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  • Except whenever I see a non scientist challenge science, it's never with any rigor or substance. They'll literally be measuring angles off of an example figure posted in a news article as their argument. If you want to help push science forward, you can't just play gotcha on social media; you actually need to be able to do the math, and show your work.

  • [meta] "." is not a rule
  • Geez no wonder you're in a bit of a funk. It's terrible having to moderate friends in general, and that's a messy situation that will only lead to misunderstanding when done over text. Hope you take some time for you and check in with yourself.

  • Let's discuss: Mass Effect
  • Agreed. First playthrough should 100% be vanilla. I do mod a few things on subsequent playthroughs though. Personally I like to give myself infinite paragon/renegade (through a save editor), because I like being able pick a renegade option when I think my Shepard would do that, without having to worry about maxing my paragon for important choices. I also prefer playing biotic classes because they're more fun, but want a sniper rifle, so I mess with the save to give sniper rifle competency to my class in ME1. Finally I'm trying the happy ending mod this playthrough to see if I like it.

  • Let's discuss: Mass Effect
  • Mass effect is one of my favorite series ever! I've played through the trilogy at least half a dozen times now. It's my cozy game I always have a playthrough going in.

    Mass effect 1 was incredible for its time, and still pretty good today. The biggest mistake I see people make is not talking to everyone on the ship in between missions (this is true for the whole series); if you don't you'll miss the best part of the game. Also make sure to pick an interesting class, probably something with biotics. Infiltrator and soldier are boring to play compared to sentinel or biotic.

    Mass effect 2 was the game that shifted the series from an RPG to a cover shooter. The mechanics were much better, but it removed some of the fun. I remember the first time I played it I was heartbroken the citadel was so much smaller than in the first game. I'd say 2 has the best DLCs of the trilogy (Shadowbroker is unrivaled). I love the structure of 2 as well, but there's definitely a few gotchas where if you do a mission too soon it'll lock you out of finishing important side quests if you want a good ending.

    Mass effect 3 is great, the mechanics are more mature than 2, the story and "omg" moments are the best in the series; and (especially with the DLCs) it really fleshes out the backstory of the galaxy and races in a way the first two games didn't. I do wish the team on the ship was a bit bigger, but the citadel dlc is definitely a close second best in the series; and makes up for it imo.

    As for the ending of 3 (mild mood spoilers):

    spoiler

    I like my games to have a happily ever after ending, and that there really isn't one kinda bums me out. I get why the writers did it, and I don't fault them for it; but I'm looking forward to my current playthrough using the happy ending mod for a non cannon ending that won't leave me kinda sad after finishing the game haha

    So all in all, I think the trilogy is incredible, and everyone should try it. That said you've gotta go in with an idea of how to play it (this is true for all the games, but especially 1), because the games will let you miss a lot of stuff (like crew interactions, important side missions that affect the ending of the game and encounters in later games, etc.). It's definitely a trilogy that's better the second time through bc of it, or just find a good non spoiler guide/video for tips.

  • YouTube Premium says the price party is over for grandfathered accounts
  • I mean the Invidious project is nice. So is NewPipe. I tend to primarily use YouTube through a patched android app with Revanced; and with SmartTube on an android TV set-top box. When uBlock Origin finally falls; I'll almost certainly move to downloading videos automatically and putting them into Jellyfin, hopefully the options for automated YT downloads gets better by then. Right now the best option seems to be ytdl-sub.

  • As Gazans Scrounge for Food and Water, Hamas Sits on a Rich Trove of Supplies
  • Everything you said is wrong. Egypt is trying to let aid through, Israel has repeatedly bombed the roads in each time they're fixed; preventing aid. Also, as you so aptly pointed out, it's war. The first thing a functioning country does in war is ration food so the soldiers can stay fed; even if it costs civilian lives. This has happened many times. That Israel is purposely starving civilians knowing full well it won't affect the soldiers, just for propaganda, is frankly evil.

  • Louis Rossman: The best way to watch online video; my yearlong project is finally done!
  • The app needs two things: YouTube SponsorBlock, and the ability to tag creators and filter by tag/interest. I'm really hopeful they add those two things, and I'd be a convert.

    Oh and an android TV version while you're at it ^^

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 15th
  • I've been really enjoying the new expansion for Cyberpunk 2077. I personally loved the game when it came out, specifically for the tone and environment and the main story. I did stop playing pretty quickly though because the progression didn't click for me and different parts felt too shallow.

    I really think the 2.0 update fixed a lot of game mechanics I didn't like the first time through, and the expansion has a great tight storyline I've really enjoyed sinking my teeth into. I'm going back and doing all of the side quests I didn't get to before I stopped playing too. And so excited to see what the alternate ending they cooked up is. If you had fun with the game, definitely consider picking it back up!

  • When I shutdown my computer last night, it gave me this error message. It seems to be working fine but should I be considered?
  • That type of error is usually indicative of hdd issue. I only mentioned NVMEs because they tend to fail all at once, without recovery options. Spining disks usually fail slower (but not always). Take a peek at smart info, maybe run a scan. My guess is the cord got jostled though tbh

  • Red Hat stops all upstream and downstream work on desktop Bluetooth, multimedia applications (namely totem, rhythmbox and sound-juicer) and libfprint/fprintd
  • Fedora is a great OS. They also bought CoreOS a while ago and rolled it into their own offerings (fedora Coreos and RHEL Coreos). They're also the primary developers of Pipewire, the de facto replacement for PulseAudio and potentially Gstreamer.

    It's really sad, in a fluke they've embraced, expanded, and extinguished OSS projects by making themselves the linchpin, and then selling to IBM. Goes to show that you should never trust those even with the best intentions, as they can eventually sell out.

  • When I shutdown my computer last night, it gave me this error message. It seems to be working fine but should I be considered?
  • Personally I'd be worried there's a transient disk issue. I'd ensure my backups are good and files aren't being silently corrupted. I assume you're on an NVME, they tend to fail instantly, but sometimes you'll get transient file errors beforehand (like not being able to open a system library). Look at something like debsums to start with maybe.

  • LazyVim: blazingly fast, sane defaults, easy to customize and extend
  • One nice thing with lazyvim is there's a single option to disable all the key bindings so you can map them yourself. I really like the set of plugins it comes with too, so I've been really happy with the distro so far.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)JE
    jellyfish @beehaw.org
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