What’s Taters, precious?

Aurorus, the evolved form of Amaura. First appeared in X/Y Kalos region if I recall correctly.

Jeez Louise. I don’t play this game, but I’d be extremely angry if I paid for this, uninstalled the game to free up space, and then wanted to replay it for nostalgia purposes and couldn’t download all the content I paid for.

I’ve never seen this before, where you pay for DLC content and you can’t download it again. I’ve seen games get delisted on Steam but I can always access them again as they are tied to my account.

My first fear about the gaming Digital Rights Management model was when Ubisoft announced they’d be shutting down legacy activation servers a few years ago, and the DLC I purchased for my physical copy of Splinter Cell Blacklist Wii U would no longer be accessible. They backpedaled thankfully, but it’s an eye opener. I always thought buying physical would protect me, but it looks like this isn’t the case with companies like Ubisoft and whoever makes Monster Hunter.

I’m heavily evaluating if it’s even worth buying DLC for any game going forward, knowing that corporations can take it away from me. Perhaps we change the language from “Buy this game” to “Pay for a temporary License to access this game that you will never own”.

You know that’s a really cool idea. I wonder if OP can try this out as a test and see how effective it is. My concern is nailing the fitmet properly while reducing the ability for the “mouse glides” to get snagged on the desk while sliding it around. Seems like a tall order - you can’t exactly cut it into strips as you’ll need to sew the edges or introduce something that would keep it level and prevent snagging. But that would increase friction.

Wonder if cutting a mousepad into the profile of the mouse and adhering it to the bottom would achieve the effect. If it’s a traditional optical or laser mouse is used, would it register motion if the taped surface never moves?

I kind of want to test this out myself lol. But I have a Corsair big mouse mat with RGB that I really like, so I’m not looking to have this as a permanent solution for me - just something I want to play with because I’m very curious.

So naturally a mouse pad, as you may be aware, are useful to minimize friction and improve accuracy depending on the type of mouse you use. If you remove the mouse pad entirely, make sure you have a non-reflective and even surfaced desk.

What you are looking for, for lack of a better way to put it, is “mouse feet”. My first link that came up appears to have replacement ones for popular mice: https://feetglide.com/product-category/glides/

I found this web site that sells them, but this should help point you in the correct direction. I suspect you can find similar ones at other online retailers.

Earthbound - never played this so I’m looking forward to it for my next retro play through after recently finishing a replay of both A Link to the Past and Golden Sun 1 & 2.

Afterward, it’s the Soul Blazer trilogy. I’ve only played Illusion of Gaia, and perhaps an hour of Terranigma. I loved Gaia, and remember really liking the bit I’ve played of Terranigma.

Hey, sorry I’m not sure why. The YouTube video link comes directly from YouTube.

Here’s the full YouTube URL to the video rather than the shareable one I had in the post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM

Invidious:

I shared an Invidious video link through the most stable Invidious instance I’m aware of. Perhaps you can try checking other Invidious instances: https://docs.invidious.io/instances/. There does not appear to be a local instance hosted in Canada.

Piped:

The alternative Piped does not appear to have this video yet as the video was just posted to YouTube today Nov 20th.

Here’s the Piped link to the “Last Week Tonight” channel. Perhaps it’ll show up several hours from now when it indexes YouTube (not sure how quickly Piped sees newly posted videos): https://piped.video/channel/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ

Which one has been your favorite experience so far?

I watched the video and I’m really impressed. Port key Games did a fantastic job getting this game to run natively on very old hardware. I’ve been nervously waiting for this release and expected bad things, or even worse, a cloud version.

The game definitely is serviceable and I’d argue it’s “great” for Switch players who haven’t played it nor have an alternative high-performing platform to play it on. Considering this game gets a pretty consistent 30 FPS with good textures is enough for me to recommend it to my Nintendo-only sibling. The only small disappointments are the necessary load time, the obvious workarounds that had to be made to reduce the world from being “open world”, and the shudder-inducing animation frame drops of some faraway background characters that make me remember my time with Pokémon Scarlet/Violet.

