Quoting: JustinWoodThere's an absolutely delightful blog I read yesterday that I feel does a wonderful job about why the AI hype is just grifters overpromising on what generative AI can do. Recommend folks take a look at it! https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ [External Link]

Thanks for this. I am in complete agreement with the author of this blog post. I wish people would stop using the term "AI" to describe this technology. LLM (Large Language Model) may be many things but it is not true artificial intelligence. As I see it, it is, at best, a large database parser, nothing more.

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Quoting: emphy

Quoting: kit89Do the above gog links fail to open for anyone else?

They're affiliate links, so common ad-blockers will likely block them.

Vivaldi Mobile used to let these pass, but about a week ago it started aggressively blocking the links. Seems like this has happened with a number of ad-blockers recently ...

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Quoting: CybolicUhm, those terms.... (emphasis mine)

By entering this content (e.g., photo, video, text, etc.), You understand and agree that the Sponsor and anyone acting on behalf of the Sponsor or its respective licensees, successors, and assigns, shall have the right, where permitted by law, to print, publish, broadcast, distribute, and use in any media now known or hereafter developed, in perpetuity and throughout the World, without limitation, your entry, name, portrait, picture, voice, likeness, image, statements about the Campaign, and biographical information for news, publicity, information, trade, advertising, public relations, and promotional purposes without any further compensation, notice, review, or consent.

Surely that can't be legal? Signing over the rights to one's name, likeness and voice in perpetuity in order to enter a contest?

When I was running my retail computer store 20 years ago, a local TV studio wanted to film some footage in the store. They presented me with a waiver/contract to sign that was worded exactly like this. I balked and refused to sign. My business partner was quite upset with me. All he saw was the potential free publicity. I was not willing to give up my sovereignty for some cheap media attention.

This kind of waiver/contract is pretty standard with the News & Entertainment Media corporations. It is slimey, I agree. The fact that the terms allow them to use the material for any purpose, not just the original one, deeply erodes my trust in them.

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Quoting: FjolserikInstallation path is too long. Please move your Forza Horizon 5 installation to a shorter path.

You could try setting up another library folder on a different drive and moving the install to that new folder. This is all done within the Steam client software.

However, this sounds like a bug. You would probably be better to report this to Valve/Steam.

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Quoting: PenglingI'd been waiting for Linux laptop support to get to where I wanted it to be (I dropped Windows in 2004 and moved to Mac OS X until 2007 while I waited for that), and the original Asus Eee PC proved that it was.

Clearly, the wrong netbook brand attracted my attention. Looking back, the Linux distro on the Acer had a horrible DE. On the other hand, the original Asus Eee PC was running Xandros, a Debian based distro that utilized the KDE desktop. I looked at old pictures of the UI on Wikipedia. I am very impressed by the quality of that DE.

Quoting: PenglingI'm glad that you were able to keep your laptop in service! It really bothers me how many perfectly-usable machines just go into landfill because of Windows' failings, and the way that people have been taught that there "really isn't an alternative".

Thank you. I agree. That laptop was the last computer I ever bought brand new (replaced its AC adapter & battery too). I only buy used laptops now, and not all that often. I am tired of the constant upgrade cycle. I haven't seen sufficient improvement in computer tech to justify it for me any more.

If the new software won't run on my hardware, I'm not interested. There are literally tens of thousands of good games in the back catalogue to choose from that will run on my laptop.

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Quoting: PenglingIt was part of how they tried to paint Linux as "lesser", for sure.

Given my level of exposure to Linux at the time, it certainly worked on me. Ironically, I eventually installed Linux Mint on my netbook after the WinXP support ended.

Quoting: PenglingI would say that they did more damage than tablets did

I will certainly defer to your direct experience. At that time, I was out of touch with the computer industry for my mental health so I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on. The netbook was just a neat tool with a lot of potential to me. I didn't discover how far Linux had come until 2014 when my laptop's HDD died and the Win7 backup wouldn't reinstall on the new HDD.

Looking back, I can certainly see how netbooks would have been a big deal to the Linux community and I understand your distaste for what was done.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: Purple Library Guywith all Windows versions you'd still have that "this doesn't work well on this kind of device" problem.

And that quite quickly leads the masses to the mistaken belief of "These portable PCs actually aren't any good.", leading to manufacturers no longer making them because the demand gets destroyed. :dizzy: As I've said far too many times (including in this very thread :tongue:), it's exactly like what happened with how the netbook product-category was killed off*.

I don't think you need to worry about that too much. To make that happen, the Windows netbooks had to dominate the category, at least briefly. They could do that because MS had a lot of control over the OEMs that were making them, so they could lean on them to mostly drop the Linux ones--maybe not completely, but slow down production, marketing and placement enough for the Windows ones to become the default. But Microsoft does not have any control over Valve, and no competitor that has yet appeared seems likely to dominate the Deck in sales or even publicity, certainly not enough to define the category in the public's eyes.

There may be something to that. For myself - which may or, more likely, may not be a reflection of the greater whole - I discovered netbooks while I was in trade school, reeducating myself in midlife. I found that a netbook running a full version of Windows XP without an optical drive was more convenient, lighter and infinitely more portable than my full sized laptop. My only encounters with Linux at that time had been more CLI and/or very basic GUI - nothing to cause me to throw over Windows for Linux. Acer had put out the ZG5 netbooks with your choice of WinXP on a 120GB HDD or some unknown distro of Linux on an 8GB or 16GB SD drive (this was pre-SSD). Given a choice like that, I went the direction I imagine a lot of consumers would have and chose the WinXP model.

This amount of difference between the Windows and Linux models could very much have influenced the choices of more consumers than just myself. Perhaps these configuration differences were also a factor?

I always felt that Google's Android and the advent of the tablet form factor played a huge part in the demise of netbooks. I preferred the netbook form factor myself.

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Quoting: dpanterCurrently on GOG:
Giveaway Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War [External Link]
Free Warhammer Skulls 2024 Digital Goodie Bag
[External Link]

Got Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War for free on Steam last year. Now I have it for free on GOG too. Thanks for the tip, dpanter!

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Quoting: ToddL

Quoting: EduAAAThey very generous, free game, but when you check let's see hmm, it's not the full game, it's a way to make people buy must have dlcs unless you wanna play a demo.

Not sure what you're getting at with this statement since the version of Dragon Age Inquisition that Epic is giving away is the Game of the Year edition, which includes the DLC and other bonuses.

Of all the free offers I looked at from this article, the only giveaway with just the core game is ENDLESS Legend. There is a ton of DLC for this one. The core game is not a demo, however, and no one is obligated to buy the DLC. Of course, I am sure that the hope is that you will like the base game enough to want to purchase some of the DLC ...

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To think I was considering to eventually try the other Dragon Age games and the Mass Effect series, once I get through more of my backlog. EA just keeps doing things that make me want to boycott them instead ...

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