I watched the whole series and did enjoy most of it, so keep that in mind because this is going to sound really, really critical.

Liked the premise but I feel like it just jumped the shark multiple times, kept going, and jumped the shark again every following season.

That said, yes, you’re right that it does explore some interesting topics, but the way they did and kept raising the stakes every season just kind of ruined it. So much of it was just completely implausible even by TV science standards. And they basically rebooted the show in the last few seasons except with Space criminals replacing the grounders as the antagonists.

Conceptually, my favorite season was the first because of the survival theme, though the teenage drama kind of annoyed me (granted, it was a YA show and I wasn’t exactly the target demographic). In practice, my favorite season was the one with ALLIE. It explored ethics in AI while being a bit of a mix of The Matrix and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a touch of zombie movie. For better or worse, it also provided the backstory of much of the series.

Best character arc? Probably the authority guy from the beginning. Forget his name, but he looked like a young, store-brand Dustin Hoffman. (Edit: Kane?) Started out as the bureaucratic jerk, went through hell and stuck to his principles when refusing to take the ALLIE chip (and they even crucified him), and became one of the few level headed characters toward the end of the show.

Worst character arc? Probably a toss up between Clark and Octavia. It’s like their worst attributes got turned up to 11.

Favorite character overall? Raven. She was basically a live-action Gadget from “Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers”.

Ooh, nice. I wasn’t aware there were softmods available for the 360 yet. I avoided modding it at all because I played a lot on XB Live and didn’t want to get it banned but since that’s shutdown, I may revisit the mod scene. Glad to know there’s a softmod. I did the MechAssault one on my OG Xbox and it opened up all kinds of doors.

I found Xbox 360 copies on ebay but no PC ones. They’re not expensive so maybe I’ll just do that and then try to get an Xbox 360 emulator working on my (Linux) gaming system. My 360 works but is def on borrowed time.

Plus, some of the mechanics are maybe a bit spicy for modern sensibilities.

Not that you’re wrong (Wikipedia alludes to the same thing) but the only spicy mechanic I can recall is hacking an enemy’s brain chip to make them temporarily fight on your side and commit suicide after it wears off. That’s literally the exact same thing as “Possession” in Bioshock: Infinite that came out a year later.

I thought it was profound at the time, but no, it wasn’t at all.

This was a meme I posted a while back and based on a true story:

Basically I thought that plants were the manifestation of God himself. All around us, providing us with live-sustaining oxygen and food.

I dunno, but it did.

My original hard drive died and when I got a replacement, I just went to my purchase history and re-downloaded it. When I wanted to play it a few years ago and noticed it wasn’t on my Xbox anymore, I went back to re-download it and it wasn’t anywhere to be found in my history.

Probably something buried in the XB:Live ToS that says they can do whatever they want.

I just have a Linux-based “DIY Steam Machine” so it’d have to be able to run under Proton. I may just buy a physical disc on eBay for ~$22 and hope my 360 doesn’t crap out on me lol. It’s the later “slim” model with an upgraded hard drive, so as long as I can install it and it reads the disc enough to start the game, I should be okay.

Honestly I have no idea. I don’t think so? I vaguely recall the music at all, but I wanna say it was a kind-of techno background music which all sounds pretty generic to me (not my preferred genre).

Edit: According to TV Tropes, it does have music by Skrillex so maybe (renewing?) the music licensing wasn’t worth it considering its low sales.

If we go by the logic in some media where the ghosts are bound to the house/property, they probably don’t want to be stuck somewhere that will eventually just dissolve in the rain.

Nice! I bought the XBLA Perfect Dark remake and really liked it. The Github repo is just the wrapper so I’ll have to track down the actual assets, though.

Note that payouts are proportional to this distance

Good to know. Yeah, I was taking the highest payout delivery runs since I had gotten pretty good with the fuel scoop so I wouldn’t have to factor in fuel costs (just the occasional repair). Was definitely multitasking with housework while in the 15 minute supercruise section, but doing that 4 times got pretty unbearable. I kinda regret not making the final delivery to collect payment, but by the time I got all the way back out there from the detention center, it would have taken close to 45 minutes lol

When accepting missions this distance will be displayed in the details

I noticed that but thought it was from the station where I accepted the mission. That, and I’m still getting used to the sheer scale of the game.

FSD boost

I read about that but don’t have that upgrade yet.

Mine was just a board in an anti-static bag. As bare bone as you can get.

Yeah, I like it after figuring out how to get it in the right modes. Bought it for playing emulators but works great with Steam.

eBay (US) like a week ago. I got it for $125 but they were going for under $100 before I heard about them.

I don’t think you can buy them new anymore. All the stock I’m aware of are from decommissioned crypto-mining rigs and being sold secondhand.

I included an eBay search link in the Resources (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=bc-250) and just checked it. Looks like they jumped in price again and are $180+ now.

Assuming you’re in US or Canada, here’s the listing for the one I bought (same seller). It’s the least expensive at $165 with $16 shipping. Some listings include the SSD, so that may be why some cost more. Basically I think the cat is just out of the bag and now that people have found an easy way to repurpose these, demand and price is up.

Oh, nice! Yeah, I had yet to come across that project but will probably give it a try later.

https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/system/40cu-unlock/#performance

I haven’t done it yet, but it seems to require a patched amdgpu kernel module and setting two values at build time. I’m content with it as-is but may explore that later. I’m also waiting until I have some more cooling before doing anything that will generate more heat. That’ll require a different case, and I just don’t feel like that right now (I’ve got games to play and all lol).

About one roll for $17-20. It used close to a full 1kg roll (half a roll of black, half a roll of red). So if you did it all in one color, you’d just need at most one roll (assuming no failed prints).

I didn’t factor that in since I already have a bunch I bought last year on sale and that money was already spent and waiting for a use.

Yep. You’ll need 25.1 (or higher) and a fairly recent kernel to have all of the drivers in mainline though it’s possible to build them for older distros if you really want to. Basically the guidance is to avoid LTS distros and use something more bleeding edge.

Bazzite has most/all you need already baked in. The only special consideration I had to make with Bazzite was installing the GPU governor. It’ll work fine without the governor, but it’s running full tilt the whole time even when it doesn’t need to.

Yep, it’s not the most energy efficient build but definitely affordable since it’s upcycling what would otherwise be e-waste. It’s not something I’m going to leave running 24/7 so I can deal with it eating some power (I’m pretty big on efficient computing since I’m installing a PV system).

A single 120mm fan is sufficient for gaming if you don’t unlock the extra CUs or overclock it, and you need to either use a shroud to direct the airflow through the heatsink fins or, like I did, 3D print a spreader tool and break the fins apart so more air can make contact with it.

If you’re gonna use it for LLM workloads or heavy sustained loads, you’re gonna need at least two fans and some airflow over the back where the VRAM is. I’ve seem some liquid cooled builds which look awesome but I can’t justify that expense haha.