blindsight

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Isn't a cracked (old, I think?) Kindle the only way to pirate KU/DRM titles? At least, that's what I recall from the last time I looked into it. There's a book I really wanted to format shift from KU since Google TTS was fucking up all the proper nouns, but I gave up. (It was an obscure book that isn't available anywhere pirated.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Longest I've been out of Canada is a week.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Proroguing Parliament for 2½ months to pick a new leader isn't a good look for the Liberals on this one, but I can see why they went for it. That's a lot of news cycles for things to cool off before a likely election.

I doubt it will be enough to keep the anti-trans bigot party from winning a majority government, sadly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Weird to hear that. My only issue so far has been how hard it is to get movement speed on boots. Granted, I'm only just about to start Cruel, so my playtime is low compared to many, but I'm absolutely loving all the boss encounters, particularly with the dodge mechanics. And not needing to worry about socket numbers, colours, and links on gear.

Maybe I should read what others are saying, but I have nothing significant to complain about so far, aside from move speed being a bit too slow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Same experience for me on the other side of the country in small-town BC. I had a minor non-urgent issue that needed imaging. I just walked in and got it done immediately after my doctor appointment. It took me as long for me to change into the hospital flasher "clothing" as I spent in the waiting room.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

That sounds really cool. Thanks for sharing; I hadn't heard about this one previously.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I was gaming exclusively on the Deck from January to the start of December...

...But Path of Exile 2 I'm streaming from my desktop to get acceptably clear visuals and smooth framerates. I'm back heating my house with my desktop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Bankruptcy seems like a stretch, indeed. But those assets are largely not income generating, aside from donations and tourism. With those on the decline, their value situation is worsening.

Hopefully, they'll be forced to sell their "priceless" artifacts until there's nothing left.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Holy shit, that's huge. I was trying to wrap my head around those numbers.

Russia is about 3½ times Canada's population, so 30K deaths is, per capita, equivalent to about 8.5K deaths in Canada. That's higher than all-cause mortality in Canada from ages 1-35. Just from HIV.

Whoa. That's not good.

Or, another perspective:
More than 1% of Russians are infected with HIV. (Estimated 1.5mm out of ~140mm.)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

I would expect this kind of Puritanical pearl clutching in the US, not Europe.

Apparently, any game that uses straights, flushes, and full houses gets an adults-only rating, but games with addictive psychological dark patterns designed to maximize microtransaction revenue are fine for children. What a world we live in.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Loving it.

On the Steam Deck, it was playable, but I couldn't find settings that looked good and were visually clear, so I finally got around to setting up Sunshine and Moonlight (in-house streaming) and it's amaze balls.

I'm using a script that switches my desktop to a virtual monitor that's the Steam Deck's native resolution, and I recently upgraded my house to a WiFi 6 mesh network, so it's working almost flawlessly. (I often get crashes on startup, but it's never taken more than 3 tries, then no issues.)

I'm still only in act 1 (limited playtime) but I'm so excited to be playing PoE again, and PoE2 is perfect for playing with a controller.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I don't want to simp for a corporation, but what is Valve doing that's anticompetitive?

Like, don't they need to be doing something to limit competitors' access to the market to be anticompetitive?

Steam requires base price/same price parity for selling Steam keys, but they're literally giving their services away to developers for free in those cases, so that's pretty clearly not anticompetitive, right? And there's no requirements that I've seen written anywhere that they require price parity for non-Steam-key sales.

And, based on the massive numbers of bundles of games I've bought with Steam keys with total historical-low game prices below best-ever Steam sale prices, they pretty clearly don't even enforce this rule strictly (it seems like so long as the total bundle price is in line with individual title sale prices, they're fine, even if consumers get other games as well.)

So I'm not sure what the basis for this suit is. Not saying it's healthy for the market to have an effective monopoly in this space, but the reason Valve is maintaining its marketshare is because they're consistently offering the best value to consumers compared to other storefronts, which isn't illegal.

/Insert "prove me wrong" meme

 

I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.

This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.

So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?

 

All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.

Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.

I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.

The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.

What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?

 

There's a big protest being organized across Canada to protest SOGI being taught in schools, and I'm fed up with it. There are so many vulnerable students who need to know that what they're experiencing is normal, and right-wing extremists are politicizing human rights and spreading manufactured controversy about children being shown pornography in schools.

The linked article is just one of many anti-SOGI protests happening across Canada on Wednesday.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is that some of these right-wing anti-SOGI [redacted; unkind] are parents of kids in our kids' classes, and a couple of them are close friends with my kids.

