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Joined 2Y ago
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Cake day: Jun 10, 2023

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In SSBM on dolphin emulator, I can’t seem to ‘reel in’ a grapple recovery with Samus
I've played this game since only a couple of years after release, but on other people's systems. I used to see people use Samus' grapple as a recovery mechanism not just grabbing but my play style got too ingrained for me to really learn new tricks and I considered this too hard and never took advantage of it. I want to learn it now and it seems like it should be simple but something's wrong and I can't figure out what. I throw hook towards a vertical surface, it seems to 'latch on' but I can't figure out how to reel in after that. The hook just extends as samus falls until cancels out and she dies. I thought maybe I should be pushing the stick in the direction of the grapple hook, but it doesn't work, I tried holding other buttons after the latch on animation begins but nothing. I'm using an Xbox series X controller with Dolphin on Mac OS. Am I just too stupid to figure this out, or is it a glitch to do with this configuration? EDIT: Oh wait, nevermind. Even though I thought I wasn't, I was unconsciously holding the grab button after the throw. As it turns out if you don't do that, and you press A after the latch on, it works.
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I’m sure those who know more about this stuff will roll their eyes at this question but like, I’m about 9 minutes in and why do almost all the examples the guy’s using have white pixels flashing on and off around the edges of the screen? Around 8m25s in particular it’s evident. I thought maybe it was a snow or rain effect, but I don’t think so. It looks like an artifact of some kind.


For some reason when I hear the Super Mario Bros 2 Overworld theme, in my head I start hearing the lyrics to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air over the top of it.
They don't even really fit properly, but it happens every time and I find myself trying to find ways to fit the lyrics to the tune. In particular, the lyrics "I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air" feels like it sorta fits right, even if the rest of the song doesn't. That is all.
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To answer my own question, I found this from googling https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408596960797-Disco-Elysium-The-Final-Cut-M1-compatible-version?product=gog

Which seems to indicate that it is, but you have to take some active steps to make sure that’s what’s run when you actually play the game. I find that a bit confusing but it sounds simple enough. I don’t know what GOG galaxy is but I assume it’s a storefront like Steam. Sounds like if you run by opening Galaxy and hitting play, it won’t be the native version and will run through Rosetta 2 but if you run it from your applications folder it’s the native version. This is a bit odd because that makes it sound like by default what you have installed is BOTH versions which sounds like an awful waste of disk space but maybe I’ve misunderstood.

After I bought the game I went looking for where to download it and found it in the games section of profile page on GOG but when I downloaded it, it was an installer that starts downloading the Galaxy thing. I can’t imagine having any use for that and since I’ll likely never launch what will at the moment be my only GOG game from there it’s just a potential source of confusion so I clicked on the download backup installer option. Hope this ens up being native, I think the game is meant to have very modest requirements indeed in any case so if it turns out to somehow be running through Rosetta 2 I suspect it’ll be imperceptible anyway.


Is the OSx version of Disco Elysium on GOG Native to Apple Silicon?
It's way cheaper than the app store and Steam and Humble Bundle
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Is Assassin’s creed shadows going to be some free to play bullshit or will I be able to just buy it?
I don't really buy games much these days. I was trying to see what games would work on Mac and was pleased to see a new Assassin's Creed game is coming out on Mac natively. I was pretty stoked with this news, I've never played any of the AC games but they've always looked good. I thought I'd check the Apple App Store to see if there were any other AC games that might already be out and there was only one option (actually on some 'App Store Preview' thing not the actual app store), called Assassin's Creed Mirage. It was listed as free to play with in-app-purchases. I'm really just not participating in that, can't stand that shit. I don't think I've actually bought any Ubisoft games since the Nintendo 64, are they all like this or is that just some unfortunate anomaly? I noticed also that it'd listed them collecting data about me, which, WTF? Keen to wait till November for AC Shadows but not if it's going to be any of that nonsense.
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Are there any recent-ish single player, complete games that are similar to Rise of Nations and would work on Mac or at least on WINE?
I love that game and it's the best RTS I've played. It seemed to basically rip off the CIV games heavily but simplify them and put them in an RTS context. Everything I loved about Age of Empires as a kid but much better and also spanning the ancient age to the information age. I run an M2 max mac, which makes things complicated, but I'm open to jumping through some hoops if such hoops exist to make something that wasn't supposed to work on Mac, work on Mac, but would need to know if it even can be done for that particular game. Also obviously direct compatibility out of the box would be great. I really don't want anything that's multiplayer only, as I'm unlikely to ever play online and prefer single player games I really hate free to play games and just want to buy the game in its finished state outright that will stay the same for as long as I own it and then just pay for any expansions or new additions at my discretion if they get released. I'd like it to have the same all of history spanning scope for tech. I like there to be air units and navy units.
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Yeh Graphene is the plan long term but I have to stick with stock for the time being.


