Spiracle

I’ve had issues since kernel 6.4. Since early December, one pair of Bluetooth headphones works again (mostly, with occasional connection issues), but the AirPods still fail to pair at all.

1. Refurbished ones are just as good as fresh ones, and basically always “on sale” since their price is reduced.

2. Valve seems to be moving towards a very likely Steam Deck Refresh. Very little is known about when or how this will happen. Based on previous comments and data-mining, the refresh will have the exact same amount of gaming-power. It may, however, have a better WiFi-chip, better screen, and stuff like that. Nothing is certain and if you want a Deck soon-ish, I wouldn’t recommend waiting for this.

you feel dirty

One might argue that this is the issue. Men watching porn feel dirty/wrong. Women masturbating and consuming their porn of choice is normalized.

Male sex toys exist, they are just not advertised. (Aside from hole shaped after specific, often fictional, women. Again, the focus is on the woman, not male pleasure.)

Screen and battery are the top pain points both Griffais and fellow designer Lawrence Yang want to address in a Steam Deck sequel, too, they told me in late 2022.

From the article.

Apparently, you’re getting both HDR and VRR on the current Steam Deck soon. Currently, in the Preview version, soon-ish in stable.

Announcement: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3686804163591367815

Wild speculation: Might this be for the Deckard instead? While I would expect that to run on a newer processing unit, I’d expect the Deckard to come before any hardware refresh.

Not sure if there is a world where this makes sense, though. Perhaps they are using that APU internally for prototypes? Not sure if it would be added to the kernel for that…

Edit: Reading more detailed rumours and speculation, Deckard or Deckard-related tec seems to be the most plausible explanation.

It lets the battery discharge to 90% while plugged in. If you’re not using it for a few days you should still unplug.

It did. I must have mixed them up. Not sure about the desktop/gaming divide, I mostly get my info from random articles.

Based on a brief search, you may be correct on both counts. I’ll fix my post. Thanks for pointing it out.

If Windows works fine for you and does not annoy you, there is no need to migrate.

Personally, I’ve been mostly happy using Linux as my sole desktop OS for ~15 years. However, I only switched because Windows kept breaking and reinstalling no longer fixed it. I couldn’t imagine going back now, but a big part is probably being used to it.

These days most major Linux distributions should be fine for desktop use.

Linux Mint Cinnamon use to be the go-to beginner distribution. Its design is apparently somewhat similar to Windows, giving you some initial familiarity. Linux Mint is also based on Ubuntu, which used to be so widespread that many support pages and simple how-to instruction still default to explaining it for Ubuntu.
(This can still lead to confusion if you search for “install [Windows program] Linux” and the instructions work for Ubuntu based distribution only, not for any other distros.)

The last few years, I’ve seen a switch to Arch-based distributions around. Valve itself switched away from Ubuntu to Arch in some ways. (On Steam, the system requirements still use Ubuntu as default.) SteamOS used to be based on Debian, which Ubuntu is related to, until the Steam Deck. Now it is based on Arch. More specifically, Valve seems to default to:

Base: Arch
Desktop environment: KDE Plasma (more powerful/options than Cinnamon)
Compositor base: Wayland for gaming, old X11 for Steam Deck’s desktop. (Apparently Wayland isn’t quite ready yet for that in their opinion.)

EDIT: Fixed thanks to feedback.

Arch itself is seen as a more technical distribution. There are extremely many support pages for every issue or question you may have, similar to Ubuntu, but some may be more difficult to understand. Still, support systems improve as the user base grows and Arch is growing.

For specific distributions, EndeavourOS is the one I’ve heard about being the most friendly. Manjaro is also beginner-friendly, but the folks who maintain it have some serious issues with seriously fucking things up sometimes.

https://itsfoss.com/arch-based-linux-distros/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVlD17OjFAc (Video compiling Manjaro fuckups.)

It failed to boot for me, too. Only worked when I stopped asking it to encrypt the hard drive.

To be honest, only laziness is stopping me from switching to another OS, though. Very poor experience so far.

Exactly. Difference is, you may also create fully NSFW models or pictures, if you figure out how. There’s a topless woman in the top community creations right now. They just don’t seem to want straight up porn, and this makes it difficult enough to keep it from being flooded by that.

Yes. Various, with various limitations.

The simplest is Stable Horde/AI horde. Volunteers donate GPU time to the public. Please do not abuse this trust by overusing it without giving back! Great for quick experiments, though, since it requires no sign-up. Also includes a “get probable description from uploaded image” function, I’ve just noticed:

https://aqualxx.github.io/stable-ui/about

Personally, I’ve been playing around with leonardo.ai. It has a payment structure, but the free tier is very generous, in my opinion. You get 150 free daily token. Images cost between 1-4 token. It has a prompt generator, and you can even train your own model for free. There are also a lot of community models, since every model is set to public by default. You can even browse public images and directly copy all settings/prompts into the generator or use them for image-to-image stuff.

The company is very much focussing on building an active community, which can be both good and bad. You are first put on a waiting list, but your account is automatically activated if you join the discord and write some comments. There are also constant community contests/challenges to earn more token.

https://leonardo.ai/

Edit: leonardo.ai techncally allows nsfw generations, but heavily discourages them. It has an automatic filter for any terms deemed nsfw. You may also not discuss how to circumvent that filter in the discord. (You may discuss how to bypass the filter to prompt safe for work images. E.g. you may discuss how to create Charles Dickens characters despite Dickens being filtered out.)

Here are few more, but I haven’t tried any of them:
https://stable-diffusion-art.com/free-ai-image-generator-sites/

Not to dunk on you too hard, but this question is on the same level as “Do people actually use OnlyFans” and “Do people actually pay money on scummy gambling sites?”

Of course they do. The reasons vary from charity towards poor creatives to paying for access to exclusive content to simping for your favourite thirst trap to simply wanting to support a creator you like for a month or two.

I don’t fully understand what people get out of it in many cases like supporters of creators who get 50k+ every month but only release a bit of content once per year, but in general it makes a ton of sense.

It is, and it will be so long as the barrier of entry is so huge and the advertising is all about it being just another toy/plaything.

I’m really interested in a VR (or rather AR) environment for every-day computer use. A full virtual multi-monitor setup which does not require locking myself away from the world. It is very clear that this is not the sort of application VR is marketed for, unless you are a business with a lot of money.

Same. I usually don’t play to win (casual player, as I said), but I did put in the effort to get all achievements and beat the heart at ascension 20 at some point.

The mods in particular give it staying power (and usually make it a bit easier/more absurd for casual play).

Thanks, I’ve downloaded TGGW (https://www.thegroundgivesway.com/download/ for those curious) and will try it soon.

It would be nice to have another background game. Currently, it’s basically Rogue Fable III or Slay the Spire and very rarely something else.

Added PoA to my wishlist for later.

As a very casual rogue-like enjoyer (failed to ever kill the unicorn in nethack), I regularly enjoy Rogue Fable III. There’s not a ton of story or content, but all the essentials are there.

It’s a generic dungeon with various themed levels. (No puzzles.) Minor lore through occasionaly messages by the underlord or by reading signs/messages. Get the keys from guardians in side dungeons, then beat the big wizard and take his goblet of immortality.

You get a race for basic modifiers (no weight limit, but only move horizontally, for example).
You get a class, which determines your default talent/spell list.
Then you can get some extra talents/spells regardless of class from books/altars/librarians.

It’s simple, but I enjoy doing it while listening to other things. No direct challenge modes, but various race/class combos are more difficult than others.