nekusoul

nekusoul, 18 hours ago

I really hope so. I just can’t comprehend how they thought that shutting down this studio in particular was a good idea, when Hi-Fi Rush has kind of been used as the poster child for GamePass for a while now. That alone should’ve been a good reason to keep the studio alive, even if it was operating at a loss.

nekusoul, 2 days ago

All they had to do was to allow me to move the taskbar to the side and I’m only partially joking.

nekusoul, 4 days ago

I’d have a bit more symphaty if they at least tried to do the bare minimum before choosing the nuclear option.

Most notably, the PVE queues in LoL were infested with bots for years and you could tell them apart from real players before they even made their first move. Often times you’d be the only human player. If stuff like that wasn’t caught, I have serious doubts about their previous efforts to catch “real” cheaters.

nekusoul, 4 days ago

Yup. At the very least, they shouldn’t have made it a requirement for TFT. If it were possible to cheat there that’d be more of a game design problem anyway.

nekusoul, 4 days ago (edited 4 hours ago)

Lots of good advice already, but there’s two things I’d add:

1. If you can’t find a place to test different keyboards you could also get a switch sampler first. They’re relatively inexpensive, at least compared to getting a keyboard you don’t end up liking. You don’t need one with lots of keys or with multiple brands, as long it contains the major types (Clicky, Tactile, Linear) and has some variation in actuation force. Worst case, you end up with a new fidget toy.
2. You don’t necessarily need VIA, just QMK. There’s the online QMK configurator, which allows you to configure your keyboard, download it as custom firmware and flash it. If you have some experience as a developer you can also just grab the QMK firmware and customize it that way. QMK offers excellent tooling and tutorials that makes this incredibly easy, particularly on Linux. I’d recommend checking this out even before deciding on a specific keyboard model.

nekusoul, 6 days ago

That’s true. Personally though, it not being optional for any amount of time just shows that there’s no good argument to have it be mandatory in the first place.

nekusoul, 6 days ago

[…] I didn’t bother to activate 2fa on my github account. I ended up writing a simple fetch for fun, …

I’m not judging, but reading those two lines back to back is pretty funny.

Also good to know what causes those seams. I’ve noticed it in some consoles, but never bothered to check why exactly that is.

nekusoul, 8 days ago

Yup. I’ve always loved having a handheld device as a companion to my PC. The first few months with the Switch were great, but as time went on I just wanted a better designed Switch that’s also just a PC, particularly after getting hardware-banned for trying to fix some of the issues myself with homebrew apps.

I never would’ve thought that we’d actually get to see a device that’s real so quickly (anyone remember the Smach Z?), is actually pretty good and how quickly it’s now becoming its own market segment.

nekusoul, 9 days ago

Considering that DOTS is allegedly at least partially to blame for the disaster that is Cities: Skylines 2 (Source), I’m almost tempted to say that’s a good thing.

While the licensing changes were the last straw, I was always annoyed with the direction Unity was going, which was grafting a bunch of unfinished, barely documented features onto the engine, putting the stuff it’s supposed to replace on life support and never actually finishing those features for years.

nekusoul, 9 days ago

Yes, there were lots of other issues, but what I’m mostly referring to was that many of these broken systems wouldn’t have to be built if stuff like DOTS and virtual texturing wasn’t unfinished:

And the reason why the game has its own culling implementation instead of using Unity’s built in solution (which should at least in theory be much more advanced) is because Colossal Order had to implement quite a lot of the graphics side themselves because Unity’s integration between DOTS and HDRP is still very much a work in progress and arguably unsuitable for most actual games. Similarly Unity’s virtual texturing solution remains eternally in beta, so CO had to implement their own solution for that too, which still has some teething issues.

nekusoul, 11 days ago

We also shouldn’t just focus on generation, but also on consumption. If we had a smarter grid that could shift demand to fit the dynamic power generation of renewables better, that should reduce the required capacity for backup power generation quite a bit.

nekusoul, 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

The entire point of the nuclear is so that it can take the base load

The idea to cover baseload demand with its own baseload power generation is an outdated concept though from a time when demand was inflexible and generation could be controlled to fit. Now that generation is dynamic, having baseload power generation is the opposite of what’s needed. We need flexible backup generation and more flexible demand to bring down baseload demand.

nekusoul, 11 days ago

Oh yeah, I kind of skipped over that, but I actually meant that more flexible consumption helps bring down baseload demand, and in turn the need for backup generation as well once we reach that point where that matters.

