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vorpalhex

I used Epic Launcher for a while, and very seriously used their store. Their free games did bring me over initially but I was happy to spend money..

Except that the experience just sucked. It was mediocre. My biggest gripe is that launching games was really slow, the store was kind of painful in lots of little ways and it was sort of annoying to deal with them in general.

Maybe they fixed those issues but it was too late to retain me. I literally repurchased the games I was still playing on steam which didn't have those issues.

At some point, in the early days, Steam was a bit rough. I remember a summer where occasionally steam would stop launching and you had to reinstall it (back when it was a blocky dark green app). But Steam got over those teething pains and has been really high quality since.

Itch.io is great, I don't use their launcher (just haven't tried it) but I use them and enjoy them. Their checkout experience is fairly sane. It's not as if I refuse to use other platforms.

But Epic just lowkey was not a great platform.

Re:French digital tax may kill VideoLan non-profit on Friday October 30, 2026 @05:08PM (#50310159)
So once you've milked the 43 French billionaires to extend French spending by 2.5 years or so (this assumes you extract 100% of their wealth into actual liquidity), what's your plan for year 3?
Re:Northflank Breached on Friday October 30, 2026 @11:53AM (#50305721)
When you build something small, you can easily see all the doors and properly guard them.

As you build something bigger and bigger, quickly, with several people building, guarding all the doors becomes exceptionally difficult without a kind of aggressive discipline which is contrary to the "go fast" culture.

Cybersecurity in practice until now, for most companies, has been an insurance problem, not a quality problem.

Such companies are quickly discovering that insurance is a post-hoc partial correction and not a proper solution.

This situation will not improve anytime soon for most companies.

The solution does not require any new magical tools.

Honestly it can drain my crypto wallet or whatever as long MacOS stops doing an imitation of Windows Vista with a billion security pop ups.
Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:08PM (#50296870)
Parents who use digital pacifiers (ipads, etc) do it because they think it will make their life easier and their child happy.

They are wrong on both counts. You are stealing your kids opportunity to develop an internal world, an attention span and to self stimulate.

And your kid, who is probably fairly smart and good, will always be "difficult" in social situations. You will dread taking them out. A dead ipad will be your doom.

I promise: your kid is smart, great and can self entertain. It's never a problem in the kid, always the parents.

Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:02PM (#50296787)
There is no kid who benefits from an ipad instead of being allowed to self entertain.

Conversing with your kids is great. Coloring is great.

Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:56PM (#50296708)
What if your kid is a three legged midget in a horse costume? What if he's just a Claude operating a child sized robot body? What if your kid is Benjamin Button and has a crippling addiction to internet porn?

You probably shouldn't still be "entertaining your kid". Your kid can almost certainly still entertain themselves. You are not helping them by shoving an ipad in front of them.

I spent several years as a young kid with a peer who was severely disabled both physically and mentally. This kid was also very happy to entertain himself, especially with shoelaces. He loved untying and tying his shoes. He also deeply loved picture books.

Don't use people with disabilities as an excuse to be lazy.

Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @12:11PM (#50291369)
I'm going to give you the most important parenting advice you didn't ask for:

Stop entertaining your kid.

Your kid doesn't need to be entertained. They don't need the tv, a tablet, or a scheduled production put on by their parents.

Let them be entertain themselves. They are great at it.

They will be better behaved, they will be happier and more independent. You will enjoy spending time with your kids again.

Take them out. Let them wait in line. Let them sit at the table a bit. Do slow restaurants that aren't kid friendly.

Let them bring a few small non-electronic toys or a little book, or paper and crayons.

Re:Amazon's "Digital Pacifier" for Toddlers on Sunday October 25, 2026 @03:21PM (#50235131)
It's not as if the kids who get the digital pacifiers are well behaved.

Usually my kids are sitting quietly at the table and playing with their little cars or whatever while some kid is melting down that he ran out of roblox or his game isn't working.

I've literally seen kids that are 9 or 10 act this way in public! Like little babies!

Some context for those not exposed to this previously.

Messages usually mean nothing. An uptick in activity means.. nothing. We're on the tail end of a major exercise so upticks in chatter are probably related to that.

Anyone who posts anything along the lines of "but there were 5x more messages or a really big message so N is going to happen!" is a crazy person. Ignore them.

It's neat, but it's not prophetic.

Re:Plex laid off the whole player team on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @03:53PM (#50186656)
It's a shame Plex has failed to be functional. The moment a product has a bunch of UI refreshes but no core fixes is when you know the wrong work is being done.

I'd still be happy if Plex could turn things around, but until then Jellyfin seems to be king.

Re:Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS on Friday October 02, 2026 @09:16PM (#49940514)
Then tell them to stop trying to use a computer, give them an apple juice and let them go back to eating their favorite color of crayon.
Re:The Luxuries in Life on Saturday September 05, 2026 @05:09PM (#49580713)
Listening to music with my young kids is a favorite. My wife and I also frequently invite other couples over to listen to vinyl and enjoy a cocktail or two.

