It’s so prevalent we can literally say “I’ll verb your noun” and it still gets the point across.

Yeah, I should get one of those, lol, but I generally don’t need one since I do most of my work on the ground and near a table or bench or something. This is the first, and probably only, time I will ever be doing work on the roof. Plus, I was the only one home today so unless some religious proselytizers show up, no one would be in the fall zone.

Careful what you wish for. My Bullshit Detector of Doom™ is predicting a push toward cloud gaming rather than optimizing anything.

Which tracks, sadly. Big tech has already hoarded up all the GPUs, RAM, and storage. I always hoped those would eventually trickle down to the secondhand market, either as they refresh hardware or when the stupid AI bubble finally bursts, but since they already have them, it would make sense to repurpose them for gaming and sell you a subscription. Because of course it would be a subscription.

Despite all these challenges and setbacks, Microsoft is still pursuing and pivoting towards cloud gaming and cross-platform gaming, Xbox Game Pass subscription, and is forgoing exclusivity to allow more players to join Xbox’s gaming endeavors, ranging from PCs, handhelds like the Rog Ally and Ally X, mobile devices, and even automobiles.

– https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-bets-on-cloud-and-cross-platform-future-for-Xbox-while-brushing-off-30-profit-margin-rumors.1191620.0.html

Ooh, nice. I wasn’t aware there were softmods available for the 360 yet. I avoided modding it at all because I played a lot on XB Live and didn’t want to get it banned but since that’s shutdown, I may revisit the mod scene. Glad to know there’s a softmod. I did the MechAssault one on my OG Xbox and it opened up all kinds of doors.

I found Xbox 360 copies on ebay but no PC ones. They’re not expensive so maybe I’ll just do that and then try to get an Xbox 360 emulator working on my (Linux) gaming system. My 360 works but is def on borrowed time.

Plus, some of the mechanics are maybe a bit spicy for modern sensibilities.

Not that you’re wrong (Wikipedia alludes to the same thing) but the only spicy mechanic I can recall is hacking an enemy’s brain chip to make them temporarily fight on your side and commit suicide after it wears off. That’s literally the exact same thing as “Possession” in Bioshock: Infinite that came out a year later.

I dunno, but it did.

My original hard drive died and when I got a replacement, I just went to my purchase history and re-downloaded it. When I wanted to play it a few years ago and noticed it wasn’t on my Xbox anymore, I went back to re-download it and it wasn’t anywhere to be found in my history.

Probably something buried in the XB:Live ToS that says they can do whatever they want.

I just have a Linux-based “DIY Steam Machine” so it’d have to be able to run under Proton. I may just buy a physical disc on eBay for ~$22 and hope my 360 doesn’t crap out on me lol. It’s the later “slim” model with an upgraded hard drive, so as long as I can install it and it reads the disc enough to start the game, I should be okay.

Honestly I have no idea. I don’t think so? I vaguely recall the music at all, but I wanna say it was a kind-of techno background music which all sounds pretty generic to me (not my preferred genre).

Edit: According to TV Tropes, it does have music by Skrillex so maybe (renewing?) the music licensing wasn’t worth it considering its low sales.

Twitter … got invaded by 4Chan mentally unstable losers and edgelords.

I mean, yeah? A mentally unstable edgelord loser bought the platform several years ago and remade it in his unstable, edgelord image. Every other complaint you have about Twitter is explained by that.

Me, too, when I used to sell my old crap on eBay. I feel like it’s just common courtesy. Basically I’d go an hour before they closed and ship out all the orders for the day.

I run Synapse currently but last I looked at Conduit it wasn’t at feature parity with Synapse (granted, that has been a while). The other two I wouldn’t touch with a 50 foot pole because of their stupid-ass names.

If it’s a relatively recent laptop, it should be fine.

Many of them will let you set custom charge limits. If yours supports that, limit it to like 60% or thereabouts. Long enough that you can get some UPS use out of it but not full enough it’s ever gonna go spicy pillow on you.

If it won’t let you set a charge limit, they’ll still kind of float around full charge but not stay at 100% all the time. Even plugged in, mine will drop down from 100% to eventually 92% before it will start charging back to 100 again. That’s over the course of several days to a week.

If the laptop is older than about 2017 or so, or still has a removable battery, you might want to just take the battery out and use an external UPS as those typically don’t have the extra charge management features newer ones do.

To run them full time, you either want to remove the screen or “tent” them because a lot of heat is dissipated through the keyboard, and it’s normally expected to be open while running because of that. By “tent”, I mean open it halfway and put the screen facing down so it’s standing up and shaped like a tent.

Eh, yes and no.

A lot of friendships do start out based on proximity, convenience, etc but can grow into something deeper and lasting. Like, many of my friends in school growing up all had last names near mine in the alphabet. Two of those I still hang out with decades later.

When you leave college and go into the real world on your own, you find out which ones were built on convenience and which were lasting. I couldn’t tell you how many “friends” I had in college, but since graduating, I probably only keep in touch with about 10 of them regularly.

Reminds me of the saying “Relatives are who you were born into, family is who you choose”.

If I understand correctly:

“Ask” is for more open ended questions (The vague “what do you think about” posts like you mentioned). Posts that are asking for a simple / single answer are generally removed for not being open ended. The question is more for discussion.

Here you can ask things that are less open ended and/or are looking for a single or simple answer.

Similar vibes:

I gotta replay this game, it was a lot of fun. Long after the Wii was considered old, I bought one just for this, played Twilight Princess once, and haven’t touched my Wii since.

A few years ago I decided to try the lithium-ion UPSs. I’m on my 3rd year with them, and I will never go back to lead acid. I’ve got one “classic” UPS that is still in good shape as long as you don’t try to run more than 100w from it, but when it goes, it goes.

These use the LiFePO4 batteries, and I get close to twice the runtime as my old ones, and they don’t drop from 80% to 10% like lead acids do. The battery chemistry is also good for about 10 years of daily cycling, so assuming the electronics hold out, they seem like they’ll last.

The only hiccup with the model I got is it doesn’t have a serial monitor connection, but you can probably fine plenty that have it.

Nope.

We live in a society, and as far as I’m concerned, stealing the person behind you’s very limited leg room is selfish.

Signed,

A tall person who WILL kick your seat when my knees are in agony.

Ugh, yeah. My “temporary” spinners that were an emergency upgrade became permanent when I went to buy the new ones and prices had skyrocketed. I’ve got one cold spare left, so hopefully there’s a price break in the near-ish future