On one hand, nice to have my country mentioned in a context where we’re not being warcrimed, on the other, I’m somewhat disappointed that our government actually lifted a finger in the investigation of a foreign intellectual property case.

I’ve always been curious about this stuff and I know I need to make some effort soon, ever since we moved our home recordings from VHS to DVD some 15-20 years ago.

My understanding is that SSDs are also likely to lose data when unpowered for a long time, which is why they haven’t been recommended to me for external backup drives.

“Spinning rust” is much cheaper than I thought, even if I have to pay 200$ in shipping to get a bunch of massive used server drives here. And it seems to not have that problem, with the downside of either needing to be completely powered off or wasting a bit of power when it’s not active. I’m still not sure where the HDD parking technology is at.

Of course ripping all the physical media would also be nice. A lot of the original discs I have (most of my discs are straight shitty copies with one file, yay third world) have things like special features and multiple audio tracks, things like that. I wonder how those should be organized.

I’ve also wondered if there’s varieties. Maybe where I live, they’re different tasting and smelling? Broccoli has only ever been one of the vegetables to me. Nothing repulsive (or even noteworthy).

Even as a kid it was weird to see cartoon characters complain about specifically broccoli while I literally munched it while watching.

Now when it spoils, yes, it can get a little sulfury, as can cauliflower, its cousin. But fresh broccoli?

It’s so ubiquitous that for about a second I thought wait what I thought that was the good one until I remembered that I’ve been using qBittorrent for a decade.

For a time, it just was the client.

Just off the top of my head:

Steven Wilson, one of the most influential artists in my creative life. Turns out even some of the songs were even recorded there. I don’t even think he has a familial claim to benefit from Zionism, I think he’s just gotten roped in. At least I tell myself that.

Sacha Baron Cohen, IMO one of the most brilliant comedians. I don’t think he’s necessarily an extremist to the extent that Natenyahu is, knowing his politics, but that is the logical conclusion of Zionism and just being on that path is all the red flags in the world.

Quentin Tarantino, bro why

I actually can’t think of many. I’m from Lebanon and if it’s even a small part of someone’s public life we just avoid them, it’s been that way for very long. So there’s an extent to which these people are filtered out.

I also don’t use traditional social media at all so something like the Sarah Silverman meltdown you mention would be completely off my radar.

Ah. I was hoping I was holding on to some long-lost file, I think every one in my list is included in your list. I think the rare ones were limited-time exclusives.

If it’s not too much trouble, you should make sure there’s an up to date copy of all these files somewhere. At least the IA should have it, I’d think.

Best of luck finding the rest.

Here’s what I got in my old local archive folder, if it helps. Let me know if I have something missing, I’ve never been on this side of this interaction!

Not entirely sure if this is complete, or if it’s even all Maxis. I have a third party mod folder backed up somewhere (and one with those old text guides, loved those) but I didn’t find it with a quick search. This folder is from 2010, so it’s not exactly period-correct. In case Windows doesn’t like these older .exes they seem to just be archives with the .far files inside, so you can rip them open. Not exactly sure why some of these are .zips and others are .exes, but the .zips only contain the .far files.

One thing that sucks is that some disk content was just permanently gated behind these downloads, and there was every possibility that you wouldn’t know these downloads existed. Specifically there were Makin Magic recipes for child-only magic stuff that used ingredients only adults could gather. So the Magic Bookshelf was mandatory to see that stuff that came on the damn disk. I’m pretty sure I was using a third party reskin of that item before looking for the original, but I could be wrong.

Good lord, .far files. Remember FARout? Those really were the days. I still like to think I’ll revisit TS1 properly someday. That was a proper game, with unapologetic personality.

I still prefer paper, although not having to store moisture-sensitive fragile things is nice. So is the fact that I can read books that are out of print or hard to find (or banned, yay Middle East), even if fumbling with PDFs isn’t wonderful on the device.

