For sandboxing in Lutris you’ll want to have a look at the “Command Prefix” option under “Runner options” - whatever you put there prefixes the command that runs the game, which is exactly how sandboxing with things like firejail works (i.e. you start your stuff from the command line with firejail firejail-args your-stuff your-stuff-args so you literally prefix your command with firejail).

It’s possible to configure it game by game and also as a global default for all games which you can then override for only some games (this later is how I run it).

Lutris also integrates with Steam so you can run Steam games from it.

Same here and for me too it was gaming holding me back, though I mostly buy my games via GoG hence use Lutris and it’ve had a pretty low rate of games that won’t work at all (and, curiously, one of them which won’t work in Steam works fine if I use a pirated version with Lutris), though maybe 1/3 require some tweaking to work properly.

It’s also interesting that by gaming in Linux with Lutris I can make it safer and protect my privacy because Lutris let’s me do things like run the game inside a firejail sandbox which I have set up as default for all games including disabling network access for the game.

Still have the Windows partition around just in case, though the only time I booted it in the last several months was to clean up some of the stuff to free one of the disks to make it a dedicated Linux disk.

Portugal has exactly the same system (I’ve lived in both countries) which has actually even more features (such as letting you pay yours bills at any ATM) than the Dutch one.

I think that at least in Europe the countries were ATMs rely on VISA or Mastercard for inter-bank withdrawals like in the UK and US are the exception rather than the rule.

I live in a 10 million people European country which is the leading cork producer in the World

Also the first European country to explicitly decriminalise drug consumption.

Those two things are unrelated.

There is a real possibility that the person who would be best for Palestine would be Trump simply because he doesn’t follow through on what he says and is too incompetent when he does.

It’s a very sad state of affairs that the US Presidential Candidate that might be the least Nazi-supporting one is Trump, not because of his ideology not being Fascist but because he’s incompetent, inconsistent and has a tendency for non-interventionism.

You have it backwards: going after the natural voters of the other side in a two-party system is the riskiest thing you can do because the other party has a massive advantage with those voters which is an historical track record of telling them what they want to hear and them voting for it - rightwingers trust them on Rightwing subjects and are used to voting for them.

Even if (and it’s a massive massive if) a party succeeds at it once due to the party on the other side having deviated too much from its traditional ideology, all it takes for the party on the other side is to “get back to its roots” to recover most of those lost votes and subsequently win, whilst meanwhile the leftmost party that moved to the right has created for itself an obstacle in their own “going back to its roots” in the form of a section of the electorate which feels they were betrayed.

Sure, they’ll eventually get it back if they themselves quickly “go back to their roots”, but it will take several electoral cycles.

Further, if that gap remains too long on the Left even in a two party system it would create room for a third to grow, starting by local elections, then places like Congress, then Senate and eventually even the Presidency.

One of of the key ways in which First Past The Post maintains a Power-Duopoly is because growing a party enough to challenge the rest in multiple electoral circles takes time and the duopoly parties will try to stop it (generally by changing back their policies to appeal to the core voters of that new Party).

The US itself once had the Whig Party as one of the power duopoly parties and that exists no more.

The Democrats abandoning the Left is not a stable configuration for them and carries both the risk that the Rightwing electorate sees them as fake and the Leftwing electorate feels betrayed, and now they’re stuck in the middle with a reduced vote.

Whilst the first paragraph does make some sense, it presumes that in such a situation the Republicans would not conclude it’s the style of the candidate rather than his ideas that caused the rout. That might be a little optimist considering that the traditional Republicans’ were just as far right economically before and almost as right in Moral issues, but they had a different style of candidate (remember Reagan?).

It might also be a little optimist to expect an absolute walloping of anybody, Republican or Democrat.

That said, it’s a valid scenario, though it relies on very low probability events.

The second paragraph is inconsistent with every single thing the Democrats have done in their pre-electoral propaganda, from the whole “vote us or get Trump” (something which wouldn’t scare the Right) to the raft of pre-election promises on Left-wing subjects like student debt forgiveness or tightening regulations on giants such as Telecoms a little bit. If they really thought they could win with only votes stolen from the Right, they would be making promises which appeal to the Right, not the Left.

Besides, the whole idea that Rightwing voters would go for the less-Rightwing party rather than the more-Rightwing party is hilarious: why go for the copy if you can get the real deal?

From what I’ve seen in other countries were Center-Left Parties totally dropped their appeal to the Left and overtly went to appeal to the Right, they got pummeled because the Maths don’t add up and, as I said above, Rightwing votes will choose the “genuine article” over the “wannabes”.

It’s not by chance that in Europe even whilst becoming full-on Neoliberal parties, Center-Left parties maintained a leftwing discourse and would throw a bone to the Left once in a while (say, minimum wage raises) when in government.

