Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

A Case In Point - Irreal

2026-02-21T17:02:04.000Z

The fates are still punishing me for leaving home for travel. Today I had two errands to run:

Renew a driver license
Return an unused TV set top box to my provider

The DMV is, of course, a red flag but it turned out taking 3 hours. Three hours at the DMV is /no one’s idea of a good time. After I staggered out of the DMV I went to my provider to drop off the TV set top box. That should take about 5 minutes, right? Silly you and me. That took an hour and a half.

In any event, I’m exhausted and ready for bed so today’s post is going to be ultrashort. The other day I wrote about Prot’s post on using --init-directory as an aid in debugging. Serendipitously, I ran across this post about ready-player freezing. The developer, Álvaro Ramírez, asks the user to provide information on his configuration and Emacs version.

This is a perfect example of where Prot’s advice would be useful. The user could easily build and install a temporary init.el to eliminate everything but what’s needed to produce the problem. Doing so might even allow the user to discover the problem on their own.

What are we all playing this weekend? - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-21T08:00:00.000Z

Saturday mornings are hopefully for not feeling hungover or beaten-up or assassinated. You see, it's Friday as I write these words, and I've just been invited out for drinks in the park with one Graham Smith, former RPS EIC and nowadays, co-founder of disgraceful champagne socialist operation Jank.cool, an indie joint the rabble-rousers among you are already calling "RPS when it was good". What's the matter, aren't we feeding you enough Deals posts?

Microsoft gaming head Phil Spencer is retiring, replaced by an AI exec who promises no "soulless AI slop" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T21:34:29.000Z

Ah, it's a Friday night, time to rela-

Wait a minute, long-time Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer's retiring, his assumed replacement and Xbox president Sarah Bond has resigned, and the suit now being tapped to take over Spenny's gig currently has the following job title: president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product. Right, guess I'm writing a news.

Upon Review, It Looks Like President Nyarlathotep’s Small Business Soul Harvest Is Technically Against the Rules - McSweeney’s

2026-02-20T18:00:00.000Z

“The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Trump’s economic policy on Friday, ruling that he had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner.” — New York Times

- - -

Thank you for bringing this issue to the Supreme Court’s attention. We all know how important the rule of law has been during the first solar cycle of President Nyarlathotep’s re-ascendancy. Without us, the Dread Lord would have likely found Himself unnecessarily hindered by bureaucratic red tape, jurisprudence, and antiquated notions of everyday logic. We also firmly established that the Crawling Chaos is legally allowed to gut the fabric of reality however He sees fit—but only while He continues to occupy the Presidency. It clearly says so in the Constitution. Or, at least, it did before Nyarlathotep used the document as toilet paper for one of his many festering orifices.

Regardless, as you all know, we agreed to review a complaint about the President’s international economic plan. Specifically, the plaintiff’s charge that Nyarlathotep’s Soul Harvest Doctrine is explicitly against the rules He promised to uphold. We read over the defense submitted by His legal necromancers—we would have preferred it in written form rather than sheep entrails, but we respect that they clerked with Haruspex Alito. After scrying the ovine intestines, however, we simply find the arguments lacking.

With all due respect to President Nyarlathotep (and our own bodily fluids), we do not believe the Necro-Administration’s contention that “Phantom Warlocks Only We Can See” was reason enough to initiate multiple soul harvest taxes directed at small business owners. The claim that these souls will pay for themselves because they’re technically only “temporarily” trapped in the Nightmare Dimension is spurious, at best, especially because we have yet to see a single harvested citizen awake from their “blood nap,” as the necromancers describe in their offal briefing.

Furthermore, and in the interest of transparency, we did not anticipate that the soul harvests would affect our livelihoods, per se. It was our understanding that those harvests pertained primarily to businesses that sold products like computer chips, cars, and maple syrup. In recent weeks, however, it’s become clear that it isn’t only small businesses that have been harvested—our own stock portfolios have suffered as well. And lest anyone think this is purely a selfish ruling on our part—we know plenty of Outer God sycophants who are feeling the same pain right now. Not, you know, the same pain that comes from your humanity being sucked out of your ears by an infernal soul vacuum. But you get what we’re trying to say.

