Xolvix

What I'm saying is I've been reading people post stories about those popups asking people to disable their adblockers when trying to use YouTube. I haven't encountered that personally yet which means one of two things - either the YouTube changes haven't been rolled out into my area yet, or my ad-blocking extension has been updated to suitably deal with it. There are people who say uBlock Origin was able to bypass the popups, so it can be done. But it's a cat-and-mouse game being played right now.

No shit that's the whole bloody point of this thread! I mean YouTube can certainly try, but there's been a never-ending war between ad-blockers and anti-ad-blockers for as long as blockers have existed. As with most things, YouTube will probably find a solution that most people cannot bypass, but anyone determined enough will find a way. YouTube can TRY to block users with adblockers. But whether they'll succeed or not is very much uncertain.

Part of the issue, at least for me, is that I didn't even start using an ad-blocker until ads had become so ridiculous they were actually impacting the performance of my computer. I started using a blocker way, way back when I had a single-core CPU. I can even remember what it was - a Flash ad displayed on DeviantArt. The problem now is that I've become so used to a cleaned-up web experience that browsing the web in a non-blocked fashion is so incredibly shitty that if it weren't for ad-blockers, I'd barely use the Internet. I can understand YouTube wanting to block ads, I really do. But from what I've read the increase in ads on YouTube over recent years is just not going to encourage me to disable my blocker and I'm not prepared to pay for Premium since I don't use YT much anyway. Is it unethical/immoral? Well I've crossed that bridge years ago; the web is so horrible without blockers that if it's unethical/immoral to block them, then I'm happy to be judged so. What I can say is that I would use YouTube even LESS if I was forced to view ads. EDIT: For what it's worth I've never had YouTube show me that pop-up yet. I know the rollout is staggered but also that uBlock Origin filters are regularly updated to deal with it, so who knows. Maybe I did have it but the blocker dealt with it silently as with other ads.

This is now a thread about the classic Nirvana album "Nevermind".

It's true some Android phone manufacturers copy Apple even after making fun of them. Samsung are notorious for mocking Apple then copying the exact thing they mocked them for (removal of headphone jack, removing charging power brick, the notch, etc.), but they're just one manufacturer. I have a Motorola Android phone for example and baring a few annoyances it tries to stay fairly traditional with a mostly stock Android system and a headphone jack. Options exist, is what I'm saying. But then again tech companies are very, very good at building ecosystems that can be painful to move out of. Apple do it, Google does it, Microsoft does it, etc. It's why I think it's best to never fully go all-in if possible, so that you can pull the ripcord if it gets too much. As for your concerns about tech journalism, don't fret. Journalism as a whole has been shit for ages, it ain't just in the tech sphere. So many people sucking up to companies in the hopes they'll get free gear or swag or an invite to their next reveal, whatever it is (tech, entertainment, whatever). People don't like asking hard-hitting question because it puts them on a "list" - there's always plenty of sycophants, and the bills needs to be paid.

I promise I'm not trying to be "that guy", but I feel like this is one of those cases where the answer is staring you right in the face - Android. Not that Android doesn't have its own issues of course, but it does have the value of a huge variety of models and by extension an increased chance in finding one that suits your needs better. Apple likes to keep things simple by having total control over the design of its hardware and software, which is great... if your needs and wants align with theirs. I guess what I'm trying work out is if this is a rant and then back to business, or a rant and then an opportunity to try something different.

Well I finally got it and I think it'll rather swell. I've already gotten used to the higher frequency and fortunately I can throw the overdrive on the maximum without any noticeable over/undershoot. I do have a minor quandary and that is with gamma. The monitor comes with three gamma settings - the default appears to target the standard 2.2, while the other settings will set it a bit above and below this level. After a bit of experimentation I'm tempted to set it to a slightly higher gamma, because this brightens the blacks a little better which can be useful sometimes. It also makes the monitor match the gamma of my old monitor a bit closer which helps with familiarity, but I'm aware I'm deliberately messing with the colors compared to what's intended. I think I'm so used to the TN panel that on the standard gamma settings everything looks much darker now than before. I found I had to up the gamma/brightness in a lot of games manually when I didn't need to before, so I figured well if that's gonna be the case, why not just up the gamma in the monitor and save the trouble? But I don't know if I should just force myself to adapt to the 2.2 gamma instead like "normal" people. EDIT: Damnit now I'm not so sure. Night scenes look a lot better at the default gamma, but more importantly TDM looks better with the default gamma. With the brighter gamma like I tested, sure it looks more familiar to my previous monitor, but it's also a bit more washed out. Plus of course the desktop is affected by the higher gamma which also affects things like images and other content. Default gamma it is then, if games are too dark I use the in-game brightness/gamma options like most people do. Unless you're playing Starfield.

