This is an interesting development, for sure - and not one we will be able to accurately gauge the net impact of for a while.

It does feel like CD Project want to move it off their financial documents (P&L, cashflow, balance sheets etc.), while Michael wants to double-down and focus on building out the historical catalog.

Success will really depend on if GOG can remain profitable through lean years without having to ultimately rely on compromising their morals; and whether they will continue to receive support from modern publishers to help fund the more niche projects.

There are apparently OpenVPN profile you can import, but as I said in my earlier comment - I just couldn’t get it to work (connection attempts would just time out).

I still have like ~18 months of PIA left (joined under a 100% cashback offer), but will likely switch to Proton or Mullvad afterwards - as they both seem to work better under Linux from what I’ve read.

I’m sure over time I’ll tinker more under the hood over time, but for now - I’m just trying to ease myself into Linux with pre-configured installers when particular apps aren’t available through the Cachy Package Manager.

30-odd years of Windows usage has dulled my IT skills!

I barely know what I’m looking at! 😅

Pretty sure I tried poking around that file on Bazzite also to see if I could locate the RPM to try and do a manual terminal install - but gave up after a few minutes.

The only franchises I will pre-order are:

• World of Warcraft Collector’s Editions : even though I stopped playing a few years ago now, I still buy the physical copy collector’s editions to add to my collection - I have every one going all the way back to vanilla.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 : I have both the PS3 Collector’s Editions for IV and V, feels like getting the same for 6 to finish off that ‘trilogy’ would be apropos.

This is a cursed list, but at least 2/3rds eventually lived up to their initial promise!

Sample size of 1, here.

Bazzite was my initial entry-point into Linux, but I bounced off it within 48 hours as its immutable nature made it impossible for me to install the native PIA VPN client and for the life of me I couldn’t get the OpenVPN to play nice.

Currently on CachyOS, and seems to run just fine - giving an end user just enough rope 😅

Plus it’s Arch underneath the hood too, so I can still cheekily say that I run Arch!

ETA: I wonder if/how long I would count as part of this Bazzite cohort?

Unironically, you’re missing out.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both just ways to project the smartphone already in your pocket onto an additional screen (like plugging a second monitor to your laptop or PC).

Manufacturers like GM and Tesla hate it because it stops your data from being readily collected and stored with the purpose of building up a profile of ‘you’ that they can then sell to advertisers and insurance companies.

Now if only manufacturers had the good sense to keep things like climate control as physical switches - that’s my own personal bugbear. 🤬

I’m in a similar boat, our next TV will be a commercial display if I’m not confident that we can successfully air-gap the TV.

Something like this, ideally: https://www.lg.com/au/business/information-display/oled-digital-signage/oled-pro-monitor/65ep5g-b/

Yeah, in hindsight it really landed at an opportune time.

It’s a crying shame how greedy companies like Nvidia & Micron have gotten from back-to-back runs on their products - it feel like it will take a generational downturn for them to pull their heads in, and return to the more modest profit margins of the past (which even then was around 30%, IIRC).

Ah, completely forgot that Intel 6th gen introduced DDR4 - I would’ve sworn it was much more recent than that!

You’ve certainly gotten your money’s worth out of your system - that’s for sure!

I went from a 3570K, 16GB, GTX 670 -> GTX 1080 (later SLI’d), to my current rig:

5950X, 32GB, RTX 3090 -> RX 7900 XTX

Just before the Ethereum mining rush took off, and with the current pricing due to AI fuckery - I don’t think I’ll be switching up anytime soon.

I get where you’re coming from, and in certain situations where you can’t otherwise get around it, you can configure your home network to not allow the Smart TV to phone home with telemetry or to accept any inbound external network traffic, so it can only access local network data such as your PC for Steam link.

I’m not confident enough to configure my home network that well (yet), hence I just opt to have the TV air gapped instead

The thing with smart TVs is that you don’t need to connect them to your network to use them.

LG, unfortunately, still make the best OLED displays at the moment, and Samsung are arguably even worse when it comes to not respecting their customers.

Our C2 65in is hooked up to an Apple TV for all of our media streaming needs.

64GB of DDR3 RAM in a system of that era is straight nuts!

The US Economy after the inevitable, next global depression:

Data centres aren’t run by hardware manufacturers. When Nvidia/Micron/Samsung run out of enterprise corporations to bilge funds out of, they will return back to selling to consumers.

Does this mean that things will 100% return to how they were in the ‘Before Times’? No, let’s be real - the surplus of under-used data centres will definitely result in a push towards cloud gaming, online experiences and the like - but in an ideal scenario we would end up with more choice and not less.

But again, this all hinges on the current AI bubble bursting in the near future - followed by a pretty bad recession/depression.

The principal of supply and demand still applies, they will cut prices up until the point they either go out of business or they find a sufficient number of buyers.

Companies like Nvidia, Micron and Samsung are currently chasing massive profits off enterprise customers, but will come crawling back to consumers once the AI bubble bursts (assuming they survive the resulting market collapse).

As an example, if Nvidia can turn one TSMC wafter into one AI accelerator that they can sell for $40K, or into ~5 RTX 5090s they can sell for $2K/ea - they will sell as many of the $40K cards as they can, and only use failed wafers to try and satiate RTX 5090 demand.

But if there are no more AI customers, they will be forced to drop prices in order to shift more volume. If they can’t drop prices further due to wafer costs, then they will pass up wafer allocations from TSMC.

If TSMC sees too many wafers free up - they will be forced to drop prices to all customers (AMD, Apple etc.) to try and pick up the slack. They in turn will need to drop prices in order to try and increase sales volumes.

This will have a downwards pressure on prices and a “return to the mean” moment for tech prices. It will just be a painful couple of years until we get to that point, and honestly with the way things are currently going - it will be the least of our worries.

Prices won’t fall, not until the AI bubble bursts and the related industries shift focus back to consumer-level goods.

At best, you could hope prices remain steady for a few years and real-world incomes slowly rise to match this new normal.

That’s awesome, didn’t even think of how useful AirDrop could be in that situation!

How’s controller support? I have a Razer Kishi V2 I bought way back when to play the Rockstar games, that’s just otherwise gathering dust.

It’s nighttime here in Australia - will load up some files and test it out tomorrow morning! 😁

Thanks for bringing Delta to my attention! I use my Steam Deck for emulation - but now, I have another rabbit hole to go down for when I need to pack ultralight!

Any obvious iOS restrictions, assuming I’d be primarily interested in SNES gaming and have local access to any/every ROM file?

Netflix’s deal/offer is only for WB/HBO properties. CNN etc. would be spun off into its own company called Discovery Worldwide IIRC.

Paramount’s hostile takeover attempt is for the whole WB/Discovery enterprise.