axby

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Minecraft is dropping VR support next year in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I’ve never been into tablets, are Surfaces as easy to install Linux on as a PC? Is there any bootloader unlocking or anything like on a phone, or is it more like secure boot on a PC?

I had installed Linux on an old Chromebook and it would always offer to wipe the hard drive on every boot, so now I’ve assumed that some hardware isn’t as Linux friendly as others. I think a lot has changed since I got my desktop and the last laptop that I installed Linux on.

And are the Linux touch screen interfaces any good? I tried a Fairphone that was running something Linux and the touch interface was lacking. (It was a great tiny laptop for using a terminal though).

And last random thought… I loved the 10” netbook form factor back in 2009 or so. I think tablets are a similar size, but the weight is in the “monitor” part, I preferred the bottom heavy laptop form factor. Are the Surfaces okay for that, or top heavy enough that they can fall over and can’t have the angle adjusted finely like a laptop?

What's the most futuristic piece of tech you can buy for under $100? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I bought a 512 GB SanDisk one for $65 USD a few years ago. I don’t like Samsung software bloatware on their phones, but having 512 GB of storage for $65 feels pretty futuristic to me. I can’t believe more phone manufacturers don’t offer external SD card support… you’d think more consumers would demand it, given that the alternative is to pay a lot more, every time you get a new phone.

I’m basically able to keep like every photo I’ve taken for the last 10 years or so (though not at original resolution).

What's the most futuristic piece of tech you can buy for under $100? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I was thinking this too, but consider some improvements:

  • wireless printing seems to “just work” now. Besides having to painfully enter my wifi password with up and down arrows on my printer, it seems like my windows and Mac laptops are able to print to it wirelessly without any initial setup. (I use Linux on my desktop but haven’t tried printing from it yet). I think it even works from phones.
  • cables: I don’t remember what type of cable printers used, but I remember the big keyboard cable, then the smaller purple and green PS/2 ones (I think keyboard and mouse were different?)… I vaguely remember multiple different peripheral cables, like FireWire? Giant parallel ports for things like scanners?

I hate that most printers don’t come with the USB (B?) cable that seemingly only printers need now, but I’m glad that it’s standard and that everything supports <strikethrough>USB-A</strikethrough> I mean USB-C (except my PC) now. Such a utopia.

What dessert or junkfood do you always keep in stock at home? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I find that stove top popcorn is even less convenient (so less tempting to eat all the time), but much cheaper, and maybe tastier in some ways.

Get a ~500 g (1 lb or so?) bag of whole kernels for $3-ish, some oil that you use for cooking other stuff anyway, and salt. Heat the oil on the stove with a few kernels, then when those pop, briefly remove from heat and add more. Make sure the pot has a lid. Keep shaking it side to side to keep the popcorn from burning.

I find it adds just enough oil to taste good, but not so much that I’m eating something super awful for me. (And it’s much tastier than air popped). And I assume you could still add melted butter if you want an extra treat.

I want to get one of those movie theatre style things where the popcorn can fly out of the pot.

Mastodon's latest update introduces an improved notification system, new safety and discovery tools, and a refreshed look, among other improvements in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

My problem may be related: how do you find people to follow? I wish I could just follow communities like on Lemmy. I’ve tried following hastags I’m interested in, but it seems like they aren’t always used.

I’ve instead searched for topics that I’m interested in, followed a bunch of people, then unfollowed the ones that post too much stuff I’m not interested in. But this seems like a pain.

I also don’t necessarily want to see everything that a single person posts.

4
Bank of Canada cuts key interest rate to 4.75% (www.cbc.ca)
 

The Bank of Canada has lowered its key interest rate to 4.75 per cent, marking the bank's first rate cut since March 2020.

Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Cool, thanks! This is what I was looking for. I've briefly tried playing with Nextcloud before, but this seems like another good option.

Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

This is what I do for my own notes now, but could it work for students writing essays and that sort of thing? I suppose there must be some markdown to HTML/PDF/etc converters (also probably ODT or DOCX or whatever).

Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.

But I don't see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don't even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).

I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think "Nextcloud" is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don't have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven't used it much, and on iOS it doesn't seem to be able to run in the background.

edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?

Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (11 children)

What do you recommend? I love LibreOffice on Windows and Linux, and it still works well on macOS but the GUI seems weird on it, the buttons are really large. I still use it but my partner is put off by it.

Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

I already basically get that half the time I boot into windows after an update. They say “let’s finish setting up your PC” and try to get you to pay for one drive, office, even game pass.

I’m so glad gaming on Linux has gotten to such a good state. I barely ever boot into windows now. (The “ad” on boot up is probably only once every few months, but that’s about as often as I boot into windows).

No International Backlash Over Canada's Cannabis Legalization, Says Trudeau in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t think it’s only you. I remember him saying (and even tweeting) that 2015 will be the last FPTP election if the liberals were elected. I was younger at the time but I remember a lot of people reluctantly voted for him instead of the NDP just to finally end FPTP and be able to choose the NDP as their first choice in the next election (but still choose the liberals as their second choice, to keep the conservatives out). Further reading for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting

Then they won, claimed that they couldn’t find an alternative that everyone liked, and apparently that was it.

My understanding is that many people would have been happy with “anything” besides FPTP, but weren’t able to agree on their first choice? …surely it’s not that ironic? Or maybe there’s more to it than that?

Anyway overall the liberals may have still been the best choice… but this wasn’t some minor promise that he made. I think this is what was most important to a lot of people. Err.. I think? No one seems to talk about it now.

edit1: added link to tweet

edit2: This article seems to summarize the timeline: https://globalnews.ca/news/3102270/justin-trudeau-liberals-electoral-reform-changing-promises/

edit3: this seems more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Canada#2015_federal_election

AlexGames: simple Lua games in a browser with multiplayer support, self hosting friendly. in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Thanks for posting this (I'm the original author). It's not clear to me where to share my projects like this, many places on the internet don't seem to welcome any form of self promotion, even if it is open source / ad free / etc.

My original post was directed towards the self hosting community, but it should still be completely useable with the github pages version (linked in the post). And stay tuned for an Android app (and maybe iOS some day), most games are great offline. I'd love to add multiplayer over bluetooth, the main time I play games like this on my phone is when I'm on a flight or when physically with someone else.

I'd love to hear feedback, especially constructive criticism! There are some other features and new games that I'd like to add, but I'd love to hear what people actually want, instead of just what I enjoy working on.

61
AlexGames: simple Lua games in a browser with multiplayer support, self hosting friendly. (lemmy.ca)
 

TL;DR: try my Lua web games here, see github for self-hosting instructions: https://alexbarry.github.io/AlexGames

Hi all, here's a hobby project I've been working on: I wrote a bunch of simple Lua games, compiled the Lua interpreter to web assembly, and defined a simple API to draw on a canvas and handle input. It all builds to static HTML/JS/WASM, except a few hundred lines of python for a websocket server for multiplayer. I recently added some dockerfiles so I think it should be easy to self host.

Here is the web version on github pages: https://alexbarry.github.io/AlexGames/ , and the source on github (self-hosting instructions in the README).

I'll list some of the games:

  • local/network multiplayer: chess, go, checkers, backgammon, gomoku
  • single player or network multiplayer: minesweeper
  • single player only: solitaire, "word mastermind"[1], "endless runner", "fluid mix", "spider swing", "thrust"

[1]: it may not technically be multiplayer, but my partner and I enjoy picking our own hidden word and sharing the puzzle state as a URL or just passing a phone to each other.

Part of my motivation is to avoid ads on mobile games, and to be able to play different multiplayer web games with friends without having to get them to make an account and all that (just share the generated URL, it contains a multiplayer session ID). I also like the idea of having my own private web games server, and not having to be reliant on some service that might eventually get enshittified.

I figure that if I can throw together a similar game in a few hundred lines of Lua, then no one should have to deal with full screen ads or pay ~$10 to play them. Especially since most mobile games that I like are simple and I only play them for a few minutes at a time, maybe only a few times per week.

