My 602 is my work mouse too. Several years ago I figured I would buy a backup, but it was already discontinued. So I looked into what seems to be Logitech’s intended replacement for it, the G604.

I went to a BestBuy to get a hand on it IRL and it sucked. Everything about it felt cheap. The materials, the button response, everything. RIP.

I’ve had to 3D print a new batter cover for my 602, but other than that it is still holding on for now.

Everything is 95% shit

This right here is a piece of wisdom that I think a lot of people would benefit from. It applies to almost everything.

“Genre” as a concept is incredibly limited. It’s used by marketers to help sell things. Convince people media is more similar to stuff they like than it actually is. Its also used by academics and content creators because their very existence is depending on inventing rigid categories and definitions where none truly exist. Genre can be useful when its descriptive, but I think it can be harmful when prescriptive.

I read an interview a long time ago… I think it was with Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, but I could be wrong. The interviewer set up the context that a lot of people take the position that grunge killedor replaced metal, but some AIC fans argue that AIC is a metal band. He said something along the lines of “we use a lot of metal-isms in our music, but when we are writing we aren’t really thinking about whether something is metal or not”.

I really embraced it when I started making music myself, and with band members. There have been occasions where I purposefully say to myself “I want to write a power metal song” or “I want to write a simple singer-songwriter folk song”, but those tend to sound almost like parodies. They’re popular with people who only listen to music casually. The more interesting artistic exploration happens without those assumptions and expectations. The most interesting pieces of media tend to defy genre boundaries.

Even “anime”… What counts? Stuff like Castlevania and Arcane get called anime, but they weren’t made in Japan. A lot of animation is outsourced to Korea or other countries now… Does that still count? A lot of Adventure Time was animated by a Korean studio… Is that anime? Is any japanese-made stop-motion or claymation anime? What about projects that blend animation with live Action?

The modern western version of “gifts” is really about pushing over-consumption. If marketers cannot convince you to buy something yourself, they can try to convince someone else to buy it for you.

I’ve always felt that gifts should be tokens. Symbols of good will, reminders of the relationship. Consumable gifts are great, especially when shared with the giver. Alcohol is great for this, but there’s plenty more you can do. Small, inexpensive art prints or figurines.

I don’t want someone else to buy me something I woukd want to research myself. My parents gave me a “snow thrower” for Christmas a couple years ago. Its a relatively cheap, Ryobi 40v thing- I do not own anything else that uses that battery ecosystem. My step-dad loves his, and I am it is great for their 2-car driveway, but my driveway can probably fit like 10 cars in it, and I would have rather saved up for something nicer myself. Now i’m in this weird limbo where I feel socially obligated to use it for several years at least before I replace it with something I actually want.

Ah so these “communities” are just based on what an individual gets sorted into aor out of according to u/Grail

“Men” as a “political community” is entirely a fabrication. Reality does not conform to the social constructs you are trying to impose upon it. This may come as a shock to you, but most men do not actually know each other.

In the last US presidential election, 45% of women voted for Trump even after all of the misogynist shit he’s done, and 45% of men literally voted for a woman to be president (not including non-voters of course). A slight statistical trend, but certainly not enough to be able to predict who an individual woukd vote for based on gender alone.

Gender is a spectrum (or more correctly, a collection of a lot of traits, most of which are their own individual spectrums). That is not something I can selectively believe is true whenever I want to support my trans/nonbinary/gender fluid friends ans just conveniently ignore whenever it makes me feel good.

Racists absolutely love to cite statistics about violent crime in predominantly black communities. Do we say “good black people need to do a better job of holding the bad ones accountable?” Absolutely not, because that’s prejudiced ans ridiculous.

If one trans woman sexually assaults a cis woman in a public restroom and JK Rowling starts howling about it… What do we do? Do we demonize all trans women, or even all trans people entirely? Do we start doing genital checks in toilets? Do we start to become afraid of trans people as a “political community”? What if it were more than one case? How many cases does it take for it to become a problem? The answer is: the question itself is fundamentally transphobic and invalid.

I think most progressives get it: its unreasonable to generalize individuals by their identies and pre-judge based on things they cannot control. However, there always seem to be some people who have a problem with that and want to hate others as a sort of “revenge”. Right now it’s in fashion to hate on men. In the past it’s been white people, which I find particularly funny because “whiteness” itself is an incredibly recent concept and many “white” people in the US today would not have even been considered “white” 100 years ago. I’ve heard the occasional hate against straight and cis people.

Age is another one I see. People love to hate on Boomers, but most of the evil people destroying the world aren’t Boomers. Trump, Biden, Obama, both Clintons, Bernie, McConnell, Peloso, Graham… All Silent Generation. JD Vance is a millennial. Elon Musk is Gen X (though it’s even less relevant outside the US). Plenty of boomers are cool as fuck and have spent their lives fighting oppression to make the world a better place, while plenty of people from every “generation” have been shitty. The simple fact is that such generalizations are meaningless.

I think he writes his voiceover in a tone similar to how he would write a report for academic or professional publication, with the technical jargon reduced for his audience. Kind of reminds me of How Its Made.

The segments where he is talking live to the camera sound more natural and casual.

Spider-man is a vigilante who constantly fucks up and makes the system worse. He is also, and I cannot stress this enough, a work of fiction. Relying on the individual wills of physically and politically powerful men, even well-intentioned ones, is how we get to authoritarianism and fascism. The answer is not in individuals, but in systems.