In any case, this small coterie of calcified legal priests has represented the final line of defense against personal, political, and economic injustices long before the Dread Lord’s initial summoning in 2016. Sure, this legal system may seem almost as insane as the Necronomicon itself in hindsight, but what’s done is done. Except for Nyarlathotep’s Soul Harvest Doctrine, though. He needs to stop doing that right away. And if He can’t return all the harvested souls to their proper owners, then He should at least promise to do that sooner than later.

We’ll leave that at His discretion, of course. Remember, He’s immune to prosecution or occult banishment rituals so long as He remains President. This is precisely what the Founding Fathers envisioned.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 gaming headset review: good listener, bad talker - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T17:35:12.000Z

So much of what the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 does, it does right. Its build quality is outstanding, having a thickness and solidity that most wireless headsets lack. Its stretchy headband, as on pretty much all SteelSeries headsets, successfully tricked my entire skull into thinking it was lighter than it is. It’s flexible, working over Bluetooth or a 2.4GHz dongle, the latter’s USB-C connection also making it a plusher Steam Deck alternative to the Arctis GameBuds. And it sounds, both in games and music, fabulous: audio is powerful but detailed, like you could peel apart the stacked-up layers of a song mix or shooter soundscape into its individual tracks.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3X Wireless gaming headset review: sweet sounds for PC and handhelds - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T17:35:09.000Z

My initial interest in the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3X Wireless was sparked by it being, essentially, an over-ear version of the Arctis GameBuds, with a near-identical USB-C 2.4GHz receiver that lets it pull double duty with both a main PC and Steam Deck (slash, handheld PC of your choice). Happily, it’s turned out to be a very fine headset in general, performing a convincing impression of a higher-end model despite its current tag falling towards the lower-middle of wirelessdom.

US Supreme Court strike down majority of Trump's tariffs, so hopefully that's one less hardware buying headache to worry about - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T17:02:29.000Z

For once, I bring what should hopefully be good news for folks looking to buy or upgrade their PC hardware without having to factor in a bunch of inconveniences they can do nothing about. The RAM crisis is still in full swing, but the US Supreme Court have struck down the majority of President Trump's tariffs on imports. These tariffs have been another of the key annoyances complicating the state of play when it comes to hardware companies being able to sell you the bits you need at prices which haven't been driven far above where they should typically be.

XCOM designer Jake Solomon reveals "Life Sims + The Truman Show" game... while announcing his studio's closure - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T16:48:13.000Z

Midsummer Studios announced their existence in May 2024 with a promise to “revitalise the life sim genre”, but now, they’re closing down. Co-founder and former XCOM developer Jake Solomon confirmed the news on social media this week, saying goodbye with some brief pre-alpha footage of Burbank - a build-your-own-TV-series project with a lot of generative AI in it.

“We built a studio, we made a game, and I'm really proud of both,” Solomon writes. “Before we close the doors at Midsummer Studios I'd like to share a glimpse of Burbank, the game we poured our hearts into.”

Turn recipes into huge cooking production lines in the new Snacktorio demo - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-02-20T15:39:22.000Z

Snacktorio is a factory-cooking automation game from the developer of APICO and Mudborne, and looks to be another great indie game to try out.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

I can't say I enjoy this 19th century turd-collecting game but it did make me laugh when I patted my horse to death - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T15:27:53.000Z

Nightsoil is a sombre little top-down narrative adventure about a gong farmer – that is, a collector of human waste – in 1854 London, at the height of the cholera epidemic. Gong farmers were, I understand, required to work after sunset, to avoid causing revulsion among the decent folk. In this case, you’re a gong farmer at the end his tenure, working his final shift alongside his trusty carthorse Ol’ Boy, while reminiscing about his bygone youth and the happier days that might have been.

Disaster At The Bunker - Irreal

2026-02-20T15:26:02.000Z

I returned home Wednesday night to discover that the minions, far from guarding the bunker, had been enjoying a nonstop Bacchanalia and that the bunker had been without Internet connectivity for a couple of days. I should have known something was up when I received a notice that my Apple hub had gone offline and I couldn’t see that status of any of my Smart home devices.

