Yeah, N64 speedrunners even went as far as replacing their aging analog sticks with machined steel sticks. Because as the console ages, so do the controllers. And stick drift became a major problem for speed runners who used genuine consoles. There was even a case where an aging controller led to the discovery of a new glitch, when a speedrunner’s NES controller had gotten so old that it allowed him to press button combos that wouldn’t have been possible with a new controller. And that button combo allowed him to perform glitches that would have been otherwise impossible on a console.

The larger issue is accessibility. If speed running requires a genuine console, it severely limits the number of people who can afford to participate. There would be a big financial barrier just to buy the console and game(s), and since no new consoles are being made it will inevitably lead to the death of speedruns as consoles die out and nobody can continue playing.

One of the original goals of emulation was data preservation, since it quickly became evident that game companies wouldn’t bother preserving their own games. And as consoles age, that will only become more and more important. I personally have backups of all of my legitimately purchased Nintendo games. But that’s only because I enjoy data hoarding and have a NAS that can actually store all of it. Not everyone has that luxury, and it means that (again) there will be a big financial barrier to anyone wanting to be able to play the games that they legally purchased and have the right to play.

They’re probably talking about the BMG rootkit from the early 2000’s. Basically, when you inserted a Sony CD into your computer, it would automatically and silently install a rootkit on your PC, which introduced a backdoor on your PC that was being actively exploited. It was also notoriously difficult to remove, as it would reinstall itself even if you deleted every visible trace of it (and improperly installing it could disable access to your CD drive entirely.)

Then when shit hit the fan and Sony was making headlines for it, they released a “fix” for it. The fix didn’t actually remove the rootkit, and simply hid files with specific names (the rootkit files) from the users. This only introduced another vulnerability, where hackers could just name any virus the same as the rootkit, and it would automatically be hidden.

It led to several very large lawsuits and state investigations. Sony was raked over the coals by multiple state attorneys general, and the FTC even published warnings urging consumers not to buy Sony CDs.

All in the name of DRM. The rootkit was initially meant to stop you from ripping and copying the CD. Oh, and the rootkit contained sections of improperly credited open source code. So Sony stole from OSS programmers while claiming that they were trying to prevent IP theft.

Which is the exact same behavior that caused the dot com bubble. VC funding was throwing money at any and every dot com business, in the hopes that it would explode and lead to profits.

All it did was massively overvalue the dot com companies, which caused a bubble when people finally realized they were overvalued and VC investors turned off the spigot of free money.

I actually loved how Larian wrote the ToS for Baldurs Gate 3. It’s written as if it is a warlock pact.

It’s the first time I have actually read a ToS in years.

Woman died because an employee at a Disney resort served her food with peanuts in it. Her widower tried to sue, because the woman had confirmed with the server that there would be no nuts, and the server assured them there wouldn’t be. So someone on the restaurant’s side fucked up. Pretty open and shut case of negligence.

Disney’s lawyers tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, by saying that the husband had agreed to binding arbitration in the Terms of Service when he signed up for a free two week Disney+ trial on his Xbox several years prior. He never actually paid for a subscription, and cancelled after the free trial. But Disney was saying that the binding arbitration clause was still in effect in perpetuity, even after the trial ended and he cancelled the service.

Disney quickly reversed course (and “allowed” the man to sue them) once they realized it was making headlines, because they didn’t want to deal with the bad PR. But if it hadn’t made headlines, Disney’s lawyers likely would have continued pushing for dismissal.

Nah, Yuzu is still working fine on mine. Basically, if you had the emulator installed prior to the takedown, EmuDeck will continue to use it.

Which is honestly a pretty good argument for just installing every single emulator (even if you never think you’ll use them!) because they don’t really take up that much space, and you could potentially lose access to them if you never bothered before a takedown.

You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)

Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.

Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).

Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.

For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.

As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.

Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.

And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.

And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.

Most of the episodes aired before at-home VHS was common, and TV stations weren’t in the habit of archiving their old footage for nightly broadcasts; The show was viewed as transient since it dealt with current events, and nobody expected people to want to re-watch old episodes. It’s likely that a lot of them aren’t available simply because nobody (including the tv station) has recordings.

Knives go dull much faster in the dishwasher. If you want to keep your knives sharp, you should be hand washing as soon as you’re done with them.

Also, get a damned knife block; Having your knives rattling around in a drawer is just asking for dull knives and accidents.

Cold water and dish soap is the way to go. Hot water runs the risk of delaminating the coating layer, and hand soap tends to have moisturizers that will stick to the lens. Microfibers are too abrasive, and don’t adequately lift debris away from the lens. Just lather a drop of soap to cut the oils, then rinse. If your oleophobic coating is still good and water slicks off the lens, you can even turn the faucet low and just run a trickle across the lens to dry them. So you literally never need to touch the lens with a towel or microfiber cloth.

