Interesting, although in your screen shots the Linux version looks better? Are the screenshots the wrong way round or maybe just not able to represent the other changes you mention in the game?

The lighting looks better in the first shot and the items like the bin look better. But the textures of the posters look less good.

It seems very odd the game would use different textures at the same resolution and settings. Maybe they made some compromises to get the Linux version working as you say?

Also HDR is notoriously messy on Linux - maybe the Proton version of the game is managing to use it better than the native route on your system? Or maybe they didn’t do a good HDR implementation on the Linux version as you say.

Would be interesting if people notice the same of the issue is the Proton version is better than the Linux native version.

This is a slightly dodgy comparison - a native linux version versus a windows version run through Proton?

Bearing in mind Valve make Proton they may have done zero optimisation or work to ensure the Windows version and Proton work together. It’s possible settings need tweaking in Proton to make the game run optimally, but given there is a Linux native version of the game it’s unlikely anyone is going to have spent time doing that.

So the windows version may not be running optimally at the moment in Proton and may not get there as people aren’t going to be motivated to optimise settings.

Yes of course he needs to be prosecuted.

I get that people hate insurance companies but at the end of the day this was a brutal and cold blooded murder.

As unhappy as we may be at the state of the world, the last thing anyone should want is for things to be determined by who has the gun and is willing to shoot.

Having said that though, maybe things are getting beyond the point of no return. Democracy in the US seems to be a joke, and the billionaire class have unfettered power. I worry we’re on trajectory towards violent revolution.

The ambivelence and even open celebration of a shocking violent murder is a warning sign of how bad things are right now. Across the democratic world countries are devided and in flux because the political class is not listening to voters and in hoc to the billionaires.

Trump in the US will be a mess. But France and Germany are also in political flux. What we are lacking globally at the moment is an outlet for this mess or a solution. People seem to be divided and unable to coalesce around a solution to the problems. I worry that means more chaos and ultimately violemce to come.

For Firefox, Session Restore came in version 2 back in 2006 - Wikipedia

I’m not sure when Internet Explorer added the feature, but they removed the automatic restore in version 8 and made it manual in 2009 - Wikipedia. I feel like Internet Explorer 6 had this feature, but I can’t remember now.

Not sure when/if older browsers like Netscape Navigator had this feature.

Yeah, for US money the serial number is prefixed with a letter to donate the year it’s from and the note also has a series year for the actual design printed on it.

Money has evolved a lot since the 1980s so modern money would be obvious. And banks in the 80s would probably be pretty hot on money fraud as hard case was so central to the economy.

A better option would be to collect money printed prior to the year you wanted to time travel to. It’s unlikely they would be able to detect duplicates of real money already in circulation elsewhere in that time. But it might be hard to fine money that old in large volumes as so much gets taken out of circulation and replaced with new money every year.

A steam engine back to Ancient Rome, just to see what they might have achieved with that kind of idea.

There is literally a kettle on the left lower side of the image (likely deliberately as it seems awkward having it in front of the air fryer like that)

If it doesn’t say the year it means Nov 10 this year. The page you linked shows last release was 2 weeks ago for me.

He sounds very Trumpian.

Politicians would be better focusing on things that matter like how the Democrats lost the election to Trump and how they’re going to win the midterms.

A crappy paper finding rude words and phrases on steam is not really worthy of anyone’s attention but Valve’s

“Millions” of examples sounds dramatic until you look at how many billions of exchanges have been made in valves forums and comment pages. It needs addressing but it’s not of international or even national importance.

Instead of virtue signalling, Warren should be asking how the Dems managed to allow Biden a free ride through the primaries, held on til the bitter end blocking alternatives and then endorsing Harris blocking any debate.

I’d rather Warren focus on fixing the Democratic Party. A bit of democracy in the Democrat party would be a start.

If you’re worried about DRM then look at GOG.com - they sell DRM free games, and you can download the installers direct from their website if you don’t want to use their client and want permanent backups. The installers are not online either. I have a large library of classics and new games from them.

Polyamory is more common these days. It may be experimentation or real for her - only she can decide that. Be there for her, try to not to seem judgemental or negative so that she can trust you and be open with you if things do go wrong. That also means being accepting if this goes right for her.

