How does one find out what chips are in what USB sticks? Manufacturers don’t make this information available. At best you just find read and write speeds, usually just the max possible read speed and nothing else.

As much as I like Firefox/Librewolf, Vivaldi still has the upper hand in UI/UX. Workspaces, more feature-rich sidebar, one-click access to recently closed tabs right there in the tab bar, speed dial, tab stacks and other QoL stuff that makes just enough difference for me that I can’t really daily-drive any other browsers. Until FF reaches feature parity (it’s getting close, but still isn’t quite there yet) I don’t see myself migrating anytime soon. Quess I’ll just need to rely more on AdGuard DNS and Vivaldi’s built-in adblocker if uBlock becomes neutered on Chromium…

Windows 11 is easier on the eyes and easier to use. We took the best elements of Windows 10 and refined them to create a soothing place to work and play.

Nah, no, hiding basic stuff behind bazillion clicks in nested menus deeper than hell is not “easier to use”.

Wake on approach. Lock on leave.

Windows 11 can automatically wake up when you approach and lock when you leave.

Why would I want that on a desktop that needs to do work even when I’m AFK? My PC doesn’t even have a password on it—because if a stranger gets access to it, something has already gone horribly wrong and a burglar seeing my furry pics is the least of my problems🤪

3D spatial sound

This technology makes it possible for you to perceive the sources of sound in games. 3 It requires compatible headphones and is available on both Windows 10 and 11.

I don’t use headphones and I already have a bangin’ good surround sound setup with 18" sub and tactile transducers.

Smart App Control

Exclusive to Windows 11 is Smart App Control. It provides a layer of security by only permitting apps with good reputations to be installed. Only available on the latest version of Windows 11.

Why the fuck would I want that? I and only I get to decide what programs have the priviledge of getting installed and what don’t. I bet M$ will deny “good reputation” to harmless code injection mods for games (SKSE/OBSE et al, ENB) because these are basically hacking while allowing data-stealing privacy nightmares like Discord app.

KDE Connect is awesome. And completely cross-platform, and FOSS.

Child holding a teddybear.
ED-209: “Put down your weapon! You have 40 seconds to comply!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvqDaFpXeM

Oh, who am I kidding, human cops do exactly the same shit…

Elder Scroll series. Skyrim for the modding and eyecandy potential, Oblivion for the madness that is spellcrafting (also Shivering Isles is the best ES DLC), Morrowind for the true alien fantasy.

Thief II is the quintessential first-person sneaker.
Independence War II still has one of the best flight models and a great story.

X3: Terran Conflict is the best first-person strategy game.

Half-Life 1 and 2.

Il-2: Great Battles is the best WWII combat flight sim.
DCS is the best jet combat sim.

Elite: Dangerous is the only space sim with actual 1:1 scale galaxy, including many real-life stars and is the best life-in-space simulator with flight model as good as I-War 2 and decent enough on-foot parts (even though there is some jank and glitches).

Since I mostly listen by dropping a whole genre into an ephemeral playlist, there is zero overlap. I rarely even hear a piece more than a few times a year, and sometimes the whole playlist takes more than a year to play from 0 to Z at an average of 1 hour play every day (eg I have pretty much the complete catalogue of Ektoplazm, including 575 goa trance and 377 downtempo albums).

Even if I have a few static playlists of random pieces, they’re also thematic (eg a bluegrass playlist as background music for dogfighting) and with zero overlap between them.

Come to think, of it, I only have two static, saved playlists—one for dogfighting and one with pieces that have subbass and ULF content down to and below 20 Hz. Playlists for me are wholly ephemeral, the default one that gets cleared and refilled as I go, acting more as a playback queue, and temporary ones that get deleted when I’m done with them.

Used to play strategy games quite a lot 20 or so years ago. AoE, Homeworld, Red Alert. But I never got very deep into them.

The main reason I don’t like strategy games anymore is that most of them simply boil down to micromanagement and actions-per-minute. That is not how my brain works. I hate micromanaging and multitasking. I love planning tactics, doing recon and analyzing the situation (as long as I don’t have to do statistical analysis with spreadsheets for that), setting goals and executing plans.

Best strategy game I’ve ever played? X3: Terran Conflict. Once you set your plans in motion everything works pretty much automatically—you don’t have to order your traders or military forces around constantly or set up product batches in your factories manually. You set up parameters by which your assets work, and aside from occasional tweaking and optimization you leave them to their own devices. Instead you concentrate on the actual grand strategy or a single battle at hand or putting out some random brushfire that needs your attention without the worry about your “villagers” standing around idle because they can’t figure out there’s a fresh patch of fish 100 meters to the left.

