The whole article is sickening. Spoilers below for graphic/shocking content.
How are there so many people willing to pay >!to rape teenagers!!And cleaners just turning a blind eye on taking out bloody towels daily.!<
I played Superhot first on the Deck. Since time only moves (much) when you're moving, you have lots of time to practice aiming and getting used to track pads/stick + gyro controls. It requires precise aiming, and there are occasional times where speed helps, so it was a good "training" game for me.
It's still not as natural as KB+mouse, but I've been enjoying Ziggurat 2 a lot (on normal difficulty). I won't push into hard modes, like I would on PC, but it's working well for me.
In case anyone else needed to look it up, "trading while insolvent" means conducting regular business ("trading") while having liabilities that exceed assets ("insolvent"). Like (I think) ordering product from a vendor you can't pay for, or having employees continue to work when you can't make payroll.
Downloading content is almost definitely legal in Canada, and non-commercial digital distribution has never gone to court, so its legality hasn't been established.
I can't find the source, but I recall reading speculation that sharing backup copies between owners of the media is likely legal in Canada but, again, it hasn't been tried by courts, so its legality hasn't been firmly established.
Anyway, with non-commercial digital distribution not having any legal teeth in Canada, it's effectively legal and its literal legality is unknown.
Depends on your jurisdiction.
As far as I know, that's never been tried in court in Canada, and there's reason to suspect that may not be the case here. (Although I'm not a lawyer, so I may be mistaken.)
This could be huge, but we'll need to wait and see. The economic and ecological footprint of LLMs is problematic.
That said, will this actually help, or will they just use 3T parameter models to outcompete competitors 1T parameter models using GPUs? Really, this is more about small-scale models competing with midsize models. Like, this could bring a model as big as GPT 3.5 down to be something you could run on affordable hardware, right?
That would be really compelling for my sector (education) where there's a lot of concern about student data privacy. I could definitely pitch building a local $5K-cost LLM server that could handle a dozen or so simultaneous users. That would be enough for a small school district.
You can if you own the Mario game...
... but I just downloaded a 1TB Batocera Switch image to run from MicroSD.
This statistic is misleading. They have no way of knowing what people paid for those games. The "value" isn't just the Steam price.
As many people have mentioned here, most games in big Steam libraries come from bundles. It's pretty typical to get games for, like, $1-2 each in those. I regularly get 8 games for $10, of which I only really want 1. I play the one I cared about and get my $10 worth. There's no "lost value" so long as I got my money's worth from the title I played.
I take an even bigger view: if I buy 10 bundles for $10 each, and get 1 absolute banger (for my preferences) and a few others that are fun for a bit, then I'm happy. I often add 20 new games to my library in a month, and only immediately play 1. That doesn't mean I have "$400 value of games I've never played."
We need more hydroelectric water storage. Pump water uphill all day. Doesn't need any fancy materials, just a bunch of space on a hill connected to the grid.
Sort of... But the form factor itself completely changes the experience.
Indeed. As a silly example, I had a Pacman clone game that ran based on CPU cycle speed. I needed to turn the in-game speed setting way down and toggle turbo off to make it slow enough to be playable.
Sad but not surprising that governments failing to fund maintenance costs are leading to service failures. Even less surprising that a conservative government is using the problem they created to privatise profits.
I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who was supporting anti-trans bigots, who were accusing teachers of being pedophiles, and (I suppose) attempting a coup. (Hard to take the last one seriously.)
Like... Of course this ended poorly. I'm surprised they paid any of the hydro bill from their camp, tbh.
The biggest advantage of A4 isn't explained clearly: since it follows √2 ratios, you can reduce by half and get it to fit exactly 2 pages of information on 1 sheet, so you can make any document into a 2-per-page booklet with perfect formatting.
If you try to print 2 pages per page with US Letter, you get massive waste and it looks terrible.
The sugar one is about the glycemic index. Ingest sugar > blood sugar spike (kiddos with energy) > blood sugar crash (hangry, dysregulated kiddos)
Of course sugar doesn't cause ADHD, though; is that a myth people believe?
Sentencing hasn't happened yet; 48 years is the maximum, according to the article.
Whatever the sentence is will be ridiculous since it's just copyright infringement, but hopefully the sentencing goes to a small fraction of the maximum.
I dunno. I think there are enough things named after men.
Maybe a nice neutral woman's name... Like, Anna?
And it's more about preservation and archival, so I think it should be called an Archive, not a library.
Yeah, Anna's Archive. Great name. Let's go with that one.
Looks like a cute little puzzle game. I think my daughter might go for it; I just want to check first if it has any educational value for teaching algorithmic thinking.