Bit late because I've already bought the display, but yeah I'm aware of those OLED monitors as well. Unfortunately I'm not willing to pay for the expense and from what I've seen, almost all display tech have some sort of drawbacks. It's all in comparison to a 2010 TN panel though - everything is better at this point.

So recently my primary monitor died. It was purchased in 2010 and used TN panel tech so it had crap viewing angles among other issues, but I liked it all the same. For a replacement I ended up buying the AOC 24G2SP, mostly due to generally good reviews on various sites as well as the recommendation of its predecessor by @chakkman in this thread. I'll be getting a hold of it soon but I already know about the benefits of IPS compared to TN - looking forward to consistent gamma levels no matter where you are looking! One of the more important aspects however is I'm going from a 60Hz display to a 165Hz display. I'm only superficially aware of the various terms used for monitors these days, but this monitor is advertised as being "adaptive sync". Apparently this means it's not a native G-Sync monitor but what's called a "G-SYNC Compatible" monitor. That and terms like variable refresh rate, it's all confusing to me. I should note I have an NVIDIA card. If nothing else, I just want to know if what I've read is correct - that within the NVIDIA control panel you enable G-SYNC, then global V-Sync ON for all games, and then within the games themselves, make sure the in-game V-sync is off (i.e. let NVIDIA take care of it all). Finally, I want to avoid ghosting as much as possible without inverse ghosting due to overdrive settings that are too high. Some people suggest running games at a lower Hz to ensure the response rate allows for this to happen rather than at the full 165Hz. But others to leave the display always at 165Hz and never tweak it otherwise G-Sync will break. I'm so confused. Sorry for the wall of text. Any advice on any of these topics would be appreciated. Thanks.

I started with OpenShot but kinda abandoned it due to issues like @thebigh mentioned. Seems like every new version has some weird bug that causes problems or is just annoying and you wonder why it's there. Sometimes I tried using nightly builds in the hopes it would fix things but it wasn't sustainable. Nowadays I'm a big fan of Shotcut. It's a more mature project and also has more regular releases. You do need to learn how to use it of course but even a dummy like me was able to edit videos with transitions and other effects.

There's a third type - people who expect this behaviour and yet still don't care. I'm probably in this group because well, it is typical Microsoft behaviour (which is unfortunately quite common among other tech companies these days), but I don't use Edge so I'm mostly unaffected. I should note that while I do primarily use Firefox, I occasionally use Edge to check on a site if I think Firefox is having issues with it or for comparison. But after doing this, I always need to remember to delete the Edge tray icon/desktop search app from loading on startup, which adds an autostart entry every time Edge is launched if not already present. It's insidious and really wants to dominate the entire OS if it can. Which is a shame because I generally like Windows as an OS because the framework is pretty damn solid - it's all this shit Microsoft lays on top that ruins the experience.

Please give us more examples in this thread. You gave one (noclip) and it wasn't even correct! Have a look at the release notes for each release. You'll see a lot of bugs are fixed in addition to new features. Sometimes these features are imperfect, sometimes there are regressions, but fixing bugs is a core part of the game's development. Here you can look at what's currently being worked on for 2.12: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/changelog_page.php?version_id=108

Can you elaborate on the issue 2.11a has with cheat codes? Last time I tried cheats (typical ones like noclip and notarget) they were working fine. Also can you elaborate on the "garbage"? I think some examples would be useful. If you're talking about the many warnings that appear in the console I agree it can look ugly, but most of the time they're benign and a consequence of the maps being old or having errors themselves. There's a careful balance one must take in preserving the playability of old missions and keeping development of future capabilities of the game going. I've encountered missions that break on updates, but for the most part they're pretty rare and the mission creators either update them if they're still active or workarounds are found. Anyway if you have some more examples of what you're talking about it might be useful.

Oh yeah, I should second this as well. A mission is not fun if it's designed to be painfully tedious in terms of dodging the visibility of the AI. I can't remember which mission it was, but the mapper must have been in a bad mood that day since too much of the interior of an important building was lit very brightly with non-dousable light sources, with few if any viable hiding areas to obverse patrol routes. I don't know what the intent was, maybe it was a challenge for elite players or something, but it wasn't fun and I resorted to my power move of the "notarget" command just to make it bearable. Forget even looking for loot in such environments.