Self hosting isn't necessary to try it out, but without SSL it should just be a simple one-line command to host the HTTP and websocket server with docker compose. For SSL support it is a few more steps, I added steps to the README: one command to build the static HTML (so you can copy it to your web hosting server, which should already take care of SSL), and another to host the websocket server, which can have your SSL certs passed as parameters. But you don't strictly need the websocket server, it should just fail to connect after a few seconds and then you can play the games without network multiplayer. You can even use my websocket server and your own static HTML, just add &ws_server=wss://alexbarry.net:55433 as a URL parameter to your own URL. I haven't self hosted much on my public server, so I'd love to hear feedback on how to better handle SSL certs. Ideally you could just choose to not use SSL for your websocket server, but firefox at least prevents you from connecting to a websocket server without SSL if you're using SSL to visit the page itself on the same server. (On a local network without SSL it's fine, though)

Some features that I'm proud of:

  • the network multiplayer works pretty well, I'm pleased with websockets (previously I was hoping to get WebRTC working but I didn't have much luck). On the wxWidgets and Android prototypes I had a normal socket server working too, but I've focused on the web version since it's good enough
  • an English dictionary for word puzzle games. (aside: loading ~220k English words as javascript strings and a javascript array took like 12 MB of browser memory or more, but I got it down to ~6 MB by moving the dictionary to C managed memory)
  • state sharing via URL: for most games I serialize the state and then you can export it as a base 64 string in a URL. This is useful to keep playing on a different device, send a puzzle that you liked to a friend, or for "word mastermind", to choose your own word and get your friend to guess it.
  • built in autosave, undo/redo, and browsing previous saved states. I used the same code to render state previews that I wrote to render the games for normal play, so all a game has to do is implement state serialization, implement a few APIs to get that state, and call "save_state" whenever the player makes a useful move. Then games can simply call a few lines to add an "undo" and "redo" button, and those can call a one line function to fetch the previous or next state. (I'd like to add a full history tree at some point, but for now if you undo many times and make a new move, you lose the moves that you un-did ("undo-ed"?))
  • playing arbitrary games as zips of Lua files. While the self hosting community might not need this much (since they can just add their own games to the source and rebuild), I figured many people might be interested in writing a game without having to build and host my project. So I added support for unzipping bundles of Lua source files and storing them in the built in emscripten filesystem in the browser. I added an example game and an API reference, see the "Options" menu and the "Upload Game Bundle" section.

Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear feedback, or get new game contributions or bug fixes / features.

72
Anyone else remember Tyrian? Any other recommendations for classic games with a decent mobile port? (upload.wikimedia.org)
 

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_%28video_game%29

TL;DR: fun back in the late 90's, there's a decent mobile port available on Android. I'd love to hear more recommendations for classic games available on mobile.

I played the shareware version of this when I was young a lot. I loved the starting weapon (pulse cannon?), and then loved the laser and a few others... but hated a ton of them (multi cannon? vulcan canon? Those bomb things with trailing clouds? They all seemed so weak and hard to use effectively, even at the highest levels. It almost felt like they only existed to be avoided in arcade mode, where you changed weapons by touching things that appeared after killing enemies or destroying things).

You could also upgrade your shields, generator, ship, side weapons... I remember different side weapons had wildly different strengths. Some were short burst and a ton of damage (plasma storm! My favourite), others would fire continuously and do a little bit of damage.

I liked the arcade mode too, and I vaguely remember trying the two player mode with friends who had a joystick (one on the keyboard, the other on a joystick), or awkwardly trying to share the keyboard (probably one with WASD, the other with arrow keys, but I can't remember). We might have tried the mouse, but I feel like the keyboard was more effective.

There was even some tanks/aircraft mini game, like Worms Armageddon? I think you had to unlock it, possibly with cheat codes. And as I was writing this I remembered some other special ship (or game type, I forget) where you had to perform gestures to do special attacks? Like tapping move in a direction and pressing shoot would also shoot a bolt of lightning, in addition to your normal weapon? And there were other key combinations to do more powerful attacks.

A few years ago I played through a lot of it (even the non shareware episodes! Childhood goal unlocked) on my Android phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.opentyrian ... I'd share an F-droid link but I'm surprised not to find one. I thought it was all open source now.

I found a bit of other discussion on it in a thread about dos games: https://lemmy.world/comment/248050 (side note: what is the best way to share a comment in a way that works well no matter what your home server is?)

I didn't grow up playing it, but I had heard good things about the "Ur-Quan Masters", a remake of Star Control II (wikipedia link). I still have the app downloaded to my Android phone, but it seems like it was taken down, the link doesn't work unless you're logged in to a google account that already has it downloaded: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sourceforge.sc2 . I found a github link and some other sites that reupload APKs, but I can't vouch for any of them.

Anyway, does anyone else have any recommendations for fun classic games with a decent mobile port? I love to stock up on games like this before a long flight. I'm also interested in iPhone recommendations, I haven't found as many in the Apple app store.

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