How does one find out what chips are in what USB sticks? Manufacturers don’t make this information available. At best you just find read and write speeds, usually just the max possible read speed and nothing else.

Elder Scroll series. Skyrim for the modding and eyecandy potential, Oblivion for the madness that is spellcrafting (also Shivering Isles is the best ES DLC), Morrowind for the true alien fantasy.

Thief II is the quintessential first-person sneaker.
Independence War II still has one of the best flight models and a great story.

X3: Terran Conflict is the best first-person strategy game.

Half-Life 1 and 2.

Il-2: Great Battles is the best WWII combat flight sim.
DCS is the best jet combat sim.

Elite: Dangerous is the only space sim with actual 1:1 scale galaxy, including many real-life stars and is the best life-in-space simulator with flight model as good as I-War 2 and decent enough on-foot parts (even though there is some jank and glitches).

You’re not alone. I’m in the same spot. I love the humor of Fallout and I really liked the TV series; I have played Morrowind, Oblivion, more Skyrim playthroughs than I can remember but I bounced off FO3 pretty hard. For me it was the dreary environment and overall decay of the world.

People in FO3 just didn’t seem to care much about their living conditions and this doesn’t seem like what would happen in actual post-collapse society. People in general love surrounding themselves with art and beauty, rusty scrap metal shacks wouldn’t be around two centuries after the bombs drop. Earthship, stucco and clay bricks are low tech but can be made very pretty and livable. Murals and paintings made using various pigments, colorful textiles, basreliefs, carvings and sculptures of ceramic, wood and stone would be everywhere, sprinkled with surviving pre-war artifacts that’s been restored, maintained and cherished with pride.

Plant life would also recover quite fast and be lush in a post-atomic war world—Chornobyl is a prime example how nature claims back human-abandoned land just decades after a nuclear event. Deserts in FO should not be all dreary brown misery; there would be a thriving ecosystem of both flora and fauna. Two centuries is enough time for the most dangerous radioisotopes to decay away and you wouldn’t really find places where radiation would stop wildlife reclaiming the land. More mutations and birth defects, yes, but life will find a way.

And this overall miserable representation of post-apocalyptic world is the reason FO games never really clicked for me even though the satire and tone hit the spot.

Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh0NWmlo1TE

Yeah, sorry, no. Even if I had the space, when I get home from work at 1900 the last thing I want to do is more work. It’s not like you can just plop some seeds into soil and do nothing until the harvest is ripe—I know, we had a decent family garden when I was a wee lad. Took a lot of work to keep it going.

If I worked 4 or even 6 hours a day—sure, I could add some homework to my day. But not when working 8 hours+commuting. And many people are working even longer days.

PC. Because:

1. Better controller support—I’m not limited to what MS or Sony deem as “certified” or “authorized” hardware. Most of the really good hardware (VKB, Virpil, Arduino) will never be available for consoles and what little is available is bad at best.
2. Best sims are PC only (DCS, Il-2, E:D, X series, Hunternet etc)
3. Sims support 3rd party auxiliary software (TacView, EDDiscovery, OMH, EDMC etc) for better experience and that’s simply not going to be possible on consoles, ever.
4. For other games, modding experience on PC is simply better. SKSE and ENB is what keeps Skyrim going and makes it still relevant 13 years later. Can’t have this kind of code injection and wrappers on consoles.
5. If I ever get into retrogaming, emulation is the way, especially since actually acquiring retro console games in their original physical format is bound to become a very expensive collector’s hobby if you don’t have your own collection from childhood already or don’t have local second-hand options.

E2E encryption is the public protection measure.

VKB. Their configuration software is intimidating at first glance (and you better RTFM!), but it’s super powerful and allows you to change and tune absolutely everything. Plus the settings are stored in the device so you only need to run the configurator when you want to change something. This is what you get when engineers run the company, not marketing, and they respect the end user’s intelligence.

Aside from certain mice, office keyboards and video conferencing stuff, Logitech is trash. Especially when it comes to flight sim and simracing hardware.

Like Skyrim this one is far more playable in third person, and I really recommend giving that a try.

