Some developers make gog users second rate citizens, some don’t publish on gog at all. I wouldn’t call it a sinking ship though, later years they’ve had more big name games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 than before.

Also, if gog shuts down tomorrow I can still install all my games from the installers on my network share, something I can’t say about steam.

I am very happy about Proton/SteamOS and how they assist in making games playable on Linux. I hope the SteamOS devices become popular enough that developers stop trying to shut Linux out.

I’m not looking forward to what will happen with Steam when Gabe is no longer around though.
Having one big marketplace/launcher might be comfy right now but that can turn into a nightmare quickly when there’s a new owner in town.

Personally I’m trying to buy any game I can on gog.com instead of Steam. Both to get my own offline installers and to ensure not all my eggs (games) are in one basket. I launch more games from Lutris then Steam today.

Just a reminder, if you’re in the EU then waiting 'til June might be worthwhile:

Gonna be interesting to see which models disappear from EU altogether and which models get the better repairability and software updates next summer:
Ecodesign requirements will apply to mobile phones and tablets put on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards, including:

1. resistance to accidental drops or scratches and protection from dust and water
2. sufficiently durable batteries which can withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their initial capacity
3. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
4. availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
5. non-discriminatory access for professional repairers to any software or firmware needed for the replacement

• https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

I just keep the installers on my NAS, together with whatever dlc installers, patches and mods I deem necessary. With the current prices of 12-18tb hdd drives it doesn’t cost much to keep em there.

polygon briefly mentions what the patents are about
https://www.polygon.com/news/476177/palworld-developer-nintendo-pokemon-lawsuit

The update seems to be about https://www.pocketpair.jp/news/20241108

If your phone is still working then I would try to keep it alive a little while longer considering the new rules of EU that comes into play in June.

Gonna be interesting to see which models disappear from EU altogether and which models get the better repairability and software updates next summer:
Ecodesign requirements will apply to mobile phones and tablets put on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards, including:

1. resistance to accidental drops or scratches and protection from dust and water
2. sufficiently durable batteries which can withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their initial capacity
3. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
4. availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
5. non-discriminatory access for professional repairers to any software or firmware needed for the replacement

• https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

Here’s some screenshots of that menu: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Tablets-and-Mobile-Devices-Archive-Read-Only/My-HP-7-1800-tablet-is-not-fully-booting-up/td-p/7712791

All I find are guides on how to go into recovery mode to wipe and reset. Which doesn’t help you much when it comes to saving files:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Tablets-and-Mobile-Devices-Archive-Read-Only/My-HP-7-1800-tablet-is-not-fully-booting-up/td-p/7712791

I really enjoyed the first one. I missed some side quests due to shooting npcs in the head when they gave me attitude, but it was worth it. It had some long sought freedom compared to most new open world sandbox rpgs.

The fact that gog.com let me forego launchers all together as well as letting me download the game installers and put them on my NAS means a lot to me. I don’t remember the last time I had GOG Galaxy installed, I just download, install and play the games and then call it a day.

I can’t wait for the release in 2044! I hope 1440p is still all the rage when it launches!

Serious note: I hope Intel stays in the dgpu market, we could use another player in the space.

Gonna be interesting to see which models disappear from EU altogether and which models get the better repairability and software updates next summer:

Ecodesign requirements will apply to mobile phones and tablets put on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards, including:

1. resistance to accidental drops or scratches and protection from dust and water
2. sufficiently durable batteries which can withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their initial capacity
3. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
4. availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
5. non-discriminatory access for professional repairers to any software or firmware needed for the replacement

• https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

If the leaks are correct we’re talking about 120W TDP and higher power and thermal efficiency than the 7000 series of X3D CPUs.

L2 8MB, L3 96MB(32MB + 64MB) for a total of 104MB according to Toms Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/extensive-amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d-specs-leak-details-unlocked-120w-cpu-with-5-2-ghz-boost-clock

I consider June 2025 to be summer. :)

Ah, that sucks and complicates things. One can only hope that doesn’t stop the US phones from getting them then.

