atmur

I have a bit of an obsession with the Need for Speed series, and while I've played all of them, I haven't completed all of them (the ones with a campaign at least). So I started playing through the remainder a while back.

Both Shift titles were in that list, I played Shift 1 first. I don't love it, but it has fleeting moments of something more. Every now and then you get into the flow of a track in a car that handles well, and it just clicks. That's maybe 10% of the time though, otherwise you're dealing with janky physics and brain dead AI.

It's been a long time since I've played Shift 2 Unleashed, from what I remember it was a marginal improvement over Shift 1. Before I get into me being wrong, let me bring you up to speed on racing games in general if you aren't an avid follower of this mess of a genre.

Racing games are generally categorized as arcade, simcade, or sim racers. Arcade would be Need for Speed Most Wanted or Midnight Club 3, sims would be Assetto Corsa and iRacing. Simcade, as you'd expect, is somewhere in the middle. Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, PGR, GRID, etc.

The best simcades are the ones that simplify the driving characteristics of a sim while adding in something unique. PGR4 has a kudos system that rewards skilled driving and a killer soundtrack to make moment-to-moment racing more exciting, Forza Motorsport 4 feels like a car nerd's wet dream with the amount of passion poured into everything surrounding the driving, etc.

A big problem with simcades as of late (Forza Motorsport 8, Project Cars 3, etc) is that they stop after the first step. They simplify sim physics to make themselves playable on a controller, and then they do nothing else. There is no reason to play FM8 over FM4 or Project Cars 3 over Shift 2.

So what's Shift 2's deal?

It is the most visceral simcade (maybe racing game in general) that you will ever play. Here is a video I recorded of a quick race around Brands Hatch.

(side note: this game is almost 15 years old and goddamn has it held up graphically)

What is Shift 2 doing to make this race as intense as possible?

1. It is pitch black. You better not crash and break your headlights, or you are fucked. Your opponents' headlights light up your cockpit when they get close, adding to the pressure.

2. Your vision blurs the faster you go, until the only thing in focus is the track in front of you.

3. Dirt and bug splatter hits your window, occasionally directly in your line of sight.

4. The hood of your car shakes at higher RPM or when going over bumps, making the cars feel more physical.

5. The transmission whine sound has been made more prominent compared to reality, meaning the car is basically screaming at you at all times.

6. Your head moves to follow the track, every bump shaking your helmet. In most other racing games, you are the car. In Shift 2, you are the meatbag inside the car. This is especially relevant when you crash. Your view jerks forward, your vision goes grayscale and blurry, and your driver breathes heavily for a few moments afterward.

7. No rewind mechanic. If you fuck up, your race is over. Don't fuck up.

8. AI are willing to jostle for position. They aren't as intelligent as some modern sims, but they're way smarter than Forza's AI and collisions carry an actual risk in Shift 2.

Now look at this video of FM8. It feels sterile in comparison.

Even if you remove points 1 and 6 from Shift 2's favor, a race at dusk with regular cockpit view, it still looks and more importantly FEELS incredible. And now here's FM8 again.

Shift 2 isn't perfect, it shares some problems with Shift 1. Notably, some cars just straight up suck to drive (the slower/heavier ones), both PC ports are iffy, and it succumbed to licensing hell and can't be purchased anymore. But still, after 14 years, it's leaps and bounds ahead of the driving experience of every other simcade racer released since, including its own spiritual successor.

It sucks that no other racing games have really tried to follow down this path since. Slightly Mad Studios' own Project Cars (1 & 2) carried some of these ideas into an actual sim, but then they shot themselves in the foot with Project Cars 3 and haven't done anything since. They're been absorbed into EA in the meantime, so who knows if they'll ever have the chance.

I wish it didn't take me so long to revisit Shift 2. If you're itching for a good simcade racer, give it a shot. It feels fresher than ever with how stagnant the racing genre has been as of late.

