Strange Adventures in Infinite Space

Zork

Ultima

I love it when foodstuffs get put in scarequotes.

I have questions about how useful the basic information Dominos gets from me from their app will be to anyone. Android doesn’t let them just harvest roaming data any more.

I used to work at a Dominos, and their side items have been ludicrously priced for a good while. There’s usually a “coupon” in their app with a substantial discount on pizza, it’s the only way I’d order from them.

It is true: Destiny 2 is rated by ProtonDB as “borked”: https://www.protondb.com/app/1085660

But there are an awful lot of other games with high ratings there. The Steam Deck has done wonders for getting Windows games working under Linux.

Read in Clayton Endicott III’s voice to make it weirder.

It just seems like it’s a lot of papering over a fairly substantial problem. While the example I gave was Handbrake, which does seem like it should be a unique example, every other piece of software that I check Flatpak versions of also had ludicrously wasteful storage issues.

I’m aware of dependency hell, but it seems to me that most software doesn’t have that as a problem, not if the libraries are sensibly maintained? After all, the fact that upgrading a library can improve all the software that uses it seems like it’s usually a positive thing. And the ballooning storage requirements of Flatpak make it a tool that should be used occasionally, rather as a primary way to release software. Using a filesystem that can detect duplicates would help, but itself also seems like a special-case kind of solution, and not a great solution to turn to just to avoid what seems to me to be a significant issue.

Wizardry inspired a lot of games, but the three games listed have greater influences elsewhere. (FF and DQ in particular are more like Ultima.) Sadly the games that were most inspired by Wizardry, sometimes called “blobbers,” have mostly died out: The classic Bard’s Tale games, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Etrian Odyssey and the Japanese Wizardry games hold the torch but are pretty niche these days.

The demise of the original Wizardry series is one of the greatest injustices in the history of computer gaming, up there with the closing of the original Atari.

DOS Wizardry has a significant bug that makes it one of the worst versions.

But it appears like we’re in a situation where it’s not used for specific situations, but for lots of different things. Just a few Flatpak programs starts to chew through a significant amount of disk space, and some programs are only being distributed as Flatpaks.

My response to that is Flatpak. 16MB of software requiring 700MB to download and consuming 2.8GB of disk space. Linux absolutely can be bad, due to cultural issues.

(My example software above is Handbrake. I’m sure someone’s going to “well actually” me about this, and I don’t even care. I don’t see how it can be justified, and I’m kind of curious to see if someone can do it.)

CLOCK 2.0, coming soon, free with ads!

I think this may well be the thing that, at long last, eventually leads to the end of the Windows hegemony on PC. Linux compatibility being a prerequisite for running on the default configuration of the Steam Deck. Gaming is the Microsoft OS's last real stronghold.

Roguelike.

Showrunnners are never absolutely sure how many more seasons they’ll get. If a show is popular, they could end up having to continue it after a conclusion. Or the show could be popular but corporate priority could be elsewhere, and they’ll be forced to wrap up promising storylines quickly. Even for shows that announce they have plans for a beginning, middle and end, it’s possible that they’ll be cancelled before end planned ending, or else have to stretch after the ending has been reached. Safer is to try to just coast along, being non-committal about major plot elements, until something happens that pushes the show to resolve things.

Speak’s brethren!

Vet: “Capybara Tick! Speak’s not a dog. He’s a rodent!”

The Tick: “Ooh!”

Vet: “But he’s one of the world’s largest.”

Tick: “Oh, man! Way to go, Speak!”

Maybe? We’re fighting anecdotes with anecdotes here, there is no way I can examine your statement when it’s entirely a friend-of-a-friend memory. I take issue with your “wildly ignorant” statement (of course), and stand by my point. And it’s not learning about a discipline, it’s the opportunity to learn about it.

Now it’s my turn to tell you basically what a lot of people here have already said, but maybe you can get something extra out of this telling.

Everyone who was mega-successful, in old age or young, has had a huge advantage somewhere that people rarely talk about. There are no exceptions to this, only cases where those advantages are lost to time or secrecy. And nearly every time, family wealth is involved in some way. Usually directly, but even if they never got a penny, being in a wealthy family brings you so many casual advantages.

You’re comparing yourself to people who were dealt winning hands from the start. Like, a kid who gets a patent at a young age? Someone was coaching them, possibly someone with an agenda. Invents a new plastic? Uh-huh, at what age did they get into polymer chemistry? Who even told them polymer chemistry even existed? There’s something else going on there. Don’t let the media gaslight you into thinking you’re “behind.”

It’s okay to be you! It’s not a race, and even if it was, the people you’re comparing yourself to had a gigantic head start.