Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

As Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids gears up for release next week, its devs , sort of, delay its 1.0 release date - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-06T19:05:59.000Z

A new trailer for the next Path of Exile 2 update, The Last of the Druids, was shared earlier this week, showing off all the cool things you can do in it! Which are mostly relegated to turning into animals, but in my eyes that is eternally a cool thing to be able to do, in a game or not. And with that trailer also came a release date for the update.

In true roguelike fashion, Slay the Spire 2 is only being made because of a 50/50 coin flip - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-06T18:22:08.000Z

Imagine a second, alternate version of our world. Everything is the same, on the surface. The sky is blue, the economy is in shambles; it's the unnatural order of things. And yet, you cannot help but feel something is different. Like there's something missing, or perhaps replaced. Ah, there it is - Slay the Spire 2 is not a game that even remotely exists. As it turns out, this world, our world, where the roguelike called Slay the Spire 2 does, or rather will, exist, is only the world we exist in thanks to the flip of a coin.

Converting Markdown Text In The Clipboard To An Org File - Irreal

2025-12-06T17:43:50.000Z

As I’ve said many times before, I don’t understand why someone would prefer to use Markdown over Org mode but there are such people. At the very least you may be working with outlanders who don’t use Emacs and therefore don’t have access to Org. Regardless, sometimes it’s convenient to be able to convert some Markdown text to Org mode.

Charles Choi has us covered. In this nice post he provides a bit of Elisp that will take Mardown from the clipboard, convert it to Org mode, and insert it in the current Org file. As you probably expect, he uses Pandoc to do the heavy lifting. That means you have to have Pandoc installed, of course. Choi also mentions that you’ll need to have the system clipboard and kill-ring integrated but I think that’s been standard for a long time. I don’t do anything special on macOS although I do have save-interprogram-paste-before-kill set to t.

If you sometimes find that you need to convert Markdown to Org mode, Choi’s code is a good way of doing so. The code itself is easy to understand and modify if you need to. As Choi says, you can invoke the function in several ways such was a context menu, a Hydra or Transient menu, a keybinding, or simply by calling it with Meta+x. Unless you find yourself using it all the time, you’ll probably find Metax and command completion more than adequate.

Romeo is a Dead Man sets its outlandish sights on a February 2026 release date - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-06T17:10:09.000Z

I can see it now… in the near future, the review embargo for Suda51's next game Romeo is a Dead Man, and as far as the eye can see the digital realm is scorched with 7/10s. Its maximalist shenanigans, techno-blasting soundtrack, and ridiculous premise puts it in a position where it couldn't possibly be for everyone, even if such a score is actually ideal for such a game, but when has that ever been the case for a Suda51 game? However, as I said, this vision I have is in the near future, because the hyper-violent action game now has a release date.

I helped a parasitic worm eat my neighbour's eyeball in 2025's weirdest horror RPG, and I'd do it again - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-06T11:59:00.000Z

Part turn-based RPG, part-survival horror, with a sprinkling of metroidvania goodness, Look Outside was always going to be my jam. But where it sank its grotty little hooks into me was how gleefully punishing it was. My first playthrough quickly became a cacophony of mistakes, but each one moulded my adventure in ways I never expected.

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

2025-12-06T08:00:00.000Z

Waking up at the crack of dawn today, I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices did not have a comments thread in which to badger us to play Troubleshooter Colon Abandoned Children. I burst from the covers, ran weeping to my PC (this happens most mornings, to be fair) and discovered that I had forgotten to finish the intro for our latest What Are We All Playing This Weekend article. And now I have. So, what are you all playing this weekend?

Managing Light/Dark Scheme in MacOS and Linux - Take on Rules

2025-12-06T02:04:34.000Z

Related Links :: Tags: < emacs < programming < technologies

Summary: A code walk through of toggling dark/light scheme in Emacs.

On my personal machine I’m using Debian 📖 with the Gnome 📖 desktop. And my work machine runs MacOS. I have written an Emacs 📖 function (M-x jf/dark) that toggles between light and dark for either my personal machine or work machine. You can find the code up on Github.

