axby @ axby @lemmy.ca

See https://alexbarry.net/ for projects I'm working on, and contact info.

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2 yr. ago

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Must be this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack

The attack is characterized as misogynist terrorism because it was motivated by revenge for perceived sexual and social rejection by women. At the time of his arrest, Minassian described himself as an incel to the police and in prior social media postings, and described the attack as the continuation of an "incel rebellion", started by the late Elliot Rodger.[11]

Sorry for the mobile Wikipedia link.

Ah, the comparison to Epic helps me understand a bit... maybe. Are they simply worried about PS5 "winning" and Xbox disappearing? I don't worry that Steam will ever disappear because of Epic and don't care if they get games (in fact I have an epic account just to claim the free games, but I don't really play them because they don't support Linux). But if Steam did disappear in favour of Epic, I would be pissed. I wouldn't care if there's a merger or rebranding as long as Linux support and my existing library is maintained.

Even still... worst case, they buy a PS5, and get all the same games and more? A friend of mine switched from Xbox to PS and thought it was pretty good. I do prefer the Xbox thumbstick placement over PS5, though. I guess they'd also lose their Xbox friends/following/achievements/etc. Though surely it would, at worst, be merged into PS.

But still, even if you're worried about this backfiring and Xbox disappearing... it seems worth the risk, to me. Presumably there are some good PS exclusives that could come to Xbox?

I'm really trying hard to figure out how this isn't just fanboy whining and I'm coming up short. I'm interested in other ideas!

I couldn’t understand why this would be anything besides good news, but I guess they’re worried that the hardware won’t get as much focus?

(I’m out of the loop, I play PC games now and haven’t bought a console since the Xbox 360 back in… 2008 or so? I forget)

“It’s so easy to see Xbox is killing its hardware and putting a stake in the heart of it by doing this,” he said. “And there’s no going back… it’s dead.”

He later tweeted: “Xbox could have killed Game Pass, say buy our exclusives and focus on our hardware and that’s 100 percent the better idea [than to] SAY LETS KILL EXCLUSIVES AND put Halo on PS5. The outrage would be half of this and guess what you might be back to having a healthy business.”

It still seems like an over reaction to me. Exclusives have always seemed bad. I’m just glad games are getting released on PC, though I haven’t played many AAA games in a while.

I still prefer a physical SIM for my main cell plan, but when travelling to other countries it is so amazing to be able to just download an eSIM and avoid roaming fees. Airalo is quite convenient, but I hear it’s getting pricey compared to other options.

Plus with dual SIM I can disable roaming on my main SIM but still receive texts for free, but use data for cheap with the local eSIM at the same time.

Disclaimer: I live in Canada which has some of the most expensive cell plans in the world. Roaming in the US is $13 CAD/day and $16 CAD/day in the rest of the world. That seems like blatant extortion to me, they can’t blame Canada’s large size for expensive roaming fees (right?). I think US plans are a lot better, and I assume European cell plans are generally even cheaper.

Edit: I prefer physical SIMs for my main plan because if my main phone is dead or broken, I can just pop the physical SIM in an old phone that I bring while travelling. Until eSIMs can be somehow transferred like that, I don’t see myself using them for my main cell plan. Just remember to set a SIM PIN so that if someone steals your phone, they can’t use your SIM card to receive 2FA texts.

Edit 2: eSIMs are generally a pain to transfer between phones. I think my cell provider lets you do it online by scanning a QR code, but I know some make you call them and read 16 digit codes over the phone. Some even charge a small fee. I dread the day where other cell phone manufacturers follow what Apple did in the US (I think?) and make eSIMs the only option.

Steam link (for more info about the game and reviews): https://store.steampowered.com/app/300570/Infinifactory/

Does the epic store really not show any screenshots, or am I just not able to find them?

Awesome, thanks for confirming my suspicion that air travel is too overpowered. I feel better about giving OpenTTD another try some time. It’s hard to find time where we’re both free and in the mood to learn a new game. Plus I much prefer just figuring something out myself over reading comprehensive guides (I don’t mind looking up specific things).

I’m also excited to look into mods!

A thousand times, yes. I love Factorio and want to get my partner into it, but she finds the logistics tedious and doesn’t like the gritty art style. We love Cities Skylines (the original, I haven’t tried this new one yet). There aren’t enough city builders (or games focused on building and without much combat) that have good multiplayer.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that? We loved Stardew Valley but I want something with more building. The multiplayer mod for Rimworld works pretty well. I considered vanilla Minecraft but it seems like the buildings don’t feel important enough without mods like FTB.