That's... Hilariously bad. Canned meats vs. fresh. Fancy ice cream vs. cheap ice cream. Everywhere you look things are shittier for the Aboriginal People's food guide. What the fuck were they thinking? Why did they even put out a different version?
Fanatical is running a Steam Deck games bundle right now. Are any of these games worth the time?
I feel like I've heard good things about Arise, but I'm out of the loop. I don't recognize many of the others by name.
Prices are reasonable, so it's less a question about if it's worth the money, more if its worth the time. (3 for CA$6.79, 5 for CA$9.59, or 8 for CA$13.69)
Terror of Hemasaurus Jack Move Garden Story Castle on the Coast The Tarnishing of Juxtia Arise: A Simple Story Zombie Army Trilogy Beyond the Long Night ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf Röki Home Sweet Home EP2 Hero's Hour Moonlighter Pathologic 2
I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.
This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.
So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?
All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.
Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.
I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.
The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.
What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?
Saskatchewan is fairly conservative leaning, from a Canadian perspective, so perhaps this isn't surprising, but it's a shame that drug use continues to be viewed through a criminal lens instead of a healthcare and mental health crisis.
My understanding is that even suicide is generally covered by life insurance policies after a two-year vetting period; I would have thought that drug overdoses would at least get the same treatment. It doesn't say in the article how long this policy existed, but the context implies it was longer than two years and I would have thought it would have been a relevant detail to include in the article if it was a newly opened policy, so the omission of that detail further supports it being an older policy.
I have great sympathy for his family, especially because of the long legal battle that I'm sure has retraumatized them over the intervening years.
My context / use case
I got Fire 7 tablets for my kiddos a few years ago and they're dreadfully slow and can't really run many apps at all. With my daughter needing some educational support at home, I was looking for a cheap replacement that actually had enough power to manage recent education apps, and hopefully be future proof for a while.
Alternatives
The cheapest tablet at Costco.ca, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, is $500 CAD, has a weak processor, only 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage.
I'll never touch Apple products for a zillion reasons, but cost was completely prohibitive for a device my child could drop any day. Even used ones are insanely priced. And the app ecosystem for education on iOS is almost entirely paid apps, increasingly using a subscription model. (Or so it seems.)
Newer Amazon Fire "HD" tablets suck, too, but at least they're cheap. And they might be powerful enough to run some things? idk. I wasn't enthused.
Then, I thought to check AliExpress and found an 8GB tablet with 128GB storage, a processor better than the S6, and a 2K (1440p) display. After reading reviews to check if it's legit, I ordered one.
Informal Review
The great:
Price/value for the specs. I paid ~$240CAD for a bundle that includes a nice case, screen protector, charging block and cable, and a child-size Bluetooth keyboard. (It doesn't have a digitizer, so I skipped the stylus.)
The good:
The tablet is snappy. The battery lasts a long time. The screen has plenty enough resolution to render everything crisply on a 10.4" display.
It's a perfect tablet for my kids use as an educational tablet. It's great for PDF ebook reading (mostly picture books and early reader chapter books to date, lol!) and has handled all the education/edutainment apps without any slowdowns.
3.5mm jack. 18W fast charging. Build quality feels solid. Well positioned hardware buttons and 3.5mm jack make it easy to use in either orientation. The included case works as an angled stand. SD card slot for expansion. SIM compatible for phone/data.
The bad:
The viewing angle is pretty terrible. It's completely fine for solo use or for applications where colour accuracy isn't important, but it's very noticeable.
The speakers suck. I'm not a sound geek, so I don't know the correct terms, but the sound is muddy and distorted. They also have a fairly low maximum volume, and become increasingly distorted at higher volume. They work well enough, but it's not enjoyable for music. I would definitely use headphones for music/video/games.
I haven't tried the camera at all, but I've heard it's not great. Can't comment on that.
The purchase
The vendor I ordered from (ALLDOCUBE Direct Store) swapped the EU plug for a US plug at no extra cost. It arrived quickly (3 weeks?) from China.
The package arrived with the retail box crushed, so the included screen protector broke. After using it for a day, I decided to buy a second one for my other child, and asked them to include a replacement. Not only did they include a replacement, but they pre-installed the screen protector on tablet #2 so it couldn't break, without my asking them to.
I would recommend the seller, but ask them to pre-install the screen protector (if you plan to use one) so there's less risk of damage in transit.
Discussion
Anyway, not sure if this is the kind of content people want here, but I thought I'd do my part to add something!
Has anyone else experimented with cheap AliExpress/Chinese Android devices?
Based on my success with these, I'm considering getting a phone for my wife there. I'm a bit more worried about data vulnerabilities and software support longevity on a daily driver phone, but it's really hard to find a small quality phone for a reasonable price. Also, it needs to have a good camera or it's a nonstarter.
Do you have any experience or thoughts on this?