$1000. Delusional.

Throw in the lack of trackpads, confusing branding and Windows and I'd be surprised if these aren't dead on arrival.

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Gave this a shot, but ended up refunding it. While apparently it gets pretty good a few hours in (when you get to the medium levels), I found the basic gameplay a big turn off. Enemies spawning in visibly is pretty amateur, but I think the weirdest turn off was the UI itself. There's no compare option, so I'm constantly moving my mouse to try to determine what component is better, there's no description of what a holster does - I never bothered equipping one - took the big laser gun instead. It wasn't particularly clear what any of the map marker were, or what your objectives were.

Finally, the video gave me the impression that there would be strafe options to elevate the game beyond the usual mech-warrior issue of two big mech facing each other and hammering the "fire" key as quickly as possible. But while there is a strafe, I couldn't figure out how to make it last more than a metre or so - useless for dodging in the end. Presumably there are power-ups, but hey ho, the early game is indeed, face-enemy-hammer-fire. There's a grapple too, but it suddenly stopped working in one of my playthroughs. It might be because I swapped an arm, and the new arm didn't have grapple? It wasn't obvious, so... yeah, no grapple suddenly, and so even less movement options.

The whole thing is extremely bare-bones.

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No, my dear

It's impossible to use that phrase without sounding incredibly condescending. Not sure if you have English as your first language, so pointing out here that it sounds very douchy, and hopefully that wasn't your intention!

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...and all I want is a plug and play working functionality for the realtone cable and Rocksmith 2014.

Hmm, I definitely got this working maybe a couple of years ago. I think I might have been running EndeavourOS back then? But I didn't have to do anything special. The cable just appeared as an input, so I could record from it directly in things like OBS, although it was like a line in, so maybe I had to put it through my amp? I can't remember, sorry.

I'll maybe try to find it again and give it another shot.

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I've got Chrome the way that I like it on the computer front

It was definitely painful switching, but in light of Manifest v3 and the utter devastation that caused to uBlock Origin, I'm glad I went through that pain when I did. I occasionally have to open Chrome for work (Teams website has features that don't work on Firefox without user-agent manipulation that I can't be bothered to work around), but 99% of my actual browsing is from Firefox.

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Too bad if you need to download something from the saxonica website, because you happen to need an xpath 3.0 capable xml parser.

I must be missing the point here, because the Saxonica website works perfectly for me (on Debian/Firefox 142). Is there a bit of it that's broken on Firefox? I tried it on Chrome too, but it's identical.

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I do remember enjoying Command & Conquer back in 1995, but I don't think I got truly hooked on the genre until Total Annihilation launched in 1997, and the graphics in this feel very "early C&C" to me.

Then, the marvellous RTS pinnacle, Battle Zone, arrived in 1998. That was an incredible period in my life, as I'd just started at the firm I still work at today, 30 years later! Good memories playing these games, along with Doom, Quake, Descent and Crusader: No Remorse!

It was a special moment in Battle Zone to finally create your first massive Walker unit and hearing the pilot rumble "For God and Country" as it stopped off to demolish whatever poor target you'd highlighted!

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Wow, the animations in this are top-drawer, really impressive. I have fond memories of Alien:Fireteam, and while this is single-player, I'm still sold. It's been ages since a good Alien-franchise game landed!

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I'm sticking with Firefox, been using it for about 3 or 4 years now. I think the AI features arrived in 135, and I'm on 142 now, and other than a pop up asking me if I wanted AI engines added to my search bar (I didn't), I don't see any hints of AI elsewhere. Provided I can turn that absolutely shitfuckery off, I'm happy to stay on Firefox.

I've been testing out ProtonMail to replace Gmail and ProtonCalendar to replace Google Calendar. I'm already using Firefox instead of Chrome, and I've also updated my home screen and search bar to use DuckDuckGo. But I still use Android, and particularly rely on Google Maps, so there's still work to be done.

Goddamit. I used to love Google products. I still feel sore about Reader and that was 2013! What the hell happened to this company??

Edit to add: Just have to share this video of Meta's AI in action. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0Ee8IYGKjTQ [External Link]

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This is purely about AI, a bubble I wish would just hurry up and burst already. There will be no focus on desktop builds, only data centre. Any benefits to desktop will be incidental.

If Valve use an Intel/Nvidia SOC in their next SteamDeck I doubt I'd buy one. I really do hate AI that much, and I just don't have any enthusiasm for supporting NVidia, a company dedicated to burning the planet for the benefit of AI - going so far this week to announce that green energy can't support their ambition and fossil fuel reactors and nuclear power are the only option.

I don't even consider myself particularly green, but that's a new low.

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