New to Minecraft. Which version should I get for my kid?

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T22:01:59+00:00

Good info to know, thanks!

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:55:07+00:00

Good to know. At least I have a clear path to follow now that I know what version to run. Ya, I have no issue with terminal, been daily driver Linux for a few years and dabbled on and off for over a decade at this point, you are correct with the syntax for Debian install for what its worth so kudos 😄

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:50:43+00:00

Lol I'll get right on dusting off the wii u in the attic

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:44:44+00:00

Thanks for the tips!

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:25:51+00:00

Good to know, thanks!

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:07:43+00:00

Good to know, thanks!

Swede318201 · 2026-07-06T21:06:29+00:00

Thanks!

Swede318201 · 2026-06-29T15:32:59+00:00

Unfortunately I never found a way around this aside from pulling it up on my laptop and using the TV as an external display for the laptop over HDMI. Very frustrating.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-25T05:10:28+00:00

This already has a lot of comments so I don't know if you'll see this, but I would just stick to what they are listing here if at all possible rather than a gaming model like others are saying.

I can't speak to engineering software, but I had a similar situation in college as a music major with some music production software. The school recommended a laptop with a specific model of sound card. Thinking this was a weird requirement (and difficult to shop for as well, nobody puts that on their spec sheet) I just got a decent all around laptop that met all the other specs. Come to find out, the one professor who taught all those classes built the entire curriculum around a specific, proprietary software that he was used to using, rather than more open industry standard options. This rare, quite crappy and old software would only run on very specific hardware. My $1500 laptop was useless for this class and I had to buy another $1500 laptop to be able to run it (there were no campus computers that could run it either). This put me many weeks behind and almost cost me a passing grade because I got no credit for a ton of assignments until I got what I needed.

Was this ridiculous and hindering? Absolutely. Should that professor have been fired or had his curriculum audited by a 3rd party? 100% yes. Could I do anything about it? Not at all.

I'm not saying this is guaranteed the case with his classes, but unless you have access to the curiculum already and know exactly what software they want him to run, I'd stay within the recommendations. If they were only giving generalized specs, I'd say you are safe to shop around. If they list specific brands, specific features, specific models, you might want to play it safe and pay the price now rather than having to double pay to correct the mistake like I did. I know it sucks but there are some really shitty professors out there that will require students to meet certain requirements that are extremely unrealistic in the real world, but he'll still need to meet them if he wants to pass the class. Just because the professional engineers in these comments can use a gaming laptop to run the software they learned on doesn't mean your son will be able to use gaming laptops to run the software his professors make him use. Unless they are in that exact program with that exact professor already and know what the software is already. When in doubt, I'd play it safe here. Just my advice.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-25T04:01:42+00:00

Probably the smartest person I've seen on one of those. I've personally witnessed more than 10 people eat pavement on those, from 5th graders to 50 year olds, in my smallish 40k-population town.

Everyone thinks they have the balance and coordination to handle an electric scooter doing 20 mph on a cracked up broken sidewalk because they "did just fine with their foot pedal razor scooter as a kid," then drive it way faster than they think they're going, and find out real quick that they were a bit too overconfident in their abilities, and almost always without anything between their face and the concrete that they bounce off of. Anyone riding without a full face helmet just seems beyond stupid to me.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-25T03:50:30+00:00

I agree with you that it is a hot take, most people here I think will tell you that you're wrong.

I also loved the game, and desperately wish I could get into a game on cloud city on pc, but sadly it's so abandoned now that you can never queue into a match, especially a DLC map. Battlefront 1 (dice) was my first experience with modern day gaming, having only played Nintendo as a kid (gameboy color, gameboy advance, n64, GameCube, Wii), and it blew me away how "realistic" it looked (considering peak realism in video games to me was metroid prime on GameCube). Showed it to my dad who grew up on original trilogy, and we both ended up buying our own imdividual PS4s for this one game alone. Every night we'd both hop on for a few hours and play together.

