If it’s the control you find clunky, Kodi does support LIRC, and USB infrared receivers are like $20. You should be able to convince it to listen to your TV or universal remote for menu navigation, volume, etc, which will make it feel a lot like a normal/smart TV. I use the Kore app on my phone.

But UI is the Achilles heel of most open source software.

There’s mythtv, but it’s significantly more complicated than kodi and doesn’t have the streaming plugins. IME, mythtv makes a nice backend for Kodi, especially if you want to capture live TV OTA/cable. For just watching stuff, Kodi is great. It doesn’t really honor any file hierarchy you might set up under its “Movies” or “Music” tabs, but you’ll find that structure preserved in “Browser.”

I’ve found OSMC, which is just a dedicated OS wrapper around Kodi, a little wonky, but that could be just me. I’m used to ssh-ing in to systems to maintain them, and it took me a long time to understand OSMC’s connman network manager. I think it’s probably fine if you intend to interact only though Kodi’s on-screen controls, but osmc feels like a ‘weird’ linux. Doesn’t even log to /var/log/syslog

In the 4(?) days since I got my first anti-adblock popover, I’ve completely stopped watching random videos. My few favorite channels I’ve watched in incognito without harrassment, and the only thing I’ve noticed is having more time for other things.

If those content providers were on some other platform, I’d go there, but that’s honestly asking a lot of them for a small slice of their subscribers.

Who are these kids under 20 with $14,000 to give out to scammers? Retirees with a spare $35k, I believe, but I’d really like to see the distribution for both. I’m guessing the means and medians are very different.

No sweat, friend. I was just using the opportunity to extend the “It’s all Reagan’s fault” train. And Donald Regan was a real guy appointed by Ronald Reagan. They didn’t have the diversity of names we do now, so a lot of them repeated, rhymed, or required a middle initial to differentiate. Like all the George Bushes - GWB, GPB, GHWB…

Yeah. https://www.educationnext.org/remembering-nation-risk-reflections-politics-policy/

Abolish the Department of Education. School choice vouchers. Standardized testing. All these memes started with Reagan. Not Regan, his Secretary of Treasury, but a lot of people confused Ronald Reagan and Donald Regan, even at the time.

Onion & carrots, anywhere from 1:2 to 1:1 by weight, boil in just enough water to cover, grate in some fresh ginger, salt, puree. Add more water if it’s too thick. Throw in some chicken bouillon if you like.

It sounds like his teacher thinks games should be evaluated for their development of tension and consistent messaging. It sounds like they would penalize a game for having a story with twists and surprises, because those either break messaging consistency or deflate tension. And, of course, quicksaves are evil.

I can kind of see where they’re coming from, but it feels like a very academic, navel-gazing place, akin to pretentious art critics talking about color, composition, and allusion to past masters, or a film critic talking about Dutch angles and long takes. Things that may contribute to the artistic quality and even the enjoyment of a piece, but are not components that us rubes actively look for. The fact they try to lump BG3, soccer, and chess all together under one system of evaluation tells me that they’re going to use some really bizarre criteria.

No doubt. Enjoy your video games the way you want to enjoy them. I picked up RDR2 again recently, got to the point where you’re supposed to break Micah out of prison, and I’m just like, fuck that guy. I’m going hunting and playing dress-up.

I thought Apple was on to something with their cylindrical form factor. It’s inconvenient from a mobo perspective, but a central core motherboard, with CPU, GPU, even memory and M2 sticking out like fins. Get the mobo down to segments like 25mm x 250, and stack the whole thing over a massive -like 250-350 mm- low rpm fan would be great for heat management and noise. Heck, put it in a venturi tunnel driven by a 500mm fan.

Not to mention the subjectivity of what “7” means. I’ve tallied enough judges ratings to know that some people treat 5 as average, some people treat 8 as OK, and some treat anything below 7 as failing.

Got a cabinet in similar state: got the doors cut, fitted and filled, just need the hinges. But the doors will stay if you lean them and maybe a little wedge. They’ve been like that since July. 2002.

There’s definitely an arms race - if it’s cheaper to pay an SEO to get your pages shown, then you pay the SEO; if it’s cheaper to pay Google advertising, then you pay to play. I’m sure Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to filter SEO techniques to get better, authentic results, but it seems like a losing battle at this point.

human nature remembers negative experiences much better than positive, so it only takes like 5% assholes before it feels like everyone is toxic.

I would not be surprised if this is an experiment to see the effect of killing API on the event. I mean, really, not many accounts have left reddit (a lot have showed up on lemmy/kbin, but a small fraction of reddit), and I remember a lot of complaints of bots in the last place. It’s just 3 months since the last one, so they should get great data on the effect of API charges on their bot access.

BBQ

babyque?

Also love this post, but I can’t help noting the irony of a thread begging people to ‘sell’ a product on a platform that famously opposes advertising. In fact, thinking about it, there are a lot of “what are you playing now,” “what should I play next,” “what’s your favorite…” threads on most of the gaming c/'s I’ve seen. Like, in the absence of advertising, people are just begging to be told what’s new, exciting, and available, as though it’s more meaningful coming from a pseudonymous internet stranger than a declared corporate minion. Real opinions or astroturf? Who’s to say.

“Awesome story” is always going to imply “for its medium.” You’d never compare the story in “The Strawberry Roan” to “The Telltale Heart,” or Telltale to “David Copperfield.” There’s a story painted on the Sistine Chapel, but it’s character development is abominable compared with “Pride and Prejudice.”

You can’t tell a story in a game without the player’s participation. If the game has a plot, the writers have to force the player into actions that advance the plot. If the game has character development, the character may have to make choices the player wouldn’t. OP’s right that games do have more tendency to rely on ex machina solutions, or have narrative/character inconsistencies. I mean, how many times will you gleefully murder legions of minions, only to have an agonizing dialog over whether to spare their super-villain overlord? But people like the mechanic of going full murder hobo, and you’ve got to balance fun mechanics with philosophical interludes. Or vice versa.

The alternative is a completely freeform simulation, where every NPC has some scripted responses to every possible player action. That’s two complete stories based on whether the player chooses not/to murder his boss’s boss, another where he agrees to, but then betrays his boss instead… And what if he overthrows the assassin lord after/before he meets the mages’ guild? That kind of ‘choices matter’ game has been a dream as long as RPGs have been around, and you just can’t do it. It’s what sets tabletop RPGs apart from computers.

It’s almost like luck and nepotism are more important for success than ability.

Standard rice cooker uses magnetism to turn off. The steel bowl loses its magnetic attraction when it gets hot - like 400 oC - and it can’t get that hot when there’s water. Basically, they go full blast until the water boils off, then shut down. As long as the cooker is pretty full, the residual water/steam in the rest of the rice will bring the whole bowl back to 100 oC pretty fast and rehydrate any of the bottom layer that got crispy. If you run a conventional rice cooker under-loaded, you’re more likely to get stuck/burned bottom.

I have a cheap, 4 cup rice cooker, but I usually make just 1 cup at a time. Unplug it after 7-12 minutes and it won’t burn. I’re pretty forgiving. I’ve used rice cookers from the little 4-cup to big 5-pound commercial cookers. Rice, water to the fingernail/1st joint, go. It’s amazing. If you cook rice regularly, just get one.