Haven’t played FO, but hell, no, Skyrim (and Morrowind, and Oblivion) in 3rd person is janky AF. Bethesda games never were meant to be played in 3rd person—I suspect the option is there simply for vanity cam, screenshots and modding.

Third party apps: “OK. We’ll show ads. Muted. Behind a black overlay. If we really can’t find a workaround.”

StarWars Anarchists: Fuck 'em all! Power to the people!✊🏴

In 2006, it became possible for anyone to search WorldCat directly at its open website [REDACTED], not only through the subscription FirstSearch interface where it had been available on the web to subscribing libraries for more than a decade before.

So how is this “hacking” if the information is publicly accessible for all?

Pretty much any Batman movie. It’s subtle, because it’s not chaotic evil, but lawful evil—the status quo, established hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that plague the city remain in place. In fact, enforcing and protecting status quo is the whole raison d’entre of Batman, who is an extremely priviledged rich individual benefitting and profiting from the status quo. And thus has no desire to enact real societal change, unlike eg Baine.

I’d argue James Bond is also the same. Yes, Bond villains are evil—irrationally and comically so—but like Batman, Bond represents, enforces and protects the same hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that give rise to these villains.

Then there is Star Wars and all this light vs dark side. But if you stop and think about it, Sith and Jedi are just two sides of the same medal. Jedi mind trick that coerces someone to do something against their will is extremely evil by its very concept. Especially in how trivialized its use is in the movies. Also, there is nothing civilized about lightsabers. These are horribly dangerous to the wielder and their opponent alike, will easily cut through hull plating by accident (a bad thing when a cm of material is all that’s standing between you and hard vacuum). And would in reality not make a clean cauterized cut, but explosively flash boil the target with the end result like being blown from a cannon.

Lawful, systemic evil is the most devilish kind of evil; it’s so subtle it goes unnoticed and is even celebrated as good, no doubt in no small part due to the vast propaganda machine lawful evil loves to build up around itself.

I would do it on purpose. Because fuck 'em snobs, and not in a good way🤘

My dream vehicle: electric tadpole velomobile. Efficient, stable even in winter conditions, weather protection. Unfortunately unaffordable at the moment, prices starting at around 9000€. Plus living in a condo storing one safely while not in use is a difficult endeavor.

Saying that AptX is lossless since 2016 is blatantly false. And yes, just like with HDMI and USB, AptX standard naming and Qualcomm feature naming schemes are a misleading mess.

There are 4 flavours of AptX (linked article states this as well), and only the latest supports lossless, but is available only on very few chipsets and devices so I even forget that it exists, because for all practical purposes it doesn’t.

Denon Perl Pro, Bose earbuds and Cambridge Audio M100 are the only non-chinese earphones that I know of that support AptX lossless and the latter are not even listed by my local importer. Plus, you need a very specific (expensive) phone to use them because AptX Lossless is not available for all chipsets. Basically, Asus ROG 8 or Xiaomi Redmi K70 Pro for ones available to buy for me, and then it’s not available at every retailer, either, and the b2b wholesalers I have access to through work only list ROG Phone 8 (~1200€ retail).

In conclusion, to make use of lossless AptX you have to jump through many hoops and spend a lot of money—700+€ phone and the 200+€ earphones. The standard is far from being, well, a standard; common and widespread. 99,9% of devices on sale and in use by people only support older AptX standards, mostly AptX HD (which is not lossless!).

No, it isn’t. It just has higher bitrates, but still not enough for lossless.

Counterpoints:

1. Good IEM-s don’t really need ANC. If the silicone tip doesn’t isolate enough you can use foam tips that basically function like hearing protection earplugs.
2. No battery is even better than replaceable battery.
3. Wired IEM-s never get obsolete. At worst you’ll need to replace the silicone tips from time to time, or the cable and today even 20€ Chinese IEM-s have replaceable cables. With good care wired IEM-s can last decades.

Nothing to do with ADA conversions (and digital-to-digital, eg SRC or bitdepth conversion, is completely transparent if done even remotely adequately). Small drivers close to eardrum with good seal just seem to be easier to manage when it comes to frequency response and distortion. Most open circumaural headphones, for example, seem to have deficiencies in lower end no matter the price.