Yeah I bought my N64 when GameStop was liquidating their stock to make room for the next gen stuff. It was like $50 for a refurb console, two controllers, and a few games. Plus games and peripherals were only like $3 each because they were trying to clear their inventory.

I walked in with like $150, and walked out with a fully fleshed out console (four controllers, memory expansion pack, memory cards, etc) and a full library of games.

Near mint original copies sell for ~$2000. If you just want to legally play the game without emulating, go pick up the DS version for like $80. It’s pretty widely regarded as the best/most definitive version anyways.

For what it’s worth, emulation on the Steam Deck works really really well. And it’s a touch screen, so the touchscreen controls work flawlessly. The only real potential issue is that you can’t close a hinge, which breaks one particular Zelda game with a puzzle that requires closing the DS.

Which is the exact same behavior that caused the dot com bubble. VC funding was throwing money at any and every dot com business, in the hopes that it would explode and lead to profits.

All it did was massively overvalue the dot com companies, which caused a bubble when people finally realized they were overvalued and VC investors turned off the spigot of free money.

You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)

Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.

Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).

Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.

For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.

As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.

Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.

And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.

And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.

Most of the episodes aired before at-home VHS was common, and TV stations weren’t in the habit of archiving their old footage for nightly broadcasts; The show was viewed as transient since it dealt with current events, and nobody expected people to want to re-watch old episodes. It’s likely that a lot of them aren’t available simply because nobody (including the tv station) has recordings.

Mozilla doesn’t have a VPN. It’s literally Mullvad servers, with Mozilla’s branding on top. Mozilla doesn’t deal with any of the actual server stuff; It’s all handled by Mullvad.

FWIW, it’s a nice little drop shipping side hustle for Mozilla. They get to skim off the top of every Mozilla VPN sale, while doing none of the actual server maintenance and having no ongoing costs (hosting, electricity, etc) related to the VPN servers. But to be clear, you can get the exact same service (for a little cheaper because Mozilla isn’t skimming off the top) directly from Mullvad.

Paying for a VPN through Mozilla is like paying for a Spotify subscription through Apple’s App Store; You get the exact same service as if you had gone straight to Spotify’s site, but with an added convenience fee tacked on by Apple.

Sure, but it’s worth asking why the management is so poor. Many people have theorized that it’s because Google is pulling the strings; It would be in Google’s best interest to keep Firefox around on life support, because it helps them avoid antitrust lawsuits if they can point to Firefox and go “nope not every browser is Chromium based!” But it’s also in Google’s best interest to whittle Firefox’s usage down to near zero, which is what every single recent Mozilla decision has been aiming to do.

Mozilla was getting paid a lot of money by Google before Google got their hand slapped in an antitrust lawsuit. Many people have theorized that since that lawsuit, Google has pivoted to making deals directly with Mozilla’s management instead.

They also recently added built-in AI chat support, which just gives you contextual “summarize this text” type of stuff on your right click menu. But still, it just goes to show that Mozilla is really leaning into AI.

If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.

The DLC launches next month, so it has seen a surge of renewed interest. And once the DLC lands, it’ll likely get a surge of new players from being on the store page again.

Let me help with that…

Spotify
YouTube

It gets even worse: During the investigation, it was discovered that at least one person had copied videos and photos onto an external hard drive and taken them. The investigation never discovered who it was, or how many people had made copies; They just knew that files had been copied to at least one external storage drive.

The implication being that all of the teenage girls had their laptops open in their bedrooms, and at least one random employee had copies of their photos and videos.

My buddies and I had easy access to a theater, which had giant curved walls on each side of the stage. We hooked up three projectors to three Xboxes; One projector for the stage, and one for each of the curved walls. Then we ran them into the sound system.

We did it two or three times a week for months.

The funny part is that you could always tell who was screenlooking, because the screens were so big that you had to physically turn your head away from your own screen. And at that point you just die, cuz you start missing the people right in front of you.

Sure, but that feels a little bit like saying “We don’t need guards inside the prison, because we already have them patrolling around the perimeter.”

It’s important because it allows them to directly modify the CPU’s microcode. Basically, the CPU has its own set of instructions, called microcode, which controls how the chip functions on a physical level. If they manage to change your microcode, even a full system reformat won’t kill the virus; You’ll need to either re-flash the CPU (which is not something the standard user or even power user will know how to do) or replace the entire CPU.

That invisible hand is named Black Rock. Every time home values look like they’re going to dip, the investment firm swoops in and buys things up so they can sit on more empty houses and prevent their existing investments from losing value.

Supposedly the PAL version uses the Japanese drop rates and enemy stats. So you could conceivably use that to play the game in English. But I haven’t played it to confirm.

If you’re playing FFX/X-2 on PC, consider installing the Untitled Project X mod. It fixes some stuff and adds more graphics/UI options, but one of the most significant changes is that it allows you to toggle exp to the whole party regardless of participation.

It completely eliminates the “swap every character in to guard for 1 turn” hassle. You basically never need to grind, because every single character stays properly leveled. Basically, the game difficulty was balanced as if you fully utilized every single character in every fight. So the mod allows your exp gains to reflect that expectation, without needing to mindlessly swap each character out every time.

Currently working my way through Legend of Legaia. I’m shamelessly using some cheats to alleviate the grinding, because the American version of the game is ~4x more grindy than the Japanese version, and combat is much harder. (Yes, they slashed all of the exp and drop rates for the English release, along with making enemies significantly stronger.)

In the American version of the game, you need to stop and grind quite a bit just to be able to afford the gear for each new area. But in the Japanese version, you can pretty much steamroll enemies that are at your level, even without proper gearing. And since you have more gold, you never need to stop and grind. Hell, you actually end up with an abundance of gold in the Japanese version, meaning you don’t need to worry about things like being able to afford healing items. Which, again, just makes the game that much easier.

And quite frankly, I’m way too busy to be able to stop and grind. So I use cheats to level the playing field. I’m about halfway through the second area so far. No big hangups since I’ve played through it probably a dozen times.

I also just beat Megaman Legends again, and have moved onto Legends 2; I haven’t ever actually beaten 2, so it’ll be an adventure. I had forgotten how much more smooth the controls in 2 are, so it has been a pleasant surprise so far. IIRC, Legends 1 was made before DualShock controllers were common, so they couldn’t rely on the controllers having twin sticks. So the movement is very stilted, with turning on your shoulder buttons. Legends 2 actually allows for a true shooter layout with twin stick controls, so I don’t feel like the controls are constantly fighting me.