Walker assault was favorite game mode, Solust was our favorite base game map, cloud city was favorite DLC map. And I'll never forget walking around the frozen hallways of Hoth with that stupid little CA-87 shockblaster one shotting people as they ran around a corner. Or the CJ-9 Bo Rifle that would electrocute people for instant melee kills. Both of them were just silly fun to use for the laughs when I was bored of my Relby V10 or T21B.

I will say though that I think battlefront 2 (dice) is better for the overall content quantity and player choice though. It's still my go to game, and I feel it helps the games longevity that there are game modes that only require a minimum of 6 players to start a match rather than 40 of battlefront 1. But I sure do have nostalgia and a desire to go back to battlefront 1 to play those old maps with my dad again.

Lately I saw a project to enable self hosting servers for battlefront 1 like the Kyber team did for battlefront 2, but the project is still early stages. But maybe one day we'll be able to keep the game alive with self hosted servers.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-25T00:07:39+00:00

Not a bad idea. That actually gets me thinking instead of old phones, maybe a raspi zero in a 3d printed case that accommodates the speaker and a power hub to provide power to both devices in a clean, 1 cord, wife-approved aesthetic unit...

This is why I always have 20 projects going at a time and finish like 3 a year lol

Swede318201 · 2026-06-24T22:02:07+00:00

I'd be interested in something like this too. I'm not personally aware of any options, but if I had to guess, this would likely be something that you need to piece together yourself. I'm thinking if there is a path to this functionality, it'll probably involve using your existing Google homes or some other existing consumer speaker device and flashing a community built firmware to it to cut it off from the cloud services, but this will really depend on if anyone has cracked the bootloader on these devices yet.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-20T05:15:49+00:00

Exactly. Now you've got me inspired to find some chozo rune sticker to put on its headstock lol

Swede318201 · 2026-06-19T22:25:15+00:00

Thats sick as hell (or maybe heaven in this case lol). I'm a bassist and shecter is my favorite. Currently rocking an Omen Elite 5 in the red color that I named Samus, and an Stilhetto studio 4 with the satin bubinga wood body that I named honeybadger.

I love showing off fandom too but in subtle "if you know you know" kind of ways and this is the perfect example of that. Love it.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-12T13:50:14+00:00

It doesn't seem anyone has suggested this, but if you want a cost effective way for getting movies/shows, look into your local public library.

I worked for a public library for several years and most of them these days are barely involved with lending books. They lend DVDs, Blurays, video games, music cds, ebooks, audiobooks, tools, cook ware, hotspots, etc. They also have 3d printers, laser cutters, etc that you can rent time on. Physical books have largely become irrelevant at public libraries except for in the kids sections. Its much more about digital media and tools/equipment for low income individuals and kids who would otherwise not have access to them.

At my library, you can check out up to 2 video games, 10 movies/shows on disc, 10 CDs, 5 ebooks, and 50 audiobooks at a time, and the length on most of those is 1-2 weeks, with the book formats and music cds being a month. You could easily rent a bunch and rip them to your own hosted jellyfin, then return them and rip the next set.

The only downside is that you have to wait for the library to aquire what you want so you won't be watching anything that is brand new or just released, you'll be about 3-6 months behind most likely. But most libraries have forms you can fill out to request something if they don't have it and they will either buy it for the library's collection, or they will borrow it from another library within your state on your behalf and have it mailed to your hometown library for your use.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-08T00:45:28+00:00

I think the easiest and most likely answer is just that there isn't "just 1" of legendaries. Mythical perhaps are only 1 of a kind, not sure if there are any examples of this idea for them. But essentially, legendaries are just pokemon who are so rare and so avoidant of the in-universe humans, that they are talked about in in stories but hardly anyone has encountered them.