I do wonder whether you are misinterpreting what you are seeing too.

You are seeing the guy as in control of this and bringing his 2nd girlfriend along. But actually she brought her boyfriend and a girl to dinner at home. Is your daughter also trying to tell you she is in a relationship with the girl too? Was it her boyfriend and her girlfriend?

It does seems odd to bring the girl to meet you if she was purely his girlfriend. Maybe she is more to your daughter than that or maybe she was trying to get a rise out of you? Or maybe she just wanted you to understand how the Polyamory thing works?

I do understand your reluctance around this, and your likely worries for your daughter. It’s easy to see her as being the “victim” of her boyfriends wants. But she does have agency and she has chosen this lifestyle - so I think you have to let it play out and be cautious about expressing your concerns too hard as it may push her away.

Be there for her - it’s very important to keep being her support network and not inadvertently isolate her if you disapprove of her lifestyle. You need to be the ones who are there for her no matter what and where she comes for advice and support if this does goes wrong.

Interesting. Although I’d contend no one “celebrates” daylight savings. It’s not a holiday, and unfortunately saying “it’s not 9am in my house” probably won’t get people far.

I do like the percentage clock idea.

I have a 24 hour analogue clock on my wall - one turn of the clock with the hour hand is a full 24 hours instead of 12. It really changed my concept of time in the day. 12 noon is at the bottom of the clock.

It always feels striking to see the clock at noon and realise how small the morning really is due to sleep and how much of the day is left.

It was intended to bring the existing Julian calendar in Eastern orthodox churches closer in to line with the gregorian calendar. It was not meant to be a universal calendar.

It’s not realistic to alter the existing calendar in this day and age. The gregorian calendar was already too embedded in 1923 to change, and now it’s globally dominant.

The only way to replace the calendar now would probably have to be a brand new calendar (to prevent confusion with the existing calendar, it’d need new month names for example) OR a global agreed change to the gregorian calendar.

Neither is likely; there doesn’t seem to be a big enough need or benefit to get countries together to change this. They can’t even agree on action on pressing crises like the climate crisis.

Yes it’s absolutely worth getting in to video games, there is huge breadth and choice on what to play, and a huge vibrant community.

Starting place is really what devices do you have? Do you have a laptop or PC? If so the world is your oyster and you will find plenty to play even if it’s not very powerful.

If you want something popular, cosy and accessible I’d recommend Stardew Valley. It’s cheap for such a great game, plenty of content, great learning curve and a huge wholesome community.

But there is loads of choice - you could play card games or puzzle games on you other devices and explore what’s available. PC games offer much more variety and depth compared to a mobile, and is very easy to access - no need to buy a console or hardware.

Also English language books are going to be predominantly sold in English speaking countries. And it makes sense cost wise to target both markets together rather than printing individual runs priced for individual countries where possible.

And Canada and the US both use dollars; there is potential ambiguity in price for manufacturers and retailers, so better to clearly specify both. There is not ambiguity with the peso - if a customer sees a book is $10 they will know there is a different price in pesos.

Yeah I get what you’re saying. I would put some caution for Fedora Kinoite - if you want a system that just works and you don’t want to tinker, then it’s great. It just works, and it updates in a very sane and stable why. But if you want to learn Linux and tinker, then it can be very frustrating working with an Atomic distro at the start.

So if I was putting Linux on my parents laptop and didn’t want to be dealing with too much tech-support, I’d probably go for an atomic distro. But if the user wants to learn how to use linux, play with it, tinker then I think an atomic desktop is too restrictive to start out on.

While Mint with Cinnamon isn’t the most cutting edge feel to it, there is a huge wealth of resources out there for people to tinker and play with the system and it’s a great spring board in to other parts of the Linux world. I do love KDE Plasma though - it’s my favourite DE and I used to run it on Mint before I finally moved to a KDE based distro.

I’d recommend Linux Mint generally for noobs. It’s popular and has lots of tips and advice available online, easy to find. It’s easy to install, and as it’s an Ubuntu derivative you get a lot of the benefits of the big user base without the downsides of Canonical (such as Snap being forced on you). I used to use Mint, and it’s a good stable daily driver.