I got home exhausted to find that everything was off line, even the TV. The WiFi router showed that it didn’t have access to the Internet although the local WiFi was fine. I called our provider and they couldn’t see the modem either. After the usual power off for 30 seconds dance a couple of times they decided they needed to send out a tech.

The next day the tech came out and said he’d check the cable. He did his thing for about half an hour and the Internet came back. He never came in the ~~house~~ bunker and left without telling me what the problem had been.

Fortunately, he was done by about noon and I was able to push Thursday’s post just as if nothing had happened. The whole thing made we realize how dependent some of us are on the Internet. All of us at the bunker felt completely at sea without the Internet. That’s true even though we still had access via broadband on our iPhones and iPads. I realized that we had, in fact, become cyborgs. We become disoriented when we get disconnected. It’s a trope so familiar it’s almost a cliche, yet it seems to be the truth. Greetings my fellow mechanized humans!

The Wolf Among Us, The Last Express and more join the GOG Preservation Program - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-02-20T15:03:49.000Z

The GOG Preservation Program expands again to include more classic games that will be kept alive with patches from the GOG team like The Wolf Among Us.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Fogpiercer is a tactical game that recognises the true joy of artillery is using it to give your enemies a little shove - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T15:00:00.000Z

The thing you need to understand about Fogpiercer is that this deckbuilding roguelike, in which you control a train battling Mad Max-style road bandits, knows the secret joy of artillery. It is one of the few games that recognises that while it's satisfying to hit an enemy with a shell from a howitzer, it's even more satisfying to target the space next to them and use the force of the blast to give them a sideways shove into a wall.

It's a mechanic that puts Fogpiercer into the same fine company as Into The Breach.

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire looks awesome in the new boss trailer - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-02-20T14:50:29.000Z

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is arriving on March 19th and ahead of release a new trailer shows off one of the boss fights, and it really does look awesome.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Lexispell is a Balatro-styled roguelike word game with a demo worth trying - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-02-20T14:35:23.000Z

Lexispell from MrEliptik is a roguelike that has you spell out words for points with some Balatro-styled mechanics, and the new demo is worth a go.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

[$] Open-source Discord alternatives - LWN.net

2026-02-20T14:32:51.000Z

The closed-source chat platform Discord announced on February 9 that it would soon require some users to verify their ages in order to access some content — although the company quickly added that the "vast majority" of users would not have to. That reassurance has to contend with the fact that the UK and other countries are implementing increasingly strict age requirements for social media. Discord's age verification would be done with an AI age-judging model or with a government photo ID. A surprising number of open-source projects use Discord for support or project communications, and some of those projects are now looking for open-source alternatives. Mastodon, for example, has moved discussion to Zulip. There are some alternatives out there, all with their own pros and cons, that communities may want to consider if they want to switch away from Discord.

The Book of Remind - LWN.net

2026-02-20T14:26:56.000Z

Dianne Skoll, creator and maintainer of the command-line calendar and alarm program Remind, has announced the release of The Book of Remind. As the name suggests, it is a step-by-step guide to learning how to use Remind, and a useful supplement to the extensive remind(1) man page. The book is free to download.

Security updates for Friday - LWN.net

2026-02-20T14:04:20.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (grafana), Debian (gegl, inetutils, libvpx, nova, and python-django), Fedora (azure-cli, chromium, microcode_ctl, python-azure-core, python3.14, and roundcubemail), Red Hat (grafana and osbuild-composer), SUSE (apptainer, dnsdist, istioctl, libsoup, openCryptoki, python-nltk, python311, python313, rclone, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (libvpx, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, and linux-intel-iotg).

The best SSDs for the Steam Deck - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-02-20T14:03:22.000Z

Valve currently have three Steam Deck models on offer: you've got the standard 256GB LCD variant (basically no longer in production), the 512GB Steam Deck OLED, and a beasty 1TB edition of the latter. All of them are lovely handheld PCs, but whether you've got one of these or you invested earlier in a smaller model, you might still be itching for a little more capacity to make that 32-hour flight to New Zealand a lot more bearable. At this point you have two options: a microSD card, or for storage with more clout, one of the best Steam Deck SSDs.

Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth arrives April 27, will run "great" on Steam Deck - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-02-20T13:57:10.000Z

Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth is set to arrive on April 27th from he creators of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, giving us another lovely adventure.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.