It sounds like it but, in general I prefer to have 1 maybe 2 home screen pages of stuff I know I’ll use all the time right away and anything else I’d rather just search.

I suppose if you have only enough apps to fill maybe a single home screen page then by that standard I’d have a lot as between my less frequently used apps and all of Google’s pre-installed ones that’s probably a few pages, but generally I try to be sparing with them.



Planning to switch to Graphene OS for several reasons, but I have a reason why it will be better for me not to do that until a bit later so until then I’m just trying to be comfortable with stock.


On Google pixel, is there a way to search ONLY locally when searching apps?
When I want to find an app I haven't pinned to the home screen I swipe up from the bottom of the home screen to bring up a search bar where I can search for an app by name or scroll through list of all apps on the phone. Thing is the search bar on my new pixel phone is actually a Google search bar that will search apps locally at the same time as providing web results, especially if it can't find the app by name. It's a nice idea in theory but in practice I find it annoying, especially if I've just made a typo. Also, I'm just never going to use this search bar for web searching anyway because for that I would want my chosen browser so the web results are of no use to me. I actually remember my old phone used to do what I wanted it to do, then one day it switched to what my new phone currently does and after a long time I found the solution to return it back to it's previous behaviour except now I've forgotten what I did. I only want to search my phone's local storage for apps matching my keyword when I access the app drawer. How do I get rid of this Google search bar? (I'd love to get rid of the Google search bar from the home screen itself as well but I understand I can't do that without root on stock android.
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It was brand new at the time come to think of it, it wasn’t released until 2008 so this more likely happened in 2009. The timing and the dramatic difference from stock to jailbroken is just too striking to have been a coincidence, although you might be alleviating some 15-16 year old guilt, that perhaps it triggered something. Still very worrying that a new and very expensive phone was triggered in to dysfunction from the process but maybe it was unlucky defective model. I definitely think that while it was jailbroken the problems were as a result of the OS but maybe the Cydia apps or something else were particularly draining and then that fast draining cycle triggered something else physically.


This is mostly sounding reassuring. My wanted banking app is on a list of apps that people have successfully used on Graphene OS so it’s probably ok, but yeh, definitely want to be able to go back. I guess I don’t know what answer I’m looking for, but in the anecdote I started this post with, I was amazed that it was somehow possible for changes to somehow survive a re-flashing to stock. I really, really don’t want that to happen.


Is there any permanent risk to the phone itself if you install graphene OS?
Back in 2007-ish I told my Mum all about how you could jailbreak iphones and unlock them to make the phone with other carriers. I helped alleviate any concerns by convincing her and myself that if there are any problems after the procedure, nothing physically has been changed on the phone and as long as I made a backup first, we could always switch back. I jailbroke the iphone 3g she had and it didn't take long before she began to notice a lot of problems, it got hot all the time, the battery drained way fast and animations were juddery and slow and sometimes apps crashed. I restored the backedup image of the phone from before thinking I'd fix everything, but although it improved the situation somewhat, the heat and battery dissipation remained permanent and the phone became useless. Ever since then I've been pretty scared of doing anything of that nature to any phone. I really want to install Graphene OS on a pixel phone but... well, I also want to be sure I can go back if I change my mind, especially as the phone is expensive. Any risks associated with doing this? Is there any way to screw it up so bad that you permanently brick the phone? If the USB cable breaks or gets yanked in the middle of it or something like that can I always get back to square 1? Is there any known way for things done in the installation of Graphene OS to somehow survive having stock android flashed on to it?
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Didn’t know they’d taken out the storage drives but I was aware despite my general ignorance that it’s not turnkey ready to go. I guess what I’m wondering is, is there any part of the of the process involved in designing and building such a supercomputing cluster that is already taken care by buying it in the manner that it has been sold and could that in any way offset the increased costs of trying to bring such a cluster online rather than starting from scratch? I’m not saying it is the case, so much as wondering aloud for anyone with expertise to chime in, to see if that’s a way it could make sense.

I understand there’s a mountain to climb to bring this thing in to a usable state for anyone, but could it maybe get you to base camp more quickly?


Does the hardware being all so arranged as it is in this manner to create a supercomputer make any difference to that evaluation? Like does the work of putting all the outdated hardware together in the complex way needed to make it functional for supercomputing make it potentially cheaper than buying more modern hardware but having to build it all yourself?


