It’s an interesting technology, a solution in search of a problem.

I remember reading the insert for this back in the day included in my Civilization box or something. Was interested in getting it, but I think I picked up Betrayal at Krondor or Ultima Underworld instead.

I guess now it’s time to revisit it.

Have a Lemmy gold: 🥇 !

This, to my mind, is the one biggest benefit of GoG. No separate launcher/front-end/DRM needed.

On the topic of launchers though, I’m a big fan of Heroic Launcher (for Linux at least). Can hook it into GoG, Epic, and Amazon.

Glad to hear Gog is partnering with Heroic. Heroic is pretty slick, and only getting slicker. Shame to waste effort, and much better than forking and not contributing to upstream.

That was exactly what I thought it was. Classic! And an official RFC (although introduced on April 1).

Right there with you!

My first experience with the internet was Gopher.

The whole Fediverse is still a little on the niche side, but if growth continues, I think this is exactly another development. When you work for Company X, your work email is usually somebody@companyx.com, likewise I would expect official Fediverse presences.

Where it will probably take off though is when somebody starts selling corporations a turn-key solution. Kind of how products like Outlook took over corporate email.

Pretty much. Musk is far from a free speech absolutist as he proclaimed himself to be. I would go further and say he’s substantially worse, unpredictable and inconsistent in free speech matters.

Old Twitter would hardly be a true paragon of free expression, but they were at least relatively transparent. Good luck getting any answers from new Xitter or any consistency.

Relevant XKCD

TIL.

For purposes of this post though, RFC 3339 and ISO8601 are identical. Dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, so 2024-08-29 is both RFC3339 and ISO8601 compliant.

Not an expert, just spent around 2 minutes looking at https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

The standard I recall being established back in the nineties as to whether strong encryption was even legal in the US was “substantial non-infringing use” or similar. It’s been awhile.

The problem with key-escrow or anything similar is that any proscribed circumvention is also available to the “bad guys”.

I think Telegram’s stance would be that they can’t moderate because of strong end-to-end encryption. Back in the day the parallel would have been made to the phone system or mail.

Of course this is all happening in France, so I have no idea what the combination of French and EU laws will have on this, but I would still broadly expect that if a parallel can be made to mail or phone, Telegram would be in the clear. The phone company and mail service have no expectation of content moderation.

I guess we’ll see.

I’d have to agree. An official Mastodon instance for announcements, and then just echo posts wherever desired.

Could go further, have public libraries get funding to run public instances or similar, but I think you are already seeing non-profits and maybe some co-ops formed to run Fediverse instances, so the need is less.

Some controllers are almost integral to the experience. Intellivision and Colecovision come to mind. Having said that, emulation and modern controls are generally great, and generally my preference.

Similar. Had a Colecovision when I was a kid, followed by a second hand Commodore Vic-20. Hands down the Colecovision had better graphics, but all you could do is play the games you bought or shared. Next was a Tandy 1000 TX, and I don’t think I ever looked back.

I did have an original Gameboy, that I bought with my own money, and that was pretty cool, but still it was simply a matter of playing the games they sold you. In the shareware scene of the 90’s, even the Gameboy was horrendously limiting.

For me it’s never been a performance issue. Most of the time I’ve been using old PCs, and the latest console would technically be more powerful (back to Colecovision vs. Commodore Vic 20). It was a matter of flexibility and variety.

Have you looked at the Stop Killing Games campaign?

I was 95% k+m until the Steam Deck (the 5% being my old Saitek Flightstick).

Since the Steam Deck I’m probably 90% controller.

I will say that k+m offers superior speed and precision, especially in FPSes, but the biggest improvement that I noticed was that I was getting a sore shoulder from repetitive strain sitting too much time in front of computers. Controllers are more ergonomic.

Ironically, the Atari -like joystick from the 2000’s from Walmart for $15 that plugs directly into your TV with games stored in the joystick is a better joysticks than the original 2600 joysticks.

However, I would contend that the Intellivision controller was worse.

I had a Colecovision (and Vic 20), and although I will say that was better than the 2600 and Intellivision joystick, I have to emphasize to all these youngsters complaining about the original NES controllers that those were still an improvement over previous default joysticks.

Flashbacks! This reminds me of my first Gravis Gamepad (IIRC). Was a disappointing joystick, even compared to old Intellivision controllers.

It was okay with fighting games, and I do recall a nineties PC giant robot fighting game (One Must Fall maybe?)

Still, my first joystick that I actually loved and made a game much better was an old CH Products flightstick. Early flightstick, so it only added a throttle to the base, so no rudder control.

I remember playing Comanche Maximum Overkill with that stick and just popping in and out of canyons. Also Earthsiege and Strike Force Centauri. I ended up with a Saitek Flightstick, and it was even better (Independence War is a fond memory) but the difference was not as revolutionary as going from a regular joystick to that first CH Products flightstick.

For sure. Easily half (likely more) of my unplayed games are Bundle games from a bundle I got primarily for something else. There’s a few gems I’m sure.

There are a few games I bought on sale to play later as well (I’ll get to you!) but the other glaring flaw I see is a selection bias. The people who use this service or similar services are going to be the heavier Steam users with collections in the hundreds.

So heavier users, with lots of bundle games and sales. I’d divide that total by 10 at least

Probably why I actually leave multiplayer on in No Man’s Sky. There’s people around, stuff happens, but there is no need to engage if you aren’t in the mood.

Plus, if you are feeling sociable and want to, you can go to the anomaly and team up for bonuses.