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70% of Russian Gamers Are Pirates Following Western Publisher Exodus
  • In absolute numbers they will only be a drop compared to Chinese pirates, trust me.

  • Me after downloading qBittorrent not knowing what I'm doing
  • Hopefully you checked the local laws first. I have heard that in some countries there are SWAT teams ready to go to your house once you start torrenting xDDD.

  • Atlas Fallen's minimum and recommended system requirements on PC revealed
  • Folks, this game is based on Unreal Engine 5. It will run even on a potato PC. That engine is impressive - any moderately capable GPU will deliver great performance in this game.

  • Which audio codec to choose?
  • It is not about the price. You can buy great stuff for $500 altogether, and you can only splash $500 for one piece of a sound chain, which was not really necessary in the first place (often people buy super expensive headphones and then listen on a cheap Android phone some 128 kbps MP3s - amazing, really!). It is all about balance. Personally, I do not aim for hi-end sound equipment, but I have also heard enough of the spectrum that I know I will not be satisfied with low-end devices.

    That's why I settled for mid-tier offerings, and I am happy with my setup, knowing fully well that if anything goes bad, at least I will be able to replace it without taking a loan. After all, if you want to go hi-end, then you better have the cash to stay hi-end when necessary, and I have plenty of other hobbies to splash too much on sound.

  • Which audio codec to choose?
  • Don’t believe anyone trying to sell you on the idea that FLAC sounds better than an appropriately compressed (read: transparent) lossy format: Opus ~128-160kbps, MP3 ‘V0’ (~215kbps), MP3 320kbps, AAC ~150kbps.

    Only partly true. If the rest of the chain is of decent quality (hi-res sound card, proper cables, quality headphones/speakers/monitors), then the difference between lossless and lossy is apparent to a trained ear. Especially the lack of dynamics and space is typical of lossy formats.

    Personally, I never understood why I would want to listen to anything but lossless in the first place. I never really had to worry about storage space too much for my music to consider converting it to a lossy format. I am more of a user who likes to archive stuff; therefore, lossless and FLAC are the only future-proof ways if you want to listen to your files in the next 25 years or so.

  • Which audio codec to choose?
  • Many people I talked to said that CD's just use mp3 codecs in the first place.

    That may be partly true for non-original CDs made out of MP3 files via CD burner, but original CDs should not be "crippled" like that.

    I think this debate is kind of late, at least a decade late. FLAC has clearly won; it is available everywhere and shall stay that way thanks to its open-source nature. With increasingly cheaper physical storage (SSD, HDD) and more affordable cloud storage, I think FLAC's longevity aspect just beats everything, even though there may be other codecs such as Opus which may provide a better compression/quality ratio.

    But if you only care about lossless, just go with FLAC and enjoy your tunes. ;-)

  • It feels a lot nicer here on lemmy / kbin
  • I really like the speed and overall clean user interface here. I am still learning, but so far I like what I see. Hopefully, we can all grow together into one thriving community!

  • Starfield will get DLSS 3 on PC, modder declares - and very soon after launch
  • I would also add that it is completely in line with Nvidia's core philosophy, which has always prioritized profits first and foremost. I wonder how much more proprietary tech we will see in the future from them. I am kind of worried, as they are pretty strong with AI and might want to push something like Nvidia-GPT, their proprietary system, into games. You will then be left with the choice: play with a basic AI or go with Nvidia and enjoy a reasonably smart AI.

    I really hope this does not happen, as this vendor lock-in would only serve Nvidia and nobody else. I am writing this as a long-term customer with many Nvidia GPUs..

  • Steam Summer Sale 2023 Thread
  • High on Life seems like a good, fun piece, now for 50% off. Considering it is still fairly recent (December 2022 release) and well rated, not a bad deal at all in my eyes.

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1583230/High_On_Life/

    Anyway, I am going for Hogwarts Legacy. I was holding back until they introduce some patch fixes, and now I can even save some sweet cash.

  • “Reddit cannot survive without its moderators. It cannot.” That’s a recent quote from Reddit’s VP of community, Laura Nestler.
  • Absolutely. They will end up with a shitload amount of AI-generated nonsense that desperately needs a human touch to make any sense. That's what moderators do. And they are now leaving en masse.

  • Call to action - renewed protests starting on July 1st
  • Absolutely. Personally, I have been part of Reddit only for a few months, and with the speed of adoption of alternatives you've mentioned, we will be perfectly fine in just a few months from now. By the way, /kbin looks awesome; I like the UI and overall speed.

  • Reminder that RedHat makes A LOT of money already. The results of the 2019 fiscal year show that RedHat spends twice as much money on ads and sales people than on developers.
  • TBH, never used anything from Red Hat directly, but I think they will be missed if they decide to lock themselves out of community.

  • New kbin user guide (preparation for impending wave of reddit migrants in July)
  • Very useful, thank you! I will share this with my friends :-)

  • ToKrCZ ToKrCZ @kbin.social
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