OpenTTD seems like it should be exactly what we want (also it’s free! And runs on weak hardware, and mobile), but maybe we were playing it wrong. Airports seem to give way too much easy money. And when we first played through we only made transportation for passengers, and I think we should have focused more on industry. I tried it again myself later and did better after focusing on industry, but it still seemed like airports were better money (and way easier).

Awesome, thanks for sharing this! I haven't gotten into audiobooks yet, but it's good to know that there are user friendly options out there.

Vaguely related: it's also possible to listen to audio books through local libraries in some cases. I think the app is not as friendly, and does a lot to prevent you from getting DRM free mp3s, but at least there's no charge.

Thanks, this is somewhat reassuring. Maybe some day I'll try it. I used to like tinkering with things, but lately I haven't had as much patience or free time.

Ah, I actually have bought a few music CDs a while ago, and they were actually fairly easy to rip myself. I can't complain about that at all. If ripping DVDs was that easy then I would probably enthusiastically buy a few DVD boxsets. But I don't really want to buy dedicated hardware just to read DVDs on my PC to do a cumbersome ripping process, and also probably lug that hardware (or the entire PC) to my TV now and then to watch a movie.

I've been interested in vinyl for a while, does it really sound better?

Ah, good point. I had briefly heard of this and was shocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

For anyone who hasn't heard:

This is achieved by way of region-locked DVD players, which will play back only DVDs encoded to their region (plus those without any region code).

This definitely furthers the original post's point. And he may have even mentioned it.

It's infuriating that you can pay for something and then move, and lose your collection. This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/488/

I may have missed it, but does he (or anyone else) have recommendations for options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?

And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(

I have some additional frustrations with Netflix:

• they have removed some shows that I like
• if you travel to another country, you can’t always watch the same shows— even if you downloaded them within the app
• they completely remove some episodes: the episode of community where they play Dungeons and Dragons, and (other streaming services) remove the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode.
• extremely user hostile way to browse content. They always move your list around and show the same show in multiple places
• I absolutely hate how all these streaming services auto play to the next episode. You can often change this behaviour. But my partner sometimes casts it to our TV and the damn app (Disney+ in this case, I think) changes the interface just as you get to the credits. I want to sit in peace and let the credits play, and discuss the episode. But it tries to shove another one down your throat, presumably to “maximize engagement”. (I get it for content that you’re binging or are re watching. But this is horrible if you’re just watching an episode during dinner and don’t want to have to scramble to stop the autoplay as soon as it ends)

I really like Aegis for 2FA/TOTP:

https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis

Edit: also Element, a matrix client, for messaging: https://element.io/download

Edit 3: Feeder for RSS (Google Play)), (F-Droid), I really like how you can extract the text of articles without ads.

Edit 4: Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, a bunch of simple puzzle games, no ads or BS (Google Play) (I think this is the right one: F-Droid). Fun fact: he created PuTTY.

Edit 2: also minidlna (apparently called ReadyMedia now) as a UPnP/DLNA server to host music and videos on your PC, then you can easily watch using VLC on a phone/computer (and any smart TV with the VLC app, probably) within the LAN. I’d be interested to hear any recommendations for how to easily access my UPnP server from outside my network from my phone. I’m sure there’s some way to do it with a VPN, but I’d rather only route the media streaming traffic through my home network, not all my phone’s traffic.

+1 to everything you said. Another funny thing I noticed: I looked at my steam catalog on a family member’s Macbook. Many of the games aren’t available on Mac, plus they dropped 32 bit executable support.

I never thought that only ~15 years later (from when I first tried Linux) we would start booting into linux from a mainstream OS for gaming. How the times have changed.

Thanks for this info. I’ve always wanted to try some of the FF games, is there any benefit to playing them in order? I rarely manage to stick to a new game, so I’m wondering if I should just try one of the most recommended ones at first, then I can play the others if I liked it. (But I don’t want to spoil the story, if there’s much connecting them)

I came here for tips to be happy but I still enjoyed your tangent dog story. I hope your dog is okay!

I was wondering what this was, here it is:

Ryujinx is an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator created by gdkchan and written in C#. This emulator aims at providing excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds.

(from https://ryujinx.org/)

Also semi-hijacking this thread: which colony sim has decent multiplayer? Ideally co-op.

My partner and I tried a multiplayer mod in Rimworld a year or two ago and I don't think her PC can keep up with it on higher speeds, and it doesn't seem to sync. So my game advances, and hers lags behind and needs to take some time to catch up.

Thanks a lot! Excited to use darkly-pureblack now on web.

This is awesome! “The Incredible Machine” seems like it’d work great too. It was a bit awkward to control in the browser (having to bring up the keyboard a few times), but I’ll have to try their app later.