Wow, they sometimes don’t provide service to a device physically capable just because of the brand? WHY!? Thanks for the heads up


How is that phone by the way? I’m kind of swooned by it but I’m wondering if I really should spend all that money and go to all that effort to have it shipped here when I don’t even do a lot of photography. It just seems so nice, and the bloody pixel and oppo and Samsung phones I can choose here seem so… meh.


ah. That’s interesting I’ll have to see if I can use this same method for determining whether it would work on the Xperia 5V too


My understanding is that we don’t use whitelists here (I’m guessing except for stolen phones) although I only have random internet posts to go on for that as well. What’s the basis on which you say VoLTE is likely. It’s looking likely from the collected internet forum posts and that one youtube video that I’ve seen but I’ve been unable to find anything the least bit official. Even if not straight from the horse’s mouth then at least a very reputable 3rd party like GSM arena but so far no luck. I’ve at least been able to confirm the absence of evidence of VoLTE on GSM arena’s part is not evidence of absence of the feature because of my own personal case confirming that I can get a false negative this way.


How do I confirm if a certain phone supports VoLTE?
You'd think this would be easier than it seems to be in reality. I am interested in getting a Sony Xperia 5V or Xperia 1V. Where I live, phones can't make calls unless they support VoLTE. The phones in question support basically all the bands I need them to support and I've found several encouraging Reddit posts from people saying they got the Xperia 1V to work here (haven't found any for the 5V). Some confirm VoLTE, others simply say they were able to make calls. The VoLTE requirement for phones is very recent with different carriers killing off their 3G networks at slightly different times the latest being about a month away so it's hard to judge how much I can trust those posts. I've also seen a video from what seems to be an Indian person showing you how to enable VoLTE on a 1V. The thing is though, these are encouraging *signs* but Sony themselves have kept decidedly shtoom on the matter not mentioning the capability in their marketing *or* their web manuals for either phone, it is also not mentioned on GSM arena, however I noticed that this is not mentioned in the information about my current phone on GSM arena either, even though it definitely does support it because I've been using since even before it was a hard requirement. Is there any way to figure this out definitively? I've tried contacting Sony and maybe at some point they'll reply but frankly I'm not holding my breath and I suspect if they do reply they'll say something about the phones not being for sale in this country (which is true), or mentioning some of the other things the phone *can* do without answering whether it will do this one *particular* thing, which is what some websites selling the phone did as well. That type of evasive behaviour would normally lead me to conclude the answer was the feature isn't supported but those Reddit posts and that video, while not definitive enough in their own right seem to strongly indicate that it is supported.
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Ah, I just put an edit in to my question having guessed that exact thing. That makes sense, hopefully that’s what’s meant. I’d have to be able to find a place where I could import the phone which went in to enough detail to tell me which variant of the model they’re selling.


If GSM arena lists a certain band frequency as supported by a phone but says - USA at the end of the list, does that mean the same phone won’t work in another country operating towers on that band?
I'm trying to make sure that if I import a phone to my country, it will likely work pretty much wherever I may go here. Most phones I'm looking at support every 4G band operated here, but I've noticed that on the GSM arena website, they will often give a list of supported bands for a given phone followed by a dash and a region name like 'Asia' or 'international' or 'USA'. One of the supported bands I'm looking at is operated in my country, but seems to be pretty rare, if I use that as a criterion the list of devices shrinks considerably as does the number of brands to choose from. One particular phone I looked at only lists support for the specific band I'm looking at in it's "-USA" list of supported bands. I'm confused by what this means for me, if that band is used in my country and I import a phone that only lists the band as supported in the US does that mean the phone wouldn't work here if I'm in an area where the only available tower operated on such a frequency? Why not? It sounds like it's physically capable. The other question is, how do you assess the likelihood of this being a problem? The relative rarity of support for this band and the fact that it's only *officially* supported here, but seems only to have recently been licensed for people to build infrastructure operating on that band makes me think that there are likely very few towers actually using it here, but presumably more will eventually start to do so. My current phone has lasted me 6 years, almost 7 so I'll want to future-proof in this regard. In the time since I bought my last phone, carriers have abandoned any non VoLTE support so if the phone I bough then, hadn't had this compatibility it would have become a brick well ahead of its time so I'm weary of something like that happening. EDIT: Something has occurred to me that didn't before and might answer my question, but then I guess it'd be good if anyone knew because this is only a guess on my part. Maybe the dash followed by region name is referring to model variants, as in, if you buy the US variant of the phone, then it supports these bands, and if you buy the international variant, it supports these bands etc etc. In that case, it would presumably mean that if I bought a variant model of a phone that lists support for a particular frequency band it should work anywhere in the world where those frequency bands are used not just the region mentioned after the list. I guess the trouble is that usually the sites I can find selling these phones to consumers in my market don't go in to anywhere near that level of detail so I'd have no way of knowing which model variant it was other than simply the manufacturer's marketing terms for their product lineup.
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Never got a solution to this, but I eventually uninstalled and reinstalled VLC and it worked a charm, no more networked media in the video tab and my media library preferences actually stick.