How do you handle that? Kids shouldn't be held accountable for their parents' beliefs. But what about playdates and birthday parties and such? Should we discuss the friendship? It feels wrong to ostracize the child. They deserve to feel safe and have friends.

Also, I'm thinking of taking time off work to counter protest, and making a sign like this one:

Not really related to parenting, but I think it's important kids feel supported and bigots are told their archaic world views are unwelcome. It'll be super awkward if a parent I know is standing on the other side of the protest.

 

Saskatchewan is fairly conservative leaning, from a Canadian perspective, so perhaps this isn't surprising, but it's a shame that drug use continues to be viewed through a criminal lens instead of a healthcare and mental health crisis.

My understanding is that even suicide is generally covered by life insurance policies after a two-year vetting period; I would have thought that drug overdoses would at least get the same treatment. It doesn't say in the article how long this policy existed, but the context implies it was longer than two years and I would have thought it would have been a relevant detail to include in the article if it was a newly opened policy, so the omission of that detail further supports it being an older policy.

I have great sympathy for his family, especially because of the long legal battle that I'm sure has retraumatized them over the intervening years.

 

My context / use case

I got Fire 7 tablets for my kiddos a few years ago and they're dreadfully slow and can't really run many apps at all. With my daughter needing some educational support at home, I was looking for a cheap replacement that actually had enough power to manage recent education apps, and hopefully be future proof for a while.

Alternatives

The cheapest tablet at Costco.ca, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, is $500 CAD, has a weak processor, only 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage.

I'll never touch Apple products for a zillion reasons, but cost was completely prohibitive for a device my child could drop any day. Even used ones are insanely priced. And the app ecosystem for education on iOS is almost entirely paid apps, increasingly using a subscription model. (Or so it seems.)

Newer Amazon Fire "HD" tablets suck, too, but at least they're cheap. And they might be powerful enough to run some things? idk. I wasn't enthused.

Then, I thought to check AliExpress and found an 8GB tablet with 128GB storage, a processor better than the S6, and a 2K (1440p) display. After reading reviews to check if it's legit, I ordered one.

Informal Review

The great:

Price/value for the specs. I paid ~$240CAD for a bundle that includes a nice case, screen protector, charging block and cable, and a child-size Bluetooth keyboard. (It doesn't have a digitizer, so I skipped the stylus.)

The good:

The tablet is snappy. The battery lasts a long time. The screen has plenty enough resolution to render everything crisply on a 10.4" display.

It's a perfect tablet for my kids use as an educational tablet. It's great for PDF ebook reading (mostly picture books and early reader chapter books to date, lol!) and has handled all the education/edutainment apps without any slowdowns.

3.5mm jack. 18W fast charging. Build quality feels solid. Well positioned hardware buttons and 3.5mm jack make it easy to use in either orientation. The included case works as an angled stand. SD card slot for expansion. SIM compatible for phone/data.

The bad:

The viewing angle is pretty terrible. It's completely fine for solo use or for applications where colour accuracy isn't important, but it's very noticeable.

The speakers suck. I'm not a sound geek, so I don't know the correct terms, but the sound is muddy and distorted. They also have a fairly low maximum volume, and become increasingly distorted at higher volume. They work well enough, but it's not enjoyable for music. I would definitely use headphones for music/video/games.

I haven't tried the camera at all, but I've heard it's not great. Can't comment on that.

The purchase

The vendor I ordered from (ALLDOCUBE Direct Store) swapped the EU plug for a US plug at no extra cost. It arrived quickly (3 weeks?) from China.

The package arrived with the retail box crushed, so the included screen protector broke. After using it for a day, I decided to buy a second one for my other child, and asked them to include a replacement. Not only did they include a replacement, but they pre-installed the screen protector on tablet #2 so it couldn't break, without my asking them to.

I would recommend the seller, but ask them to pre-install the screen protector (if you plan to use one) so there's less risk of damage in transit.

Discussion

Anyway, not sure if this is the kind of content people want here, but I thought I'd do my part to add something!

Has anyone else experimented with cheap AliExpress/Chinese Android devices?

Based on my success with these, I'm considering getting a phone for my wife there. I'm a bit more worried about data vulnerabilities and software support longevity on a daily driver phone, but it's really hard to find a small quality phone for a reasonable price. Also, it needs to have a good camera or it's a nonstarter.

Do you have any experience or thoughts on this?

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