Not an issue I’ve seen with LG at least. Their OS is bad for the reasons I mentioned (apart from perfectly good standard “dumb” TV controls), but the hardware is great.

A TV just bricking basic functionality because it’s not on the internet would probably be grounds for a class action lawsuit here.

You can use pretty much any smart TV dumbly. The most obvious way to do so is to just not connect it to the internet, but if you want it on the network for certain things (like home automation), just don’t agree to the bullshit when you first power it on, create a login, or enable any of the ad-tracking junk disguised as features like “live TV plus” (which is often hidden across multiple menus). The Home Screen for it will forever look like a generic menu begging you to configure your TV, but if you have other stuff plugged into it you’ll hardly ever have to see it.

To really be sure you can use a raspberry pi running a pi-hole server to see if it’s phoning home at all. My LG does nothing online except when I have it pull an update in the rare instance that one comes out with an improvement I care about.

Using a digital signage screen is an interesting suggestion that comes up often, but if you’re a home theater junkie you might have trouble finding one of those at the same level of quality as the best smart TVs at a comparable price. There’s always a trade off to find between what you’re looking for, what you’re willing to deal with, and what you can work around.

As gross as the business is, I do appreciate all the people who blindly agree to all the data mining, privacy violating agreements on their shiny new TVs because they’re a lot of the reason why I can get a 77 inch OLED for so cheap. Manufacturers like LG, Sony and Samsung make some great hardware but their software is worse than Bonzi Buddy.

But yeah, I disable every bit of “smart” and AI functionality (replace it with an Apple TV or something that isn’t loaded with ads and constantly phoning home) and set the location to Albania (which also has the benefit of fully blocking some other “features” from even appearing as an option.

Man, I haven’t imported many games but that game and its sequel were some of the best gaming purchases I ever made.

Really tried to get into Osu (even looked into some of those digital drawing boards artists use, just to try to make it feel like the original) but to me the game just isn’t anywhere near the same without a stylus and a resistive touch screen - two things which are outdated tech now - so I don’t think I’ll ever get something that really recaptures it. I’m glad that the basic gameplay is still being kept alive though, even though what I really want I can never have.

Nothing’s dissuading me, I’m definitely gonna watch it. I’m just a bigger NIN fan than a Tron fan.

I HAVE broken discs in similar sets (Mr. Robot, Planet of the Apes) taking them out of those awful cases, and also had them arrived scratched up. Definitely check them closely when they arrive so you don’t realize (like I have) when you get to disc six a month later and realize it won’t play past 40 minutes. So many cheap box sets now have the same horrible packaging that ruins the discs.

When possible with those kinds of cases, I just rip out the horrible center disc holders, put the discs in sleeves and then put those in the case.

This soundtrack kicks so much ass on its own that I almost don’t want to watch the movie and understand the context

It’s just making a joke about the game being challenging (he’s only the hero if you win). Game media used to be a lot more playfully antagonistic back when many games weren’t necessarily designed to be won.

(And while I’m here, that manual has other odd stuff in it that predates Nintendo setting global standards. It has multiple uses of the word “kill”, and it has an “ask your parents” bit about the domino effect).

Like everyone else here, I’ve got no love for Nintendo’s business practices, but the owner of the software having officially endorsed ways of playing their stuff on modern devices (let alone replications of original hardware, like with their old controller releases) has basically always been a good thing, both for average Joe consumer that’s interested in game history and doesn’t know what a ROM is, and for the emulation community who wouldn’t ever pay for this stuff but can often build off the tech (or educate us on the problems with it). Is any of this the ideal? Of course not, locking ancient games being a subscription is typical megacorp horseshit. But a kid being able to pick up a brand new Switch 2 and play Game Boy Arkanoid and Virtual Boy Teleroboxer on it is something.

Art of all forms shouldn’t be virtually inaccessible to the masses outside of methods of questionable legality (although, make no mistake, I think those methods are good too, and these things can coexist).

Whether or not the games are objectively “good” or popular is totally beside the point. Just because I can easily download a pirated version of some forgotten 80’s b-movie doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing when it finds some form of new life through an overpriced official boutique blu-ray release.

Wario Land is still a really great game on it even today that doesn’t deserve to be locked on flawed hardware (the motherboard disconnects one of the lenses over time and it’s a pain to repair), and Red Alert is one of those games in which the limitations actually, probably accidentally, give it a really unique hypnotic style, and the dual gamepad controls (also used to nice effect in Teleroboxer) ensured it didn’t just feel like a regular Nintendo game of the time. I don’t doubt it inspired actual classics like Rez.