How do you make the ‘video’ tab in VLC only display local videos on the internal memory?
This used to just be how it worked, I don't know what changed. I have for a long time used VLC to navigate to files on my computer in the other room so I can stream video to my phone that are stored on the computer. Occasionally I'll also use VLC to browse local media on my phone. I can still do this through the browse tab but I have to navigate my phone's internal memory folder structure that way, which is cumbersome and irritating. Previously I would just go to the video tab because any video that showed up there would be local to the phone. Now, all the video on my computer's storage is displayed there and seemingly NONE of the phone's own local video material. I tried going to settings and Media Library Folders and noticed that interestingly the network location for my computer was ticked and the internal storage was unticked. I have no idea how that happened but I thought I had the problem solved then. I unticked all potential Media Library Folders except internal storage which I ticked and then navigated to the video tab in hopes of seeing only local video and no network video. The situation was completely unchanged. There was a notification at the top of the screen from VLC indicating it was scanning so I thought perhaps it was going to have to complete this scan first before anything could change so I left the phone to it to it with the VLC app open. Some time later I returned and the notification was gone, but the video tab was the same. I navigated away from and then back to the video tab and still it was the same. While writing this post I checked the Media Library Folders setting again and the changes I had made were reversed, only the network location for my PC was checked and all other items including the internal storage were unchecked. WTF!?
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I play wave race 64 alot it really is such a fantastic game but it’s a very short one, I’ve played it to death. At one point I think I even beat the world record for the Glacier Coast course but I’ve heard that records set on emulators aren’t counted and even if you’re not cheating an emulator run is considered easier than on the real 64.

I really want another wave race title. I wasn’t a huge fan of the GameCube one. Just such a nostalgia hit. It was the first game I had on my 64 and I played all through Christmas day. Something about the sunset bay and also the training level really brings me right back to 1998 whenever I play it.


Anybody know of games similar to Dito Seregin’s ‘Escape Pod’?
[The game is here. ](https://terzalo.itch.io/escape-pod). Tremendous fun and despite it's lack of depth, I've had fun trying to beat my records but ultimately, it gets tired fast given there's only one "level" so to speak albeit a randomly generated one. I really like the mechanics of this one and managing them against fuel load. It's similar to a game called [Space Rescue by Ostrich Studio](https://ostrichstudio.itch.io/space-rescue) which I also liked but both these games seem to be kind of little prototypes so there's very little to them.
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I have found myself continuing to use Keep for the same reason I adopted it in the first place. It runs in the browser and it’s usable everywhere without me needing to do anything.

I need to take notes on a computer at multiple different work places without taking time to install something nor asking anyone if I can, I need to also use it on my phone as well as my home machine, I need to be able to share it with others and have a reasonable chance they’ll be able to see and/or edit it without needing to know or do anything themselves to make that happen and I need it synchronise everything with no intervention or administration on any machine I may use it on whether I own it or not. It sounds entitled, but also, I really don’t want to pay for a glorified note pad even if something cloud based like this is inherently more expensive and complicated than that.

SyncThing would be great if I only had to worry about my own hardware on which I can install the necessary things but that’s not practical when I don’t know what machines I’ll be using down the track and I most likely won’t own them.

It’s a shame because I actually really don’t like Keep. I don’t like it for the privacy implications (though if I also don’t want to pay for what does then I don’t really have a leg to stand on there), but I also hate using it. The interface is annoying, needlessly, and I can only indent one level, which for a notetaking app is infuriating. It also limits the length of a note, which fits with the spirit of a quick note taking app rather than fully fledged word processor which Google also offers but, still, having any limit at all I super annoying. I also particularly dislike the touted feature of rich previews of weblinks because it becomes hard to see where my notes end and previews begin and ironically, despite my complaints mostly being about how basic Keep is, this is too sophisticated a feature for a notes app. I’m using it to make lists of things, if I want to see the page or information on the page I’ve linked to in a note, I’ll just go to the page.

