I don’t buy AAA games, so YMMV, but I buy my games almost exclusively from GOG and Itch these days. I have loads of games on Steam, but now the DRM-free aspect is most important to me. If something is only on Steam, I may still buy it if I can confirm that it’s “DRM-free” (e.g. bypassable Steam check) there, or if it’s so cheap that I won’t mind losing it. As honest as GabeN and the Steam team seem to be, I’ve been shafted enough times already.

The one drawback I see for buying on GOG vs buying on Steam (which can also be kind of an advantage depending on your perspective) is updates. Steam seems to let publishers push updates out whenever they want. While a few publishers do actually seem to forget about GOG, I have read comments from a few different developers (in response to complaints from customers) that they had sent their updates to GOG but were stuck in an approval process. It appears that the GOG team manually tests every update before putting it up for customers, and there’s a large backlog for a small team, so it can be several months before a patch gets through.

“rd” and “rmdir” only work on empty directories in MS-DOS (and I assume, by extension, in Windows shell). “deltree” is for nuking a complete tree including files, as the name suggests.

JS has saved me many hours of mind-numbing, error-prone manual keyboard work by giving me a way to hack together a simple bit of automation as a web page.

Even when a computer has been ham-fistedly locked-down by an overzealous IT department, I can almost always still access a text editor and a browser that will load local HTML files.

When you use any piece of Internet-enabled software, any and all data that passes through it can theoretically be copied and siphoned off back to the authors of the software.

Should they do it? No. Can they do it? Yes.

Does Mozilla do it? They say they don’t, and I’m inclined to trust them. Do other major browsers do it? Absolutely.

As regards your physical location, geoIP databases can get pretty close these days.

Sure. Almost 40 years ago I started learning to program as a kid, and the only reason I knew the word “syntax” at all was because the default error message in my computer’s BASIC interpreter was “SYNTAX ERROR”. I didn’t learn what it actually meant until many years later, in English class.

I taught myself with the excellent Usborne books, which are now all downloadable for free from their website. You won’t be able to use them as-is (unless you get your kids to use an emulator for an old 8-bit home computer), but I’m sure you can still get some useful ideas, and maybe even copy small sections here and there.

As others have mentioned, my school also taught us a little LOGO, which was a bit of fun for me but rather simple. I remember that most of my classmates enjoyed it, though.

Nah, you’re cool. I know my system’s old, but as you say there’s still plenty of life in it, so I’ll keep it for now. Especially since I stick entirely to indie games these days.

But actually, I’m keeping an eye on auctions for something just a few years newer. Games that require AVX2 extensions are finally starting to come out, and my CPU doesn’t support them. Even with indie games, most of them use third-party engines, so it might not be too much longer before it’s an issue even for me.

Heh, TFW someone describes “resurrecting” a “low-spec” machine, and others talk about how old and out of date it is, and it’s roughly equivalent to your main gaming PC.

How many techie types have had someone come to them and say something like “Hey, you know tech thing XYZ? You know how it sucks? Well I’ve got a great idea: make a BETTER one! So what do you say? You whip it up in an afternoon, I’ll handle marketing, and we’ll be rich!”

Like they really thought that the issue is just that no-one can see the flaws. They thought that the fix is super easy and they’re just the first person clever enough to see it.

I’m guessing it’s because “SyncThing” is a proper noun.

Not to take away from your very good point, but I think the word you might be looking for is “eqivalence”.

Die Hard (for the NES)

Warning: You MUST read the manual!

At first glance it might look like a simple top-down scrolling shooter like Commando or The Chaos Engine, but it’s so much more. It’s very free and open, with seven floors to explore, and once the in-game timer ends you must go to the 30th floor for the final showdown. The thing is that there are a few ways both to pick off the terrorists singly or in pairs, and to extend the time limit. If you just hide in some corner of the building and wait for the timer to run out, you’re going to get mown down by 30 armed terrorists in a fairly small space. But if you’re good you can use that time to wipe out almost all of the terrorists, leaving only the leader Hans himself to face you, which is much more manageable.

Die Hard wasn’t high on my list at all when I first played it in the 1990s, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s still one of my all-time favourites. But ever since AVGN did a video on it, it’s become popular to dump on it.

Most “complaints” that I see about this game either show that the person hasn’t actually played it for themselves at all, or are solved by reading the manual. Funnily enough, in that AVGN video he even says something like “Maybe this would make sense if I read the manual, but f*** that, who reads manuals?”

The only negative thing I have to say is that IMO the “foot power” meter, which affects movement speed, runs out a bit too quickly even when you walk everywhere instead of running. That being said, I’ve only noticed it on later replays, and I don’t recall it being a problem the first time I played it all those years ago.

I bought these… holy macaroni, 16 years ago. I played the first one for a little while but then stopped. I don’t remember why, so most likely it was just that something else caught my attention.

It might be time to have another look.

Some people can hold their length, but only in private.

There was a recent discussion about controllers that may help you, here: https://lemmy.world/post/35100527

To add to my recommendation in that thread of the Logitech F310, for your question specifically:

• The wires on both it and the F510 are built-in, not socketed. In my experience usually only wireless controllers have socketed cables.
• I’ve never had the buttons on it get swapped around on any OS.
• I’ve never had any of them develop drift, and they’re all 8-12 years old at this point.
• They don’t support the WiiU.

I scored 12/28 on https://jsdate.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

the boss can detect headphones going on your head and music starting from 50 feet away and instantly be behind you with a burning question that doesn’t make any sense.

I’m sure you realize that the question doesn’t make any sense because they had to think of it on the spot, just to prove that you can’t wear headphones in the office due to all the important ambient office talk you need to be a part of.

One of my best, most competent bosses once said to the team “I don’t understand how you guys can work while listening to music, but as long as your output stays high, I’m not going to interfere.”

Reading the FAQs, the whole situation smacks of changing for the sake of change. It seems like some important functionality of the old system isn’t available in the new system, but they’re pushing it through regardless. Combined with this downplaying of Linux support, perhaps some political representatives with low technical skills have been talking to some lobbyists. And unless the Finnish school system has bought into Chromebooks in a big way, they seem unusually eager to support ChromeOS.

I wonder if the whole Secure Boot/Microsoft shim key issue is a part of this.

How about that worst of both worlds, the tutorial where the author starts out writing as if their audience only barely knows what a computer is, gets fed up partway through, and vomits out the rest in a more obtuse and less complete form than they would’ve otherwise?

1. Turn on your computer. Make sure you turn on the “PC” (the big box part) as well as the “monitor” (TV-like part).

2. Once your computer is ready and you can see the desktop, open your web browser. This might be called “Chrome”, “Safari”, “Edge”, or something else. It’s the same program you open to use “the Google”.

3. In the little bar near the top of the window where you can write things, type “https://www.someboguswebsite.corn/download/getbogus.html” and press the Enter key.

4. Download the software and unarchive it to a new directory in your borklaving software with the appropriate naming convention.

5. Edit the init file to match your frooping setup.

6. If you’re using Fnerp then you might need to switch off autoglomping. Other suites need other settings.

7. Use the thing. You know, the thing that makes the stuff work right. Whatever.

Congratulations! You’re ready to go!

This is another good point. I’d try turning off Fast Startup first, and if that alone doesn’t clear the issue, try this (leaving Fast Startup off).

Make sure that Windows Fast Startup is turned off. I don’t know if that’s specifically the problem here, but in my experience quite a few “everything’s fine, it should be working!” boot issues have been resolved by booting into Windows, turning off Fast Startup, and then doing a full shut down before going back to Linux, especially on laptops.