First we have the general function (and associated alias for ease of typing):

(defun jf/color-scheme-system-toggle ()
  "Toggle system-wide Dark or Light setting."
  (interactive)
  (funcall
    (intern
      (format "jf/color-scheme-system-toggle:%s" system-type))))

(defalias 'jf/dark 'jf/color-scheme-system-toggle)

I’m opting to use a dispatch pattern, in which I dynamically construct the function name(s) to call based on the system-type variable. A disadvantage of this approach is that I’m defining functions for an Operating System (OS 📖) that is not relevant to the machine.

It would be simple to refactor, but for reasons of the example, I’ll keep them separate.

For themes I have the following:

(defvar jf/themes-plist
  '(:dark ef-owl :light ef-elea-light))

And I use the following command to set the theme based on the color scheme:

(defun jf/color-scheme:emacs (&optional given-scheme)
  "Function to load named theme."
  (let ((scheme
         (or given-scheme
             (funcall
              (intern
               (format "jf/color-scheme-func:%s" system-type))))))
    (modus-themes-select (plist-get jf/themes-plist scheme))))

For MacOS

I have the following:

(defun jf/color-scheme-system-toggle:darwin ()
  "Toggle the darwin system scheme."1’
  (shell-command
   (concat "osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\" "
           "to tell appearance preferences "
           "to set dark mode to not dark mode'"))
  (jf/color-scheme-set-for-emacs))

To determine the MacOS color scheme:

(defun jf/color-scheme-func:darwin ()
  "Determine MacOS preferred/current theme."
  (if (equal "Dark"
             (substring
              (shell-command-to-string
               "defaults read -g AppleInterfaceStyle") 0 4))
      :dark :light))

For GNU/Linux with Gnome

The command for Linux and Gnome is as follows:

(defun jf/color-scheme-system-toggle:gnu/linux ()
  "Toggle the gnu/linux system scheme."
  (let* ((target_scheme
          (plist-get '(:dark :light :light :dark)
                     (jf/color-scheme-func:gnu/linux))))
    ;; Instead of all of the shelling out, we could assemble the shell
    ;; commands into a singular command and issue that.
    (dolist (setting jf/color-scheme-commands:gnu/linux)
      ;; In essence pipe the output to /dev/null
      (shell-command-to-string
       (format (plist-get setting :template)
               (plist-get setting target_scheme))))
    (jf/color-scheme:emacs target_scheme)))

The list of settings to change are as follows:

(defvar jf/color-scheme-system-toggle/gnome-settings
  '((:template "gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-enabled %s"
               :light "false" :dark "true")
    (:template "gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme %s"
               :light "default" :dark "prefer-dark")
    (:template "gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme %s"
               :light "default" :dark "prefer-dark"))
  "A list of plists with three parts:

- :template :: command to run.
- :dark :: what the setting should be to be in \"dark\" mode.
- :light :: what the setting should be to be in \"light\" mode.")

To determine the current color scheme in Gnome:

(defun jf/color-scheme-func:gnu/linux ()
  "Determine Gnome preferred/current theme."
  (if (equal
        "'prefer-dark'"
        (s-trim
          (shell-command-to-string
            "gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme")))
    :dark :light))

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Netflix to buy Warner Bros for $82.7 billion, including the creators of Batman Arkham and Mortal Kombat - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T19:32:13.000Z

It’s after 5pm on a Friday, but no force on this Earth can stop me hurrying back to my desk to report on a large financial transaction. Also, we should have written this up earlier, but we were busy deciding which are the objectively correct 100 best PC games.

I’m not… sure we put any Warner Bros games in that list. I’ve just done a CTRL-F for “Batman” and got zero results. I know, WTF - Arkham Asylum is amazing. Mark needs to stop driving things and think about capes for a change. I’m sure Warner Bros aren’t too bothered about this gross oversight right now, though. Netflix have just revealed plans to buy their entertainment business for $82.7 billion in stock and cash.

