Honestly maximizing my phones current daily battery life, so that I don’t need to charge it as often.

My previous phone (Xiaomi Redmi Note 4x lasted me 4 years 2018-2022, and the reason I moved off of it, was because it’s GPS was wonky and I couldn’t use it as satnav, and the Micro USB port was dodgy since I got it and I grew tired of using it. It’s battery life is still great and when I do use it as a temp phone, it still is great.

What I did with that phone, was root it, installed Lineage/Arrow OS without Google Play, then installed the bare minimum that is required to get Google Play to work. When I originally did this with my Note 4x the battery life went from barely 1-1.5 days to an easy 2 days depending on my usage. I think it’s now at a solid 1.5 days, but it’s been sitting in a drawer at 1/2 charge so… meh.

My other trick, is to reduce screen on time. Learned that lesson with an old Blu phone I had. After looking at my battery drain, it’s obvious that the less I am on it, responding to messages and looking at emails, the longer it lasts. My solution there was a Pebble Time, so I can look at and respond to arrant notifications and emails. Sadly the Pebble isn’t as good as it use to be, since responding to texts is bad, and Rebble isn’t as active as it needs to be for me to keep using my Pebble.

My new smart watch is a Garmin Forerunner/Fenix. I had a 235 but it was missing basic watch features, my SO has a 245 which works great for their needs, and I splurged and got a Fenix 6 during a massive discount sale, the watch was over half off. Barely use it for its intended purpose, but for a notification machine that lets me see my emails and messages, all while lasting 2+ weeks, it’s nice.

Current phone (Poco X3 Pro) lasts easily 3 days without a charge, and light lemmy doom scrolling or about 8-10 hours of constant screen on time.

You have a few options.

If you want to save money, a Kobo or Kindle is a good starting point. Obviously tracking and logging pre-installed so keep that in mind. But there are ways around the DRM locks, and Kobo can be moodified to run KOReader.

If you don’t want the slow and laggy e-reader experience, any Android tablet will do so long as its not those “cheap” ones you find at Walmart. With the exception of the Fire Tablets (they are subsidies), you’ll probably want to spend about $150+ on it. A used tablet with Android 8 or newer should work too. KOReader again is available and is the most compatible e-reader app, with Moon Reader as my fallback.

But if Money is no Object, you might as well get an iPad, the pre-installed Book app from Apple is amazing, easy to use, and if you disable iCloud for it (unless that’s what you want) versatile. The best bit is, you can even use an iPad Air 1 and it works well. Sure transferring books is a pain, but it can be done with iTunes.

However if you want eInk, then you only option is an Android e-reader. Onyx Boox, Pocket Book, Bouye, etc. The problem with these devices is that they are not cheap, and they will get dropped before an update becomes available. I have experience with Boyue and Onyx Boox. My two Likebooks, are stuck on androids 4.4 and 5, and never had an update since I got them. While my Onyx Boox has surprised me and had an update this week for the baked in apps though the OS version is still 10.

In my view I think you need to get a good but cheap device, old iPad, kindle, etc. Use it and break it. Find what you do and don’t like about it, then spend good money for the box that fixes it. I started with my Android tablet and hated the battery life, my Kobo sucked because it has no color. I got a Nova 3 Color and I’ve been quite happy, but I do miss the MicroSD card.

Thanks I forgot I even had a dropbox account. And everything is deleted files and account.

Better question, what was I playing? Since I completed Metroid Fusion in exactly 2 hours according to the in game timer. And since I set up a DS emulator on my Laptop I’ve been playing New Super Mario Bros for the first time in years, as well as replaying Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team.

Technically you can voice chat with friends over discord the Nintendo Switch online app.

But yeah I use anything that isn’t their service for voice chat.

peer pressure. I fell for it in my TF2 days in high school. A buck there a few bucks there, all for a hat with particle effects that I never got. All because one of my friends I was playing with had one, and I wanted one too.

I learned a valuable lesson, but I was also 15/16 and had the ability of self reflection (and wanting to get Skyrim for $5 instead of a key). Can’t expect this level of self control from most teenagers, let alone a 10 year old.

What might be a good idea is to try Game Pass for a few months and see what they settle on. Then for Birthdays or Christmas, get them the games they played the most. Not sure how parental controls are like on it, but I hope they exists.

That being said, outside of Nintendo, there aren’t many Online games which don’t demand their users to pay for cosmetics with fake in game currency. See CTR Nitro Fuelled, Fortnight, Call of Duty, Overwatch and Minecraft skins.

With that said if changing your system isn’t an option, Minecraft Bedrock Edition the only game I am familiar with. There is a skin store, but you can’t earn in game currency from just playing (from my knowledge). So if they don’t have access to the credit card, they won’t be tempted, plus the base game has enough options that you can customize your character well enough.

If you can get a switch (and friends have one already), Splatoon 2/3, Mario Kart 8, and Animal Crossing are all friendly non-microtransaction laden games.

Drivers. I’ve yet to run across any major issues except for Intel Compute not working with Davinci Resolve but that’s well documented.

