of the Epic Game Store for bribing companies to not release their games on Steam for a set amount of time, and choose not to use it as a result, but it's time that the 30% industry standard be dropped. In purchasing a game I want to support continued development of that franchise, and $15 of a $50 purchase going to the storefront is not only excessive and inflationary, but harms developers as well.

  • Biden Weighs Letting Ukraine Strike With U.S. Weapons in Russia
  • If he lets Israel strike Palestine, then Ukraine should be able to destroy the Russian infrastructure that's enabling the Russian Army to be easily resupplied. In contrast to Netanyahu, Zelensky's chief interest wouldn't be to target population centers anyhow, as such a move would only fuel Putin's popularity.

  • PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history
  • Perhaps more like what fridge companies do via incessant water filter replacement reminders: Enjoying your Super Deluxe CoolPlus™ Fridge? Don't forget to check out the CoolPlus™ Fridge Magnetic Spice Rack and CoolPlus™ Fridge Juice Dispenser Add-on!

  • Does Reddit shadowban mentions of Lemmy?

    In the months since I deleted my Reddit accounts and joined Lemmy, the lack of user base growth has made it clear that we need some users to stay on Reddit as a means of shepherding more users over on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, Reddit simply got what it wanted: less users who make a fuss about how it manages its platform without losing users en-masse.

    In doing so, however, does Reddit shadowban posts that mention or promote Lemmy? Googling mentions of Lemmy on Reddit mostly brings up posts from around the time of the blackout, suggesting that mentions of it since then have been suppressed. Before I return to Reddit to promote Lemmy, does anyone know for certain one way or the other?

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    AAC vs AC3 bitrates

    In the past I've chosen I've often kept AC3 audio tracks thinking that their substantially higher bitrates made them better than the AAC tracks I compared them to. As I've since learned that AAC can be comparable to AC3 at a substantially lower bitrate, to have a means of comparing the two codecs, what would the AAC-equivalent bitrates be for 224kbps and 640kbps AC3?

    7
    Video length variation when converting MP4 file to MKV

    To compile optimal video, audio, and subtitle track combinations of videos for my media library, I've found MPC-HC's millisecond counter and frame skip features useful for finding the exact offset between different video and audio tracks. After using MKVToolNix to combine the video track of an MP4 file with the delay-adjusted audio track of an MKV file, I noticed that the resulting MKV file was 0.143 seconds (about 3.5 frames in this case) shorter than the original MP4 file. As the frames of both videos remained in alignment until the end, it seems that the 0.143 seconds were taken off the end of the video.

    Is there a difference between the two formats that affects video length?

    2
    Why aren't more releases x265?

    Nearing the filling of my 14.5TB hard drive and wanting to wait a bit longer before shelling out for a 60TB raid array, I've been trying to replace as many x264 releases in my collection with x265 releases of equivalent quality. While popular movies are usually available in x265, less popular ones and TV shows usually have fewer x265 options available, with low quality MeGusta encodes often being the only x265 option.

    While x265 playback is more demanding than x264 playback, its compatibility is much closer to x264 than the new x266 codec. Is there a reason many release groups still opt for x264 over x265?

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    Hard Drive Shucking

    Having gradually built up my media collection to near the capacity of my 16TB external HDD, I've reached the point where I'll probably need to build a RAID array to keep the collection in one place. Assuming the RAID array will be at least 32TB, I have a few questions:

    1. From what I've read RAID arrays can help mitigate the risk of individual drives failing if extra space is allotted on the hard drives. Assuming a total capacity of 32TB, how much of that space would be reserved by the RAID array for data loss prevention?

    2. Is there a certain type of hard drive I would have to use? Aside from my 16TB drive, I also have two 2 8TB drives that I'd ideally like to be able to re-use in the RAID array, but have left them in their enclosures for the time being.

    3. If the hard drives in the array have different transfer speeds, does the array as a whole default to the slowest one?

    4. Whether the hard drives I already have are compatible or not, what RAID enclosure and hard drives would you recommend?

