I’m interested in hearing both about if you still use the default carrying case that comes with the deck, and if you use any kind of protective clip-on case such as the Killswitch, JSAUX Modcase, or other.
I’ve been using the JSAUX ModCase since the hub variant was first offered. A ModCase with a hub is pretty much a portable dock.
Coming up on two years of heavy use and I do have some observations on the ModCase.
#The kickstand is not very heavy, but I find I usually have it off and in my briefcase when I am playing on the Steam Deck. After it was broken in a bit, it could flop around a bit, and although not particularly large it is fairly heavy duty and having it off saves a bit of weight and avoids the flopping around.
#The kickstand is fairly heavy duty, but there are two small hinge pins that the foot levers out on. One of the hinge pins broke on mine a few months ago, and the other is wearing fast. I made a quick repair with a bit of wire (actually from a paper clip) but the size isn’t quite right, so the hinge is still pretty loose. This is a simple device, and is a wear part. I could order a whole replacement ModCase, but it would be nice if you could just get a replacement kickstand. Likewise, although it hasn’t happened to me (yet), when using the ModCase, you sometimes put the removable cover down somewhere ill advised. I would assume that the cover is lost or broken more often than other parts of the ModCase. The ability to buy just a replacement cover would also be good. The clippable band has been pretty useful for just attaching any random device to the ModCase, more bands would also be a useful purchase. The only extra part is adhesive pads, which I guess is a partial replacement for the attachable band.
#The hub in the hub/ultimate version is a little bulky, and not really much more useful than the cheap one I first got off of Amazon. It works mostly fine (external video cuts out briefly now and then), but the cheap Amazon one is around half the size, and the external video doesn’t cut out.
That oat milk is more expensive than cow milk always seemed like “virtue pricing”. An acre of oats makes more oat milk than an acre of dairy cow feed makes cow milk.
Arguably one of Canada’s greatest contributions to WW2 was our production of the CanPat trucks.
“Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics” was the quote from Gen. Omar Bradley IIRC, and I imagine in any conflict we become embroiled in (or wish to dissuade someone else from becoming embroiled in) we can contribute greatly to the logistics side.
I’d like to see a Canadian version of the US’ Army Corps of Engineers. Right now, it could help with natural disasters, and could also help with infrastructure projects. In a conflict, they could prove invaluable in actually getting fuel and supplies to the conflict zone.
Coastal patrol and Arctic patrol are two other areas where I think Canada has to stand alone to some extent.
Yep, can confirm. I used Xubuntu primarily for years, and never had an account on the official XFCE forums or Git, because why would I? I’m just a user, the software is very stable, and stuff tended to just work.
Still, Indie games continue to be developed. This will be gaming’s salvation when the big studios are fully committed to squeezing every loot box/DLC/microtransaction out of “Live service” forever games.
I don’t think Clash of Candy Shadow Tanks is going anywhere, but there will always be the next Stardew Valley passion project.
On that note, I think Indy’s have embraced a retro aesthetic because you don’t need a whole art team rendering your graphics. Combine this with AAA games being rather formulaic (can’t risk a big studio budget trying unproven ideas) and I think you have an audience willing to accept older graphics in retro games.
Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”
“On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”
I accept no credit, I simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia.
Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and “appification”.
Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it’s not as smooth as I remember.
In BC’s case, we have passed legislation to move to permanent Daylight Saving Time… when Washington State, Oregon, and California do. The hold up is that US Federal law allows the states to stay on Standard time, and stop switching to Daylight Saving Time, but not the other way around. It has been before Congress a few years now, but the US isn’t really good at getting things done, and this is low priority.
Technically we (BC) could just go ahead and do it. Or Washington, Oregon, and California could all just stick with Standard Time instead of Daylight Saving Time^1.
^1 I really don’t care, PDT or PST. All arguments about “I like an extra hour of sun in the morning/evening” are pointless. The numbers are made up, and we can change start and end times. Do the kids need an extra hour in the morning for sleep according to the latest study? Set the school start times an hour later. Changing the clock against which all these times are measured is like changing rulers instead of using different measurements.
Ever notice how touristy places have seasonal hours? It’s possible. Just stop changing the clocks instead of setting different times.
I have profound technical reasons to hate the time change. You know how you cell phone automagically changes the time? It’s not magic, and it comes with technical consequences in Industrial Automation.
Also, large organizations. North America and Europe start and stop DST on different dates (thanks Bush). The northern and southern hemisphere start and stop DST in different directions. On top of that, most countries don’t change the clocks. There’s a reason you’ll see references to UTC on the Internet.
