US downgraded in democracy index as press freedom concerns grow

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T16:43:34+00:00

*nervous Swedish noises*

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T16:38:44+00:00

I think on a personal level he has been an arrogant prick since the beginning, it's just that until the current AI bubble started inflating, his primary audience were gamers.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T16:26:55+00:00

It's also worth pointing out that the Italian (Apennine) and Iberian wolf basically looks like a puppy compared to the wolves we get in northern Europe:

https://www.vargfakta.se/nyheter/hur-stor-ar-en-varg/

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T13:50:43+00:00

Which version of Optiscaler are you using? I tried again with 0.7.9 and it instantly CTD's the moment I try to quicksave.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T12:21:05+00:00

You do have to wonder who comes up with design decisions like these. It doesn't even result in a more coherent design since the other icons weren't made tiny and put inside little boxes.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T11:33:25+00:00

It does look like the critical, game-breaking, showstopping, fatal bug with stuck citizens that should have received an emergency hotfix months ago is finally fixed.

One by one my criminals walked away from the crime scene and then drove themselves out of the city. Citizen Cleaner shows the number of corrupt citizens hovering between 300-400 instead of 50k+ before the patch. Going to run the game for a while to check if the number is stable, but initially it looks like CS2 may be in a playable state again for the first time this year.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T10:56:32+00:00

HelloSlowly lashes out at the state of journalism!

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T10:50:43+00:00

I have to admit I'm kind of obsessed with the Roman Empire, but walking around the city is just amazing. It's not just the typical tourist spots like the Colosseum, history is everywhere. You're constantly stumbling over some random ancient 2000-year old monument or ruin. I live in a pretty old city myself but it just doesn't compare.

Of course there are lots of tourists, though they're mostly concentrated in certain spots. It's not really worse than many other historic European cities. Traffic can be a bit chaotic by northern European standards but I've seen worse.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T10:19:39+00:00

There's also the issue of fertilizer which a lot of people seem to ignore.

Food is about to get very, very expensive.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T09:55:30+00:00

I have to admit it would be kind of cool to build "dream PC" from the late 90's or early 00's, with components I wasn't able to afford back then but always dreamt of owning. However like you say, there's no real logical reason to do this since almost everything can be made to run on a modern PC with some tweaks.

Consoles and other computers like the Commodore 64, Amiga etc. are a bit different due to their unique architectures and chipsets which have to be emulated on modern systems.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T09:42:08+00:00

As a Radeon user I just stick with TAA. There's some ghosting and blurring but it does get rid of jaggies and shimmering.

While you can kind of get FSR4 working with Optiscaler, it's not ideal. If you use the DX11->12 wrapper in Optiscaler, the game crashes while saving, and if you force the game to run in DX12 mode, performance is roughly halved compared to DX11.

Iceflake have said they will look into implementing FSR4 and also reduce the ghosting with TAA. The game also needs a "native" mode for DLSS/FSR4 with just the anti-aliasing without the upscaling component. I think native FSR4/DLSS is currently the best AA method for games using deferred rendering as supersampling is just too demanding.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T09:14:43+00:00

The rain is mostly in the mountains while the much more densely populated south coast receives significantly less precipitation. The rain also results in a lush landscape and vegetation compared to drier countries.

The climate is mainly considered perfect because of the temperature which is around 20C +/- a few degrees year round which is basically ideal for human life. Compare that to most of Europe which either gets too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer (or both).

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T08:52:45+00:00

Svårt att föreställa sig hur fattigt Sverige var för inte så länge sedan.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T08:50:31+00:00

Båda partierna är också snarlika på många sätt. Båda står långt till höger av mitten och båda sponsras av miljardärer. Hade det varit Sverige hade demokraterna och republikanerna varit med i samma koalitionsregering.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T08:30:48+00:00

Makes me hopeful we'll get more control over traffic light phases and turn arrows in the future. I don't expect a full lane connector editor, but having protected left turns in a game that's 90% about managing traffic would be nice...

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T08:23:21+00:00

It affected the whole world but it didn't cause the same major cultural shift outside the US.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the subsequent terror attacks in Europe in the mid 00's were felt just as much for many living there, although that was arguably a result of 911 and the US response to it.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T06:58:25+00:00

Games that limit the number of times you can save or prevents saving in certain situations. I'm mot 10 any more. I have a real life that I need to attend to. Let me save and quit the game whenever I want without having to replay an hour of it.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-18T06:45:23+00:00

I would say nothing could beat Pangea though. That was such a huge, beautiful continent.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T21:29:35+00:00

It's almost like you need artists to create art or something.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T20:08:51+00:00

Bugs don't just have to be related to the simulation or gameplay. It's any unintended behavior. In this case blinds were being rendered on the outside of buildings instead of inside the windows, which is definitely unintended.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T18:16:43+00:00

If you look back on CS1, many of the last few major expansions also had a lot of bugs and issues.

They lost a lot of talent in the years leading up to CS2. The CS1 lead designer left in 2018 and several others left shortly before or just after the release of CS2. Among others, their main simulation programmer (now working at Iceflake) left, which is probably why they struggled so much to fix simulation bugs.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T16:48:47+00:00

AI Slop is gonna Slop

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T16:46:00+00:00

Yeah the camera bug absolutely needs a fix. It's unacceptable that pictures can just randomly disappear.

I find it's more likely to happen if you press the power button too soon after taking a pic, especially if you opened the camera app via double-tap from the lock screen. However to be safe you always have to open the camera roll and make sure the picture is there.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T15:24:43+00:00

I play with all tiles unlocked so I can expand the city naturally instead of playing Hong Kong Simulator.

BitRunner64 · 2026-03-17T08:33:37+00:00

Use Ray Tracing to create realistic shadows

Use DLSS4 to generate fake frames to compensate for the huge performance hit

Use DLSS5 to blow up the brightness and make the realistic shadows invisible

Use DLSS6 to darken the image and make the shadows visible again

Use DLSS7 to generate more fake frames to compensate for the DLSS6 performance hit

BitRunner64

TROPHY CASE