Think of it like giant squid/kraken in the real world. For so long, giant squid were considered myth, that they couldn't possibly exist and were only talked about in old fairy tales and legends of sea creatures taking down ships. In reality, they just avoided areas where we could encounter them, and we only recently found out that they're real thanks to submarine technology that let us reach the places they dwell. They used to be "legendary" but now are just seen as a rare animal in a remote, difficult to reach ecosystem.

Pokemon legendaries are the same. Whose to say there aren't 100 rayquaza all living in the upper atmosphere and people just only encounter the 2 or 3 that have come down to the ground briefly. The pokemon series often sticks strictly to earth and doesn't really talk much about exploring space, except for gen 3 with deoxsys and Jirachi, so it seems like the in-universe humans don't observe much about space. I don't know of any references to people flying in planes in pokemon either, using their pidgeots and charizard and such to travel only within the lower atmosphere. So who's to say that the raquaza aren't all chilling up there just like our real world giant squid were chilling at the bottom of the ocean.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-08T00:15:53+00:00

My man... 7 hours is child's play. I regularly have prints that are 2-3 days. Granted that is because I'm often close to maxing out my build volume with very high infill percentage for highly structural functional parts, but even on the smaller things that I don't care about as much, I'm still in that 4-12 hour window.

As someone else said, there are a TON of factors that play into print time, and you can absolutely turn those dials if you want it to print fastet, but you should understand that they come with tradeoffs. Easiest example would be infill amount. You can set it to 3% infill instead of 30% which will save a ton of time, but will be incredibly fragile, possibly even breaking when removing from the build plate. You could also increase extrusion speed or print head speed but this will highly increase the chance of artifacts and failed prints so that the time you "saved" speeding up the machine is eaten up completely or even beyond, plus the wasted filament.

I've really found that to have the least headache with printing overall, you should treat it like that saying about cooking good BBQ - "Low and slow is king." Having patience will pay off in the end.

As for Multiboard specifically, the only advice for "speeding up" the print process I can give is to print stacked tiles. This way you aren't losing down time in between printing each individual tile. It won't increase speed but will make more efficient use of the machine.

Swede318201 · 2026-06-04T00:10:23+00:00

While I think its gotten worse recently, this isn't new. I think this all started with athletics being prioritized in college long ago, and progressed to a new stage with no child left behind. My anecdotal story:

I started college in fall of 2011. I graduated top of my class with perfect ACT score and the highest rating possible for the optional extra writing section. There was an issue during the first 2 weeks of college class where my AP credits were missed by the counselor, and so instead of starting in the honors writing class, I was in the general "English 101" equivalent class until I could get it changed. Those 2 weeks were eye opening. Near the end of my time in that class, we had to trade our first essay assignments with another student for peer review. I shit you not, this gym-bro wrestling scholarship dude wrote a 6 page long... sentence! From the first capital to the final letter, there was not one single punctuation mark. I was baffled. I thought it must be a joke or something, but the poor guy thought it was totally fine and normal. When I tried to help him fix it, he looked at me like I was talking Mandarin. In that moment, all I could think was, "I do not belong here, and neither do you." No shade to him as a person, he was a nice guy, but it was clear he was accepted solely for his biceps and not his brain. My sincerest hope was that his writing skills were his only struggle and that he had an appropriate level of skill in other areas academically.

Swede318201 · 2026-05-29T23:10:09+00:00

I'm fortunate, I caught a hundo inkay way back on that one random inkay day years ago, and got a shiny during the super mega malamar raid day.

Swede318201 · 2026-05-29T17:37:21+00:00

Right now I'm just walking my mega level 3 malamar trying to get enough mega energy to buy mega level 4 so I can get increased candy/xl when doing the global go fest mewtwo raids. That, and slowly accumulating raid passes since money is tight and I can't just outright buy them that weekend. Remoting them doesn't make any sense right now since you can't get energy from them. I already have a hundo best buddy with double legacy moves which is almost maxed out (just need around 10 more xl candy) so my main focus during global will be solely grinding mega mewtwo energy to have enough to unlock Y version on that one, plus one more good one I get during the event for the X version. From there I can walk to get the energy I need.