I get the hate for the Virtual Boy - most games on it barely feel complete, it was uncomfortable to use, it made your pupils dilate - but it is a fun and important piece of weird gaming history, and Nintendo acknowledging it as such and finally officially allowing people some way to play those games again (knowing full well it’s going to get a lot of hate) is still a good thing overall for classic game preservation.

It would be, if this wasn’t passing off old news from right after the Switch 2’s big reveal trailer as something new: https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-switch-games-free-switch-2-upgrade

(The games that weren’t free to upgrade then still aren’t now).

I know we hate Reddit here but this site is just taken from and rephrasing this post, which is more informative (which at least they were nice enough to link to): https://www.reddit.com/r/blackberry/comments/1jmalqp/a_startup_is_bringing_back_an_updated_blackberry/

(There’s also a pretty damn good chance this is total BS - the poster says he “used AI to cover up their actual design”).

I love VRR when it works but man it can look horrible when it doesn’t. Prince of Persia; The Lost Crown on the PS5 runs great at 120hz with VRR… if you don’t mind the entire screen flickering rhythmically every few seconds, just like this article describes.

Honestly, not having a new Xbox, the best I’ve seen VRR look in action on my TV is on my docked Steam Deck, but that has its own problems - the display drivers on the deck completely wig out if you leave VRR on when putting it into sleep, and if VRR is on on your TV the picture won’t even display after waking it if you have the resolution set to anything other than “automatic.” (You can sort of work around this by keeping the cursor on the VRR toggle and “blindly” toggling it in the quick menu on wake, but still… wonky stuff that really proves how many years it takes for things to catch up to display innovations.)

Really liked the first game for the first few hours, then it turned into grind in which constant challenge-free repetition of levels to build your army was more important than the creative rhythm/strategy combat that made it unique. A lot of handheld games from that time did that (The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core, and Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, to name a few) - they’d have excellent core gameplay but would absolutely be loaded with tedious filler with the idea that you’d do that stuff on your daily train commute or whatever.

It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).

I put my microfiber cloths in one of those delicates laundry bags and toss it in with a regular load on cold, then let them air dry. Never had any problem with them scratching lenses.

I actually just spent a year or so doing this during break times at work with EAC. I ripped everything to WAV because storage is cheap, it’s a bit faster, and you can tag WAV files now, so I saw little reason not to, though FLAC is usually just as good and has wider support, so it’s up to you (you can easily convert back and forth if you change your mind, since either is lossless).

The key factor with EAC is to use it with AccurateRip (which is built-in to the app, but you need to configure it with your drive properly for it to work). There’s a lot of info on configuring this online but like with anything that touches audiophile communities, there’s a lot of bullshit you have to sort through as well. You’ll see a lot of people saying to set it to the slowest option to ensure a perfect rip, but 99% of the time you don’t need to do this - AccurateRip will compare your CD to what other users have ripped and ensure a bit-perfect match. In the event you have a rare CD or it doesn’t match the database, that’s when you set EAC to run slowly (secure mode) and set it to test and verify the tracks. After ripping, I use MP3tag to search musicbrainz or Discogs to tag the tracks and it’s good to go. In the event you’ve got a slightly defective disc AccurateRip/EAC point out errors in, you can even use an app called CUEtools to scan the database and repair the files.

I was paranoid about getting everything right on my first try, since the last thing I wanted to do was rip every CD I had again (well over a thousand) due to some dumb configuration mistake, so feel free to send me a message if you’ve got any questions. I nerded out and took a stupid amount of step by step notes about what I did so if this post isn’t long and annoying enough for you, I got plenty more where that came from.

Uhhhh if someone is asking for a randomly generated authentication code you might want to double check who you’re talking to and make sure you’re not being scammed.

Edit: seems it might be normal? https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/customer-service/customer-service-asked-for-my-2fa-code-to-verify-my-account-over-the-phone-despite-the-text-saying-not-to-share-with-xfinity-reps-normal/6410d59641879c3c4d1c6128

Holy shit that’s bad practice. Great way to get less tech savvy people used to customer service reps asking for verification codes and trusting them without hesitation.

Yeah what I love about the witch is that it captures more than just the horror of like, you know, a witch, but also the hopeless 17th century Puritan nightmare of being excommunicated, ostracized and left to fend for yourselves in the woods in an unfamiliar country.

Haha, “the only thing it has going for it” is 100% why it’s important and we need to keep it around. I’m a big fan of it not being a crapshoot as to whether or not my expensive movie ticket is going to be a miserable experience due to an awful audience.

(Bonus Alamo protip: get the chocolate chip cookies. Freshly baked and delicious. I write “cookies” on a slip after they take my main order but before the movie starts, then prop it up when I’m finished. Cookies then miraculously appear midway through the movie - half the time I don’t even see those ninjas deliver them.)