If they’ve already spent the developer time to create a security update for the EU market then I imagine they will push it to phones in the US too.

If your phone can survive until next summer it might be a good idea, EU is forcing some consumer friendly requirements which I imagine will give you a wider availability of models with five years of updates.
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

Ecodesign requirements will apply to mobile phones and tablets put on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards, including:

1. resistance to accidental drops or scratches and protection from dust and water
2. sufficiently durable batteries which can withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their initial capacity
3. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
4. availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
5. non-discriminatory access for professional repairers to any software or firmware needed for the replacement

Thanks for the warning, I’m only familiar with his earlier works.
https://www.pcgamer.com/godus-is-deadus-peter-molyneuxs-controversial-godus-games-are-finally-being-taken-off-steam/

I stand corrected, .NET Core is open source and uses the MIT License.

“We’ve finished taking all we need from the Mono project and implemented it into our proprietary .NET implementation for Linux, Android and iOS. Instead of getting flack for killing off Mono (which is open source and would’ve been forked anyways) we graciously give this old husk to the Wine project. We recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET. kthnxbye!”

Good thing that it went to Wine I guess, as they do lots of work to get old Windows programs up and running in Linux and that often involves Mono.

Next time I build a PC, I plan to spend extra on hardware that can run games decently while producing as little heat as possible. My current PC is like a space heater when it’s running and it’s unbearable to play games on it for any extended periods during the summer months.

The only reason I went for an 80+ Platinum PSU instead of an 80+ Bronze PSU is to make it generate less heat (and the fact that the platinum had a really nice price at the time). Doing it for power savings isn’t worth it, but getting a cooler case is nice.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/what-80-plus-levels-mean,36721.html

Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort.

I mean you have the same functionality in LibreOffice Calc, the automatic sorting and filtering is called AutoFilter and the table style is chosen from AutoFormat Styles.

There’s an android fork of Endless Sky:
Main game - https://endless-sky.github.io/
Android github - https://github.com/thewierdnut/endless-mobile
Android repo - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.thewierdnut.endless_mobile/

Being able to selfhost game servers and allow only friends to join is sweet, I wish more games still allowed LAN connections to a selfhosted server without going through online services.

The mentioned debloater script is found here:
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater#how-to-use-it

This is the list of apps the debloater script uses:
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater/blob/main/resources/assets/uad_lists.json

No couch coop on PC, so I don’t know.
There is 2 player local coop for Playstation, XBox and Nintendo though
https://www.co-optimus.com/game/334/pc/titan-quest.html

Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2016

Regarding the security update situation you could try using LineageOS on it - but I imagine that would be for your use, not your daughters.
https://xdaforums.com/t/lineageos-19-1-for-sm-t580-gtaxlwifi-sm-t585-gtaxllte-sm-p580-gtanotexlwifi-and-sm-p585-gtanotexllte.4432957/

I’d look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+
https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_tab_a9+-12617.php

Also, a factory reset on the tablet might get it to run a bit better again.

Using discussions on github for community support and discord as a community chatroom seems reasonable.
KDE Connect is wonderful.

I agree that their choice of perspective makes local coop harder to implement due to needing splitscreen, it also means I wouldn’t want to play it with a controller.
I just hope that they keep their Helldivers 1 servers up and about, or release a patch that makes the game work offline if they don’t.

Definitely rarer now, but four people sitting in the living room with controllers is still as fun. Helldivers, Magicka, Overcooked, Totemori, Gang Beasts and Genital Jousting are all great fun with some being easier to get into than others.

I much rather fix up some burgers and drink a few pints at home while playing helldivers 1 with friends than sit at the pub eating worse burgers and paying too much for the pints.

Those of us who live with fellow nerds, obviously!

Sounds like removing couch co-op didn’t hurt their sales. :(

Eh, I remember enjoying dmc3. The gigapede fight was really fun.

If choosing Synology look into the Plus series (f.e. DS723+) or you end up with ARM CPUs and lose many of Synologys software goodies.
Their Active Backup for Business software is a nice way to backup the household machines as an example.
As you enter packages in this list you will see which models are supported:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/packages