That reminds me of when I used to have an iPhone and needed to free up storage, and there was this cursed mysterious "other data" block that took up like a majority of it.
And the story is set in modern times but it sounds like an 80's arcade cabinet. Bwoop-bwoop pew pew!
Granted some people are so focused while gaming that they look like drowned salmon, but streamers have proven you can still be emotive and act whilst gaming lol.
Haha so many times I've heard stuff playing that sounds catchy in like random sandwich shops, and hunt down where I can get a clear detection on it.
It's actually pretty impressive what the average smartphone mic can pick up ... For better and worse. =\
But I've found some favorite songs that way. It beats the old days of trying really hard to discern some words in the lyrics and hoping a search engine would help!
if they changed the workflow to be like Photoshop, it would leave those of us who know how to use Gimp but not Photoshop high and dry
That's a VERY good point. I think a good example would be how Blender has evolved in the last decade or so.
It started out very "in-house" and unconventional, but it had very specific UX principles in mind rather than just aping "ThE iNdUsTrY". Coming from learning 3D MAX to OG pre-3.5 Blender was really difficult. Right-click select?!
But like Blender, I feel like GIMP could benefit from having easily adjustable settings that could line up with what a particular user finds intuitive. Certain layer behavior seems to be the big one here. The settings are there, they're just awkwardly small buttons or buried in menus.
(Adding the universal transform tool was a VERY nice jump in the right direction.)
Blender's UI / UX overhaul caused a bit of screeching, but overall was instrumental in balancing accessibility with familiarity to existing users. It made those options very accessible and modular.
For instance, I always use left-click-select, but I use the "Blender way" for everything else. If someone's coming from Maya? There's the "industry standard keymap" for them.
It has nothing to do with fun, they just want the carrot being dangled in front of their nose.
This might explain the marketing that seemed to start with mobile games and now infects AAA MP titles:
"PLAY NOW AND GET 34 GAZILLION WORTHLESS EMERALDRUBYGEMCOINS and a RARE DROP POPSICLE MAGIC DOMINO"
Like...a newcomer would have zero idea what the heck they're even talking about but somehow it seems to work, to entice players with worthless free...server database adjustments?
Hardly any focus is on the games being unique or exciting (Surprise, they aren't!) It's all about a reward-based impulse, like training a bunch of rodents to use a casino.
Oh sweet nobody's mentioned it yet! One of my personal favorite "book-feeling games" is an FPS series.
Linear, tightly focused, and feels like a novel because it's based on one:
Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light.
(Haven't played Exodus yet)
You play a young fella named Artyom. Living in formerly-Russia's metro tunnels with other survivors after a nuclear apocalypse devastates the surface.
Your settlement comes under threat from seemingly psychic creatures called "the Dark Ones", and you're sent on a quest to go get help.
Across the way is a bit of a "coming of age" adventure. You run across really interesting and well-acted characters, sneak past hostile factions, contend with scary (and diversely behaviored) mutants, and risk dangerous excursions on the surface. This is a dark world where gasmask filters are precious and bullets are literally currency, but somehow it's still beautiful and fascinating.
(That intro guitar melody will stay with me forever.)
Like any good hero, Artyom finds himself in one bad situation after another, and along the way if you pick up on the hints, may even come to understand the world around him and the role he plays in it.
There's a morality system that's more subtle than "be boyscout or be a villain", and "ranger difficulty" is an amazing way to play because it makes gunfights feel tense and realistic.
You can only take a few hits in this mode, but unlike in most games, so can your enemies! It makes things feel much less "bullet spongey."
Everyone begged for an "open world" experience and we got Exodus which is supposed to be awesome, but something will always stay close to me about this post apocalypse story that takes you on a focused, well paced, and at times emotional ride to save a transformed world.
And that's just the first title mostly.
You won't be running between towns for hours or making rubber bands and glue into machineguns. You'll still feel like you're surviving, but know exactly where you're supposed to be going.
