[–] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Half-Life: Alyx and it's not even close. I know VR isn't for everyone, but for me, playing that game felt like I was transported to Valve's best version of a Disney World ride or something, and no game has made me feel that way before. Although I'm sure it helped that I was already a big Half-Life fan. It's a shame the next-best VR games are things like Beat Saber, Minigolf, etc... fun games, but gimicky in comparison. Now that the Frame has released without a launch title, I'm not sure anything will ever live up to the bar that Alyx set.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    According to this Guardian article:

    the UN general assembly officially retired the 16th-century Mercator projection in favour of one based on the more accurate 2018 Equal Earth design

    UN resolutions are non-enforceable, so I'm sure countries will implement it in different ways (some may not implement it at all). France has already said they will be using Eckert IV which is close to Equal Earth:

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  • [–] 102 points 3 months ago (20 children)

    On one hand, the Valve Index launched for $1000 in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, that is $1306.25. And you needed a powerful PC to be able to use it, where this can be used standalone. Only effectively costing an extra $194 for standalone processing is pretty impressive.

    On the other hand, it is difficult to justify this price considering cheaper headsets on the market, like a $600 Meta Quest 3. Unless you dislike Facebook that strongly (justified).

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    It's from the 2006 movie Monster House. In the movie, the guy just finished helping a kid, and then decided to steal the kid's snack and eat it right there in front of him. I think the face in the meme was originally supposed to be a kind of "what are you gonna do about it?" face, but people now use it for disappointment / dread / concern.

    The version we see here is "AI enhanced" so it's somewhat deviated from the original.

    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/reginald-skulinski-eating-disappointed-monster-house

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    Trust me, I push Signal hard and even donate to it monthly. As I'm sure many of you know, there are always a few contacts who unfortunately refuse to use it.

    In this case: do you prefer to use insecure SMS in something like QUIK SMS or Fossify Messages, or do you prefer to bite the Google bullet to get end-to-end encrypted messages (even if the metadata isn't encrypted)?

    I can see good arguments for both sides, so I am curious what Lemmy's take is.

     

    I know they're all bad for privacy to an extent, which is why I specified "least bad."

    This is for casual use, as someone concerned about surveillance capitalism, digital privacy, social cooling and the like. I do not have a high threat model. I am looking to balance privacy and convenience. I am not going to teach my grandma how to use monero, and it isn't always a reasonable option to use cash or mail a check.

    The big services in the US I know of are:

    • PayPal: shares your data with 600+ companies
    • Venmo: owned by PayPal
    • Apple Cash: Requires an Apple device, not an option for many
    • Google Pay: it's Google, and it doesn't work on custom ROMs like GrapheneOS
    • Facebook Messenger: apparently you can send money on there, but I think "there's zero chance I'm making a Facebook account and I'm especially not linking my bank to it" needs no explanation in this community
    • Cash App: owned by Square, might be a decent option?
    • Zelle: Not supported by all banks (I don't think it's supported by mine and I definitely have friends that use unsupported banks)

    If anyone knows of better options, or tips to minimize shared data while using any of the above options, please elaborate.

     

    This Major Order requires us to kill 5,000,000 Chargers, and special chargers like the Behemoth and Spore charger do not count. So to progress the MO, people have been suggesting dropping the difficulty to 5/6, since that's where normal charger spawns are the highest.

    The problem with that is, you get 36 medals from completing a D10 operation, but only 21 medals for completing a D6 - a 15 medal difference. So after 4 operations, you've missed out on 60 medals when the major order only rewards 50, if we even succeed (not looking good currently).

    The same applies to D7-D9, but the break even points are different: 17 OPs for D7, 7 OPs for D8, and 5 OPs for D9. May or may not be worth it depending on how much you play.

    I imagine there are lots of D10 players who do more than 3 OPs per week, so this is a bit of a disappointing MO when it's in their best interest to ignore it.

     

    As noted by the news release from CalyxOS and Mastodon thread from GrapheneOS, Google did not release the Pixel device-specific source code alongside their Android 16 AOSP release like they usually do. I think many of us, including myself, are hoping this will be published in the near future, but considering they moved AOSP development behind closed doors earlier this year, it's more likely Google has stopped publishing this section or their code altogether, making development of custom ROMs for Pixel devices significantly more difficult. Sad news for the Android ecosystem, and for open source in general.

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