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Cake day: Jan 10, 2024

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I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.


It sounds like this would be expanding that to a lot more commercial customers, though?


I forgot about using those scripts. I’ll have to put Grease Monkey on my newer computer. I added an extension a couple months ago to stop websites from preventing me from pasting into text fields, but I’d guess using a script would be a more efficient way to deal with it than adding an extension for every annoyance!


I’ve spent so little time with YouTube Shorts I didn’t know you could change the URL to a normal video


“We will store backup copies of our code in a secure repository in Switzerland, and we will provide our European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed for this purpose.”

If Microsoft is going to actually risk giving access to their source code then they’re really scared!


But really, I read the whole article and there’s nothing mentioned about a blacklight test.



I was just looking and realized there were some old racing games I used to love, so I filtered to that category and found they have the Moto Racer Collection, including 1, 2, and 3 for $1.59. I think we had Moto Racer 2 and I remember playing that a lot, so I’ll be picking those up.

I’m going to need to look into finding the old Need For Speed, Midtown Madness, and Motocross Madness games from, like, 25 years ago. I might still have some of those discs somewhere, actually.


I’ve bought very few microtransactions and the most satisfying was the Delorean Time Machine from Back to the Future in Rocket League


Didn’t enabling audio mean you couldn’t have 4 players connected while in use, though? But, if you’re using headphones you probably don’t have more than one player anyway.


It looks fun, but that price is going to be something to make me pause


When you say the BIOS update works, are you seeing something on the screen? If you connect the computer to an external monitor do you see anything?


No Man’s Sky is down to $23.99. I remember the launch was poor but they kept working on it and improving it. I picked it up a couple years ago on Xbox and have enjoyed it



I never pay full price for any of the games, they always have a few discounted and rotate through their full catalog eventually.


Yeah, at least the last couple have longer support periods now, but at the time my Pixel 2 stopped getting support it looks like the Pixel 5 (then the newest model) was only expecting 3 years. It might entice me to switch back at some point.


That explains why when I looked at Graphene later it didn’t support the Pixel 2


It was the single biggest reason I switched to iPhone. Usually I was dying to upgrade after 2 years because the phones would start to suck. Then I got a Pixel 2 and it was great! But after 3 years it stopped getting updates even though the hardware still worked fine, and I looked over at my stepdaughter’s iPhone, which was 6 years old but still getting updates, could still get parts replaced at a local repair shop. It started to feel like that was the better value as flagship phones started costing $800+.


Does this link work? Because the one in the main post was taking me to a webpage. [email protected]

Edit: No, doesn’t seem to be for me right now


I’d like an X but also haven’t really seen much to push me to upgrade from the One X I currently have. The only thing I haven’t been able to play is Flight Simulator and I’d kind of rather be on PC for that. It’s probably cheaper to get the console than build a PC, but my wife got me a Quest 2 a couple years ago and VR seems like it would be pretty fun in Flight Simulator.


One I haven’t seen mentioned is Puerto Rico. One thing I like is there is essentially no random chance to this game; everything that happens is a result of choices you or your opponents make.


I generally like the Civ games but I’m definitely not a Day 1 player. I’ll probably pick this up in a heavily discounted bundle with the inevitable expansions and at least some of the DLC in a Steam sale a couple years from now.


Despite including a numpad like the Intellivision controller, the GameStation Go doesn’t currently include any games from Atari’s recently purchased Intellivision library. But [YouTube reviewer who was hands-on at CES] GenXGrownUp says including those titles—alongside Atari Lynx and Jaguar games—is not “off the table yet” for the final release.

I only know of the Atari Lynx from reading about the history of Chip’s Challenge but I’d be interested in seeing that.


Unrelated tidbit gleaned from reading the entry:

the name “DirectX” came from one journalist that had mocked the naming scheme of the various libraries. The team opted to continue to use that naming scheme and call the project DirectX.


Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.



I guess it depends which version you watch; I think the U.S. and Canada versions are 44 minutes without commercials, but yeah, it does have some filler. When someone’s actually good at the strategy it can be interesting hearing them talk through their plans.


A separate burner seems like overkill. I’m no expert, but I think an Android service manages the push notifications and wakes up the app when it receives a notification.


The biggest difference of the TV show versus the home game is the home game just ends whenever all the killers are found. The TV show has to reach a set number of episodes, so there are mechanisms built-in to make sure there’s always at least one traitor up to the final episode.


If you enjoy the game you should check out The Traitors with its many international variants. I was surprised to read that the productions provide psychologists to help the contestants as it gets traumatic, but when I watched the first UK season there were a lot of people getting into emotional distress.

There have been a lot of people cast who really shouldn’t be on the show; it’s just a game!


Not too much earlier; Wikipedia says the game was invented in 1986 by psychology student Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow State University.


I started working in local TV news 17 years ago. I figured out pretty quickly there’s enough actual news happening to fill the 24-hour cable channels, but sending out reporters and photographers (maybe even producers) is expensive. It’s much cheaper to just have somebody in the studio blabbering on about a few things and trying to stoke reactions from the audience. It can even build a bigger audience than actual news.

Sports radio and TV is an even bigger (though less damaging) example of this. They have a lot of time to fill when games aren’t on, and a lot of times they just put someone on who will give the dumbest take possible just to get the audience mad and have an argument with someone else in the studio or even let the audience call in to argue.


Even better, the “violent video game” they’re blaming is Among Us!

screenshot of NBC article
(Not my screenshot, and I haven’t actually read the article)



Burn it down! Burning people. He says what we’re all thinking.



It’s really worth playing and often available for a very reasonable price. I don’t think it’s a genre that ever seemed like something that would appeal to me but I’ve found it very enjoyable.




I think your last point also applies to Valve. Limiting the number of models simplifies things for Valve; effectively they only have two models to support right now between the LCD and OLED models. From a software perspective I assume they’re extremely similar except at a very low level, mainly with the display panel difference. From a hardware perspective that’s only 2 main SKU families (looks like maybe 6 total with 3 of each?) and still probably a lot of parts overlap except with the panel and I’d assume two variants of the mainboard to accommodate different connections for each panel. Even making the OLED variants complicated things I’m sure, but it should be manageable.

We learned within the past year that Valve is still an astonishingly small company compared to how much revenue it has; I think they were only around 450 employees. That’s pretty doable with software, but dealing with hardware starts to force that level up and would start cutting into the incredible profitability per employee that they’re accustomed to.

Of course they’ve made plays in the hardware space before, but I don’t think anything’s been near the volume the Steam Deck has. Even assuming that they’re outsourcing the manufacturing, and maybe fulfillment, and maybe even warranty repairs, that still means they need employees to manage and support those programs. They need employees trained to support those products. They need to store spare parts and plan to have enough to legal requirements beyond the final sale date. They need to test software updates against every hardware variant prior to release for as long as the product is supported. Keeping the number of SKUs small makes the rest of that manageable and hopefully keeps profitability high and quality of service good. If they start adding too many SKUs then they need more employees, giving lower profitability and they start cutting quality and service until we end up with the bad products and support we see from so many big PC companies.

It seems like they’re working towards opening Steam OS up where other companies can make their own devices. Let other companies handle the incremental updates and making the software work with their hardware. Let Valve keep focusing on just making a few things but making them really good.