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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2024

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  • I guess I sort of agree? It’s a bit tricky to get it set up, for sure. Even just installing windows is probably beyond the average user, and this has a few more quirks and gotchas than normal.

    E.g., in IoT LTSC 11 (which is what I’m actually currently using), when you connect a controller, it’ll bring up an error message about not having a handler for ms-gamebar, and fixing that calls for regedit. (One it’s fixed, though, it stays fixed.) It also got itself into a bit of a weird state during the initial installation where it wanted me to log in with a kind of account I don’t have, and while I was able to bypass that, I don’t think I did it in quite the right way, and it broke something in the install and I had to do an in-place repair install to fix it before it would install certain updates successfully. It was also failing to download the in-place repair install, so I had to look up how to do it manually using the install DVD I’d burned previously. But that fixed it, and it’s been fine since.

    So, yeah, it’s got pitfalls and quirks and glitches. That’s also been my experience with other Windows installs, though, so it didn’t seem all that different in general.

    But once you get those initial hurdles sorted out, it’s really just like normal Windows. Better, even, since it doesn’t have all the cruft built into it, like Cortana, Teams, OneDrive, start menu ads, nag screens about upgrading to 11, the Microsoft Store, etc. (Though you can add most of those if you really want them.) My aging parents aren’t willing to upgrade to 11 because they’re afraid too many things will have changed, and I’m thinking I’ll probably switch them to 10 IoT LTSC instead. I’ll just have to be careful to make sure everything they want to do works before I leave them to it. It still gets monthly security updates and everything.





  • It’s directed by Terry Gilliam, and it’s brilliant. It’s set in a bureaucratic totalitarian state, and follows a minor functionary who is slowly losing his mind. There are multiple overlapping plots, involving a rebel heating engineer, a man mistakenly abducted and tortured to death by the government after a computer glitch, the functionary’s politically ambitious mother, a quack plastic surgeon, a beautiful truck driver, terrorist attacks, and the functionary’s ever-growing escapist fantasy life. It’s one of my favorite films. Right up there with Delicatessen in terms of dystopian comedy sci-fi.







  • Sticking only to ones I haven’t seen mentioned:

    • Tandis : geometry puzzler
    • Gateways : a 2d portal-style puzzler
    • Elliot Quest : pixel adventure
    • Phoenotopia Awakening : also a pixel adventure, had trouble with the final boss but the rest is great
    • Wuppo : flash-animation-style comedy adventure
    • Alba : sweet game about a girl who loves wildlife
    • Salt and Sanctuary : 2d soulslike
    • Legend of Grimrock : tile-based first person dungeon crawler (“dungeon master” spiritual successor)
    • A Short Hike (really short but amazing exploration game)

    Ones I have seen mentioned but can’t bear not to mention:

    • TIS-100 : the finest of the Zachlikes; a programming puzzle game
    • Crosscode : 2d adventure with incredibly fine-tuned combat and puzzles
    • Outer Wilds : fantastic time-loop puzzle
    • FTL : space adventure “one more run!” game
    • Slay the Spire : deck-drafting “one more run!” game




  • The US population in 1980 was around 226 million, and in 2020 it was around 330 million. That’s an increase of about 50%. By comparison, the GDP in 1980 was about $2.75 trillion; in 2020 it was over $20 trillion, an increase of more than 600%.

    The problem isn’t that we’re spreading out the same amount of money over too many people. It’s that we’re making much, much more money, but concentrating it in the hands of a tiny number of people and letting everyone else scramble for scraps.



  • monotremata@lemmy.catomemes@lemmy.worldIt was magnificent
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    16 days ago

    And the ringer in the phone was a physical bell with a little magnetically-actuated hammer, so if you slammed the receiver down hard enough, the bell would actually resonate for a little while after. You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.


  • monotremata@lemmy.catomemes@lemmy.worldName them
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    19 days ago

    I grew up near a place called the “McGuffin Lumber Company.” It was just a tiny storefront business, and I never saw anyone go in. And, of course, “MacGuffin” is a Hollywood term for an arbitrary thing that motivates the plot of a movie, like the Maltese Falcon in that film. So it was a running gag in my family that it must be a front.



  • Especially since he’s already been on TV talking about how “these are people who will never pay taxes. they’ll never hold a job. they’ll never play baseball. they’ll never write a poem. they’ll never go on a date. many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” He’s explicitly pushing the narrative that autistic people are useless.

    Seriously, I was thinking about getting evaluated, and this gives me the chills. I will not be seeking an evaluation at this time.