They go for super cheap on GoG and Steam all the time. Well worth the experience. :)
StarFox 64 is so perfect in that arcade-game way, where you can technically finish it in a sitting but it's so cool to figure out different paths and stuff. :D
"Okay guys, let's ROCK N' ROLL!"
In case you haven't seen it, this video might make you very happy.
I still wonder what that's like. Somebody must still occasionally get a notification that SOMEWHERE somebody paid for their WinRAR license and is like "WOAH WE GOT ANOTHER ONE!"
Edit: Stickying some relevant "war reporting" from the comments to the post body, in a hopefully somewhat chronological order. Thanks for diving into the trenches everybody!...
North American here. Funny how it's very much less "which is it?" And more "Yeah. Basically."
We've been culturally domesticated to not cause trouble for our bosses / schools / etc. If the State steps in after you cause trouble for enterprise, it's usually to kick you back into your place.
We might not live in a State dictatorship, but that only matters so far, because that State enables many tiny, petty dictatorships that more directly affect your life and run amok unopposed.
Somehow people accept petty tyranny in everything from corporations to universities to shifts at the burger joint. They'll get all riled up that some politician they never met is bawking about foreign policy, but their tail is tucked firmly when their company tells them they can't get sick days and arriving a minute late is a fireable offense.
Many have bought the lies of rugged individualism and competition.
"An insult to one is...well, that really sucks for you but I told you to just stay quiet. I'm just working hard doing what I'm told."
Like someone said before me: Even the most rebellious in us think twice about making our move, because many people simply think "That's how it is." And don't believe it can get any better.
There's not a lot of examples of collective action winning in recent history, so a lot of people don't even know how to begin to push back in the first place, besides writing an angry tweet or two.
Plasma "get new stuff" does need an overhaul though, after a poorly-coded theme could wipe a guy's drives. So careful what you install and always have backups, kids!
THAT BEING SAID:
I remember Win98 letting you customize wallpapers for individual folders.
I remember being a Win-ME kiddie that was thrilled with all the fun wallpaper/icon/sound/screensaver themes it came with. . .even though Windows ME lol.
Then XP was so bright and vibrant and fun I didn't care too bad that it let you choose from THREE dazzling color schemes. I also loved that StarDock cursor freeware that gave me a bunch of obnoxious animated cursors.
Vista's desktop applets seemed so neat except for the "massive security hole" part.
And here we are with 10 or 11:
[Pulsing blue light]
"We'Re sEtTiNg Up YoU'Re bLaNd DeSkToP...get hypnotized by spinny circles and forget you once had choices."
It's going so backwards, and they think they're so ahead of the curve by letting you tint your theme based on wallpaper color. Pffft.
Since I switched to Plasma I've had SO MUCH FUN setting up my desktop however I want it. I have a laptop install that feels like "Vaporwave XP", but my main rig is all efficient and sleek and pretty, and I get the urge to flip it all around every few months. It makes personal computing feel personal again!
Mimicking old themes is especially fun because you're still on a security-patched system that works the way you expect, but with improved nostalgic feelings!
I really want to learn to make my own splash screens and icons and cursors some time. The fact that I easily can do this and the community could enjoy them is SO COOL.
I miss when it was commonplace for people to customize and personalize their computers. It would say a lot about them. Now most normie folk don't even know how to change the wallpaper...
Right?? No, there ideally shouldn't be gouts of flame spewing from the enclosed top of a grill like that. 😆 That optical illusion is near perfect lol.
But there's a ton that's just a bit unsettling about this picture. Like the super bloodshot wide eyes for instance. For some reason "and also the smoker's on fire" seems mundane.
I keep hearing stories like this but all I see in thrift stores are like busted DVD players and other grimey old stuff that was second-rate even when released. In that awkward valley where it's not vintage, and newer stuff is objectively better.
