The American Experiment is well and truly coming to an end, and I think we can mostly agree that it is ending an abject failure.
The big question is: what comes next? Will it be the age of the American Empire, or the start of America’s Century of Humiliation?
Mind you, neither answer is a particularly good one - seeing as how the rest of the world has basically built itself up based off the foundation of a unipolar world.
We are cursed to live in interesting times.
I think it mostly just didn’t feel like a Max Payne game because of the setting. Not New York? Not Max Payne.
Gameplay wise, it was definitely on the right track; and in a way - I remember it fondly as was the last time Rockstar seemingly experimented with game mechanics ahead of incorporating them into the next GTA game.
Started with the first GTA on the PlayStation; I used to rank Vice City as my absolute favourite entry in the series - but as I’ve matured over time, I’ve come to find GTA IV (or more specifically, The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion) has taken over the top spot - though VC is still a close second.
If you haven’t played TBOGT in a while, I highly recommend revisiting it - there are a lot of parallels to VC in terms of overall feel and the general “fun” tone.
This is an interesting development, for sure - and not one we will be able to accurately gauge the net impact of for a while.
It does feel like CD Project want to move it off their financial documents (P&L, cashflow, balance sheets etc.), while Michael wants to double-down and focus on building out the historical catalog.
Success will really depend on if GOG can remain profitable through lean years without having to ultimately rely on compromising their morals; and whether they will continue to receive support from modern publishers to help fund the more niche projects.
There are apparently OpenVPN profile you can import, but as I said in my earlier comment - I just couldn’t get it to work (connection attempts would just time out).
I still have like ~18 months of PIA left (joined under a 100% cashback offer), but will likely switch to Proton or Mullvad afterwards - as they both seem to work better under Linux from what I’ve read.
I’m sure over time I’ll tinker more under the hood over time, but for now - I’m just trying to ease myself into Linux with pre-configured installers when particular apps aren’t available through the Cachy Package Manager.
30-odd years of Windows usage has dulled my IT skills!
I barely know what I’m looking at! 😅
Pretty sure I tried poking around that file on Bazzite also to see if I could locate the RPM to try and do a manual terminal install - but gave up after a few minutes.
The only franchises I will pre-order are:
World of Warcraft Collector’s Editions : even though I stopped playing a few years ago now, I still buy the physical copy collector’s editions to add to my collection - I have every one going all the way back to vanilla.
Grand Theft Auto 6 : I have both the PS3 Collector’s Editions for IV and V, feels like getting the same for 6 to finish off that ‘trilogy’ would be apropos.
This is a cursed list, but at least 2/3rds eventually lived up to their initial promise!
Sample size of 1, here.
Bazzite was my initial entry-point into Linux, but I bounced off it within 48 hours as its immutable nature made it impossible for me to install the native PIA VPN client and for the life of me I couldn’t get the OpenVPN to play nice.
Currently on CachyOS, and seems to run just fine - giving an end user just enough rope 😅
Plus it’s Arch underneath the hood too, so I can still cheekily say that I run Arch!
ETA: I wonder if/how long I would count as part of this Bazzite cohort?
Unironically, you’re missing out.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both just ways to project the smartphone already in your pocket onto an additional screen (like plugging a second monitor to your laptop or PC).
Manufacturers like GM and Tesla hate it because it stops your data from being readily collected and stored with the purpose of building up a profile of ‘you’ that they can then sell to advertisers and insurance companies.
Now if only manufacturers had the good sense to keep things like climate control as physical switches - that’s my own personal bugbear. 🤬
I’m in a similar boat, our next TV will be a commercial display if I’m not confident that we can successfully air-gap the TV.
Something like this, ideally: https://www.lg.com/au/business/information-display/oled-digital-signage/oled-pro-monitor/65ep5g-b/
It’s a valid enough question, and one that I’ve asked myself also.
Intel already produce some form of RAM to act as cache for their processors, I wonder how hard it would be (and how long) it would take for them to utilise excess fab space to churn out DRAM modules.
Even if they ended up mostly selling the final modules into the AI black-hole, it should still have a deflationary effect on pricing in the market as a whole.
Yeah, in hindsight it really landed at an opportune time.
It’s a crying shame how greedy companies like Nvidia & Micron have gotten from back-to-back runs on their products - it feel like it will take a generational downturn for them to pull their heads in, and return to the more modest profit margins of the past (which even then was around 30%, IIRC).
Ah, completely forgot that Intel 6th gen introduced DDR4 - I would’ve sworn it was much more recent than that!
You’ve certainly gotten your money’s worth out of your system - that’s for sure!
I went from a 3570K, 16GB, GTX 670 -> GTX 1080 (later SLI’d), to my current rig:
5950X, 32GB, RTX 3090 -> RX 7900 XTX
Just before the Ethereum mining rush took off, and with the current pricing due to AI fuckery - I don’t think I’ll be switching up anytime soon.
I get where you’re coming from, and in certain situations where you can’t otherwise get around it, you can configure your home network to not allow the Smart TV to phone home with telemetry or to accept any inbound external network traffic, so it can only access local network data such as your PC for Steam link.
I’m not confident enough to configure my home network that well (yet), hence I just opt to have the TV air gapped instead
The thing with smart TVs is that you don’t need to connect them to your network to use them.
LG, unfortunately, still make the best OLED displays at the moment, and Samsung are arguably even worse when it comes to not respecting their customers.
Our C2 65in is hooked up to an Apple TV for all of our media streaming needs.
T-Rex Warrior for the Commodore Amiga.
Was probably my first introduction to 3D gaming, and because it was a hand-me-down I didn’t have any instructions on how to play it. It literally took my months to figure out how to move in that game, so in the meantime I just stood in place and spin around shooting at enemies until I died.
64GB of DDR3 RAM in a system of that era is straight nuts!
The US Economy after the inevitable, next global depression:
I thought they were Canadian, though? Weird…