In reality, the closst thing we have to Spiderman IRL is the NYPD, and we’ve already seen how ACAB.

The men with the most physical and political power are the ones abusing that power. The problem is the concentration of power, not men.

What happens when the “bad” men have more physical and political power than the “good” ones do in a system that allows those individuals to exercise that power unilaterally?

What counts as “solved”? What are the goalposts, and who gets to judge those?

I mean, Sony themselves had previously announced they were closing the digital PlayStation Stores for PS3, PSP, and Vita consoles back in 2021. The backlash was so great that that changed their minds and kept the stores open. Just last month they finally announced that they will be closing these stores in 2027. So it is not unheard of for Sony to respond to feedback.

I still don’t have any hope on this case.

Its assholes trying to stake a claim on the word “triggering”. It is a purposeful manipulation of language and muddying the waters.

When I first looked at the Steam Deck, I thought for sure the track pads would be terrible. I expected them to be uncomfortable and clunky and horrible to use for any extended period of time, only useful for getting through some launchers on or doing some quick configuration. I expected to use an external mouse or the touch screen for any serious mousing.

I eventually bought it and was completely wrong. The first game I played fully on the Deck was a tower defense game called Dinosaurs Go Home! (I had gotten it in a Humble Bundle). It was pretty much entirely played using the right track pad, and it was fantastic. Sometimes for FPS’s I’ll even use the right stick as a coarse control and the right track pad as a fine control. When I play emulators, the track pads are radial menus to control save states and emulation speed.

All this to say- I know this looks ridiculous, but I have learned to not make such assumptions. This could totally be useful for a lot of applications. Heck, sometimes at work it gets really annoying to keep moving my right hand between my mouse and the keyboard, and this would eliminate that.

I also use them in my Schecter Hellraiser with no problem.

However, that is because I use NiMH batteries. They are regular old chemical cells- all of the circuitry and switching is done in the charger, which is a separate device. If you use USB-rechargeable ones it it quite possible something might cause noise. However, you might be able to add a smoothing capacitor to eliminate that if you really wanted.

Either one should be fine for pedals too, because every well-made pedal SHOULD have smoothing capacitors on the power supply to get rid of issues like that. Of course, that increases the cost by maybe $0.50 so some manufacturers cut that part.

The thing is, old incomplete games like that usually sold terribly. They are now either forgotten or worse: remembered for being terrible. Stuff like Superman64.

There used to be more pressure on developers to make good games first. Testing and QA departments have shrunk, or st the very least failed to scale with the increased scope of modern games. They instead rely on consumers to report the bugs.

So at the same time they keep raising prices, they are also pushing more of the work onto the consumers.

They make rechargeable 9vs.

Since it costs me virtually nothing, I change my smoke detector batteries every 6 months. That way I can do it at my own convenience, at like 2pm on a Sunday afternoon, instead of 3AM on a Wednesday morning when one starts to chirp.

I’m also still adapting to discussing other hardward in a community called steamdeck. I understand why, just still adjusting personally

I love physical media, but are optical discs really a good match with the steam deck? What exactly is the use case here?

As someone who grew up in the ERS of the Sony Discman, I can testify how annoying it is to try to get an optical disx to read while holding it in your hands. The PSP largely solved this with UMD’s- addign an expensive and bulky plastic shell to the discs to stabilize them. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Sony decided to remove that entirely from.the Vita. I can’t remember any other handheld that has used discs. Everything else uses cartridges or is digital-only.

Disc drives are common on laptops, and portable DVD players used to be common. These larger form factors are expected to rest on your lap or a table, so are more stable.

Another consideration is power. It takes a lot of energy to spin those discs around. That’s one of the reasons why SSD’s have almost completely replaced HDD’s in mobile devices.

Another issue is- are you planning on carrying a CD wallet full of discs around with you?

What is the use case for a disc drive on the Deck? For the games I have in disc, its easier to just rip them and keep them digitally. Same with movies and music.

I think a disc drive could be a cool part of a Steam Deck docking station, but I have a hard time seeing myself ever using discs in any other situation.

Edit: Nevermind I got the Deck and Machine mixed up lol

I ended up using duckdns for a free domain. It sucks that I had to tie it to a google account, and maybe one day this might be an area where I buy a proper domain instead.

I have a glinet Flint3 router that makes it easy to spin up Wireguard servers on it. It was a bit more finnicky, but eventually I was able to get into the advanced settings and configure the router to sync the dynamic IP with DuckDNS too.

So I have Wireguard on my phone and my wife’s phone. We have one pair of close friends who have a connection on their router too (and vice-versa) and their own Jellyfin server.

I would love to take my money elsewhere, but… Where? Everywhere else is just as bad or worse. Half the VPN’s are owner by one Israeli billionaire. I’m running out of options here.

Maybe its just me, but nowadays every public apace is incredibly noisey.

Every bar and restaurant is blaring music. Vehicular traffic, air conditions, all sorts of other machines are pumping noise in too.

I just went out with some people this weekend and found myself wishing we had, noise-canceling headsets to be able to talk to each other. Kinda makes me want to not go out any more.

Kape (and thus all of the VPNs they have purchased) is owned by Ted Saggi, an Israeli billionaire.

And yes, they are legally headquartered in London, but how meaningful is that? There’s hundreds of US companies that are headquartered into a handful of buildings in Delaware for legal and tax reasons. Their “development center” is based in Tel Aviv.