I use Debian. Does this mean I’m in the top 0.05% of Steam users?

Far Cry 3 was absolutely a high point in the series. At least until the second half of the game. But the first half is incredible. The 2010s had some amazing video game villains. Vaas, Handsome Jack, Flowey, Father Comstock…hell, I’ll even throw in Andrew Ryan and GLaDOS.

I liked Far Cry 4 and 5. I’ll argue that Joseph Seed is the closest to a second Vaas the series has come. He’s not as melodramatic as Vaas, but he is a solid B- villain in my book. Pretty convincing, menacing, and rooted in his beliefs. Plus, I ran co-op a lot with my wife. So lots of good memories there.

Blue has always been a favorite of mine, but purple has really grown on me lately. Naturally, I love bluish purples.

Once you figure out that purple doesn’t actually exist it’s even neater. Purple and magenta are colors your brain makes up when it sees red and blue light at the same time.

I actually have a Wii. And I have RE4 for PS2. Unfortunately my PS2 is dead so I actually bought RE4 digitally this morning for PS3 and was surprised in the process that the PS3 storefront still exists. I appreciate that Sony still sees the tens of us who still play this way lol

I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.

My laptop doesn’t have dust filters, but the fan almost never runs anyway. Like the heatsink is way overbuilt for the CPU it’s attached to. It’s actually quite nice. I’ve never seen it hit 70 degrees. I’ve cleaned it maybe three times since 2016. It really only spins the fan up when I’m watching 60 fps YouTube videos or playing games. And even then, it kicks hard for a very short time and shuts off again.

And again, I bought this thing nine years ago. It’s just a little Acer. And it’s not even a nice one. I paid like 500 bucks for this thing.

Now, my wife’s MacBook that she games on…yeah, I need to figure out how to get the back off so it can get a proper dusting. Fuck you, Apple. Let me work on my stuff, dammit.

The dock auto hides lol

And as a multi-monitor user, I’m finding that part to be true. I’ve got my panels set up on each of my monitors exactly the way I want. Plus, controlling the wallpaper independently on each monitor as a built-in feature is dope.

Latte. I run Debian so this is Plasma 5. As I understand it, Latte doesn’t work in Plasma 6.

The dock is Latte. I run Debian so this is Plasma 5. As I understand it, Latte doesn’t work in Plasma 6.

I’ve considered this in the past, and I might toy around with it in the future once I get the motivation to

Check your DMs

For the lolz, of course. Like, who is still using the XP start button in '25?

I’m 32 so I was a kid in the 2000s. XP represents a golden age of the Internet to me. A time when every YouTube channel looked different and any random MySpace profile you ended up on was probably playing MCR. Before you had to sell practically every scrap of info about yourself to use nearly any service, and Google wasn’t visibly evil. Ads were mostly “Your friend’s IQ was 44. Can you beat that??” because all the world’s authoritarians were too old to care about the web. You could pretty reliably know you were talking to a person in a chat room, and you didn’t have to do some kind of mental calculus to determine whether it was a bot trying to rob your grandma of all her money in Google Play cards. Pretty well no kid in the 2000s is safe these days. I’m sure most of us said the racial slur or the mental slur or had sexual relations with everyone’s mother after getting shot in Halo. I’m safe. We never had Xbox Live lol But I played a lot of split screen Halo in the living room. Good, innocent times.

Rose tinted glasses and all that, but idk, I feel like we’ll never achieve that again. Everyone was throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. And the tech was kind of in a Goldilocks zone. Just powerful enough to be cool and exciting, but not so powerful that it gets scary.

Except for those damn PS2s being used for nuclear bomb guidance.

And that’s fine. I said I really liked gnome. The only extensions I had were weather in the top bar and dash to dock. I just wanted it to do a few extra things, and I wanted to play around with widgets. Gnome was also a bit too rigid for my taste. Plasma makes tweaking small things a joy.

For me, ootb Plasma felt too much like Windows. I use Windows all day at work so I want my home machines to look and feel completely unlike Windows.

It’s Debian so I’m on 5.

Thanks! I’m using Latte for the dock and Tera Circle Blue for the icons.

You haven’t experienced happiness until you’ve cuddled the homies.

Streisand Effect. Even if they take it down, it’ll always be available somewhere. And the more anyone tries to scrub it from the internet, the more available it’ll become.

Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to come across aggressively. I get a little fired up at the thought of crossing a huge, fast road, and it doesn’t help that cars are way bigger and drivers seem way worse these days.

No question bikes are the best way to get around in a densely populated area. My wife and I stayed in a condo in a building that housed a Target (Newmark Tower) when we vacationed in Seattle a couple months ago. If I could afford it, I’d buy that condo and live that way. We rented a car while we were there, but we barely drove it. It was genuinely liberating not needing it. We rode the monorail. We took the bus from time to time. We climbed a stupidly steep hill to get dinner one night. It was awesome.

But man, I live about a mile and a half from the grocery store and I refuse to bike there for the simple fact that there are way too many fast, wide roads to have to cross to get there, and there are zero bike lanes along the way. Unless you’re on the college campus, everything here is built for the convenience of the car at the detriment of literally everyone else.

And if OP also lives in the burbs, I reckon their situation is pretty similar.

Again, sorry that I came across aggressively. I didn’t intend to get so riled up about it.

Big talk Unfortunately, that’s a huge ask if you’ve never crossed a six lane stroad on foot. The American transit system is often downright hostile to anyone not in a car. It can be goddamn terrifying. Adding: If OP can get around safely and feasibly on a bike, this is great advice.

Otherwise, there are ways to cut down on car costs if you need one. What car you own matters. Get something extremely common that never breaks. A 1998 Camry or Corolla are probably two of the most solid cars money can buy and junkyards are full of them. Parts are cheap and available.

Learning to do your own basic maintenance will also save you lots of money.

• A dealer might charge sixty bucks to swap a cabin air filter. It takes one minute and a replacement for my Honda Civic is eight dollars on Amazon. Same story with the engine air filter.
• Check your oil and transmission dipsticks every once in a while for level and condition.
• Check your brake fluid level and clarity.
• Tire pressures are on the inside of the driver door jamb. Learn how to properly inflate your tires, including the spare.
• If your car came with a scissor jack, a tire iron, and a compact spare, you can rotate your own tires in 30 minutes without buying any tools.
• On an inline four cylinder engine, spark plugs are often on the top of the head, below a cover, and are insanely easy to replace. Just be aware of torque specs, especially on an aluminum head. A torque wrench can be yours for ten bucks at Harbor Freight.
• Check your lights and blinkers every once in a while and learn how to replace bulbs. This is important on older cars that use halogen and incandescent lamps. A tail light is a few bucks, takes 15 minutes to replace, and will probably save you from a ticket.

Learning how to replace some parts is also a big plus and parts stores will often lend you small tools for some jobs free of charge.

Many states also offer discounted rates on yearly registration for older cars. In Oklahoma, it costs me $26 a year to tag my '97 Honda.

Finally, get a dash cam and the cheapest insurance you can, and drive like you’re on probation and on thin ice with your parole officer.