Breaking Horses: the thrill of going off-map - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T18:24:59.000Z

Significant story spoilers for Horses follow. Also, here is some possibly appropriate music.

Why We’re Paywalling Our Family Christmas Card - McSweeney’s

2025-12-05T18:00:00.000Z

Season’s Greetings from the Mortons!

We know many of you look forward to opening your mailbox each December to receive the Morton annual Christmas card and extensive family newsletter. It brings us no good tidings to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to paywall it.

As the years have gone by, the letter has grown in scope. When we sent the first Christmas newsletter, we were just a two-person operation in a small home in Middlebury. Now we have to cover nine busy family members across four states. And sometimes Jessica has a boyfriend. It’s a big operation, and Clare had to learn Microsoft XL or whatever it’s called.

Everybody on our list will receive the Morton Christmas Card featuring a candid photo of us down by the lake, wearing matching outfits. And while we love everyone who receives our card, those who subscribe and support our family’s essential end-of-year work will get even more of our love.

Join the Morton Friend Tier for $17.00 to receive:

Three full pages of updates on the entire Morton clan: Clare (??) and Mark (68); Rachel (39), her husband Greg, their sons Declan (6) & Branson (4); Henry (36), his husband Ian, and their daughter Streisand (1); and Jessica (31)
A recap of our disastrous trip to the world’s most boring hole (the Grand Canyon)
An update on the feud with the neighbor we hate, who parks his F-150 on our lawn
Asides like the day Clare thought she saw Beyoncé at Safeway
In-depth detail about Mark’s toe fungus

This newsletter isn’t just some free social media post. We start working as early as September. It takes days to write and weeks to edit down from its sixty-page first draft. Each Morton family member plays a valuable role in its production, from fact-checking to updating the printer firmware to making tough editorial decisions, like telling me that I “mention Pete Buttigieg should be president” a “weird amount.”

Support our hours of work and upgrade to the Morton Family Tier for $26.00 to receive:

The newsletter printed on one of the few remaining pieces of gingerbread border marble printer paper that Clare hoarded when she found it at Staples in 1995
The grand reveal of who actually writes the newsletter (hint: It’s not really the dog)
One of Clare’s annual homemade ornaments
An apology for how last year’s candlestick ornament looked like a big glittery penis
Access to the Morton Family Games app with crossword puzzles, spelling games, and more

Complimentary subscriptions will be given to families who always send us boxes of Harry & David pears and families who have good-looking sons around Jessica’s age.

From all of us Mortons, we wish you and your family a joyful, peaceful, and blessed holiday season. And don’t expect any freebies on Valentine’s Day either.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain's rejoined Obsidian full-time to work on a mystery game, but plans to keep his YouTube chats going - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T17:14:18.000Z

He's back. Tim Cain, co-creator of the original Interplay Fallouts and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines programmer has emerged from semi-retirement, returning to Obsidian to work on a game he can't talk about yet because legal documents. For the past few years, the veteran developer's been contracting on a number of games, including Obsidian's own The Outer Worlds 2, having previously co-directed the first Outer Worlds.

🥩 Red Meat Friday: Navigating Websites - Irreal

2025-12-05T17:07:28.000Z

The other day, I mentioned that I took a long, excruciating train trip. The outbound trip had been so bad that we were confident the trip home would be much better. It wasn’t, of course. Most of you, I’m sure, don’t care very much and those outside the U.S. can snicker and gloat that at least their trains can provide a pleasant experience.

There is an aspect of the whole misadventure that should concern most Irreal readers, though. The Amtrak Website. It’s horrible and turns the idea of being user hostile into an art form. Rather than dwell on the trip, I was going to crawl off into a corner and do my best to never think of it again. But then I saw this xkcd comic. As he so often does, Munroe perfectly captured the infuriating futility that one feels when dealing with websites designed by those suffering from psychopathy.

Again, I’m sure the details won’t interest most Irreal readers so I’ll spare you. Suffice to say, avoid their Website if you can.

