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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • What do you mean they’re failing to install? That sounds like a wine issue.

    Sometimes games just work better on previous wine versions so it might be worth trying a couple of those.

    I haven’t played the game but it seems to be DX11 so DXVK probably needs to be installed to the prefix

    Towards the end of the FG installer, there is usually an option to download the dependencies so make sure you have those installed with winetricks to the correct prefix. C++ Redist download option here refers to vcrun in winetricks and its probably vcrun2022 since the game is new.

    Is it defaulting to using your integrated graphics instead of the discreet gpu?

    You could also add it as a non steam game in steam since proton will be set up properly to see if it runs better.

    Edit:

    470

    Do you need to update your drivers? 470 came out in April 2021. DXVK only supports 510 and later so d3dcompiler instead of dxvk should be used but a driver update would be better.


  • 2 accounts consistently reporting the same IP, location and user habits etc being linked is more absurd than nobody ever noticing excessive uploaded data from their phones? It is very easy to monitor the amount of uploaded and downloaded data on a device, lots of people would have noticed by now. The amount of storage, bandwidth and processing power that would be required to monitor the audio from hundreds of millions of android users globally 24/7 would make this the dumbest business decision ever when there are so many easier and efficient ways to track users.



  • I finished Silent Hill 2 too, the Mannequins made me jump so many times. They always seemed to appear when I least expected them to. The game created such a tense and scary atmosphere the whole way through but the prison area was by far the spookiest and of course I didn’t understand the hanging part and kept getting punished for it lol.

    I also played The Last of Us Part 1 it was no where near as scary but the story was so good, I even cried a bit. I’d love more games that focused on keeping quiet, I dont think I’ve played anything with that sort of mechanic before. I really hope they port part 2 to pc soon.

    I tried to play Alien Isolation but I kept getting game breaking bugs and when I finally managed to get about an hour in, there were still no aliens?? Just more bugs so I’ve given up on it and maybe I’ll try see if there are any fixes and stuff when I have more time since so many people recommend it.



  • I’m a big fan of AV1, I’ve reencoded TiBs of video files to AV1. Reencoding is always going to lead to some quality loss, it just depends how much you notice it. For me I, don’t see any quality loss going from h265 to AV1 in any videos I have done with my settings. But the biggest screen I use is 32inch 1080 monitor from about 5 years ago.

    Its totally subjective so it may be worth taking a couple of your favourite video files and testing out a bunch of different settings and comparing the quality to see if theres a noticeable quality loss. Then you can weigh up the quality vs time taken vs storage cost to see if its worth it to you.

    It can be slow, depending on what hardware you’re working with but I’ve seen massive speed improvements over the past few months. ATM, I’m getting between 10 - 20 times speed up. So if I encode a 10 minute video, it takes between 30-60 seconds. This is with a 7700x, 12 cores. And I’m getting anywhere from ~10 times smaller file size to ~70% the original size.

    Another option I use sometimes is converting to 720p from 1080. I do this on some videos that my parents take because their cameras aren’t great and they have shaky hands so they’re pretty blurry at the best of times anyway lol.



  • Just tar and zstd. They’re probably installed by default for most distros anyway.

    I think this is what I used when I first tried out zstd https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-and-use-zstd-compression-tool-on-linux

    Tar supports input from zstd so I put everything on one line.

    tar -I 'zstd -v --ultra -22' -cvf YourFile.tar.zst -C /path/to/your/file YourFile
    

    -I takes the input from zstd which is in quotes.

    –ultra it should be redundant but for some reason its needed for higher levels of compression.

    -22 the highest level of compression offered by zstd.

    -c for compress.

    -v for verbose.

    -f for the file name.

    -C excludes the absolute path to the file/directory and just takes YourFile as the file/directory to compress. Its not needed if you’re in the same directory as YourFile.

    I would recommend leaving out

    --ultra -22
    

    and just test how much compression you get with the default level first because 22 is super slow and if it just can’t compress the file you won’t see any difference in file size compared to the default compression level.


  • For 3DS games I use NDSTokyoTrim to remove useless data from the game files to make them smaller.

    DreamCast, PS1 & PS2 games get compressed to chd with chdman.

    GameCube and Wii are compressed to rvz with Dolphin.

    PS3 I remove the PS3_UPDATE folder, 256MiB for each game adds up. I also use Gnarly Repacks for PS3 games since they have better compression than anything I’ve tried so far.

    Switch games, I use nsz.

    Then I use tar with zst on all of them, Nsz and rvz already use zst so theres no change but I just like to keep everything the same accross all of my roms and pc games.

    Everything else, GB, NDS, SNES etc all get archived and compressed with tar and zst. For these I’ll also use the --ultra -22 option since they’re small enough files anyway so they don’t take long to compress/decompress. If anyone knows any specific compression/trimming methods that are better than zst, I’d love to hear about them!

    Copies of all the tar archives are kept on 2 separate drives and a copy of the games are on my PC in whatever the smallest format is that is compatible with their emulator.



  • https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/genetics-firm-23andme-says-user-data-stolen-in-credential-stuffing-attack/

    The information that has been exposed from this incident includes full names, usernames, profile photos, sex, date of birth, genetic ancestry results, and geographical location.

    The threat actor accessed a small number of 23andMe accounts and then scraped the data of their DNA Relative matches, which shows how opting into a feature can have unexpected privacy consequences.

    • Usernames Profile Photos DoB

    They can be linked to other online accounts. This allows for phishing, potentially scamming or getting additonal information on them which can lead to more sophisticated/personalised scams. Older, less tech savvy users are better targets for scammers.

