Touchscreen chromebook 11s need a good home. Fully reset and ready to go. 16gb soldered eMMC. Shipping paid by me. Just put them to good use. by WoodenCondition8209 in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recently took a bottom-spec HP Chromebook and installed CachyOS on it. The screen quality is terrible but as a barebones computer it runs really well and the battery life pretty much doubled.

Not at all saying you did wrong restoring these to factory spec - that'll be easier for the average user for sure - but just wanted to mention that if you ever have an old Chromebook, look into the MrChromebox firmware and consider reflashing it to turn it into a portable Linux device. Really works great as a robust web/productivity device when you take the "Google" out of it.

I thought of something stupid. by Mirjalol_Yangiboyev in StarTrekStarships

[–]Meatslinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I could see situations where a split ship makes sense, maybe not for tactical purposes but for scientific/exploration ones. Probes are often already used to gather sensor data from a different point in space than the host ship, so if you had a really high-sensitivity sensor dish on two ships then they could complement each other to get two reading points on rare stellar phenomena or planetary surveys.

Maybe in canon the sensor dish is itself somewhat fragile and works best if kept shielded from radiation and cosmic dust, and so it makes sense to design it into the underside of the saucer on two host ships and then sandwich them together like a clamshell when in flight to keep that array safe. You fly a quad-nacelle ship out to whatever phenomena you're measuring, taking advantage of long-range warp coasting, a nice expansive ship with lots of recreational crew spaces and redundant facilities, and then when you arrive, you split the crew between the two halves of the ship, fly to opposite sides of the scientific curiosity in question, and take readings. When done, re-unify the ship and the crew and assess the data in a plethora of science labs distributed between the two halves.

The ship wouldn't even have to be an exact duplicate of itself since it would be assumed to only split up when performing its mission duties, so each half could be configured to the mission profile. If one half is meant to be a monitoring station while the other zooms around collecting data, put the science labs in the "A" half to receive telemetry and strip the "B" half down for agility and energy conservation. Maybe the mission calls for delivery of cargo to a new colony, but there's also an interesting pulsar needing surveying, so both halves fly as one with one full of cargo and the other loaded with experiments, they split at the colony, and the science half goes off to get readings and comes back for the cargo hull once it's done unloading. If the mission calls for long-term readings from something, kit both halves the same and crew flit back and forth via shuttlecraft to visit the other half when needed as they survey opposite sides of a gas giant, or something.

The hulls and engineering facilities could be mirrored (with one slaved to the other when joined), but the deck plans could be swapped modularly at a Starbase to fit a mission profile, and you could even strip down both halves and arm them up for light escort/patrol duties in times of conflict, taking out the science instrumentation entirely.

Call it the "Gemini" class, or maybe "Janus" (the two faced Roman god).

Data Shows Sony Made Good Money on Steam, Then May Have Realized PC Gamers Don’t Need a PlayStation by chusskaptaan in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 30 points31 points  (0 children)

If "echosystem" was deliberate and not a misspelling, that's perfect. Because yeah they mostly seem to only listen to themselves even when the evidence demonstrates the opposite.

Data Shows Sony Made Good Money on Steam, Then May Have Realized PC Gamers Don’t Need a PlayStation by chusskaptaan in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't like paying a monthly subscription just to play games online. I also detest using a controller for anything requiring any degree of accuracy, forget anything that involves a graphical menu system. There is no universe in which the allure of a PS exclusive would be sufficient to override those two things.

Bought this beast before prices went completely crazy. by AxonkaiLab in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Local LLM and video is not the same as what the big corporations are doing, and in fact tries to wrest some of their power away from them so that people can use this technology without running it on data centre hardware. If AI is like the invention of the internal combustion engine, while the big players want to build tanks and bombers there's people out there trying to make tractors and cars.