Publisher reveals and immediately cancels new Postal game after fans accuse it of using AI generation - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T15:39:39.000Z

Postal developers Running With Scissors have revealed... and now cancelled Postal: Bullet Paradise, a spin-off shooter created by Goonswarm Studios. It seems Bullet Paradise may have featured some AI-generated material, which has prompted an evidently massive backlash among the Postal faithful in the literal two whole days since the project's announcement. Gosh.

[$] Eventual Rust in CPython - LWN.net

2025-12-05T14:33:09.000Z

Emma Smith and Kirill Podoprigora, two of Python's core developers, have opened a discussion about including Rust code in CPython, the reference implementation of the Python programming language. Initially, Rust would only be used for optional extension modules, but they would like to see Rust become a required dependency over time. The initial plan was to make Rust required by 2028, but Smith and Podoprigora indefinitely postponed that goal in response to concerns raised in the discussion.

Security updates for Friday - LWN.net

2025-12-05T14:12:53.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, firefox, gimp:2.8, go-toolset:rhel8, ipa, kea, kernel, kernel-rt, pcs, qt6-qtquick3d, qt6-qtsvg, systemd, and valkey), Debian (chromium and unbound), Fedora (alexvsbus, CuraEngine, fcgi, libcoap, python-kdcproxy, texlive-base, timg, and xpdf), Mageia (digikam, darktable, libraw, gnutls, python-django, unbound, webkit2, and xkbcomp), Oracle (bind, firefox, gimp:2.8, haproxy, ipa, java-25-openjdk, kea, kernel, libsoup3, libssh, libtiff, openssl, podman, qt6-qtsvg, squid, systemd, vim, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Slackware (httpd and libpng), SUSE (chromedriver, kernel, and python-mistralclient), and Ubuntu (cups, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-iot, and mame).

Don't assume Skyblivion is getting spellcrafting, says UI lead who claims they weren't consulted on delay video - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T13:21:57.000Z

Skyblivion, the massive modding project reinterpreting The Elder Scrolls 4 via Skyrim's engine, had its release officially delayed to 2026 earlier this week. The delay followed an ex-Skyblivion level and world designer Dee Keyes alleging that the mod's previous 2025 release goal was "unachievable" earlier this year, in a post which also accused Skyblivion project lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel and implementation lead Heavy Burns of mismanaging communication within the mod's team. In response, Heavy Burns asserted that "many" of the claims in the ex-dev's post were "either misrepresented or just untrue".

Now, in a Discord discussion emphasising that players shouldn't assume the spellcrafting mechanic the modders have had to cut from the initial release will be put back in down the line, Skyblivion's UI department lead has suggested they weren't consulted about what was said in the YouTube video announcing the mod's delay to next year. That'd be the delay announcement video which features a section specifically dedicated to the current status of Skyblivion's UI and mechanics.

Casting Notice for the Unaired CW Pilot Young Hamlet - McSweeney’s

2025-12-05T13:00:00.000Z

SYNOPSIS
High school is no picnic for anyone, but especially if you’re one of Shakespeare’s most iconic leading men. Hamlet might be the big man on campus, but that doesn’t mean he’s got it all figured out. This drama puts a much-needed spin on a classic by imagining a world where Hamlet is young and hot.

- - -

HAMLET
Sexy football player type, but not just a football player, because we need him to be smart and sensitive too. Lacrosse team, maybe? We’ll come back to this.

Required skills: Smoldering glances, ability to look deep without creating forehead wrinkles.

- - -

OPHELIA
Hamlet’s friend, who has an unrequited crush on Hamlet. It needs to be realistic that Hamlet wouldn’t want to date her, but legally, we can only cast hot people at CW, so we’re kind of in a bind. Maybe she’ll wear glasses? Also, obviously, we’re putting her on the swim team because of foreshadowing.

Required Skills: Able to look hot but in a way where every straight male viewer will be convinced he’s the first person to realize she’s hot. Think Linda Cardellini in Scooby Doo. Or Linda Cardellini in everything.

