I didn’t realize the new Steam family sharing was so detrimental to close ones away from each other. Their Guide & FAQ is clear with their intentions:

While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.

To that end, we expect the requirements for participating in a Steam Family to change over time as we monitor its usage and add requirements to keep usage in line with this intent.

Last line is pretty brutal. Apparently even family members living in the same country & different household might be in for a surprise eventually. That’s really saddening because at first glance this overhaul sounded amazing considering a single game was locked by play instead of the whole library.

For peripherals (screens, audio) rtings is pretty cool. They take testing seriously with a scientific/engineering approach.

This is fucking revolting. I’m so full of bile this morning and I’m trying hard not to smear it all over the place. I’m sincerely worried for all of the people this presidency of sick fucks threatens. I wish I could cram all of you in my small apartment north of the border and cook the biggest batch of oatmeal cookies ever. I might have to avoid news for a while to find my footing again. What’s the point of being informed if I can’t cope.

It’s a safe bet.

At the library I’d say.

Other tigers?

This picture is kind of misleading though. Much of the photo’s creepiness comes from mistakenly assimilating the red dots to its eyes. Ants have those big familiar insect eyes we are familiar with. Quote from Snopes:

This is a closeup of a section of the ant’s face but not the full face. In a text message, Kavaliauskas [the photographer] told us, “This is just the front part of the portrait […] the eyes are already in the shadow area. […] if the eyes are illuminated, all the mystery disappears and the photograph appears ordinary and uninteresting.”

Wait what? US population is 345 millions. How do you even celebrate Halloween that requires three pumpkins per person? Plenty of people don’t even have a porch.

Woohoo!

Haha they’re called like that because of their shape right? Right?

So I went on Wikipedia and apparently Ornithogalum adseptentrionesvergentulum and its genus Ornithogalum are part of the Asparagaceae family which is known as the asparagus family, not to be confused with the Asparagus genus, of which it is but a subset. Gotta love when they fuck with people like that.

No it’s not.

Pick GDP, manufacturing output or whatever metric and look it up: Russia is not even close to the US. China is the one playing in the same league as the Americans.

As for open source being dominated by the US, the stats for Linux development don’t give that portrait at all.

I have the utmost respect for ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley, I’m happy it’s a success and I’ve played it plenty. I have to say though, there’s something in the game that leads some of us straight into a minmaxing management race-against-the-clock frenzy. I think I could play it casually, but I’d need an unwavering discipline… and that’s the problem.

It’s at least a century old problem imho. In the 1950’s clever capitalists where already looking for ways of “Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary”. I can’t believe how often I’ve had to buy a new fucking toaster. It just keeps getting worst.

I’d need to be paid a non negligible amount to try and wring some speck of usefulness out of this thing.

A beautiful word we learned from the first nations, probably the Wendat.

Ullman’s argumentation is very wiggly when it comes to impact on performance. On one hand, he claims there’s very little proof, on the other hand he claims there is no point producing proof because they wouldn’t be believed. Furthermore he says their hands are tied as they’d need their client’s approval to publish such numbers, conveniently ignoring the possibility of anonymizing and grouping data. Remember they state to being included in 70-80 games yearly.

Finally, and this is an old song, but anyways: preventing loss in sales due to piracy is an exercise in wishful thinking. The amount of pirate players who would have paid in an alternate universe with no cracked version can’t be reliably estimated.

Good luck assembling, you’ll love PC gaming I’m sure!

Just in case you don’t know already: https://pcpartpicker.com/ is an amazing site to plan a build. You can put all the parts you’re aiming to buy and it’ll tell you if there are any compatibility issues. You can share your parts list with a community too and ask for specific advice.

Concerning parts, XFX AMD GPUs are very well built and go for a reasonable price. Their 6000 series have great cost/performance value imho. I have a 6750XT in a PC connected to a 55’ TV and it’s hardly breaking sweat provided I don’t go overboard with game settings. For a normal computer screen you could have plenty of fun out of a 6650 XT I’m sure.

Could you get Amazon delivery from say, amazon.it? It could give you a chance to find what you’re looking for.

Of all the ways one would harvest a botnet for propaganda, asking the victims nicely is surely the most cynical yet.