Same as it ever was.

I try to only update stuff when I got time to fix something that breaks potentially.

They could just make VPN only illegal for peasants.

If I find a game too tedious and I’m about to drop it then sometimes I cheat whatever currency the game uses by editing RAM values which is braindead easy. Single player only. If it makes me want to keep playing. I have less patience for poor pacing as I get older.

Except Wreckfest if it counts. I had zero interest in the shitty single player campaign. I just wanted to race online but the game locks most cars behind a crappy uninspired single player grind. I gave myself enough money to just buy everything and then soley focused on online play.

Edit: oh and carry weights are my second most cheated thing. I get no joy out of shop runs. I don’t give a shit if my pockets being unlimited is “unrealistic” so is carrying whatever artibrary capped number it is like 250lbs everywhere without a backpack. Takes nothing away from the fun to cheat this waste of time shit.

Infinite Weapon durability in System Shock 2 and Zelda BOTW also come to mind. Stuff like that.

Bungie had a whole semi official mod for Halo 1 on PC called Custom Edition. Chaos Gultch, anyone? Completely insane fun online.

When using Firefox and various forks:

https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions

I find the most reliable set up is installing Tampermonkey and then the “vaft” userscript alongside Adguard Extra userscript for Twitch. I leave uBlock Origin enabled too, doesn’t seem to interfere.

I have almost none of those issues. CachyOS on two desktops. One is AMD CPU/Nvidia GPU, the other is Intel CPU/AMD GPU. Both KDE. I only use Steam native so far. 8bitdo Pro 2 controllers /w USB Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz dongles.

Occasionally a game hangs, but only about often as I had it happen on Windows.

The main problem I’m having is broken video playback on Store pages with their updated wide media player. Turns hardware acceleration on/off doesn’t fix it.

From what I understand which isn’t much: Faugus gave me the impression it’s using that Debian based Steam runtime and makes it sound like Lutris, Bottles, etc don’t even if you’re using Proton. Does it matter? You tell me.

In practice I’ve not noticed any difference when I tested it out on a couple games to experiment. I don’t use Faugus because Gamescope doesn’t work yet according (last read a couple months ago) to their github page. If the old projects are dying then whatever. I’ll use Faugus Launcher when it’s actually ready.

I liked the GUI so far anyways so I won’t be upset if I have to switch.

I was on that very same forum when somebody linked to the pizza guy thread to have an innocent laugh about the novelty of it, and that’s one example of why I try to not think about the past too much yep.

We need novelty yep. When you’ve been around long enough, you start having to look around harder to find it.

Do you care about having decent enough devices to enjoy it or do you just buy the cheapest pair of earbuds to silence the world around you?

I think good quality devices are important for the experience, but I stay in the sub $500 range for portable. Diminishing returns with honest claims at least. Get expensive enough and there’s just snake oil scams or bling cringe at the very top. My surround sound speakers I’ve been re-using most of them on multiple receivers since 2014 and won’t replace them unless they break. They were mid range at the time. I’ve replaced the center speaker and sub woofer with better ones.

Do you have favorite albums or do you just hit play on a random playlist and zone out?

Do you spend time searching for music?

I go through phases where I’ll browse Bandcamp for a few hours as an example, buy a few albums and then listen to the same album(s) on repeat almost every day for awhile if I find any worthy of that. That’s usually because of the lyrics primarily, and relating to what the artist is singing about strongly. This happens most often with modern/recent Psychedelic Rock. I’ll post a song from a local band for a bonus: https://youtu.be/1iyfXDFBgHw

I listen to F.M. radio when commuting, and discover new artists to lisyen to this way pretty often. Usually I screenshot the playlist history on CKUA app and then look them up at home later. Really only that one station: https://ckua.com/ donor sponsored radio. My favourite segment is The Road Home: https://roadhome.fm/ which conveniently is scheduled as I’m getting ready for work and ends when I arrive to work. The host lives alone in the forest in a cabin wood fire heated with his dogs. He mixes spoken word, poetry, music, letters people send him, stories, and more all together. Wild life noises and the fireplace can be heard in the background whenever he’s talking. Often birds and squirrels. It’s most excellent. This is 50/50 with commuting. I also like total silence with earplugs in while driving half the time.

Or my YouTube playlist on regular YouTube (ReVanced for screen off playback) which I’ve been adding to ever since 2006. I don’t use any other music streaming services and pay for none.

There’s also my NAS and bittorrent, but I’ve been buying music a lot more often these days. I like vinyl which is why I use Bandcamp so much. Usually you get a digital copy when buying vinyl, though I do buy digital only too.

Do you ever listen to music just to enjoy it and nothing else?

Yeah, usually that’s through the Shortwave application on Linux. Both on my desktop and living room PC. That’s for internet radio. I pay less attention to it. Background noise for chores, web surfing, or hosting dinner dates.

Do you talk with passion about your favorite songs/albums/artists?

No because nobody I know cares about music I like :(

TL;DR is music art or content to you?

Art! Usually.

https://omarmouallem.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Will-the-Real-Burger-Baron-Please-Stand-Up1.pdf

I’m the real Burger Baron and so are you! It’s a local franchise of sorts with a very messy history.

deleted by creator

I’m surprised I’m not homeless or dead yet. I ride that sanity line pretty hard and fall off occasionally, my very best is half-mad. That’s at “only” 35 years old.

I thought about elaborating, but nobody welcomes such talk. Which funnily enough is also part of the madness because barely anybody out of billions relates with me and that’s pretty isolating.

The developer of Barony is insane like the Stardew Valley guy, and just. never. stops. updating. I’ll play the game forever at this point.

Oh yeah, you’re right. Store-ception

I’m using Molly, the hardened fork of Signal that doesn’t use any google services these days. GrapheneOS introduced it via their app store…called App Store.

Everyone I know except my immediate family uses Signal at least to talk to me.

Doesn’t stop mine they want the kitchen window view.

At least they won’t shit on it. One far corner of the basement the two bastards would, even after adding another litter box instead of fighting cat behaviour.

They treat the patch of foil like the Berlin wall, constantly probing it for weaknesses, gingerly walking on it. Hoping against hope that they can shit 6 feet away from their litter box on the carpet again as cat god intended. Occasionally I replace a piece they’ve mangled enough to create a small gap which gets me worried.

Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it’s going to.

Rage inducing absolutely.

Live service games that start getting long in the tooth adding too much content.

There’s plenty to hate on with Dead by Daylight, but I was at one point pretty good at it both killer and survivor. Eventually I started to feel there were too many perks and characters to keep track of and I lost interest.

I felt the same about Team Fortress 2 when they started adding new weapons. That’s probably not a popular opinion but the initial updates tying weapon unlocks to achievements really soured me on the game, permanently. I stopped playing.