    24
    Puzzle games with procedurally-generated levels?

    While many great puzzle games have a fixed number of levels, I'd like to find more with procedurally-generated levels to maximize replay value. Aside from Minesweeper games, so far I've found the following ones:

    • Hexcells Infinite
    • InfiniPicross 2.0
    • KNIGHTS
    • Lines Infinite
    • Linklight
    • LOOP
    2
    Puzzle games with procedurally-generated levels?

    While many great puzzle games have a fixed number of levels, I'd like to find more with procedurally-generated levels to maximize replay value. Aside from Minesweeper games, so far I've found the following ones:

    • Hexcells Infinite
    • InfiniPicross 2.0
    • KNIGHTS
    • Lines Infinite
    • Linklight
    • LOOP
    18
    Television @lemmy.world Zedstrian @lemmy.dbzer0.com
    Detective show recommendations?

    Trying to help my grandparents find a new detective show to watch. For reference, here's what they've already watched:

    Bosch Bosch: Legacy Beyond Paradise Death in Paradise Elementary Endeavour Father Brown Lewis Lie to Me Longmire Marple Midsomer Murders Murdoch Mysteries NCIS Poirot Shetland The Brokenwood Mysteries The Mentalist

    While they generally seem to prefer British detective shows, I'm not sure which ones are left to recommend to them.

    22
    [Request] Add 'Redirect to home instance in new tab' option to browser context menu

    In navigating Lemmyverse for potential communities to subscribe to, it would be helpful to be able to redirect links to my home instance in a new tab to facilitate sorting through multiple communities at a time. Ideally, the option would be implemented with the ability to enable or disable either of the two context menu items to minimize context menu cluttering.

    1
    Alternatives to TorrentLeech

    While TorrentLeech is great, the demise of FileList makes me want to diversify my catalogue of tracker options in case something were to happen to it as well. Popular releases are usually available on public trackers for a while, with some releases findable on usenet as well, but are there any easily-joinable private trackers as worthwhile as TorrentLeech?

    7
    Sources for Movie and TV dubbed audio tracks

    While many popular English language TV shows seem to be dubbed into other widely-spoken languages (looking for French, personally), the releases that include those audio tracks unfortunately often either have lower bitrates than their English-only counterparts (which only include subtitles for other languages) or only have one of several seasons that made its way from the scene to usenet or a torrent tracker. Therefore, to avoid needing to download two variants of the same content and merge the sought combination of their video/audio tracks, is there a simpler means of acquiring dubbed audio of movies and TV shows?

    Language-specific public trackers (Torrent911 and YGGTorrent for French) seem to be a reliable means of acquiring alternate releases of movies containing dubbed audio that otherwise are identical in length to the original English releases, making them mergeable, but they seem to be lacking in terms of dubbed releases for anything but the most popular movies and TV shows. Usenet fills the gaps somewhat, but as language-specific private torrent trackers seem hard to gain access to, I haven't found a reliable source for most dubbed releases and dubbed audio tracks.

    0
    Looking for the simplest means of playing videos from a USB storage device on a non-smart TV

    Having already configured a VLC-powered Google TV configuration with USB hard drives for a relative without the router or download speed needed for reliable streaming, I'm now trying to configure a similar setup for another relative with a non-smart TV and an even slower download speed.

    The only requirements for such a device would be the ability to be controlled entirely with a remote, a USB-A or USB-C port compatible with USB hubs and media storage devices, and the reliable playback of videos of assorted codecs and file extensions. As Roku, FireTV, and Android/Google TV streaming sticks tend to be plastered with ads as a means of promoting content within their ecosystems, an alternative HDMI device that minimizes the number of button presses between turning on the TV and and reaching the navigation menu for videos on attached USB storage devices would be preferred.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)ZE
    Zedstrian @lemmy.dbzer0.com
    Posts 12
    Comments 179