I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but there were black people in ancient Greece IRL. It’s not even “woke,” just historically accurate!

I don’t remember having the choice of 15-bit. I only remember having the choice of “256” (8-bit indexed palette), “thousands” (16-bit “high color,” with 5:6:5 bits per channel for RGB respectively), or “millions” (24-bit, 8 bits per channel).

I actually remember the Solitaire card back images being dithered because I had the resolution turned up (and thus the color depth turned down).

I understand being intimidated. Under normal circumstances I’d say maybe try building a cheap computer for your first time, but there kinda aren’t any right now. That said, my first one was a reasonably high-end machine for the time, and it turned out fine.

I feel like the biggest sticking point is actually #2, not #1. I was the kind of kid who was obsessively reading tech magazines/websites/newspaper ad flyers and knew exactly what I wanted and where to get the best deal on it. So yeah, I definitely recommend doing your research first.

But good news: you’ve got it easy these days with YouTube showing you what to get and how to assemble it instead of having to read. The parts themselves are easier these days, too: no jumpers to set, and almost everything is keyed to only fit one way. Short of being really inept/careless and bending CPU pins or snapping the edge connector off a PCB or something, you’re not going to hurt anything.

The bottom line is, if you want to do it eventually you might as well do it now, because there really isn’t that much to it.

The only real reasons to get a Steam Machine are if:

1. You really want your computer to be a 6" cube
2. You really want HDMI CEC support
3. You really want to give your money to Valve instead of some other company

Otherwise, something else will be cheaper and/or faster, at the cost of being a more normal desktop size and shape.

I haven’t had a prebuilt desktop since I was 15, so I would definitely build my own. (In other words, if the thing stopping you is being nervous about screwing it up, don’t be because it isn’t actually hard.)

Otherwise, I don’t have any specific prebuilt brand recommendations for you, but I’ll echo the advice to get something with a Radeon 9060 XT (or better). Alternatively, if you think you might want to do AI things with it too instead of just gaming, consider a small-form-factor PC with a fast APU and a lot of unified memory (e.g. like the Framework Desktop or Minisforum MS-S1 Max) or a Radeon RX 7900 XTX (with 24GB RAM), but be aware that those would be a lot more expensive right now.

I understand wordp(l)ay, I swear! 😅

Unfortunately, theirs had a namespace collision with a separate actual product, so I decided to riff on that instead.

And moving necessary libraries into Google Play Services instead of having them in AOSP at all.

Or Google Play, for that matter!

(I don’t really care because I find the idea of hooking your credit cards to a third party to pay with your phone creepy to begin with, but are there any non-Google-Pay alternatives for GrapheneOS or Linux phones?)

This is “you are an absolute fool for planting that second cucumber plant” month.

Populism is when unpopular and serving only the elite? Nah, I’m pretty sure you’ve got that exactly backwards.

The scum pushing chat control are in no way “populists.” No actual people want it!

Wololo

…wait, wrong game.

Here’s a better idea: let’s destroy the parking lots, build buildings that are actually useful in their place, and then put the solar panels on top of that.

Or if you must insist on having big-box stores with lots of parking, at the very least put it under the store!

Wait a second, this implies that mice are predators.

I remember hearing about that. Do we know if the second bank has also lost a lawsuit yet?

Which is all the more reason law enforcement should not have cared.

The grandchildren/furries were also studying mathmatics (computer science/engineering). Just sayin’.

I don’t think I’ve so much as touched my PinePhone in years. I should charge it up and try loading some new software builds on it.

That customer knew exactly what they wanted.

They’ll get there. They hate the idea of individual people being able to make things for themselves or having any other escape from consumer serfdom.