Really good explanation of the issue though. Personally, I’m a bit more optimistic about being able to be more flexible demand. Particularly EVs and heat pumps are two areas where a smart grid can help shape demand without even being noticed by the people (apart from cheaper tariffs) as long as the car is fully charged in the morning and the room temperature is maintained.

nekusoul, 11 days ago

Don’t worry. There’s still plenty of ESP32 waiting to be flashed with ESPHome and placed into their own little enclosure out there.

Source: Me, who’s got a Bluetooth Proxy for my adjustable desk and some small LED strips running, with a soil moisture sensor planned as my next quick project.

nekusoul, 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

These days, knowing some people, I’m already grateful if a person is just using the default notification sound. Two highlights:

1. Camera flash light.alongside the notification, so you get a free flashbang whenever you’re sitting across from that person. I’ve yet to figure out how that mode is even helpful in any way and not just an annoyance for other people.
2. Long music clips not as a ringtone, but as a notification on full blast. Essentially, that person has trained themself to drop everything when a notification comes in in order to shut down the music. I’m not an expert, but that feels like the opposite of healthy phone usage.

nekusoul, 13 days ago

Unlike the article suggests, I really hope that the option “only vibrate when unlocked” means that it doesn’t play a notification sound when the phone is unlocked. Also that it’ll be enabled by default.

So annoying to hear tons of notification sound from a person who’s actively chatting, holding the phone in their hands, making the sound completely pointless.

nekusoul, 13 days ago

Even as a heavy user of CLIs, claiming that their text-only nature somehow makes them more uniform, feels a bit overly reductive to me:

To start with, there’s simple fire-and-return commands, interactive commands, full-blown TUIs and so on. Then there’s the parameters, which aren’t really consistent either across applications either. Neither in the naming of arguments, nor their grammar. The representation of the output is also all over the place.

With all those things, it’s really not so dissimilar from the different layouts of GUIs. Not to mention that there’s also lots of CLI tools that do the same thing but have a different interface, so yeah.

nekusoul, 13 days ago

I use the CLI because it’s keyboard-focused (though I use lots of mouse-enabled TUIs) and because it’s programmable.

Generally though, I kind of get what you’re trying to say, but ‘uniformity’ feels like an unfortunate choice in the context of your question, as the meaning can be very arbitrarily defined, hence the confusion. I could, for example, claim that GUIs are more uniform because all chat apps, browsers etc… are so similar to each other that once I’ve learned one I can use all.

Which is why It’d probably be better if you tried to reword your initial question avoiding that term, focussing more on describing the desired benefits of your definition of uniformity.

Otherwise I’d point towards voice recognition, as that’s very similar to a CLI, but probably not what you had in mind, I’m guessing?

nekusoul, 13 days ago

It’s one of the very few things Microsoft actually gets right on their websites. You select to log in with a passkey, authenticate, optionally select which account you want to use, and you’re signed in. Not a single username or password entered into the website.

nekusoul, 16 days ago

That whole industry can cease to exist from one day to the next and nothing of value would be lost - if anything value would be gained for the average person

That last point can’t be stressed enough. The whole marketing sector is essentially a net negative to society because neither an actual product gets produced nor any useful service is offered.

nekusoul, 18 days ago

Different person, but I started using vertical tabs a few weeks ago and gave both extensions a try for a few days.

I’m using Sideberry now. It seems more polished to me with lots more features. I particularly like how well it integrates with Firefox containers and that you can create tab groups, which are essentially tabs for tabs.

nekusoul, 19 days ago

If you want to skip ahead, there are also a few ways to get Home Assistant running that don’t need any level of Linux competency:

• They sell their own devices that are more or less plug & play.
• Installing Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi is just flashing the image onto an SD card.
• Installing Home Assistant OS onto a dedicated device involves shortly booting into Linux from USB to flash Home Assistant OS onto the internal disk.

If you don’t want to run Home Assistant OS, and instead want to run Home Assistant as one of several applications running on a Server, that’s when you need to start getting comfortable administrating a Linux server.

nekusoul, 21 days ago

They’ve basically perfected keeping the community mostly happy by toeing the line between putting out solid base games and putting out greedy DLC.

What we’re now seeing is what happens when you don’t immediately change course after you skimp on making a good base game.

nekusoul, 24 days ago

Only sort of related, but it’s kind of insane how many different phones Samsung releases. Checking GSMArena, they’ve apparently released an average of two phones per month over the last year.

Seems a bit overkill to me.

nekusoul, 25 days ago

Pivoting+tilting+swivelling VESA wall mounts are also a thing, so you wouldn’t have needed to choose the display based on its stand

I personally wouldn’t have risked my monitor on being able to design a part that is able to last just to save the few bucks a mount costs. So props to you, I guess.