The technological barriers for a self-sustaining colony are high for sure. I hope humanity eventually does get there, but if it’s all controlled by oligarchs then it’s hardly progress for humanity, despite any major technological breakthroughs.
I’ve been a huge Zelda fan since I was a kid, but I played BotW in 2016 and found it playable, but way overrated. Not a 10/10 masterpiece, more like 8/10. I have yet to even bother with TotK. I am also a huge Metroid fan, but Prime 4 seems like just more of the same.
After playing both KCD and KCD2, for example, Zelda games just seem lacking in depth in comparison. I don’t know, maybe Nintendo is past their prime—either that, or I’ve just played too many of their games and am bored of them now.
The fact that they seem to be screwing the pooch with their latest console maybe means they’ll stop being arrogant and lower their prices, but I’ll be emulating their games only from now on anyway.
American obsession with money is weird when you think about it. Money is only useful when the human creativity, ingenuity, effort, etc. you want is for sale. Billionaires think their bunkers will save them after they make the world go to shit, but nobody is going to take care of these helpless bastards when there is nothing for their money to buy. Then there is the fact that money often ruins intrinsic motivation, which is why, for example, looking at the work of great artists and composers from the past, it’s clearly evident which works were commissioned vs. which ones were truly inspired work. A lot of open source software is inspired work that can be used without the limitations of paid software. Anyone running the arr stack with Jellyfin on a shitty old laptop knows all the enshittified streaming services combined can’t offer a superior experience. People with a loving and supportive family are wealthier than Elon Musk, who despite his net worth reeks of desperation for any superficial attention he can get. America is supposedly a “wealthy” country, but any country with a government that actually cares about its people and ensures they have a social safety net, clean food to eat without 1000 toxic additives, etc. is infinitely more wealthy than the USA.
I bet the scammer is reading this thread right now. Yeah, you pal. I see you.
At least the money DOGE saved by ruining lives will be put to good use ruining more lives and fattening oligarchs’ pockets with the record $1 trillion Pentagon budget Trump just proudly announced.
I haven’t tested them, but my understanding is that on a faster gaming PC, it’s a better experience than the Switch. My understanding is also that the frame rate on the Steam Deck isn’t great for them, especially TotK, and that BotW is more playable on Steam Deck with Cemu. Here’s a thread on Reddit talking about how to get beyond 20fps for TotK with mods and other techniques:
https://www.reddit.com/r/yuzu/comments/176700x/zelda_totk_playable_on_steam_deck/
Might be somewhat comparable to a laptop RTX 3050: https://tech4gamers.com/nintendo-switch-2-equipped-with-5nm-nvidia-tegra/
I don’t like Nintendo, but agreed, if you’re going to make an argument, make it factually. $90 for “physical” copies, but that’s more like the maximum instead of the minimum.
It hasn’t been my experience that Deck emulates Switch games better than the Switch, unless you mean 3rd party titles running on Proton instead of being emulated, in which case, I’d agree. For example, haven’t been able to get a solid 60fps on MK8 in split screen mode.
I haven’t used Maya since the early 2000s when they had the Personal Learning Edition. I remember being put off by the 3 mouse button requirement and the weirdness of the UI at the time, but found C4D drastically more intuitive. Maybe the Maya UX has improved a lot since then, but I found Blender 2.8 slightly less intuitive than C4d when I first started, but not bad overall, compared to being completely put off by earlier versions of Blender’s UI as I had been with Maya. The expensive subscriptions for both Maya and C4D are definitely more off-putting than anything else, though.
Ha, and that’s why they exist despite what an otherwise terrible idea they are. 😂
Ads are an odd concept—it’s someone paying money to toot their own horn, which most of the civilized world looks down upon. In fact, the best way to sell me your product is to have the humility to tell me its downsides or give me a nuanced explanation of when to buy your product vs. a competitor. Otherwise, it’s always much better to let someone else sing your praises. I do find documentation, videos, and other factual information about a product to be the best possible sales pitch—give me an accurate picture of it, and if it’s really any good, I might just buy it. If I think you’re trying to bullshit me, I’ll assume your product has to be shit, or otherwise you’d just tell me the facts.
I was contemplating switching from Cinema 4D to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.
Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.
The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.
I stand corrected about PostgreSQL support dropping in 10.11. Seems we may still have quite a wait ahead of us.
I was imagining setting up an old laptop as a backup to my main server with PostgreSQL replication for the Jellyfin DB and some sort of file synchronization for media and metadata. I have yet to manually setup PostgreSQL replication outside of a cloud provider where the process is automated, so I was planning it as an interesting learning experience. However, from the post above, it seems I was misinformed about the timeframe of PostgreSQL support in Jellyfin.
Ah, seems I had a misunderstanding and appreciate the info!
I’m also quite happy with the LCD model myself. Most games are running on medium settings on a low-res screen without RTX, so the eye candy is at a minimum anyway and I never imagined a better screen would make much difference.
The beauty of the Deck is how easy it is to pick it up and play an hour here and there wherever you are, so I’ve played a lot of games I’ve been meaning to play for years that I frankly would’ve not have gotten to play otherwise. Better with less eye candy than not at all.
I got the LED 64GB model last year for like $280 and added a $80 1TB SSD myself, which is an easy 20 minute job. For such a low powered machine, mid 300s is about what it’s worth to me, or otherwise might as well get a gaming laptop. I have a MSI laptop with a RTX 4060, 32GB of RAM that was around $800 on sale, which I mainly use for Blender, so I can’t see paying anything close to that for a handheld.
FTFY.
I found this publication in the British Medical Journal interesting about how evidence-based medicine is undermined by financial incentives. Science is the best institution we have for understanding the truth, but it’s far from incorruptible. It’s especially disappointing that the companies profiting from a product are in many instances the ones doing the studies to prove their safety and effectiveness. The corporate capture of the governmental agencies tasked with regulating them is also quite concerning, as is the state of academia.
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702