Plus you’re there, in situ, as an actual participant in the world, not an abstract godhand hovering over the map. First-person strategy. Commanding two task groups steamrolling through a sector from the bridge of your cruiser, sipping coffee as turrets put on a massive fireworks around you is epic.

You’re not alone. I’m in the same spot. I love the humor of Fallout and I really liked the TV series; I have played Morrowind, Oblivion, more Skyrim playthroughs than I can remember but I bounced off FO3 pretty hard. For me it was the dreary environment and overall decay of the world.

People in FO3 just didn’t seem to care much about their living conditions and this doesn’t seem like what would happen in actual post-collapse society. People in general love surrounding themselves with art and beauty, rusty scrap metal shacks wouldn’t be around two centuries after the bombs drop. Earthship, stucco and clay bricks are low tech but can be made very pretty and livable. Murals and paintings made using various pigments, colorful textiles, basreliefs, carvings and sculptures of ceramic, wood and stone would be everywhere, sprinkled with surviving pre-war artifacts that’s been restored, maintained and cherished with pride.

Plant life would also recover quite fast and be lush in a post-atomic war world—Chornobyl is a prime example how nature claims back human-abandoned land just decades after a nuclear event. Deserts in FO should not be all dreary brown misery; there would be a thriving ecosystem of both flora and fauna. Two centuries is enough time for the most dangerous radioisotopes to decay away and you wouldn’t really find places where radiation would stop wildlife reclaiming the land. More mutations and birth defects, yes, but life will find a way.

And this overall miserable representation of post-apocalyptic world is the reason FO games never really clicked for me even though the satire and tone hit the spot.

Velcro, or maybe Van Der Waals force, or maybe whatever the hell makes gauge blocks stick to each other.

PC. Because:

1. Better controller support—I’m not limited to what MS or Sony deem as “certified” or “authorized” hardware. Most of the really good hardware (VKB, Virpil, Arduino) will never be available for consoles and what little is available is bad at best.
2. Best sims are PC only (DCS, Il-2, E:D, X series, Hunternet etc)
3. Sims support 3rd party auxiliary software (TacView, EDDiscovery, OMH, EDMC etc) for better experience and that’s simply not going to be possible on consoles, ever.
4. For other games, modding experience on PC is simply better. SKSE and ENB is what keeps Skyrim going and makes it still relevant 13 years later. Can’t have this kind of code injection and wrappers on consoles.
5. If I ever get into retrogaming, emulation is the way, especially since actually acquiring retro console games in their original physical format is bound to become a very expensive collector’s hobby if you don’t have your own collection from childhood already or don’t have local second-hand options.

Vortex is not a launcher, it’s a mod manager. And you don’t have to use it, there are alternatives. But you should use a mod manager, manual installation/uninstallation is really bad practice that can and will break things.

This is good. Modding can turn into the deepest dependency hell ever and not having access to a specific version of mod A can make mod B that you really love unusable. See: Skyrim VR and Unofficial Patch.

E2E encryption is the public protection measure.

VKB. Their configuration software is intimidating at first glance (and you better RTFM!), but it’s super powerful and allows you to change and tune absolutely everything. Plus the settings are stored in the device so you only need to run the configurator when you want to change something. This is what you get when engineers run the company, not marketing, and they respect the end user’s intelligence.

Aside from certain mice, office keyboards and video conferencing stuff, Logitech is trash. Especially when it comes to flight sim and simracing hardware.

Like Skyrim this one is far more playable in third person, and I really recommend giving that a try.

Haven’t played FO, but hell, no, Skyrim (and Morrowind, and Oblivion) in 3rd person is janky AF. Bethesda games never were meant to be played in 3rd person—I suspect the option is there simply for vanity cam, screenshots and modding.

Third party apps: “OK. We’ll show ads. Muted. Behind a black overlay. If we really can’t find a workaround.”

StarWars Anarchists: Fuck 'em all! Power to the people!✊🏴

In 2006, it became possible for anyone to search WorldCat directly at its open website [REDACTED], not only through the subscription FirstSearch interface where it had been available on the web to subscribing libraries for more than a decade before.

So how is this “hacking” if the information is publicly accessible for all?