- - -

HORATIO
Hamlet’s best friend and the comic relief. He’ll have a crush on Ophelia, but it’s imperative she never gives him the time of day. We’ll give him an off-putting hobby that will be repulsive to women, like reading, to solve this. It will also be implied that Horatio has a thing for Hamlet without ever explicitly saying so (but there will be plenty of textual evidence to support it).

Required Skills: Serviceable cafeteria-style cooking. We are on a budget, so we’re cutting the catering company to add this role.

- - -

GHOST OF HAMLET’S DAD
Technically not a ghost, but alive in this series since the show is set in the past, where Hamlet is a hunk, but also in modern times, so that he can go to high school. We should probably change this character’s name to ALIVE GHOST OF HAMLET’S DAD to make it less confusing. Looking to cast an older actor who appears to be on the brink of death, preferably a Timothée Chalamet type in their mid-to-late twenties.

Required Skills: Old.

- - -

GERTRUDE
Hamlet’s mom. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has recently released a statement that if Gertrude is not a total MILF, all the grips are walking off set. This is NONNEGOTIABLE.

Required Skills: Juggling (affairs).

- - -

CLAUDIUS
Ghost of Hamlet’s Dad’s best friend. Cool approachable guy, the kind that you could really settle into a tryst with. Claudius is obviously already hooking up with Gertrude, which will make the inevitable betrayal of murdering the Ghost of Hamlet’s Dad and stealing his wife that much hotter.

Required Skills: Shoulders that you can cry on and/or bounce a quarter off.

- - -

POLONIUS
Occasional third in Gertrude and Claudius’s affair. In the source material, Polonius is hiding behind Gertrude’s curtains when Hamlet confronts her about being with Claudius, so we think it tracks if we make Polonius a total freak who likes to watch. We’ll also later reveal he is a werewolf for the Season 2 omegaverse storyline, so he’ll be really hairy and wear ears sometimes.

Required Skills: [REDACTED].

- - -

LAERTES
Ophelia’s brother. He hates Hamlet, but in an enemies-to-lovers kind of way. He’ll frequently confront Hamlet in very closely blocked scenes where the two guys are screaming at each other, but it also looks like they’re about to kiss. And then one day they do. And then they both kiss Horatio. Hamlet is canonically bi now. Public domain material rules!

Required Skills: Ability to make Shakespeare scholars fight in the streets.

Don't look too closely at the best puzzle game of 2025 - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T11:59:00.000Z

Crack open Kaizen like a disposable camera, and you'll find the parts inside are very similar to a subgenre of puzzle game called Sokoban. Developed in the late 80s, these games put you in control of a worker shoving crates around a warehouse floor until they reached their designated position. These sliding puzzles in which you push objects around a space appear throughout gaming. Whenever you're shoving a great stone block in Tomb Raider, you owe a small salute to Sokoban's creator Hiroyuki Imabayashi. Though, make sure the block's not on a slope when you do it, otherwise that's a quick way to make a jar's worth of Lara paste.

Total Chaos stitches Doom to Resident Evil, and it's scarily good - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T11:57:29.000Z

I thought I had Total Chaos figured out. Creepy ruined castle, ironically named Fort Oasis. Shambling undead enemies and scuttling monsters. Resource scavenging and simple crafting mechanics. Reeks of knock-off Resident Evil territory, I thought. Not bad territory to be in, mind, but familiar. And, odd, considering I was locking eyes with hellspawn rather than shuffling corpses.

Then I got into my first fight.

Samson, a gritty driveabrawler about duffing up dudes and drifting to defeat daily debt spikes, drops in 2026 - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-12-05T10:06:20.000Z

If you're a fan of gruff blokes punching goons and putting the pedal to the metal in muscle cars, Samson looks like it'll be up your alley. It's the debut game of Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio founded by former Just Cause and Mad Max developer Christofer Sundberg, and mirrors the gritty open-world destructive mayhem both of those are known for.