Got it, thanks!

Do you put a lid on it or just walk away?

That sounds like a perfect lazy meal for me, thanks for the tips.

It sometimes takes an eternity or two to decrypt my messages, making me really want to agree here.

I made it through the Steam Autumn Sale without purchasing a single title this year, thinking wow, way to go me, nice job exercising restraint and saving some money.

Looks like that’ll be going to Amanita whenever this releases!

Yeah, they might be thinking of Samorost. Which, to be fair, has a similar style, but it’s very different visually if that makes sense.

Steam Deck here:

• No Man’s Sky. The new update is great, and the expedition is just moving. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since the game release. So much has happened since, and now I can enjoy the universe, in the palms of my hands. I’ve tried playing at the lower settings at 30 FPS for better battery life and less noise, and it’s actually pretty decent and more relaxing that way.
• ARC Raiders. Again, 30 FPS. 40 FPS is definitely doable here, but I think the visual fidelity can degrade so far this way that it can be too difficult to roam the more open areas and properly respond to threats: you may simply not see them because of the lower resolution you’ll have to run it at to keep that 40 FPS stable. And the new update is amazing, too.
• THE FINALS. I will probably wait until 2026-10-20 with this one, when Season 12 arrives. Used to play it with gyro, but the AI that Embark Studios has been using to look for cheating behavior signals has been issuing bans to such players. so I’d rather cut down on competitiveness and not risk an account suspension for months (if that).
• Allumeria. Great mix of Terraria and Minecraft, one I’d been waiting for for years. Can’t stop building!
• Ballionaire. Like Balatro, but with pachinko machines and different boards that add their quirks. Really fun in its style, too!
• Pumpkin Jack. It is Spooktober after all! Started it last year, planning to beat it now if I don’t get carried away by No Man’s Sky and "ARC Raiders* and THE FINALS again (so probably not beating it this year either).
• DERELIKT demo. The game’s supposed to be out this year, but I just want to experience them retro System Shock + Doom 3 vibes already, 'tis the season. I really enjoy the visual identity of Hypestrange games.

What’s your model? I got an older LCD one. I can kind of get it to run 40 FPS pretty much all the time, but it gets noisy and hot that way, which I really don’t like and try to avoid, especially in something like ARC Raiders, because it’s a type of game I go in for a couple of hours, maybe “wired” to the socket.

I’ve tried playing the Frozen Trail update at 30 FPS yesterday with these settings:

• In-game:
  • Resolution: Borderless fullscreen at 1280x800, but 50% render scale (so 640x400)
  • No AA at all
  • All graphics to Low
• SteamOS:
  • 30 FPS, 60 Hz
  • Allow screen tearing: On - to hopefully get less input, which is especially important on FPS this low
  • Half-rate shading: Off
  • TDP: 12 (at most)
  • Manual GPU clock: 700 MHz - to stop the hiccups when it either spikes or drops down

Surprisingly playable. Although I am mostly used to playing shooters with gyro on the Steam Deck and have difficulty using it as a standard controller in such games. Playing gyro in an Embark game is not an option right now, as they’ve been increasingly more reliant on AI for behavioural analysis, which has issued many bans to THE FINALS players that were only admitted and reversed somewhat recently, with some of them being issues again weeks after - ARC Raiders has recently introduced the same system, so I’m taking my chances. What I especially like about these settings is that the device runs much quieter and cooler, which gives me a little peace of mind, helping me think I won’t have to replace it or at least do some costly maintenance that soon.

The new controller scheme they have is also messing with my muscle memory in the most important of moments. lol

But I really hope that practice can make perfect here as well. I’ve gotten somewhat okay at this game with a wired 8BitDo Ultimate (the XBOX layout one), but I guess I just hold my Steam Deck differently. Maybe it’s time to make better use of the back pedals.

As for the end-game content, yeah, I feel you. Gonna be even more difficult now. I’m not spoiling this to you if you want to read the patch notes yourself.

Glad to see another traveller!