    • Username Sex DoB Genetic Ancestry Location data

    Data aggregators can sell this info to Health Insurance Companies or any other system who can then discriminate based on genes sex age or location

    • All of this information

    Can contribute to people committing fraud with their information if they collect enough information from different sources.

    • DNA relatives

    Having enough information about a user to use it to target their now known relatives in personalised scams.

    The people that did this probably didn’t know what information they were going to get, maybe they were hoping for payment info, and settled for trying to just sell what they got.

    Any information, no matter how useless it might seem, is better than no information and enough useless information in the wrong hands can be very valuable.

    Theres countless data breaches every year and people will collect it all and link different accounts from different breaches until they have enough information. Most people use the same email address for every website and a lot of people reuse the same passwords, which is how this data leak occurred. Knowing that these users reuse the same email/password combination here means theres a very good chance they’ve reused it elsewhere.

    You can check out what data breeches have occured and if your email or password has been posted in any of these dumps here https://haveibeenpwned.com/

    Once the information is out there, its out there for good and what might seem trivial now to you could be valuable tomorrow to someone else


  • Finally a good take. Or maybe I’m just a pessimist lol

    Microsoft are masters at dancing around anti competitive regulation. Xbox is struggling, they’ve said so themselves. I think they’re going to focus more on Gamepass and the Windows Store so making it as difficult as possible for the likes of the Steamdeck to succeeded is in their best interest. If they can push companies to adopt their new framework and at the same time make that framework almost impossible to implement into wine then its a win win. They can hurt wine while painting it as better security so they’re isn’t another CrowdStrike incident.

    Anticompetitive practices disguised as user security.

    I know linux isn’t very popular for the general public but Apple has their own implementation of wine in development and Google has flooded schools with Chromebooks. If I was Michaelsoft, I’d want to crush the competition quickly and discreetly now before I implement my Windows subscription so people don’t have any good alternatives left



  • I started The Witcher 3 for the second time. I tried it a year ago and I kept getting absolutely wrecked by the ghost thing in thr very first crypt so I gave up but this time I killed it straight away so who knows what I was doing wrong last time! Also, probably a bit controversial but I refuse to learn how to play Gwent, I don’t have the time or patients to learn a card game inside an already massive game

    I also started and finished American Arcadia this weekend and I absolutely loved it. I’m trying to play shorter games that I wouldn’t usually play in between The Witcher 3 since its long. AA is probably one of the best games I’ve played. The story is fantastic and the gameplay is pretty basic, which suits me. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and has some fun twists at the end.

    I’ve also been playing Supraland, its a pretty fun, chill game. The areas aren’t very difficult and the upgrade system is fun. I love the funny dialogues from the NPCs and again its a fun game that doesn’t take itself seriously and I find myself smiling while playing it


  • I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Manjaro, is in fact, Arch/Manjaro, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Arch plus Manjaro. Manjaro is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Arch system made useful by pacman, yay and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.


  • Over and over and over and over the gaming community has been screwed over by Publishers so I’ll stop grave dancing when Corpos stop being so horrible

    • Requiring a third party account to play a game months after it was released and after selling it to customers who can’t legitimately make an account because you don’t feel like their country can make you enough profit. Helldivers 2

    • Attempting to take away peoples digital “purchases” of media because you can’t be bothered to pay licencing. Sony

    • Changing the definition of “purchase” an established word in English and not defining your new definition until page 22 of a EULA that you know nobody is going to read. Sony, and everyone else

    • Shutting down a server and rendering a game with a whole single player aspect completely useless and not telling consumers this at the time of purchase. The Crew (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)

    • Selling a terribly incomplete game filled with glitches for the price of a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 and so many others.

    • Selling Pre-Purchases to let people play the game early but really its just another way to get people to pay to be Guinea pigs in your buggy game. That new Star Wars game and so many others.

    • Adding so many stupid “micro transactions” to games to milk players as much as possible for useless skins and camos etc. Diablo 4 and so many more.

    • Adding a “Season Pass”??? I don’t even understand what this is??? Buy a full priced game and then buy a subscription to that game??? But still not have access to all of the content and then be shown a magic glove that costs €500, why is this not part of the subscription or is it??? I hope it is. New COD and probably others

    • “Making” a game and selling it to people but really its just a scam where they got “volunteers” to work on the game for free. Then shutting the game down instantly. That zombie game with Will Smith.

    • Something, something Overwatch 2 is a totally brand new game.

    • Shutting down third party mods for an unsupported and dangerous game just after the sale for that game is over. Fine, they didn’t own all of the assets used but they did fix the issue where people could infect your system with malware. COD

    • Increasing the prices of all of your subscriptions and making those subscriptions worse by offering less while your parent company is posting ~$20 Billion profits in the most recent quarter, yes quarter, thats like 3 months…

    Btw all of these examples have happened within the last 4 years. Its pretty sad that I can list these off the top of my head. I only play single player games and I only got back into gaming a couple of years ago after ~10 years of not really playing anything





  • I’ve run into issues where a game will work with a specific version of wine but then not work with a newer version but then other games that don’t work with the older version, work with the new one.

    Theres also potentially issues of dependencies for one game breaking another game. Separate prefixes just make it easier to troubleshoot a game not working since you can just install/uninstall whatever dependencies that it might need without worrying about messing up other games.

    Its also just easier to delete the entire prefix when you realise you’ve installed too many useless dlls and you’ve finally found the one thing you do need to make the game work lol

    I also like to archive games I like since companies can just decide to remove their games from existence whenever they want. So I just add the separate prefix that has any extra dlls or tweaks to the archive so that the game should still work in 3 years without having to try and download dependencies that may not be as easy to find in the future

    But if you don’t have issues I don’t think its a big deal and if you do have issues with a game, you can just make a separate one for that anyway.