kyub
joined 2 years ago
You should have played Black Mesa instead of Half-Life 1 these days. It's not a 1:1 remake but quite close and of course much more modern, and just awesome. Xen in particular is much better in BM than it is in the original, so it even fixes HL1's weakest part. The rest is kind of similarly awesome. Maybe you should play it right now to see the difference.
(Black Mesa is a successful fan project remake of the whole Half-Life 1, and they even expanded on some things (especially Xen). It's based on an updated Source engine and has at least the graphical fidelity of recent Half-Life 2 builds, if not more).
1-2 decades earlier maybe (meaning: 60s or 70s). Location... I don't know. Maybe Norway, I've never heard anything bad about Norway. Might just be random selection bias though.
There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn't what it used to mean. In fact I'd be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an "AAAA quality" game with Skulls & Bones or how it's called and it's a total flop.
The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it's kind of safe at this point to just assume by default that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don't trust them to produce a good game).
Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren't found so easily. But they exist. There's no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.
Portal 2 is THE highest rated game on Steam.
Doom or Tetris were probably the most influential ones?
Similarly helpful advice: a broken clock still shows the correct time twice a day.
So I don't know this figure except I've seen it a couple of times in no particular context and I always thought that it was supposed to be a mouth with 1 tooth, I didn't ever think of it as a nose when seeing it.
You shouldn't have to sign into any account just to use your operating system. This is wrong regardless of OS. It's wrong and bad on iOS and proprietary Androids, and it's wrong and bad on Windows. Also, it wasn't even a thing on Windows before Win8. Don't just blindly accept such enshittification. It would be tolerable if it would be opt-in and purely optional, but MS is pretty much enforcing this crap upon their users, and that's more than a red line being crossed. That's simply hostility towards their users.
MS noticed that people do this willingly on iOS/proprietary Android and thought hey if we do this on Windows we can harvest even more data from the logged-in users and we have a confirmation of identity and also always get their current IP address and more device data.
To better sell this to the average user, they offer some minor benefits such as settings synchronization across devices, for which they also harvest your settings data, obviously (and even more they're not telling you directly). Either way, the only real reason they want this is to know who uses their OS, to control access (they could disable your account) and to harvest even more data from the logged-in users. With local user accounts, as it should be, this would not be possible.
Online accounts make sense for online services, not for your OS which should work independently from online services.
Either use a Linux distro (desktop/notebook/server/mobile) or an open-source Android distro such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS, LineageOS (mobile).
Deep Rock Galactic
https://itsfoss.com/bluesky-vs-mastodon/ This is a comparison about Mastodon vs Bluesky.
Misskey is most similar to Mastodon. Bluesky is also a bit similar to both but still the most different one from the other two. All three are different social networks. Mastodon and Misskey are ActivityPub compatible, meaning they can "speak with" other ActivityPub compatible social networks, e.g. Lemmy, Pixelfed or PeerTube. Together, that's what's called the Fediverse (different federated social networks being able to talk to each other). Bluesky is based on a similar, but different protocol called AT Protocol. It also means it's possible for social network services using this protocol to be compatible to each other. But not sure if it's there in practice yet, if there are even other social networks using this, and so on.
I'd recommend using Mastodon, and in general ActivityPub compatible social network services. They're all open source, anyone can host a server (which is very important, because if the server operator ever does any bullsh!t you're not forced to stay there and still can remain on the social network, just from a different node), they're federated (servers can talk to each other and usually do unless some specific servers are blocked on purpose by the other server), and they're compatible with multiple services also using the same protocol. And there are "big" networks already existing using ActivityPub, most notably Mastodon and Lemmy of course. Also, Meta's Threads is also using ActivityPub, however some Mastodon instance hosts have decided to block Meta's servers (there are good reasons for doing so but explaining this would make this post even longer).
Bluesky is controlled by a company made by ex-Twitter employees, I think its federation capabilities are still limited right now(?), and one can't be so sure how its future is going to look like under these circumstances. We've all seen what happened to Twitter after Musk bought it, so I think only the true, unrestricted open source social network platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Loops.video, PeerTube and so on are the future.
Before Phantom Liberty / 2.0: average game. Overpromised and underdelivered. Good at first but getting boring fast.
After Phantom Liberty / 2.0: very good game overall, fixes most old problems. PL by itself one of the best DLCs ever made, sad that such high quality was necessary to save the base game. It's like the game was meant to be from the start.
Still not on W3's level overall though, but if you can get it at reduced price it's a really good experience now. Start PL before the meeting at Embers. After PL, resume that main quest.
Don't read too much bad news, it's bad for the general mood. But still expect everything to go to hell, because it absolutely will, and sooner than anticipated. But you can still enjoy some amount of non-hellish time. And then make some preparations for an upcoming fascist government, rising crime/vandalism, and for climate change hitting everywhere with full force. Existing systems might not stay functional. Start building up local communities to support each other. Make the best of any situation and make forward-looking decisions. Don't despair, but also don't have false hopes. It will get much worse before it will get any better.