I’ve seen too many services go through enshittification, which is why I’ve always made backups of the mods I installed.

That said, that obviously scales poorly if you download a lot of mods or really massive mods.

Seeing as Steam Next Fest ends about 12 hours from now, I’d like to describe / review some demos I’ve played over the week. Hopefully, at least some of these games haven’t been mentioned before, apologies for bumping the thread:

• No, I’m not a Human: Easily my favorite demo of Steam Next Fest. The game presents a kafkaesque scenario in which you must let in humans, but keep out “Visitors” from your own home. The game is intentionally (and consistently) ugly, in a way where even the humans are ugly. The game has a collage like aesthetic, much like the creepy Nickelodeon show Angela Anaconda. This is my favorite type of horror (eerie and weird!), all without resorting to cheap methods like jumpscares. Aspects of the demo are randomized, so there’s lots of replayability.

• Bloodthief: Oh man. As a fan of games like Dusk, Ultrakill, Celeste, and Super Meat Boy, this is a game that was made for me. It’s like a precision platformer in first person with hack and slash elements… I am going to spend a lot of time on this when it comes out lol

• Ball x Pit: basically Atari breakout combat (against tetris shaped enemies) with roguelike elements. Also, you craft and build outside of combat. I’m interested to see how these different genre elements will play out in the final release.

• Bits & Bops: Beautiful rhythm based game, thats fun, charming, and family friendly. Apparently a spiritual successor to Rhythm Heaven, which I have not played. Has a native Linux build. I encountered some bugs (the game would sometimes freeze when transitioning from tutorial to game, or restarting a stage)

• Project Arrow: Puzzle platformer with some precision platforming elements and combat (involving a bow and arrow). Adorable cat protagonist. Synthwave soundtrack, plays great with mouse and keyboard.

• The Adventures of Sir Kicks A Lot: Surprisingly deep immersive sim with hack and slash elements. Despite the Minecraft aesthetic, the animations are surprisingly fluid and funny at times. There’s some DNA of Dishonored and Thief in here, where you are rewarded for creativity.

• Kity Builder: Simply adorable. It’s a calm game in which you are free to build on a remote island. In fact, there are no limits: you do not have to gather resources, farm materials, or grind to build. You can also place as many buildings as you like (and you have to, to get around the island)

• Dispatch: Surprising depth to the hero dispatch mechanics. Funny cutscenes (although the humor might not be for everyone). Cutscene interactions remind me of the Telltale games (to be expected, since some of the employees worked on this). Has a star studded cast that makes it feel like you’re playing a high budget TV show

• Platypus Reclayed: Remake of older 2004 game. Side scrolling ship shoot-em up with hi-res clay models, and has 2 player local coop. Pretty fun.

• Evolve Lab: Async multiplayer rougelite in which you (auto-) battle sea creatures that you can upgrade between rounds. Pretty fun for the small amount of time I played

• Forestrike: Roguelite martial arts game in which each battle can be rehearsed infinitely in your character’s mind (before actually trying it in the real world). You are encouraged to rehearse extensively, since what happens in a real world fight (like getting hit, or having a hostage die) is permanent in your run. An interesting, political story is teased in the demo.

• Pigface: Very dark, gritty immersive sim in which you play as an assassin, taking contract jobs. Atmosphere almost feels like Manhunt, although not quite as dark. Feels more like a PS2 game than PS1. AI could use some work but the potential is definitely there.

• Wander Stars: Animation and character designs are an obvious love letter to DBZ. Gameplay is turn based combat, where you arrange words to create your attack. You know how in anime they shout words before their attacks? The combat is literally that lol. Note that it’s a roguelite so dieing puts you at the beginning of a map (or forces you to load). I’m somewhat mixed on this structure (for this type of game), but we’ll see how it goes when the game releases.

• Öoo: Cute puzzle platformer and metroidvania where the title looks like the main character lol. You use bombs to break obstacles and reach certain areas.

• Ratatan: Rhythm based roguelite where you command a small group of creatures to fight bosses and other enemies. It definitely has a “kawaii” aesthetic, so not for everyone. Overall really fun

• The Drifter: Point and click game with an interesting story and great voice acting. I won’t mention more, to avoid spoiling the story

• Demonfo: The only VN on my list. It is also a point and click game. Interesting story that kind of reminds me of Urban Myth Dissolution Center. Surprisingly funny, at times.

Special mentions:

• Undermine 2 and Neon Abyss 2: I’ll be honest, I thought these were only ok as singleplayer experiences. However, they look like they might be fun games to play in online coop.

If I host headscale on a VPS, is that as seamless of an experience as Tailscale? And would I miss out on features, like the Tailscale dashboard? How does the experience change for me (an admin type) and my users (non-technical types)?

I game exclusively in Linux (and I play on GOG and Itch), so I just use Lutris categories for this. Of course, I made a Lutris account and turned on sync

You don’t know Shaun? How come?

(I don’t know either)

I keep noticing people in this thread recommending UBlock Origin, with others replying that they eventually got a popup to turn off their adblocker.

This is usually followed by replies mentioning they just click X (or add a UBlock filter on the popup), and go on with watching Youtube. No problem, right?

According to Ublock Origin’s Redd*t Post, that is just the first warning stage; eventually the presentation of their anti-adblock message becomes more intrusive until you receive the “The in-player message. Playback is stopped.”

I should know. I get that message on any Youtube video (while logged in), and it doesn’t go away for several hours.

That said, my workaround (extremely hacky) was to find the RSS feeds for all of my channel subscriptions, and then add them to FreshRSS. That section of my RSS feed essentially acts like a Youtube subscription page, but not tied to an actual account.

On my computer: I watch them in a private browser Firefox profile I’ve dedicated solely to Youtube (and has all of the extensions already installed, of course).

On Android: I watch them using NewPipe.

Edit: In addition, I store my “watch later” links using Linkding, which was easy to setup. While I do see reply suggestions on how to get rid of the popup, I think it’s better (for the long term) to have an independent way to consume Youtube. While Youtube currently implements a 4 stage system, they could always add another stage or make the current one more strict.

I think my approach requires more set up work (and probably introduces more friction) compared to reply suggestions, but overall is more resistant to future updates to Youtube’s nagging system.

I see some recommendations for Vesktop in this thread.

For some reason, launching Vesktop’s Flatpak version presents a blank window. It worked perfectly fine a few weeks ago. Going back several versions doesn’t fix the problem.

Does anyone else have this issue? What doesn’t help is that the repo doesn’t have an issue tracker:

https://github.com/Vencord/Vesktop

Edit: Appimage version works just fine

Thanks for the rare, rational comment regarding Obsidian. Many people here seem to think releasing software as closed source automatically means you have something to hide; seemingly forgetting we live in a capitalist system in which you must constantly sell your services to survive. (I am saying this as someone who adores FOSS and donates to most of my homelab software on a regular basis).

I think a more productive way to look at is: is the closed source dev friendly (or at least non-hostile) to the open source community? In the case of Obsidian, they haven’t done anything egregious, and regularly contribute to open source plugins. Furthermore, the notes are stored as markdown files. This gives the user strong resistance against potential enshittification, so even if they did go rogue you can just move to some other text editor lol. Granted, you would miss out on plugins but otherwise that’s a good reason to keep your plugin usage light and plan your Obsidian vault accordingly.

Use debian for your linux servers then