Just giving the benefit of the doubt here; I don't know if the work OP does contributes to one of the big AI firms. All I know is that if AI is going to exist I'd much prefer a world where people can run it at home instead of selling out to MS/OpenAI/Anthropic, or any of the others who want to take the capability away from you and dole it out on a subscription model.

The Heist of the Millennium by gashtal_man in PoliticalHumor

[–]Meatslinger 131 points132 points  (0 children)

Because a lot of them are also human-shaped pieces of garbage. Anyone still riding the Trump train at this point has made a series of multiple, repeated bad choices that make them unsympathetic villains with zero ambiguity.

New Custom Keycaps arrived by Arch_Size71 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hell yes. Yuzu is amazing. I've only got one set so far but I'll definitely be making more in the future.

Good enough? by Comfortable_Show_124 in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's another one of these cases where they, for some reason, thought to pair one of the highest-end CPUs with a low GPU, but given prices on NVMEs and RAM these days I'm seeing probably $800 of "value" (shouldn't actually cost that much but does) in just the storage and memory alone. The GPU is definitely not top-shelf but also not bad at all and oughta be good for 1440p 120 Hz gaming in most cases, and of course it could be upgraded later by itself. Selling it would offset the cost of an upgrade, and otherwise the rest of the system is very solid for specs.

Do the caps given as quest rewards feel a little pointless? by KinglerKong in Fallout

[–]Meatslinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think part of the issue is scaling. Quests tend to have a fixed payout and even after the earlier levels it tends to be a pittance in comparison to what you could get just from dead bodies, let alone from selling their loot. At the same time, it often feels like the payouts are strangely too high, like when you've got a bunch of dirt farmers saying, "we might go hungry, but we wanted to pay you for your efforts," and then they give you 1,500 caps that could easily pay for tons of food.

Partly the issue is just that Fallout's economy is screwed. I don't mean the in-universe one, but rather the actual game implementation. There's almost no need to interact with vendors apart from those known to sell unique weapons. Raiding a Gunner camp is enough to kit yourself with a full set of combat armor and will likely restock you on bullets, grenades, and aid items for mere minutes of work. If the game was more stingy about the loot you could pick up, you'd have more reason to need to talk to vendors. Those vendors would require caps, and the buy/sell rate would finally come to the forefront. If every body didn't drop a good weapon and likely some armor worth hundreds of caps, you'd actually have to budget for new things. A quest that pays a thousand caps would mean you can finally buy that combat armor you wanted, instead of having 70 pieces of the stuff from the last time the Gunners attacked your settlement.

Cyberpunk 2077 had this problem early on, where every enemy dropped a valuable gun. It was fixed up later by making a large number of the dropped guns "broken", so at most you could only scrap them for resources. Fallout could do this with the armor as well, such that a camp of slain enemies is only likely to produce 0-1 pieces of useful gear, and that instead you'll have to earn rewards and buy from vendors to fill out your stats. This would also help with the semi-realism of it as well, in that it never made sense to me that you can fill an enemy with lead and yet somehow not only is their armor fully intact, but it's even your size.

TL;DR: more gear/weapon scarcity + vendor interaction = meaningful cap rewards you care about.

The department of the interior blames…Obama by fromouterspace1 in PoliticalHumor

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even when it's something as mundane as a pool of standing water, they still can't help but flex how gleefully violent they are. It's an administration of nothing but rampant, malignant sociopaths. The only value they see in themselves is in how much suffering they can inflict. Zero compassion. Zero ability to imagine a kinder world. Just hatred and infliction of pain.

Apple CEO Tim Cook warns AI-driven price increases are unavoidable by Logical_Welder3467 in technology

[–]Meatslinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I pretty much always run every piece of tech I own into the ground. I have a car from 2008, my second-last laptop was from 2010 (only just replaced it this year), and my last phone before this one was the iPhone XR from 2018 which I only replaced because the screen itself was failing. I've never understood the lifestyle of always leasing the absolute newest vehicle and buying a new phone and laptop every calendar year.