Three points:

• Biden and Harris are right now with their actions physically supporting the Genocide. Trump talks about supporting the Genocide even more. Well, guess what: Trump lies shamelessly (as the Democrat propaganda here doesn’t stop reminding us of in everything but, “strangely”, not this subject) and isn’t even competent when it comes to actual execution. So on one side we have an absolute certainty that the candidate supports the Genocide and on the other one we have a probability that its so based on the statements of a known liar. I would say the claims that Trump is worse on this are doing a lot of relying on Trump’s word (on this subject alone) in order to elevate his evilness of this above that of people who are actually, right now, shamelessly and unwaveringly supporting the Genocide with actual actions.
• If the Leadership of Democrat Party manages to whilst refusing to walk back on their active support of a Genocide, win the election with a “otherwise it’s Trump” strategy, they will move even further to the Right because that confirms to them that they can do whatever they want and still keep in power. Now, keep in mind that the Democract Party leadership already supports Fascism (ethno-Fascism, even, which is the same kind as the Nazis practiced), so far only abroad (whilst Trump does support Fascism at home) so there isn’t much more to the Right of that before Fascism at home. You see, for a Leftie voting Democrat now will probably be the least bad option in the short term, but it’s very likely to be the worst option in the long term because it consolidates and even accelerates the move of the Democrat Party to the Right.
• Some people simply put their moral principles above “yeah but” excuses and won’t vote for people supporting the mass murder of children.

In summary:

• Trump’s Genocide support is a probability based on his word, willingness and ability to fulfill it (i.e. his competence at doing it), whilst Harris’ is an actual proven fact with actions happening right now.
• A vote for the Democrats whilst their policies are so far to the Right that they’re supporting modern Nazis with the very weapons they use to mass murder civilians of the “wrong” ethnicity, if it leads to a Harris victory will consolidate this de facto Far-Right status of the party and maintain momentum in going Rightwards. Voting like that is, IMHO, a Strategically stupid choice even if the case can be made (and that’s the entirety of what the Democrat propaganda here does) that Tactically it’s the least bad choice.
• Some people can’t just swallow their moral principles, especially for making a choice which isn’t even a “choose a good thing” but actually a “choose a lesser evil”, and “Thou shall not mass murder thousands of babies” is pretty strong as moral principles go.

If you’re getting back pain from an office chair then your arse is likely too far forward when you’re sitting and you’re putting pressure on your spine due it being at an angle other than 90 degrees from the seat, or your table is too low, lowering your arms, so you’re bending forward.

You’re suppose to feel your arse pushing against the back of the chair not leaving enough of a hole between the chair and your lower back that you can fit an arm in it, and when your arms are resting on the table (which they should be pretty much all the time if your keyboard and mouse are sufficiently forward) you should feel no pressure either downwards or upwards on your shoulders

I’ve been coding for over 3 decades, often for massive long hours (to the point that by the age of 17 I had RSI due to how my wrists were resting at the edge of the table and some years later when already doing it professionally went to the doctor with chest pain - which I feared were due to a hearth condition - which turned out to be work posture related) and at some point in my mid 20s I moved to The Netherlands and to a company which had its own Ergonomics Consultant (this was back in the peak of the 90s Tech boom so there was lots of money sloshing around) who would come around when you joined and adjust everything for you (they even had tables with adjustable height) and explain you all about the correct work posture.

Been following that advice and haven’t had posture related problems since then whilst always using pretty standard office chairs (always with adjustable height, tough).

I have however seen plenty of people doing the lazy (and stupid) posture of being all the way forward on their chair and quite a lot with arms too low or too high (which is more understandable since most cheap office tables don’t have adjustable height).

It’s not what makes them money so they don’t really have the business incentive for maximizing hardware sales that leads to a relentless pushing out of new versions of their hardware that are barely better than the last one and all manner of tricks for early obsolescence of older devices (things like purposeful OS and App under-performance and even incompatibility with older versions of the hardware).

Also in the big picture of gaming the Steam Deck is tiny and in its early stages, so business-wise is not the time to go down a strategy of relentless new hardware versions and enshittification, quite the opposite.

Absolutely, they’re doing the right thing and as the right thing aligns with their business objectives it’s a bit wishful thinking to claim its because they care so much about their customers as people.

In my own experience learning Dutch when living in The Netherlands (were, like in Denmark, almost everybody speaks good English) you learn very little and very slow with formal lessons and a lot very fast in situations were you have to manage with the local language (basically sink or swim).

I spent years living there with only basic Dutch and then ended up in a small company were I was the only non-Dutch person and the meetings were conducted in Dutch and within 1 to 2 months my Dutch language skills had taken a massive leap forward.