In terms of your specs, you should have no problem with running it as laptop, but as a 2-in-1 device you may find some specialised drivers don’t work out of the box. The most common is finger print readers, but also some of the switching between Desktop and Tablet mode can be tricky. Having said that, I own a Toshiba Satellite 2-in-1, and I installed Linux without issue. I don’t and never have really used it as an actual Tablet though; it ended up being a gimmick too far for me - they’re just too heavy and cumbersome as a tablet, and even the touch screen (which works fine in linux) is just a bit pointless for me. However I have KDE on my Toshiba now and it works well as a 2-in-1 for me at least.

The best thing to do is flash a USB stick with Linux, for example Mint, and try it out to see how it works with your hardware “out of the box”. Linux Mint has a few spins for desktop environments: Cinnamon, XFCE and Mate. None of them are really designed to be Touch based interfaces to be honest. Cinnamon is the main/high end DE and it is ok with Touch interface.

I would say KDE and Gnome are better DEs for touch screen and convertible devices; I personally prefer KDE but both support Touch well - they just have different design ethos. Both can be installed in Mint, although as they’re not “main” DEs for the distro you sometimes get some minor janky integration of the Mint tools in the KDE or Gnome desktop (e.g. sometimes the task tray icons for Cinnamon based tools just aren’t as well integrated into the system themes of KDE & Gnome). You also can end up with duplicate apps in your app menus (cinnamon tools sitting alongside native KDE/Gnome tools which can be a little irritating). But the system works fine and a lot of these things can be tidied up if it bothers you.

But Mint is very Noob friendly, and I think it’s a good way to get into the Linux world. Pretty much everything can be done via the GUI, and it has opted for a default Windows-like feel which can really help with getting used to it. Cinnamon is also still pretty flexible for creating some other interfaces to experiment. Gnome is far removed from that windows feel and is also pretty rigid in it’s design philosophy - it’s kinda “take it or leave it”; personally I don’t like it. You can push it do other things though with extensions, so there is still potential to experiment. KDE does a good job of a default Windows feel but with more design flair/slicker feel, but it also has a huge range of options for making pretty much any interface you like. One reason I left Mint is because I wanted a distro which is built around KDE rather than me installing it separately (I’m on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed now).

So overall, I’d recommend Mint, and use the Cinnamon version. Flash a USB and try it out (note it will be slower/feel sluggish compared to a native install, but should give a feel for how it handles your hardware). If you install it, I’d also recommend a dual-boot setup rather than ditching Windows completely if you’re completely new to Linux. Another option is install on a portable SSD attached via USB, and don’t touch your actual hard drive. That way you can get a reasonable feel of an actual Linux system without messing up your laptop. It’ll still be slower than a true native install but generally faster than a live-USB stick (you can of course also partition and install a full install on a USB stick itself rather than an SSD for the same effect).

EDIT: Just worth saying; if you decide to install Linux, be very careful where you install it. Double and triple check, as the last thing you want to do is accidentally wipe your windows install!

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is my current favourite. It’s user friendly with good system tools in Yast, it’s got good repos including community repos with lots of software.

Its also a rolling release but has been stable and reliable for me. Leap is their point release version if rolling is not right for you.

I’ve been using Tumbleweed for over a year, and it’s my main OS since I stopped using windows. I’ve dual booted Linux for many years but always mained windows up until Tumbleweed.

Previously I used to use Mint; it’s decent but switching to Tumbleweed (and in particular KDE) convinced me to completely switch from Windows. Everything “just works”, and I do a fair bit of gaming without issue with nvidia drivers, steam, and lutris.

For example I’ve been playing Stardew, Cyberpunk 2077, Distant Worlds 2, and Factorio recently - all in Linux and all without issue.

This is nonsense sorry. Polls shows 50:50 split between Dems and Rep, but the reality is 1/3:1/3 with 1/3 of the electorate and disengaged. The voters aren’t the problem, it’s the fucked up 2 party system which has been massaged by both parties over many decades to prevent any competition.

Why should voters feel loyal to either of those parties? Don’t blame voters for not wanting to chose between two crap choices. To many, both the Dems and Reps are the enemy. Why expect them to care if one side or the other think there is an existential crisis in the shitty system they shaped?