I’m not sure I really agree with the reasoning on why HL:Ep3 was never developed. Sure, Valve game usually revolves around some game-changing mechanics, but at the same time, Episode 3 was more than just a game, but a sendoff of a big franchise, at least for a time, and a promise to their fans: that 3 episodes are made.

I think that this was one of the signs of the cracks forming in the game developing sector of Valve. It’s been well known that the dev team within Valve has slowly developed to a more toxic environment where veterans vetoed a lof of stuff from newer employees, leading to stagnation and developers getting silently shunned for working on projects like TF2 because it wasn’t considered “profitable”, when there still was, and is, a sizeable community revolving it.

I would have said playing it safe and making a sort of “best of” of popular mechanics used in the previous games would’ve been the best choice, because that would be the best possible sendoff for the series of episodes. After all, at that point people mainly wanted a conclusion to the story arc, a moment of “this was the HL2 era, thank you for playing”, rather than something completely new.

While I agree that dd can be easily used, it still is a dumb command (as in its only purpose is to write and nothing else), which can result in some issues regarding validating the integrity of the installation, at least for a beginner.

Furthermore, it can be disastrous if you don’t pay attention to what you type in, as it will happily overwrite anything you type in.

Also, I don’t think that dd alone should be used as a backup, as it might result in inconsistent backups. The best simple backup system, no matter whether you are a beginner or an expert, are snapshots, and maybe using dd to backup those to an external drive to be sure.

I agree that once learning how to use dd programs like BalenaEtcher sort of become more clutter than anything else.

Still, something I would always prefer over dd is Ventoy, simply because not only allows me to easily make an ISO bootable, but allow multiple ISOs to be easily bootable on the same USB stick. I hope it never becomes abandonware.

That’s why customer goodwill is so important. It can save you from doing a major mistake simply by the fans still buying the next game out of support for the studio.

Also, the “if we don’t get funded” message rubs me the wrong. It feels like an appeal to emotion rather than an honest message. Something along the lines of “we’ll continue looking for funding, though the project will be put on hold” would feel more genuine without tugging on heartstrings.

Let’s see how their new game idea works out. Honestly a prophunt horror game seems interesting, but I feel it’s pretty much done to death by free mods/gamemodes already.

It has always been a common strategy. Aim for the extremes, and then move to your actual goal to seem reasonable and make the opposition think they won.

It seems interesting, but at the same time the demos all seem to feature presses/simple gestures like stroking an object. The article’s title however, at least in my opinion, implies something along the lines as we see in capacitive displays, mainly a touchpad.

Interesting tech nonetheless! Especially the plant example seems interesting, as it implies that interactions can also occur on less conventional surfaces.

While genetic research has huge potential in early diagnoses, and possible prevention, of illnesses caused by genetic defects, the statement that one can determine (general) intelligence of a potential offspring by checking embryos seems nonsensical from the get go.

First of all would be the definition of (general) intelligence. What exactly is it? Even when assuming that an IQ test cannot be cheated, the concept of reflecting one’s general problem solving skills by a number makes little sense. Can we really say that a savant that heavily struggles with everything but in one field has the same intelligence as someone that is completely standard in any way when both have the same IQ score? I would say not, as the former would need much more support than the latter.

Furthermore, often points concerning something related to eugenics ignore the nature vs nurture debate. How much of our skills are dependent on our environment? To what extent can we say that our minds have a limit on how intelligent we are? It’s hard to say, as there isn’t much research about it, and experiments on that topic are often inhumane, historically speaking. So we need to keep this lack of knowledge in mind when talking about topics like eugenics.

Ome thing I don’t quite like about kitchenowl is how the grocery list doesn’t really seem to allow entering amounts of stuff, which is especially annoying when you try to shop for ingredients for a recipe. Otherwise it’s a phenomenal app in terms of unifying cookbook recipes as well. The autosummaties also work quite well, it seems.

Win+P allows you to quickly change how your windows works. Win+K brings up the menu to connect to a wireless monitor. Win+L will lock the screen. Win+R will call the “Run…” window.

KDE Plasma also inherits a lot of the shortcuts Windows has. AFAIK MATE/Cinnamon do also share some of the keybinds, but for some reason they use CTRL+ALT instead.

Also fun fact: the Windows key is also called the SUPER key.

Based on what I heard it was mainly cost vs benefit. It was mainly an expensive gimmick, as not only you had to buy more expensive equipment that had its limitations (expensive glasses that had to synchronise with the TV or very narrow fields of 3D), but also had to have channels with 3D (which might’ve cost extra) or more expensive media that was capable of delivering 3D.

While streaming could have been a contributing factor, due to it killing traditional TV channels and basically DVD sales, it seems that overall 3D cinema declined very fast as well. This is probably because how expensive it was for both cinemas and production companies, and production companies often resorted to cheaper alternatives rather than equipment that would actually film in 3D, leading to a much less satisfying effect. So as the 3D effects got shallower, the whole gimmick in theaters died, and probably the whole 3D fad.

I never got into Clue myself, though I blame Clue DVD for that. The premade cases led to a limited replay ability, sure, but due to these cases involving background narratives made you feel like a detective as you piece together alibis through story snippets.

It’s a shame they aren’t producing it anymore for quite some time now.

What I experienced is that Snaps/Flatpaks that contain X11 apps will behave very oddly in a Wayland sessions, at least with NVidia GPUs.

Using distros that still use X11, like Linux Mint, seems to help a lot.

One thing I will commend Snaps/Flatpak for however is bundling dependencies, especially deprecated ones. I spent DAYS trying to install an older version of .NET framework that’s no longer supported to get a game (Vintage Story), but to no avail. With the appropriate Snap/Flatpak it worked first try, well, once I found the distro that doesn’t have the X11 problem that was previously stated.

What makes it worse is that, as far as I know, the players trying it actually like the gameplay, but found the game itself to still be dull. The entire gameplay apparently was made solely on market analysis, with very little individual development taking place.

I think this highlights an interesting phenomenon also seen in “The most wanted song” and “the most unwanted song”, two songs made by scientific research of people’s preferences of music, where “the most wanted song” sounds nice, but is rather bland whereas “the most unwanted song” sticks out much more, a trainwreck you can’t look away from, and is a good song in the same way “The Room” is a good movie.

It seems it’s the flaws, the impurities, are what make games more interesting, more fun.

Alternatively you can also use aluminium. Snails have a natural allergy to aluminium due to a reaction happening between the metal and their slime. Therefore they will avoid aluminium at all cost.

Or at least be sort of a monthly tax, in order to fund it. Generally however, I agree, especially since those who get caught not paying for those tickets after often those who can’t afford it, thus ending in a spiral that ultimately puts them in jail, thus costing the taxpayer more money. At least this is the case in Germany.

He actually considered abandoning the projects multiple times, mainly by hoping for a sign of God. However considering that none of his customers ever questioned the behemoth of a vehicle under a tarp and nobody told authorities about his strange behaviour, he saw it as God giving him the OK, as in his eyes, God would’ve acted upon his risky maneuvers to get caught.

Dude really tried his best to convince himself to stop, yet Lady Luck seemed to have wanted otherwise.

It’s also a miracle that he didn’t hurt a single soul, other than himself.

Alternatively tgey could use the Rimworld model: release DLCs that heavily change how you play the game, allowing you to tailor the game to your wants and needs that way.

Honestly it’s pretty sad how Viruses changed from a sort of artform to just a money making scheme / espionage tools.