I think people caught on and the good finds are pushed to their auction sites and stuff now. =\
I'm happy with my X230 I got for $200 off eBay though, like 5 years back.¯_(ツ)_/¯
I would suggest if you want some up-to-date awesomeness, try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed!
Rolling release sounds scary, but even aside from enabling BTRFS snapshots by default, it's surprisingly stable, and has proprietary NVIDIA drivers!
Granted, I don't game (that's all my Win10 partition is for right now lol), but I do Blender and other creative tasks snd it's amazingly snappy and fun.
Wayland is "getting there" on a user experience level, but as for buttery smooth frame rates and stuff, it feels like a new machine on my 144hz / 60hz dual monitor setup.
I'm running a single 3090, but I'm sure it could handle dual-GPU!
I'm actually excited at how great Linux gaming has become. I might keep my Win10 install around solely for VR games MAYBE. (I have a WMR headset. Womp womp...)
But I'm not worried at all, for when they "drop support" and I can just continue on doing all the important stuff on Linux with hardly a passing thought. Thanks for the extra disk space, Microsoft!
Totally feel ya on Mint. I put it on my X230 just now because I wasn't planning on booting it up too often and didn't want a massive update causing issues down the line. Super stable, super user friendly. I always recommend it to newcomers. Lovely experience!
Haha yeah Tumbleweed is an interesting name. Suppose it's because it's always "rollin' rollin' rollin'". Constantly in motion!
I'd caution against it on low-data capped internet plans for instance, because it updates fairly often, sometimes 1GB or more. But also plenty of people update like once a week and it's good. I update pretty much every day. It's kinda compulsive for me and I like to see if anything is fixed or new. :p
So that's one cool thing it has over *buntu and friends: Newest and shiniest features, but they've been tested a bit more thoroughly than on something like Arch, and if it does go bad, you can boot into a "snapshot" and wait until a newer update hopefully fixes whatever borked it.
But I haven't had to roll back in ages. :)
I like keeping on the edge of KDE6 right now because it's improving very quickly. Same with Wayland, even though some programs are still fussy with it. (You can have X11 and Wayland both, and choose which to use upon login)
I'm surprised and impressed it made it to the bin outlet!
I keep trying to keep an ear out for these fabled "IT cycles" where companies will just dump Dells and Thinkpads once in a while, but have never been privvy to one myself.
Maybe indystry caught on and switched procedure, realizing they weren't creating enough e-waste /s lol.
(To be fair, the last place I worked donated their laptops for tax breaks, which is good I guess. But wouldn't let me even buy one off them, so I'm salty lol.)
Well the war in the USA would be so unpopular with the USA they'd be pressured to withdraw from the USA...but they'd stick around for another decade because defense contractors' stonks were still doing great.
Alright this wasn't supposed to be a TED talk but turns out I'm passionate about this and the Adderall kicked in...
I don't think it's on older gens on a user level for the most part.
I try to teach the kids in my life computer stuff all the time. I know lots of "my dad's in IT" kids that grew up understanding how computers work even on a basic level.
We who care, do so fervently, and are often drowned out by the noise.
Let's point the finger more accurately: It's 99% on how tech companies forced the evolution of computing to their benefit. They decided what "the future" would be, and sold us out to it.
Instead of fully functioning computers, "Kids these days" have grown up with flat little content-consumption devices that make sure you literally can't understand how they work. Everything is framed as some esoteric black box service brought to you by a cabal of qualified wizards. (Look at Windows' whole "We're doing things for you behind this pulsing blue screen" schtick. Funny how opaque an OS called "Windows" has become.)
The entire design motif of modern devices seems to scream:
"Don't ask questions. You're too stupid for that. Know your place. Just put a payment method on file and tap whatever you could want for just 99¢ more!"
They're black-box appliances that were aggressively marketed to families at home, and these companies shelled out tablets and chromebooks as "grants" to schools, to secure a mind-share of future customers who were "raised on it" and know nothing else.