A fun mission for me requires a few things: I prefer smaller, more densely-packed environments instead of larger city blocks. That's not to say city missions can't be fun, but they run the risk of being exhausting, confusing labyrinths. From my perspective missions with smaller environments provided an increased chance of me finding all the loot, secrets, readables and other content. I've missed major areas in city levels purely because it's so easy to skip areas without realising it. I'm not a fan of undead and spiders because they can be difficult to kill, or at least, to kill without making a whole lot of noise. I like missions with human enemies because for the most part I can deal with them quietly, and as such it provides an opportunity to clear out areas first and then look carefully for loot and/or secrets. I really enjoy missions that have some sort of mystery, either as a starting goal to resolve, or when a seemingly straight-forward mission is designed to go badly and the mystery presents itself mid-mission. Keeps me engaged. I don't like KO or kill limits. I can tolerate kill limits more but I really hate having to limit the KOs I can make in a mission. I know some missions only have these limits on the higher difficulties, but sometimes those difficulties also have higher loot and even extra objectives that I want, but I have to deal with the KO limits alongside them. The best missions either don't have limits at all, or they are optional objectives that don't cause a mission failure if breached.

Interesting. Well I hope Vivaldi is able to flourish and continue its efforts at being the best browser it can. Unfortunately it's all too common in the tech industry, once you've grown to a certain size, to become the very thing you sought to destroy. But I guess the most important thing is that we continue to have options.

Very true, but if that's the case then Vivaldi is a bit of an oddity. Despite using Chromium the browser isn't actually open source, it's more of a hybrid between open source and proprietary code. Which is fine, except that if you consider ethics important, moving away from a pure FOSS browser (Firefox) to one that's part proprietary (Vivaldi) seems like the wrong direction... unless it's a compromise with features vs licensing, which I kinda understand. In the end though it's still a browser using Chromium as its rendering engine which means that no matter what position they have publically against Google, they're still relying on Google tech for the most important part of the browser. The browser monoculture keeps marching on...

I use Firefox as my primary browser and have never seen this popup, but I'm in Australia so it's possible the ads were only visible in certain locations. Or maybe there's a setting I disabled that normally allows the ad and I got lucky. Whatever the case this is still pretty poor from Mozilla and that bit about the "Not now" option is an example of a dark pattern in UI, where they won't give you a simple "No" option because they want to keep the idea in your mind after the popup has gone. It's infested so many web sites and software (and certain operating systems) and it's a pile of shit. I get that Mozilla need to finance their operations but Firefox is supposed to hold itself to a higher standard than Google or Microsoft or the other scum who try such behaviour. That's why it's irritating when they feel the need to try such things.

4K this, 4K that. Be like me (1080p) and keep your standards low-ish and you can never be disappointed!

Bit worried about Firmament because I'm a big Myst fan, but the Steam reviews are currently "mixed" due to bugs and jank and Cyan don't seem to have worked out how to get into a groove for a while. Even their last game Obduction showed promise but didn't hit the mark compare to older Myst games. I dunno - then again there aren't many devs making these types of games anymore so maybe I should be more forgiving. On the other hand, the state of the modern gaming industry makes it really, really easy to hold onto older hardware and not worry about upgrading until it's absolutely necessary. I play a ton of older games anyway so whatever, if I upgrade at some point the game will hopefully be patched and improved by then anyway.

It occurred to me that if TDM was a commercial triple-A game, there would be a HUD waypoint you could follow that would lead directly to all the evidence needed for the Atkinson objective. It'd be so incredibly easy... but at the same time feel rather hollow. At least here if I couldn't complete the objective, it would motivate me to seek it out on a future replay - something to look forward to doing better next time. But a lot of people don't replay games (if they finish them at all) and publishers hate negative comments people give about missing out on content, but it's how the industry is I guess. Not really sure what the point of this observation is apart from perhaps noting how refreshingly old-school TDM is. It's niche, but it serves a niche that most publishers would never touch.

Nothing for anyone in particular, just some personal tests. Headset mic.

Finished the mission, great work and very interesting to play with a ton of small details that I love seeing. But a few questions:

@Frost_Salamander I can confirm the github version fixed the issue.