I had a great time playing it on release day on PC, so I won’t pick it up on Switch. I may in the future grab it for a big discount just so I can have a physical copy for my game shelf.

In my recent build I went with the Corsair 5000D Airflow. Love this case. Plenty of room and has a decent footprint. Easy organization, practical I/O on top of the case, and premium build quality. Only thing I wish I could change was if it could accommodate three 140 mm fans for intake, so I had to settle for three 120 mm instead.

The goal of this case was having it for many years to accommodate any video card. I’ve been very happy with it. You might be able to use a 4000D to fit that card (I haven’t looked at specs to verify it), and it has a smaller footprint than the 5000D.

Edit: In case you’re looking for sales, I think I was able to get my case somewhere between $100-$120. It’s a bit pricey, but if you’re using it for 10 years it’s well worth the cost. The function is excellent and the design will age very well.

Check your local library. I used to visit my local library a lot before the pandemic when I lived closer to one. I borrowed audiobooks all the time and ripped them to my PC.

Fair point. There is temporary obfuscation, and certainly not end to end encryption when torrenting.

The creator of BitTorrent himself has this to say:

“The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.” Source: https://torrentfreak.com/interview-with-bram-cohen-the-inventor-of-bittorrent/

In my opinion using a trusted VPN not just for torrenting, but also for sourcing pirated software or other content is just a best practice.

While people sometimes suggest ignoring it because they say that your ISP is only sending you those notices because the laws compel them to and you downloaded something that was tracked, you may want to evaluate your risk.

Nothing has happened so far. Could something happen in the future?

Your ISP has built an entire portfolio of the things you’ve done online and which content you pirated. Who know how long your ISP retains that data, or which companies or regulatory bodies it shares this data with?

Laws may change.

Up to you on what you want to do with this information.

I set my VPN to Russia. Russian viruses are known to not infect their homeland, by design. They promised they wouldn’t, so you know it’s good. I then run the program, and sometimes my CPU starts heating up and slowing down my computer a bit. It happens anytime I turn on my computer now that I think about it. Computer is always running slow. I guess that’s the CPU checking if the viruses are Russian and then rejecting their requests. I can verify this because when I open Task Manager, I don’t see anything showing high CPU usage. It’s probably my imagination since the thing is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and stopping the viruses.

Only downside is I occasionally get a random command prompt pop up that disappears immediately before I can read it. Plus, my identity has been stolen several times and I’ve had to get ahold of Macrosoft Support (they built Windows so I trust them) and buy their premium $500 virus total scam defender package that I pay for monthly, but I don’t think those are related.

Great news for those who love DRM-free games!

Here’s the current catalogue of Sony’s ports to GOG - https://www.gog.com/en/games?publishers=playstation-pc-llc

Meanwhile, patient gamers waiting for Sony’s next GOG port:

Sales of God of War on GOG might influence Ragnarok to come. It’d be great if Ragnarok gets ported to both Steam and GOG on release. I think Sony is very supportive, as I vaguely recall their only IP that didn’t do so well on PC was Sackboy, and it was because it didn’t hit their expected targets.

Looks like Uncharted is also coming, too. https://www.gog.com/en/game/uncharted_legacy_of_thieves_collection I played the Tomb Raider reboots and loved them, so perhaps I’ll like Uncharted, too.

Darn, that’s what kept me from playing this game was the hope that it would go free to play by end of 2023 according to Gameloft’s early promise. I enjoyed it on Game Pass for a trial period.

If they keep free expansion content flowing, it may be worth dropping $30 USD for the base game to play it. However this is an online only game and I suspect it’ll get shuttered over the next few years if they can’t keep good content flowing.

Such a shame. My interest in this game has almost plummeted to zero now. I’ll keep an eye on it and see how it does while watching their roadmap, and perhaps in two years I might pick it up for a 70% off sale.