An AI-generated blog post by a Chinese diaspora AI grifter wherein he compares the layoffs of middle managers (which were not because of AI) to the programme of eradicating sparrows in the Four Pests Campaign.

RAMs and SSDs died for this

Dead Cells is an extremely popular india metroidvania roguelike. I have never liked roguelikes or in general valued replayability much. But last year I sunk about a 100 hours in Hades II and I really liked it. I thought about why and came to the conclusion that it's the progression I really liked. Each successful run unlocks permament progression on two fronts. Firstly, you get permanent upgrades that make subsequent runs easier. And you also progress the story. The story wasn't anything special but watching it play out with a vibrant cast and good voice acting was fun. There is also something to be said about the granularity of the progress, about how much progress each run unlocks, how much you get to keep if your run fails and so on. But I cannot construct an educated opinion on it because it has been a while since I played it.

Dead Cells executes the metroidvania combat excellently. The gameplay is tight. What I didn't like was the agency. I felt like it was completely on RNG what kind of run I was going to have. The variety of weapons is massive but I would only get to play what was rolled for me. The progression also felt whacked. Unlocking the first and second health potions is quick but later upgrades require an hour worth of cells which felt grindy.

I played it for two days, about five hours in total. I was getting absolutely demolished. Then I rolled a specific build (ice bow for free stun, crazy good broadsword and devices, all red) which made the whole thing a cakewalk. I killed the king and thought there would be more but no. That was the end of the run.

I understand there is more to the game than that. There are other final bosses along branched paths. There is the option of unlocking higher difficulty. But I don't really care for this stuff. I also understand this is a matter of taste and opinion so I don't think low of Dead Cells because of this.

For what its worth it made me appreciate Hades II and made me realise that most roguelikes ain't for me.

From the website:

Myrient will shut down on 31 March 2026. Download any content you find important.

More information can be found on our Discord server and Telegram channel.

For context:

Myrient is a fast and reliable video game preservation service with over 390 terabytes of organized [ROM] collections publicly available for download.

https://myrient.erista.me/

A blog post I found in response to Cory Doctorow taking a pro-LLM stance in a recent post of his.

I had been using KDE Plasma for about a year. Plasma really is great. It works great out of the box. Before that I used to use i3. Comparatively the amount of scaffolding Plasma has is extremely helpful. I love the Breeze aesthetic to. It's right up my wheelhouse.

My only complaint with Plasma is the window management. Coming from i3 it is tolerable and allows you to customise the shortcuts. I prefer the idea of arranging windows in workspaces, changing focus between windows and between workspaces using the keyboard only and I couldn't get Plasma to work this way.

Right now I have some free time and I found a spare laptop. So I tried setting up Niri, a scrolling Wayland compositor on it.

The window management in Niri is amazing. Overall it seems polished as well. The animations are smooth and the configuration is easy and updates to it are loaded on the fly.

The problem here is the missing scaffolding that something like GNOME or Plasma provides for you. I spent like half of all day yesterday trying to figure out how to make gtk and qt apps look acceptable and the password manager (keepassxc) still does not follow the theme. I still don't have a taskbar set up so I never know what the time is or how much battery I have left without using the terminal. This is just a drop in the bucket of the user friendly stuff missing from a bare compositor install.

There are some projects like DankMaterialShell and Noctalia that try to provide a lot of this missing functionality in one package. I tried both of them but I dislike how they both look.

This will read like a rant but it isn't. Right now I have some luxury to engage with the friction so I wanna find out how things work at the lower level in Waylandland. I am hoping I am able to stick with Niri because the window management really is great.

I have played Nioh 1 and completed 2 so I was looking forward to the demo. I was able to give it a whirl over the weekend so here's my thoughts about it.

Overall I found the game to be pretty difficult. It's not clear intuitively how to approach the fights, especially boss fights. I completed the demo yet I have no idea when to be in ninja mode and when to be in samurai mode. For the boss fights I just beat my head against the wall until I won. The full game will be a painful experience for me if I can't get better.