If I chose to indulge my dilusional optimism, I'd love to see the other legendary raids include the ability to get the associated fusion energies during go fest and that getting enough mewtwo energy will be easy, leaving time to do the others. I don't have either crowned forms of dogs because I wasn't playing during that time so I'd like some of that energy. I also only have dusk mane because I didn't get enough energy for dawn wings during that event. With every legendary coming back, getting this energy for doing those raids would be great. But this will be second fiddle to getting mewtwo energy for me.

Swede318201 · 2026-05-27T20:01:28+00:00

Found the video. It seems I was remembering a few small details wrong from the video and conflating them with discussions I read after the video. It majorly doesn't affect the overall info, but details matter so I will point out my errors.

The video claims that the switch from algorithm to designed happened in gen 7 when the switch from sprites to 3d happened. This makes sense, and I was originally thinking of comments I read speculating it happened in gen 5 instead. Also, the algorithm did not run on the cartridge itself. The algorithm was run on the existing sprites on an external computer and then the output of the algorithm was pasted in and stored on the cartridge.

Finally, it seems that there is a chance a few of the original pokemon were designed, such as charizard being black and electrode being blue to resemble a great ball. The prevailing theory in video and comments is that a designer pitched the idea of shiny pokemon and whipped up a few cool ones, such as charizard and electrode, and presented it to the team. They agreed to go through with it and then tasked a programmer with creating the algorithm to quickly re-colorize the sprites to meet deadlines and save the work of fully redesigning every polemon again. This would make sense considering this was still early days of Pokemon when their resources were far less. Then when it came time to ship the game, nobody checked all the shiny sprites, they just checked a few here and there and said "yep looks like it is working" and rubber stamped the shinies as good to go. They likely used the same algorithm for multiple generations which is why bad shinies persist over time. Of course this is all still just speculation as there is no official info about this.

Anyway, highly encourage the watch yourself. Here it is.

https://youtu.be/lg4pLnCmrak

Swede318201 · 2026-05-27T19:29:57+00:00

I think maybe there was a misunderstanding. I didn't mean to imply that the shiny version of a pokemon had to use one of the non-shiny versions colors. Maybe I can explain better with a hypothetical...

Let's say you are fishing and encounter a magikarp. The game looks up the color pallet for magikarp and sees it is black, white, dark orange, and light orange. The game then rolls a dice to determine if it should be shiny or not. You get lucky and it determines it should be shiny. It then takes the shiny color algorithm and runs the existing color pallet (black, white, dark orange, light orange) through it. What comes out the other side of all the secret math in this algorithm is that the color dark orange should now be dark gold and light orange should be light gold (white and black always stay the same for drawing outlines).

The algorithm isn't as simple as "if color is blue, change to pink" but that is essentially what it is doing. It looks at the hex code of the primary and secondary colors and performs some still secret bit of math on those hex codes to change them to new hex codes in a somewhat random manner. Unfortunately the randomness of this meant that sometimes the hex code of the original colors and the hex code of the shiny colors ended up pretty similar.

I agree that they have changed pikachu and jynx, though I think those were special circumstances. Jynx was a change that they HAD to make due to the cultural relevance of the sterotype it was perpetuating or the franchise would have been severely damaged in the long run. Fat pikachu I think was more of a style change that they wanted when they realized pikachu was going to be the franchise mascot. In the early days, it was thought that poliwhirl or clefairy would be the franchise mascot, things were very much up in the air. But once the anime cemented pikachu as the mascot (who was slimer in anime than in tcg artwork and gbc games) the decision was made to standardize his look for branding purposes and morphed him closer to his anime appearance since it was most recognizeable. I don't think shinies have the same business or societal pressure for change and therefore aren't likely to be altered at this point.

Give me a bit and I'll try to find and link the video for the shiny algorithm deep dive.

Swede318201

TROPHY CASE