The Silicon Valley titans have normalized addiction algorithms, invisible data mining, zero privacy, planned obsolescence of entire devices with non-replacable parts, browser-based-everything, subscription-tiers for everything, no ownership over purchases, and consumption-first design.
Computing knowledge has become a "magic box" to the point that colleges need to spend valuable time explaining file types and folders. Before college?
Hah! We're back to the 80's again: Only real nerds have a desktop in the house.
Elementary schools have replaced their computer labs with cheap e-waste-quality chromebooks where students do everything through a browser. Computing education went the way of arts, history, and music. Gone, unless it's a fancy private school.
They're stretched thin as it is, and the curriculum is increasingly based on standardized testing on "STEM" over everything else. Why?
Because employers want a large pool of punctual test-passers to choose from, and corporations want generationally vendor-locked customers to secure future earnings.
This is why, despite how the world runs on computers, to the majority, emails are space magic. Nobody knows nor cares about their privacy being sold off, and nobody bothers to learn about computers in the first place.
A "technical user" is super intimidating to "normies" because they know things like "There are multiple browsers" and "You can copy and paste". I'm not even kidding.
It's depressing as hell. Maybe some of it is on our generation, for not fighting harder for user rights.
This is why Linux has such a cult following: it flies in the face of this hypercapitalist customer-farm nonsense, and people find that refreshing. I'm happy to hear of more kids using it, and messing with things like Pis.
Tbf, God might consider prayers based on how they'll affect the underlying system as a whole, because any human being with sudo rights would be a massive problem in no time.
Linux might be more appealing to some because by default it assumes you're a god and fully understand the ramifications of whatever you're asking of it. We're wired to enjoy instant gratification, even if it leads to disaster. :p
But boy oh boy, do you learn things from those rabbit holes. It can be a MASSIVE pain, but I enjoy that I'm at least picking up XP points whenever I make time to fix stuff and learn more.
So much for Blockchain's real life use cases Englisch
No Mercy
idk i use tty
priorities ( lemmy.world )
Btw, I don't use Arch
NixOS is my new daily driver after a hard start and many copy+pasta from Github Repos ^^
Checkmate Valve ( lemmy.world )
This pisses me off so much ( lemmy.world )
We are not the same ( lemmy.world )
Don't mess up secure boot with bitlocker Englisch
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/windows-11-24h2-will-enable-bitlocker-encryption-for-everyone-happens-on-both-clean-installs-and-reinstalls
Checkmate Englisch
Math ( i.vgy.me )
Ctrl + Shift + A
sigh... ( lemmy.world ) Englisch
Never forget what they took from us...
the fear of missing out a better compression ( lemmy.world )
Source - Posted with Reddy
Protect yourself friends. ( lemmy.ca )
It has already been removed again Englisch
Edit: Stickying some relevant "war reporting" from the comments to the post body, in a hopefully somewhat chronological order. Thanks for diving into the trenches everybody!...
Last one, i've been farming Ai for memes but last one with lore ( lemmy.ca )
Microsoft is one of the greatest promoters of the Linux desktop ( lemmy.zip ) Englisch
systemctl enable chop.suey ( lemmy.ml )
Piracy ( sh.itjust.works ) Englisch
Hands up for 80s and 90s nostalgia ( i.imgur.com )
Numa ( lemmy.world )
Love me some arbitrary executed code /s (Plasmoids are not themes) ( slrpnk.net )
Cool Plasmoids on Plasma6:...
Self-Made ( lemmy.ml ) Englisch
Zuckerberg meme ( programming.dev ) Englisch
2nd hand ThinkPad go brrrrr ( sh.itjust.works ) Englisch
If the USA saw what the USA is doing in the USA... ( lemmy.ml ) Englisch
Why don't banks like root on Android? ( lemmy.world )
Never seen a Camel walk through the eye of a Needle. ( lemmy.ml )
or cult, I don't see difference ( lemmy.world )
Does sanitizer work instead ( sh.itjust.works )