If you only ever use soap and cold water, your oleophobic coating will last for literal years. I’ve had my current pair for almost two years now, with no scratches and my oleophobic coating is still just fine. Lens cleaners, glass cleaners, etc all strip that coating away. And microfibers are bad about causing tiny scratches that build up over time, since they drag dust and debris across the lens as you wipe them. In contrast, water gently carries dust and debris away without scratching, then the soap removes the oily fingerprints and smudges without damaging the coating.

Ding ding ding. Make it technically possible to private the sub, but then add 5000 bots to every new sub so it’s not actually possible.

Yeah, it’s a statement that is spoken from a position of extreme privilege. Being able to “not care” about politics means politics has never directly impacted your day to day life, your health, your wellbeing…

Apollo had this same bug before the API-colypse, and it’s supposedly because iOS memory management doesn’t actually alert an app that it’s being closed in the background. When you swipe away from an app, the phone automatically determines when to close it in the background; Even if it is still visible on your list of running apps, it may actually be closed. (This is also why iOS doesn’t bother giving you a “Close all background apps” button like android does. It just automatically closes background apps.) It closes it without warning, and the app is forced to refresh the next time it is opened. The app maker has zero control over this; It’s something the OS does automatically.

So maybe you swipe away to do something small, and your comment is fine when you return. But maybe you swipe away to something more memory-hungry (like maybe you want to go grab a video link.) Now your phone goes “oh hey I need a lot of memory. Time to dump some background apps.” And so even though you were only gone from the app for a few seconds or minutes, the phone still purged it.

Could it be fixed? Yeah, probably. AlienBlue (the precursor to Apollo) solved it by saving your progress occasionally, but that had problems of its own. For instance, your cache would eventually balloon to massive sizes, and it also caused excess power drain from constantly writing to your phone’s memory.

The “Methodist” part really depends on which side of the schism your church landed on. There are absolutely bigoted Methodists.

Baptist is spot on though. Especially southern baptists, which tend to be the most fire-and-brimstone with their preaching.

As the old joke goes: “What’s the biggest difference between Methodists and baptists? Baptists won’t wave at each other in the liquor store.”

Nah, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. “I smelled weed” has been used for decades to skirt probable cause requirements. Because it’s transient evidence that can’t be saved or replicated, and you can’t prove that they’re lying. You can be 100% clean, but a cop claims he smelled weed and now your car’s interior paneling is getting ripped out on the side of the highway.

The cop lied to get the search approved. No more, no less.

Job postings like yours are extremely common when the applicant has been pre-selected but the company still requires an external posting. Your applicant likes off-grid hiking, is a hobbyist drone pilot, and enjoys grilling?

Now the job posting for a IT position requires an applicant who is capable of accurate pathfinding using a paper map and compass, two years of drone pilot experience, and four years of culinary experience.

If you’re referring to the wavy pattern along the cutting edge, that’s not from the folding process. The hamon is added to the blade during the quenching process, by adding clay to the steel. The clay causes the covered steel to heat differently than the uncovered steel. That differential heating is what is visible as the hamon.

It’s largely decorative, but does have function as it determines what part of the blade can be sharpened to an edge.

Yeah, Japanese steel wasn’t great, but they were working with what they had available at the time. Katanas were basically made out of iron dust, which had been melted into slag by filtering through charcoal. The resulting chunks of steel were basically straight up slag, not nice even ingots. So the steel they got was actually extremely high carbon in places, but that also meant it was brittle as hell, because those carbon pockets were prone to shattering.

So the folding was invented, to even out the steel’s carbon content (just like how a Damascus steel blade has visible stripes, Japanese steel had invisible stripes of high and low carbon steel) and to lower the carbon content overall; Every time you heat for another fold, you’re evaporating some carbon. So the folding process took the steel from extremely high carbon pockets to a more evenly distributed carbon content.

Now that modern steel processing exists, the only real reason to stick to the folding method is tradition. There’s no need to fold modern steel ingots because they’re already homogenous and can be produced at whatever carbon level you want.

Bathroom attendants are there to discourage drug use and bathroom sex. That’s literally their primary purpose. The fact that they have towels and mints is secondary to the fact that they’re just a walking overdose deterrent.

That’s why they’re commonly seen in clubs and bars where people would be inclined to do drugs or have bathroom sex.

Yeah, something like that. Dump five gallons of apple juice and two pounds of glucose into a carboy. Add champagne yeast, cap with an airlock full of vodka, and let sit for a few months.

The result is an extremely dry apple wine that’ll kick your ass. If you’re not a fan of dry wines, just add a splash of sprite or 7-up to the glass to back sweeten it.