I use Keep as a product of necessity but I don’t like it. That said I found that I only started using it thinking it would help me be more organised at with and while it has helped a bit with everyday life, I eventually found that for work there were better ways of achieving the same thing, mainly with a spreadsheet, and I can do that using Google’s Sheets product with the same advantages that Keep had so I’ve been gradually moving away from Keep anyway.


I had that. I must say I loved that thing. I used it to death, although that said I only really got around 5-6 years out of it. Replaced the battery once the motherboard once, the fan once, the charger twice. Hmmmm.

It performed absolutely admirably throughout its lifetime though and it had a nice big screen even if it made it quite a chonker. I really appreciate the expansion slot because I was able to give it USB3.0 slots even though it didn’t have any when it came out.


Well I think I should probably avoid saying the company name that sells the air-conditioning system with the bullshit app and tablet as a package only because it’s fairly specific to where I live but the app is called ezone and when I called them about replacement and balked at the outrageous cost they said it’s because they have the tablets put together for them so they’re custom and not mass produced the same way as an off the shelf tablet. If you go in to the settings on android for it and the about section it says the model number is just ezone1.

They have it pretty well sewn up.i love controlling the aircon from any room easily but the bullshit with the broken connectivity and secretly changing my temperature to 18c all the time is enough that I’d rather have had a traditional IR remote with a digital clock style display. At least it works reliably.

You know what else sucks about this thing? Obviously it doesn’t need to be fast or high performance, but they cheaped out so much that it barely manages to run the only app it’s supposed to run. When we first got it, it was slow and unreliable and connected only intermittently (rather than solidly for months followed by not at all for months) so we updated the app, but now they’ve updated the app to have little animations and it’s too much for the tablet to bear and it almost crashes trying to run a little spinning fan animation and takes forever to wake from the lock screen. So dumb, why make it do that when you know exactly what hardware a huge proportion of the user base will be stuck with? I’m sure if you bought it now the tablet might be slightly better but what am I supposed to do? I’m not paying a goddamn ransom to be able to operate my otherwise perfectly functional airconditioning. A machine that controls temperature is supposed to be the impressive hard to make part not the damned control surface.


My house came with air-conditioning controlled by an absolute piece of shit android tablet connected to the air con unit by an ethernet cable running through a hole in the wall which also powers the tablet. It runs as the server for a proprietary app called ezone that you can connect clients to by downloading the ezone app from the play store on other devices. It frequently decides it can’t use the wifi (despite being connected to it) and therefore can’t communicate with the clients for about 3-6 months at a time before it randomly works again, it also changes the temperature from whatever you asked for, to 18C about 20 seconds after you turn it on so you have to stand there for 20 seconds ready to catch it and change the temperature back. I hate it!

The reason I mention this is, is there any way I could somehow rig up this Home Assistant software to work with the aircon via this ethernet cable? I called the company that installed the crap I got stuck with and they don’t exist anymore but someone else took them over and to get a replacement tablet costs something in the order of $600 AUD. I tried to investigate getting my own android tablet but I’d have to first find a way to get the server software off the old tablet (I wonder if I can just pull the APK off and transfer it to another device?) and still somehow have the whole endeavour cost less then just paying the bastards for a replacement piece of shit, which was surprisingly harder than I thought it’d be.



Can you guys recommend some good games for me that would work well on an MBP M2 Max?
I realise the platform is going to narrow my options considerably but I keep hearing that things are getting better these days for mac gaming. The obvious choice is Resident Evil Village and I'm this close to buying it but I'm a bit put off by first having to get it from the Mac App Store, then also the fact that it contains in-app-purchases but most irksome of all, the fact that it requires a network connection to start the game. None of these are dealbreakers, though that 3rd one is as close as it can get to a deal breaker because it's a real turn off. Why should I have a network connection? I'm sure I probably would but if I'm buying it, it's my game and I want to use it how I like. The main criteria I'm looking for is: - M2 Silicone compatible - Looking for something with higher end graphics preferably. Haven't been able to do so for so long it'd be nice for a change. - preferably native (as opposed to rosetta) - has a single player mode - preferably is single player focussed - as little DRM bullshit as possible (such as completely unnecessary requirements for network connection to play my own game that I've bought) I've previously enjoyed - Dirt Rally (2015) - Metro Redux - Civ IV and VI I could list other games but they're pretty much all nearly 20 years old now so they're not so relevant. I particularly like racing but a highly conventional FPS would be fun too, I'm just not really very interested in multiplayer and prefer a storyline.
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