And of course, the obvious: downloading them for free. Which is always ethical when Routledge wants to charge you 85$ for a scholarly work of which the author doesn’t see a dollar.

I got a Kobo and just use the networking to sync Pocket articles. Stock system.

I don’t even think an account is available in my country. Just been syncing over Calibre. It’s not perfect (it uses a community plugin) but once you get the quirks of the Calibre-to-Kobo transfer it’s easy enough.

Now the hard part. Actually reading.

Not sure about that last bit. IIRC all of the EA TS1 downloads are archived pretty extensively, across many fan sites and the IA for good measure.

Then again the last time I checked was probably over a decade ago.

Would love to browse a list of games like this. I know there’s a FOSS game list but it’s not exactly easy to browse. No thumbnails or descriptions or tags or anything.

My eventual favorite game of all time could be in this list and I wouldn’t know how to find it.

This is exactly why I’d want a GPU in a home server.

That and transcoding. Wonder what the best option would be without breaking the bank/wasting too much idle power. All the GPU talk online seems to be for gaming.

Thankfully/sadly it’s a pretty short article. Very cool stuff!

The rabbit hole that has grabbed me on and off over the past half decade has to be all the golden age of piracy stuff. And those articles are damn long.

Not linking it here though.

That second paragraph reads like a genuine slop-tier YouTube short you’d hear someone blasting next to you at half volume in public.

Narrated by an unnaturally upbeat and grating TTS voice, of course.

Never got into Splatoon but it looked like great fun and kind of perfect for low-stakes competition.

Fucks sake Nintendo

10K is a home solar investment. Where I live, people tend to live in multi-family buildings about 3-6 floors high, often split between siblings and their families. Depending on how many are in the country year-round, that might even be enough for the whole building with careful management. Obviously wouldn’t be the same if the neighbors are strangers. (I appreciate that the familial emphasis might seem a bit random in your culture). Ideally 10K might just be enough for one or two households.

The much more interesting prompt is 10B, imo.

10B? Oh man. I’m in Lebanon. We’ve effortlessly squandered more generous fortunes than a measly 10B grant, but here’s how I’d do it:

1B: buses, trams and parking garages to decongest some of the nicer (and underperforming, touristy) old town areas. Should give them a sorely needed boost 3B: modern seaside train running from north to south, with a small number of branches into the interior. Mostly freight. 3B: start phase of a Beirut metro. It’s not enough for a full metro system especially with our geological conditions, but the core city isn’t too big and one line should be feasible? 2B: functional army so we still have civilian infrastructure next time our noisy neighbor gets a hissy fit (infrastructure is worthless if it’s destroyed) 1B: modern fossil fuel power plant. Yeah it’s not green, but we generate a fraction of our needed power, meaning most people have to pay off a local generator mob for electricity. They use diesel and relatively inefficient smaller generators. Our existing ancient power plants use dogshit-tier diesel. I insist that some kind of LNG plant maybe would actually make the situation more green. As it stands the convenience of combustible fuel is more pertinent than the environmental cost

I think the table turning is in terms of what constitutes “content”, ostensibly the reason you’re on their service.

Standard tables: you sign up to this website to see stuff posted by people and pages you want to see, you can post your own if you wish

New and improved AI tables: bend over and enjoy the warmth of the slop cannon interspersed with Enhanced Consumer AI Personalized Advertising Experiences™

The user abuse was always part of the process no doubt.

It works as long as you’re on an IP address that Meta approves. If you’re using a VPN (or even PiHole iirc) it doesn’t work.

So I have to use their malware on my phone when someone sends me a DM on there.

The souls games weren’t on sale, but I’ve passed the message along about the mods. I think he’s taking a break after pushing those games to the absolute limit but I’m glad something like that exists.

Avant-garde is my jam, it’s just hard to convince people who aren’t into that kind of game to play. I love the Cosmo D games, for example, but I know most of my friends wouldn’t enjoy them if I recommended them.