How I feel explaining SAML to an end user

I've been in a fortunate position this past year of having some extra money to throw at shiny new hardware and I've experienced a side of Linux I haven't dealt with before...its poor support for shiny new hardware.

I grabbed a Ryzen 9000 CPU and an X870 motherboard...only to find that ethernet didn't work on kernel 6.11. I had to use a usb-c to ethernet dongle for several weeks until 6.13 released.

Just today and what prompted this post, I splurged on a 4k 240hz HDR monitor. HDR is obviously in-progress and I did not expect it to work out of the box. Critically, what I did expect was for the 240hz part to work, but I couldn't set it to anything beyond 120. Skip forward a couple hours, and I now know what EDID files are and how to use different ones. For more insight on my night, see this issue, this blog post, and this blog post. After all that, 240hz is smooth, goddamn.

For me, I'm not complaining. I love desktop Linux far more than shiny new hardware. I would return this monitor before considering not using Linux, and in the latter case it was a good chance to learn more about how Linux deals with display devices.

But I'm also one of many people here who wants to see desktop Linux become more popular, and if a regular person encountered either of those issues, they're going straight back to Windows. While that monitor issue has been fixed upstream, it's still broken in an up-to-date distro like Fedora and the monitor is over 6 months old at this point.

When it comes to stuff like HDR, that's obviously progressing quickly and is likely to become a non-factor in the future. But new ethernet controllers and new monitors with invalid DisplayIDs are likely always going to be coming out. Unless you're willing to tinker, your only option is to wait weeks or months before buying the new shiny thing if you want to use Linux.

That brings me to my question, is there a future where this isn't the case? And what would be required to get there?

Do motherboard/monitor/IC/etc manufactures need to submit their own kernel patches well in advance of product releases, like what AMD and Intel do for their CPUs and GPUs? Are we just waiting for them to give a shit?

Is there any possibility of hardware support-related patches getting backported to older kernel versions sooner rather than waiting for new major releases?

This is kind of an ungooglable question, and I figured it might make for an interesting discussion topic if anyone has more insight or thoughts on this.

Figured this would entertain at least one person here, it's definitely entertained my parents.

Backstory: I don't really drink alcohol of any kind, not a fan of the taste. I expressed my mild frustration at lack of drink variety (i.e., water and tea) to my parents, and they suggested I try a couple different beers to see if there are any I liked.

I then escalated things as I normally do, which has resulted in a spreadsheet built over the course of several months. So if anyone here is interested in the in-depth beer opinions of someone who doesn't like beer, this post is for you! I mostly just went to a local liquor store that let me build my own six pack and randomly grabbed stuff that looked interesting.

For reference, filtered tap water is probably a 70/100 for me.

I added the beer advocate rating just to see how my scores compared to beer nerds for fun. The subcategory column is sourced from BA, if anything is wrong there, blame them and not me. The main category is me though, if I screwed something up in that column I will take the blame. I don't really understand the differences between types of beer, other than stouts/porters being generally decent.

I added the Alc/Vol column early on to see if there was any correlation to my scores, but in the end there wasn't. It's kind of unnecessary at this point, but I left it in for the hell of it.

Lastly, I say I don't like beer, but honestly the top 3 or 4 I would call "good." Not sure if I'd ever buy a 4/6 pack of them, but I enjoyed the singles. With that in mind, if someone has a recommendation for me, feel free to send it. Maybe I'll expand my spreadsheet in the future, lmao

Trying Plasma for a bit to see how green the grass is as a longtime Gnome user. The last time I ran Plasma on my main desktop was version 5.11, I think? It's been a while...

Original post by u/Proton_Team on Reddit, reposting here so everyone is in the loop on updates.

Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton's policy on politics going forward.

First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn't serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.

The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.

This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It's important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.

I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.

Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

so much to organize, damn you humble bundle

"Find ethical alternatives built by people who are not out to fuck you over"

A video about exploring dead MMOs and multiplayer games.