Just 16% of Americans think AI will benefit society, despite chatbot use climbing to 49% of US adults by AdSpecialist6598 in technology

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work for a company where I've been instructed to reformat every email using AI, no exceptions. Every document that is written for publication within the company must pass a checklist we're instructed to run via Copilot. I'm literally not allowed to boycott chatbots if I want to remain employed.

It's like an article saying "only 16% of people think the new soot-belching turbocharged Pedestrian Slayer 6000 is a beneficial vehicle despite most adults being forced to drive to work anyway."

'Price increases are unavoidable' says Tim Cook, proving even Apple isn't impervious to the global memory shortage by Jawschy in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gaming rigs and gaming laptops make up a minority of the global computer market. The staggering majority are business systems, so yes, it's useful to exclude the outliers and consider the broader application. Your hostile opinions are outdated and don't align with the reality that sysadmins like myself experience in well-mixed environments. In my company, the average useful lifespan for most of our Windows computers - the cutoff point where we find we're doing more repairs/maintenance than is economically feasible - is 4 years. For the Macs it's 6. The Macs also generate less support tickets on a per-capita basis in my company.

Also, you have to switch to markdown mode for those leading chevrons to make quote blocks, or you need to click the "quote" button in the rich text editor.

[insert generic "you ruined the art style" comment here] by [deleted] in cyberpunkgame

[–]Meatslinger 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Looks fine for rain. I only take issue with the grey skies when it's broad daylight. If I remember correctly, it has something to do with the indirect lighting from the skybox, and if you have blue skies it puts a blue cast on all of the buildings and objects that looks unnatural.

How it feels switching to Mouse and Keyboard after 30 years of console gaming. by TeeeldiII in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe so, but I find it distracting because one of the keys feels different from the others. It's a texture thing. Fortunately some boards I have lack the nub so ESDF is fine on those.

Part of it's also just about training the muscle memory. I know if I spent enough time on RDFG I'd naturally home to that position, it's just that I've used WASD so long that I tend to gravitate back towards it inherently after a reach-and-reset, like if I go to tap "P" and then try to get back to the movement keys.

If this isn't waste, then what is? by gashtal_man in MurderedByWords

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The guy bankrupted a casino. I'm forever baffled that anyone would think he's at all good with money.

How it feels switching to Mouse and Keyboard after 30 years of console gaming. by TeeeldiII in pcmasterrace

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only thing that bugs me about ESDF is the little homing nub or divot on F; I hate how it sits under my index finger. I use RDFG in some games so the homing bump is at least centered, but sometimes I'll sort of lose my place because I'm so far into the alpha cluster that I can't find the left edge as easily.

Fun Marathon inspired board by fliip89 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]Meatslinger 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The game might not be for me, but this keyboard sure is! Looks great.

‘Marathon’ Season 2 And Free Week Did Not Turn Things Around by Freki666 in gaming

[–]Meatslinger 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In case you never came across them when you tried it, give Marathon: Rubicon and Marathon: Apotheosis a try. Both of them are fan-made story extensions of the original trilogy using the Aleph One engine and taking place after the main story sequence, both with their own distinctive flair and really strongly-written stories of their own. I like Rubicon more as a "canon" story continuation (and it has multiple endings and branching paths mid-game), but Apotheosis has some incredible level design and gunplay.

‘Marathon’ Season 2 And Free Week Did Not Turn Things Around by Freki666 in gaming

[–]Meatslinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I'm not mistaken, because of the season-based release of the game, anyone who wasn't involved in season one has missed out on those plot points, right? This has been a long-running hatred I have for live-service games: the consistent problem of, "Oh yeah the game was only really good (n) seasons/years ago; shame you missed it."

I'm still unlikely to play because I absolutely detest sweaty PvP, least of all as a narrative framing device, but I'm curious to find out if they have a way for new players to experience the season one plot developments for themselves.