I also get similar effects with other languages I speak when I go visit those countries: persist in talking to the locals in the local language and that will push your language knowledge up.

That said, at the very beginning language lessons will give you the basic structure for the language, but for going beyond the basics I find that just being forced to use it yields the fastest improvements.

(Might wanna try to start watching local TV at some point too)

By the way, if the Danish are anything like the Dutch, they’ll pick up from the accent that a person is American and switch to English. Do not follow them! Keep talking in Danish even if it feels like it’s pretty bad and hard to use. When I lived in The Netherlands most of my British acquaintances had really poor dutch speaking skills even after over a decade there because of this effect of people picking up their accent and switching to English.

Books, lots and lots of books.

At some point in my career I’ve actually designed mission critical high performance distributed server systems for a living, so I’m well aware of that.

You can still pack thousands of users per server and have very low latency as long as you use the right architecture for it (it’s mainly done with in-memory caching and load balancing) when you’re accessing gigantic datasets which far exceed the data space of a game where the actual shared data space is miniscule since all clients share a local copy of most of the dataspace - i.e. the game level they’re playing in - and even with the most insane anti-cheat logic that checks every piece of data coming in from the user side against a server-side copy of the “game level data space” it’s still but a fraction of the shared data space in equivalent situations in the corporate world, plus it tends to be easilly partitionable data (i.e. even in MMORG with a single fully open massive playing space, players only affect limited areas of the entire game space so you don’t really need to check the actions of a player against the data of all other players).

Also keep in mind that all the static (never changing or slow changing stuff) like achievements or immutable level configuration can still be served with “normal” latencies.

Further the kind LVL1 ISP that provides network access for companies like Sony servicing millions of users already has more than good enough latency in their normal service and hence Sony needs not pay extra for “low latency”.

Anyways, you do make a good and valid point, it’s just that IMHO that’s the kind of thing that pushes the running costs per-player-month from one dollar cents or less to, at most (and this is likely quite a large overestimation), a dollar per-player-month unless they only have tens of players per-server (which would be insane and they should fire their systems designers if that’s the case).

After over 3 decades as a gamer and tech user this is maybe the single most consistent important benefit for any open platform were you can just install Linux.

The rest is nice but this one means that 10 or 20 years from now your hardware might have been repurposed for something else and still be useful and in use whilst a closed platform will just be more junk in a junkyard or sitting in a box of those things you’ve kept just because you don’t like to throw expensive stuff away but will in practice never use again.

They’re stupidly cheap to operate per user when you have millions of them, which is how companies like Facebook manage to make a profit from merely showing adverts to users and with no subscription fees.

Remember that Sony gets a cut from games being distributed to their platform, so online fees are just them double dipping for extra profits.

They’re stupidly cheap to operate per user when you have millions of them, which is how companies like Facebook manage to make a profit from merely showing adverts to users and with no subscription fees.

I have an Orange PI Pro 5 16GB on a box that smoothly runs a full blown Ubuntu Desktop version and would fit in a pocket though it’s maybe a little too thick (from memory the box it’s about 3x5x2 cm).

Total cost was about $170.

The board itself would fit a thinner box, but you might have to 3D print one.

Mind you, a N100 Mini-PC that costs the same is even more capable as a Linux Desktop, but it’s significantly larger and will definitely not fit a pocket.

You can find cheaper SBCs capable of running a Desktop Ubuntu but in my experience (with a $35 Banana Pi P2-Zero) if you go too far down the price scale Desktop Linux performance stops being smooth, even if the board is a tiny thing.

It was actually quite surprising for me recently when I found out some of these things are perfectly capable Linux Desktops.

Playing Accounting Tycoon on the Steam Deck.

What’s there not to like?!

“Family friendly UI” is “ultra-advanced” stuff for me: remember, before Kodi on a Mini-PC in my living room (and, by the way, I got a remote control for it too) I had been using first generation Media Players with file-browser interfaces to chose files from remote shares on a NAS, so merelly having something with the concept of a media library, tracking of watched status and pretty pictures automatically fetched from the Internet is a giant leap forward ;)

There are downsides to being an old Techie using all sorts of non-mainstream tech since back in the 90s. I’m just happy Kodi solved my problem of having an old Media Player hanging together with duct-tape, spit and prayers.

That said I can see how Kodi having all status (such as watched/not-watched tracking) be per-media rather than per (user + media) isn’t really good for families. More broadly the thing doesn’t even seem to have the concept of a user.

I haven’t tried Jellyfin but people’s talk of it doing transcoding (which Kodi doesn’t need to do as it simply decodes the video stream and shows it on the video output) leaves me with the idea that it’s not quite the same and does things I don’t really need.