We like vinyl just because it has the physicality to it but I think anything here is fine. It's the music and the shared experience.

Executive (and upper management) hiring is much more about owning and using risk, getting the management unit (your part of the org) all aligned and singing the same tune, and for executives showing that you've done this successfully across distinct business units (eg sales and engineering).

There's then a much more serious alignment pass.

Relationships can and do pre-vouch for big pieces of this such as alignment - if you've worked with someone for a decade, you are probably mission aligned.

Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Monday August 31, 2026 @12:39PM (#49511756)
By that logic, PA had fighter jets.

And no, limiting food and medical is not a war crime if the source being limited is from the captor and matches the treatment of their own troops.

Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Friday August 28, 2026 @08:41PM (#49485810)
PA was armed.

> you are not allowed to murder unarmed soldiers,

That's also false, you can absolutely kill unarmed combatants so long as they remain combatants. Eg you can bomb an artillery crew even if they don't have sidearms.

To be eligible for capture, a combatant must generally surrender.

> typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens

I encourage you to read up on POW camps. There are no attorneys or rights. You may work POWs. There are cases in which food and medical aid can be severely limited depending on how it is sourced. You may hold POWs functionally forever.

Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Friday August 28, 2026 @08:33PM (#49485774)
Everything I mentioned was from the last year. My Lai was more than 50 years ago and the perpetrator was arrested, tried and convicted.
It isn't necessary that everyone play the game, it only takes one attorney group to create a sufficient hazard to these troll firms.

Yes it is absolutely a dumb game and an unfair process, but playing dumb games and using unfair tactics to inflict pain go both ways.

Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Friday August 28, 2026 @03:07PM (#49482976)
I notice people always respond with "but the US does this too!" and never actual incidents. No, I'm not going to just high five your vague head nod at wrong doing you can't even describe.

Seriously, sit down, make a list of incidents, including weighing the outcome of those incidents. If it's a case where an officer or a soldier did something wrong, list what happened after (court, punishment, cleared of wrongdoing, etc)

Then do the same for your favorite alternate country that you think is superior. If you want to pick team Iran or Russia, then lay it out for them. Make the same list.

One of the issues is that these aren't proper DMCA claims, instead Google/Youtube do a weird pseudo-DMCA thing where they just agree to take down your content and make you argue about it.

But the DMCA allows immediate countersuit for false notice with damages. If Google/Youtube actually just forwarded strict DMCA notices and no longer did takedowns once you counter-claimed, you could sue the trolls and collect damages. At that point it's just a free lunch for some bored lawyers willing to publish public domain works, covers, etc that are protected.

Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Friday August 28, 2026 @01:39PM (#49481951)
I suppose the UK could declare Palestine Action as combatants and hunt them down and shoot them.. but that doesn't seem very uh, appropriate. I sort of prefer them being arrested and going through courts.
Re:U.S. Sanctions Against the a/I Collective on Friday August 28, 2026 @01:37PM (#49481921)
It's not about whether a group is violent, it's about whether it intentionally guns down 50,000 protestors (Iran), intentionally hangs them (also Iran), otherwise executes them (Russia) or just generally engages in things like bombings against civilians or raping dead bodies (Hamas).

If you are on the side of the above and against the US... the US is going to seek you down and stop you.

I don't understand why that's surprising. It's like when the Weather Underground took an oath to destroy the US and was surprised when the FBI started following them around.. you declared yourself an enemy.

Thank you for sharing. I think the sqlite-esque local file approach makes sense for a lot of use cases.

What are some of the scales of the data you've been able to test this design on so far?

What was the most interesting part of designing it for you?

Do you keep a list you can share? I'd love if there was a semi-authoritative list.
Re:Bun 1.4 on Thursday August 20, 2026 @12:56PM (#49377184)
I use it heavily for personal use and find it works very well and lets me ship small applications quickly. I still use rust and other languages too as appropriate.
Re:Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury on Tuesday August 18, 2026 @03:22PM (#49351200)
Basically try to not wash your merino and if you do, handwash.

Otherwise just try to get merino blends which will hold up a bit better.

Re:Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury on Tuesday August 18, 2026 @09:48AM (#49345586)
Merino as a fabric is just a more delicate fabric.
Re:GPT-5.6 Sol Pricing Cut by 50% on Monday August 17, 2026 @07:52PM (#49339296)
Do other people find 5.6 to be worse at most simple tasks and frequently over complicate things?

I asked it to write a user todo and it turned out a four page essay. I gave the same task to 5.4 and got the small list of checkboxes I expected.

Not only is it very doable but the US consulate in your new country will literally help you fill out the paperwork.

1. Move to a new country

2. Present proof you have a new citizenship (you can't generally be "nationless" by international law or you end up remaining a citizen of whatever country you were last a citizen of)

3. Fill out the paperwork and pay $450. The consulate will assist you if you need help.

If you can follow the instructions to bake a cake, you can surrender your US citizenship. It's neither difficult nor expensive.

The renunciation fee is $450. That is less than a single year of taxes.

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