At the very least back up your Audible library in a DRM free format with something like Libation.

I am still using Audible because their web player works in my restricted office, and the authors get a couple of pennies from dragon, but have my library safely exported to ensure continued access and prevent fuckery like this.

Only two ways to find out. Time to fire up universe sandbox, cause I’m fresh out of the ability to delete the sun in the production environment.

The real question is if the earth becomes a rogue planet or if Jupiter captures most/all of the remaining solar system. Jupiter is technically a failed star, so could it finally get it’s glowup from being the sun’s understudy and keep us all together until we fall into the gravitational well of a new star?

They must be talking about Eve Online (spreadsheets in space), it’s the only logical explanation.

The real question is if there was enough backlash to the spyware crap with Civ 6 that they learned their lesson or not.

All the talk the last few months about SteamOS and Bazzite (plus Windows 10’s imminent death) got me to finally let up a Linux dual boot. Choosing a distro is a fairly contrary process with half the review lists being useless “tech media”, half AI buzzword word salad, and half distro stans trying to sell you on their version by pointing out flaws in the others.

I jumped in and am now on Manjaro as I use my computer primarily for gaming and media consumption. I originally planned this because of Manjaro Gaming edition, but Manjaro Gaming edition hasn’t been updated in years so looks like abandonware. Regular Manjaro it is, and add what I need as I go. I hope.

I decided to try Manjaro over PopOS due to enough anecdotal reviews about PopOS stability issues to make me second guess it. I have used Mint on old hardware in the past, and it was ok but I was concerned about gaming support and Nvidia drivers (accidentally jumped from Nvidia to Amd anyway, but that’s another story). Ubuntu has the same issue as PopOS on top of being the corporate distro. I also still have a bad taste from trying Ubuntu years ago and gaming attempts on it sucked.

I do not want to distro hop to find the promised land or just to see what the other grass is like, it’s just not something I am interested in and never have been. As bad as Windows can be, I have usually been able to ride an installation for multiple years barring external incident. I want to primarily sit down and use my computer. Reinstalls should be reserved for hardware refreshes and new builds.

If SteamOS can eventually simplify the decision paralysis involved in making the jump to Linux, it is going to be an absolute win. As a hard core techie with decades of experience building PCs, if I had this much trouble making the switch then I expect an even worse experience for the regular Joe.

Well I am going to put it to the test and see if it’s available anywhere to binge watch. I remember it being perfectly fine and enjoyable, but never one I was intentionally waiting to watch. Time to find out if it holds up or even gets better with age.

Why do I apparently have the entire theme song still in my brain meats? I only thought the show was ok during its original Adult Swim run, and it wasn’t even a brain wormie theme. I apparently need to go back and watch it again to see what’s up.

There is a tangible difference between cutting off utility infrastructure and the fallout from shutting down oil refineries. Sabotaging a substation or power plant, blocking vital thorofares, shutting down water plants, etc will cause direct deaths and fall more in line with an attack on the population than a protest. That is what certain countries are doing to their neighbors and we rightly condemn that even in war.

Causing a drop in available fuel through refinery or pipeline embargo or sabotage would at worst cause rationing and prioritization to emergency services. This will of course cause damage to those that rely on transportation, but allows the ability to plan for/around that infrastructure disruption does not.

Blocking roads is the least impactful infrastructure disruption obviously, but disruption of fire, police, and other emergency services is still a more direct impact than what would amount to the 70s oil embargo.

When we get into acceptable losses, it can sound like the “left’s” equivalent to gun rights. I am not saying these are the same, or of the same magnitudes, just that the argument is made for how many gun deaths are acceptable to retain fundamental liberties. Both are probably important discussions to have, but there will be people who is answered to both will be zero or who don’t even want to engage with such a topic.

The Warhammer tide games, either Vermintide 2 or Darktide. Best melee combat in a video game, relatively short rounds, and super satisfying to just genocide some heretic/xeno hordes for the Emperor/Sigmar.

You just alerted me to the existence of Orcs Must Die 3, and I am going to check it out after absolutely loving the first 2.

All excellent recommendations, and I’ll triple down on the Vermintide 2 recommendation. One of the best bang for buck indi games out there. Darktide has similarly hit a state where I can recommend it as well finally, even if it took an embarrassingly long time to get to a Vermintide 2 level of playability. If you like the -tide games, give it a go.

Behind the scenes Bungie decided they didn’t want to be a single franchise studio and sunk all the money from Destiny 2 into a bunch of failed projects. Something like 8 new IPs they tried to get off the ground and none have seen the light of day. Marathon or whatever it might be called now might get a release, but no guarantees. Basically squandered all the money and good will for the Destiny franchise trying to become the next Activision or EA and committed corporate suicide.

Add the new massively expensive campuses while having a mostly remote workforce, and the CEO buying millions of dollars in classic cars to display, and you have this worst timeline we live in. Expect Sony to replace the board and completely take over the studio soon.

Sunsetting killed the game for me too, I wasn’t able to replace ever piece of gear to keep my stat split correct and there were still entire element and weapon types missing entirely a year after it went into effect. I took a break, then a longer break, then never went back because I felt like I missed too much.

I heard they fully un-sunset everything they had sunset, but at this point I have zero desire to play the game anymore. This is after having played thousands of hours and having D2 as the only game I played for much of that time. As a 50/50 PVE and PVP player, the slow death of PVP and the removal of half the raids kills the game for me.

Lemmying in the bathroom as one does, and you caused me to drop another Seagal by trying to hold my laugh in. I salute you.

Let’s be honest, this is most probably a riff on the semi-current push for greater diversity in games. That “could” be boiled down to “I don’t see characters with my exact physical identity and want/need this representation”, even if it’s reducto absurdum.

But look at how small and dexterous the children are, able to squeeze and clamber through the tunnels. And look at what they play all day: Minecraft. Clearly the children are best suited, as they yearn for the mines.

Librewolf didn’t take as much adjustment as I would have expected, and it even supports toning down specific security postures for QoL niceties like Firefox account sync. Made the switch just to try it out and haven’t gone back. Excited to see what people come up with for more forks/hard forks in the future.

You should if you want to be a science writer or academic, which lets be honest is a better comparison here. If your job involves latin for names and descriptions then you probably should take at least a year or two of latin if you don’t want to make mistakes here and there out of ignorance.

Depending on your forecasted capacity needs, Ubiquity does have some attractive options depending on your comfort with managed vs unmanaged switches is. I am making some assumptions based on homelab tendencies. I have been very happy with the UniFi ecosystem personally, though I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The Dream Machine Pro has been very good for me both operationally and reliability wise, and there are expansion options for 10Gb Ethernet or SFP+ switches that cover most (pro/prosumer) price ranges.

They are definitely not the best bang for buck necessarily, and I have not tried any MikroTik alternatives to directly compare so take my opinions with a big grain of salt. I work in a purely Cisco environment and am used to working almost exclusively in CLI, but I found the UniFi GUI and environment easy enough to pick up with a little effort. UniFi firewall is too permissive by default if you are using something like the Dream Machine as the front end, but as a Boundary non-expert it was not too difficult to configure satisfactorily. Wireless APs are pretty great too.

The sun is a giant lithium battery that became a spicy pillow and then exploded, and as everyone knows you can’t put out a lithium battery fire like a regular fire. The fire department just pushed it out there into space beyond the environment to let it burn itself out, which is expected to take at least 5 billion more years.