Regarding the ninja/samurai switching, I'm not too excited about it. I don't like the cognitive load of figuring out this system. Maybe if I "get" it at some point I'll have a more positive opinion of it.

The approach to open world is nice. Areas are clearly segmented on the map and each area has a recommended level. So you clear an area and then move on to the next. Clearing an area is pretty straightforward. As you clear, points of interests get marked on the map so there's no need to peer into every nook and cranny.

I might get the game when it goes on sale because I can't find any physically discs in the market.

I am playing through the Steam version of the game right now. Haven't finished it yet. There are three things that somewhat baffle me. The first is how much stuff there is in the game. The game released close to when I was born so I find it impressive how many eras and locations there are in the game. The second being how smoothly the game flows. When one arc ends it is clear where you need to go next just by following the dialogue. Lastly, I love how the game is somewhat scant on dialogue lines but makes good use of the ones that are there. It is an antithesis of MGS3 cutscenes (which I also love).

The combat system is also actually really fun. The bosses make you think about how to approach them. Does the original SNES version have the "active" battle system that the Steam version has? If yes then that's very impressive. I see it as somewhat of a precursor of the battle system in the FFVII remake games.

I came across this website a while ago: https://lucida.to/

It lets you rip high quality music files from streaming services. Didn't find much use of it in the past but lately I have been wanting obscure music I can't find on soulseek or private trackers and it has been immensely helpful.

As far as I understand the whole process takes place in your browser. I am guessing this because I face a lot of georestrictions because of where I am from and this website fails for services not available here. In my case though Amazon Music works so I was able to get a FLAC of Rise Above the Storm from Beyblade which makes me unreasonably happy.

The underlying library for ripping is open source according to the website.

I started playing it last week. It has been on my to-play list for a long time. It was a launch exclusive for the PS5 so it made good use of PS5 gimmicks like DualSense haptics and speakers.

The game is a third person shooter bullet hellish roguelike. I find the gameplay to be tight and smooth. It is fun for sure. I beat the fourth boss today. The problem for me is that the game is a little bit too difficult. In the fourth biome for example, the first room contains a ton of enemies and all you have the pistol (starter weapon) with no bonuses. I end up losing a chunk of health and feeling like shit there. This is probably a skill issue too. I am noticing I don't move around and use melee as much as I should. Another problem I have is that the bosses feel a bit same-y. A large chunk of the fight is maintaining distance, unloading clips and dodging enemy projectiles. It is still fun though and I have only seen four bosses so far.

Atmospherically the game is designed well. It conveys the feeling of being stranded and held captive on an awful planet nicely. I haven't paid much attention to the lore. The story unfolds very slowly which I don't like. Lore revelations also come at points where I am panicking and scrounging up bits and pieces of health and items trying to stay alive or healthy.

Overall the game is pretty good. I got it used for cheap and it's been worth it so far. Hopefully I can finish this game. I have abandoned the last four or so games I have tried.

Jesus Christ they scraped 99.6% of all of spotify

For a long time Denuvo has been uncrackable. There was one prominent cracker who went by the name of EMPRESS but they have retired. Apart from this sometimes games like Football Manager would get cracked but the person behind it is not a prolific cracker.

Recently though someone named voices38 has started cracking many Denuvo games. I think they started from the older uncracked games, moving on to the newer ones gradually. I personally don't care for the games they have cracked but it is good to see that the games will be preserved from now on. Some recent releases by them:

• Scott.Pilgrim.vs.The.World-voices38
• Hi-Fi.RUSH-voices38
• Need.For.Speed.Hot.Pursuit.Remastered.CRACKFIX-voices38
• FIFA.21-voices38
• Shin.Megami.Tensei.III.Nocturne.HD.Remaster-voices38
• Star.Wars.Squadrons-voices38
• FIFA.20-voices38
• Need.for.Speed.Heat-voices38

Hopefully thye continue cracking.