The real dangers of the AI industry lie far way from their toy tech actually taking any meaningful steps towards some automated termination of the human race. They won’t take over critical infrastructure or manufacturing to start either sabotaging or reproducing murderbots.

If it is to bring the end, it’s in the form of senile politicians and gullible military management trusting the toy tech they know nothing about with important decisions, as well as the economic instability (to put it lightly) on top of all the other problems its use is causing.

I’m not saying you or anyone shouldn’t fearmonger here, but I am saying to mention different reasons and outcomes.

At a point in time when so many are tired of big mergers like these, when big merges like these have led to completely shit results even from the investor-beloved muh metrics, these people not only proceed with the big merger, but hire a man you probably just don’t want from the metrics perspective alone. They surely don’t care about the ethics and morality, but isn’t a person like Kotick that’s so bad for PR is bad for the public image (although already a poor one), leading to less money, so the line doesn’t up and that’s bad?

Not in the current climate I guess.

This is such a weird merger getting weirder still.

These are all solid assumptions and I thank you for providing the data to try and manage expectations here.

However, I do think you’re making the case for the current state of things as opposed to what AMD is apparently trying to achieve by supporting older hardware with FSR 4.

That said, it’s probably going to be somewhere in the middle, with RDNA 4 (which Steam Deck APU is not) getting the full potential that FSR 4 can provide, and RDNA 2 (which Steam Deck APU is) seeing at least some of it. I wonder if the latter is going to be of any benefit compared to what Steam Deck users have now, especially in terms of the power draw, like you mentioned.

They only do what the data set statistically tells them to. “Hacking” or collaborating on stuff was literally the requirement, not some emergent behaviour that these magical creatures that were born of large corporation leaders’ benevolence. They cannot and do not “choose” to break the rules, because they cannot and do not think or make decisions or truly analyze anything. Trying to find any redeeming qualities in these things only brings harm, because for the general user, or even the power user, AI cannot do anything that justifies the psychosis it causes or the cost on our societies right now or later through the economic, social, political or environmental instability it is causing and going to cause.

It’s “Human language is human-level intelligence and conciousness”, which is a rather natural assumption, although a very wrong one, that’s also being carefully exploited because of and for something that has seen market success.

And beyond that, there’s enough people both thinking “AIs” are downright persons and scared shitless because smart people up top said “AIs” will destroy humanity.

It’s all dumb and comes from severe misunderstanding of the technology.

Batshit crazy to me. People fleeing war and crises get less sympathy than LLMs. Sure is an interesting period in history to be going through.

Oh right!

I actually use it all the time in Starminer: have it bound on left trackpad touch, and the trackpad itself be a whole screen mouse region. I guess a game like Dishonored 2 just doesn’t lend itself to the lense every now and then, so I didn’t even think about it.

I also have the left trackpad dedicated to movement in Dishonored 2, but now that I think of it, maybe layers or chords will do the trick.

Thanks for the reminder! Maybe I’ll actually do my second playthrough on the Steam Deck!

I couldn’t get far in Dishonored 2 on my Steam deck: text was too small and jagged, both in menus and in-game trivia, like books, letters, etc. Otherwise a great title, yeah, with much smoother combat than the first game - not that the first game’s combat is bad, though!

On the Steam Deck? I had actually expected much worse from an UE5 title.

That said, we ain’t bringing down no Rocketeers or Vaporizers on them Decks.

Seeing more governments salivating over chat control and banning VPNs, some even actively implementing these, I really dont’t think we’re seeing OPSEC being taught in schools or colleges.

They used to tell us to be careful around the Internet, don’t use real names or give addresses or phone numbers or share any of our personal information online, to be cautios, to beware… now it’s all about “You dont’t have to worry if you don’t have anything to hide” and giving away all of your data voluntarily or being denied service until you do (or at least getting worse or more expensive service) and age verification.

Isn’t ironic how the person trying to start this debate confuses “phenomena” and “phenomenon”?

I personally believe there’s also publicity reasons here: fearmongering has been working so well for so many, so something as ghoulish as AI companies are sure to use it as well.