I had an old Blackberry Torch when they were widely available as old corporate surplus. Should have gotten more. You could get a box of a dozen for less than $100 for a while. All the corporates were moving to iPhone.
That Blackberry Torch was amazing to use. The screen was a little small, even for the time, but the physical keyboard was incredible. The camera was pretty decent as well. Even back when I got it, I think I couldn’t get data through most providers, and I believe even talk and text will be stopping on even the last OG Blackberries soon.
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
The developer of another game distributed by WB, Fist Puncher, commented on the Ars Technica story about this.
Found it, it’s the “Promoted Comment” now.
therealmattkain I’m one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.
This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users’ libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to “double dip” and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).
Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am
The developer of Fist Puncher has an insightful “Promoted Comment” now on the Ars Technica article:
therealmattkain I’m one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.
This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users’ libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to “double dip” and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).
Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am
I stopped distro hopping around a decade ago, and just use default Ubuntu LTS releases. No shade from me.
I’m not going to pretend that Ubuntu is the coolest, hippest, trendiest distro around, but it’s good enough, stake enough, and gosh darn it I’m just used to it.
It’s been years since I used a private tracker (pre-Netflix), but your experience seems to mirror mine.
I’ll expand on the quality angle for video, I’m going to be watching on my tablet, anything beyond 720p is going to be marginal at best. I also wear glasses, so reality rarely reaches 4K. For music I appreciate FLACC, but I’ll be hard pressed to notice the difference between that and a 128kbps MP3 I encoded 25 years ago most of the time.
Still, a well seeded deep collection is something I miss. Public trackers are fine for popular stuff, but trying to load my wife’s MP3 player with musicals is proving the limits of public trackers.
On the other hand, running a seedbox is a bit more involved than a VPN. In order to maintain ratios, keeping a seedbox is highly recommended from what I recall.
It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve used Linux and Mint seems to be the recommended distro for people who aren’t all that familiar with Linux like me, but I didn’t know if there was anything I should know with this ThinkPad model that anyone is familiar with. My searching around shows people saying everything from it...
I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.
I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.
Problem is that once you are wealthy enough you can move around the world. Similar to how Microsoft Ireland is somehow where most of Microsoft’s profits occur. I think there is a big role for international treaties here.
[Discussion] What kind of protective and carrying cases do you use for your Deck?
I’m interested in hearing both about if you still use the default carrying case that comes with the deck, and if you use any kind of protective clip-on case such as the Killswitch, JSAUX Modcase, or other.
Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups (thedeepdive.ca)
Ask ChatGPT to pick a number between 1 and 100 (jlai.lu)
Canada unveils updated defence policy, plan to spend $73B over 20 years on renewing military capacity (www.ctvnews.ca)
An Estimate on the Total Number of Xfce Users (alexxcons.github.io)
Steam is a ticking time bomb (www.spacebar.news)
Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival? (www.theguardian.com)
Judge Tosses X/Twitter Case Against Group That Produced Study On Proliferation Of Hate Speech On Platform (deadline.com)
X owner Elon Musk blamed the watchdog group for an exodus of advertisers.
'Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev's top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keys (www.pcgamer.com)
Toronto falls into the pit of urban decline that's plagued U.S. cities (nationalpost.com)
The GTA has been showing signs of the urban ills that are commonly associated with city life south the border....
Proton Mail Finally Releases Desktop Apps With a Linux Beta Version (news.itsfoss.com)
Did Reddit year-end recaps expose Russian interference in Alberta? (www.stalbertgazette.com)
Petition - Stop Daylight Saving Time in Canada - Change.org (www.change.org)
Join the petition to ask the Canadian government to adopt Standard Time all year round....
Phones with actual keyboards (dormi.zone)
My Son is Enjoying His New (to Him) 3DS
No eShop? No problem! We’ve had a bit of luck with used games not at “collectable” prices, but we’ve discovered hShop and CFW....
Warner Bros. is now erasing games as it plans to delist Adult Swim-published titles (www.polygon.com)
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
“It‘s kind of depressing”: WB Discovery pulls indie game for “business changes” (arstechnica.com)
Archive link: archive.ph/168Vn...
Linux hits 4% on the desktop 🐧 📈 (gs.statcounter.com)
What's your take on private trackers?
Are they for you? Why or why not?
I'm relatively unfamiliar with Linux. I'm getting a ThinkPad T460 and want to install Mint on it. Is there anything about the T460 I should know?
It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve used Linux and Mint seems to be the recommended distro for people who aren’t all that familiar with Linux like me, but I didn’t know if there was anything I should know with this ThinkPad model that anyone is familiar with. My searching around shows people saying everything from it...
Let’s Set a Maximum Wage for the Rich | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)