Now for gaming on Linux. There are 2 ways to game on Linux.

1. Native ports. Most valve games and some third parties (mostly indie) are natively compatible. I’ve had no issues playing these ports and they run like any other application.

2. Windows Compatibility Layer. Now asking for 20+ year old games to be ported to Linux is a bit of an ask. Let alone asking devs to add Linux support to their games when Linux had such a small install base.

So what some very smart devs did, was make 2 pieces of software that makes playing native Windows games on Linux possible.

WINE, or WIne Is Not an Emulator, is a compatibility layer to run native Windows Software in Linux. With a primary focus on Windows System Calls. Gaming in wine isn’t graphically the best.

Then there is DXVK, or Direct X to Vulkan compatibility layer, which translates DX9-DX11 code to the open source Vulkan that runs in Linux. Intel’s Arc graphics uses this for their legacy compatibility.

Now you don’t need to worry about installing any of this since Valve packages these apps, and some choice software like .Net Runtime in a package called Proton. This is a checkbox in Steam and when Steam Play is enabled, the Windows versions of games will be installed and will work.

Compatibility is very good at this point but there are edge cases that still need to be ironed out. Like anti cheat, DRM, and more.

Lutris is another prices of software that can be used like Steam Play but for non steam games. Its also good, but can be fiddly.

Install process is no more involved than actual Windows, but when a Ubisoft game crashes it won’t take your entire machine down with it.

From my experience, download many distros from Linux Mint to Zorin, maybe Fedora and OpenSuse if you want something non Ubuntu bases, or Manjaro and Endeavor OS if you are up for a challenge.

Then install them in a Virtual Machine like Virtual Box. This way you can test which OS you like, and see if the software you want works.

In my experience the Desktop Environment makes the biggest impact on your user experience.

Followed by the package manager (app store)

Then available software (steam lutris libre office)

Finally the terminal for when things go south (or you installed arch)

I don’t see an issue with what the dev did here. It’s not easy to make a unique IP, and making a HD port like this is fine. You just need to be smart about it, like the various reverse engineering projects around.

So long as you aren’t distributing someone else’s copy protected assets, music, art, logos, you are fine.

Sadly the game being de-listed was inevitable. The same goes with this eventually.

The proper way of doing this would’ve been to have the code for the game, but use the ROM to get you the art assets. I am certain there are tools available to do this either before the game runs, i.e. have the user extract the data. Or have it at run time, like loading the ROM in an emulator.

It wouldn’t have been easy to do, but it would prevent Nintendo from going after them, since they are not using Nintendo’s assets.

Oh I know this answer! Not using Windows, right?

A weird one if your SO is a fan of anime. Persona 5.

My SO loved playing with me since they had all the guides and stuff ready to min max the game while I did the heavy lifting. It’s a different type of 2 player game, like a Driver and Navigator while driving.

Good video, though I feel that it just ended abruptly, almost as if they had more to say.

Reddit did stop the protest and after a month, Reddit was back to business as usual. With that said, due to the protest I got exposed to Lemmy, Mastadon and the Fediverse. And if you are a company, the last thing you want to do, is expose your customers to competition.

From a personal note, outside of a few niche communities I am subbed to on Reddit, like /r/vita. I’ve noticed a decline in quality in the posts, and outside of these small communities discussions are far and few between as well. Lemmy I’ve found is a lot more active, and I am interacting with it more.

OK hear me out, I’m going to install boxes on my arch install since I use arch btw, and install Windows 11 in a VM.

I’m then going to sign in with my Microsoft™️ account and give them all my data. Then after my free trail of McAfee™️ and Norton are install, and I play the free games that are included like Candy Crush Saga™️. My VM will evolve from just a VM to a M. I do this until the FBI van arrives as Microsoft sell my data to to Government, or until my beast of a machine slows to a crawl as Microsoft™️ takes more data trying to find a buyer.

Then I will install Oracle™️ VirtualBox™️, and try out new OS’s like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. And when I settle on POP_OS I will free my M (since its prolonged suffering has evolved it from a VM), and install Linux.

Then I will find something wrong with the install, probably complain about SNAPs being an option, or that not all of the software is FOSS. Remove POP_OS and install arch.

TLDR I use arch BTW in both my ssd and my fake HDD on my ssd

The SEGA at the end caught me off guard.

I was playing super star wars. But the lava kept killing me

By my definition, the Vita is Retro. In which case that since it can emulate everything I want to play and more.

If I have to go pre 2010 probably a DS or PSP due to the vast library of games I like

Pre 2000… PlayStation 1 or Super Nintendo leaning heavily on PlayStation

Having the parental controls to limit someone’s play session is a newer concept. Most older systems like PS2, PSP, and PS3 just have age restrictions on the games, where a parent needs to unlock the system to play. (At which point you could just start a timer)

You might be able to leverage that.

Otherwise the oldest system I am aware of that has this feature is PlayStation Vita according to its manual.

Agreed.