I’m excited for this. I just got my wife a Deck used to play Escape Simulator together, but this will make it a lot easier for her to play most of my other games, now, too.

Sadly Dragon Age 3 can’t be shared, which I should have added to her account, not mine… But we only had 1 Deck at the time! (On the other hand, I’ll be able to play most of my library on her device while she’s playing, so not a big deal!)

I think you can Steam Remote Play Together with non-Steam games, but that’s the only way to “share” them that I know of.

Right, but Steam still let’s people who own delisted games download and play them forever. (Well, assuming they’re not live service games with no servers, but that’s not a Valve problem.)

I have a slightly different perspective as someone just starting Rise as my first ever experience with this series.

Holy shit, the tutorials are terrible. Massive info dump walls of text explaining too many systems at once, cryptic warning messages to confirm you want to dismiss the tutorials are extra confusing… And despite the massive info dumping, they don’t even tell you everything you need to know to complete the tutorial missions as you complete them. When you go to trap your first monster, there’s no tooltip to teach you how to use items in the “how to trap” explanation or NPC dialogue. I needed to google it.

And no ability to pause in a singleplayer game? I googled some explanation about pause being on one of the menus, but I couldn’t find it. Thankfully, suspending the game on a Steam Deck pauses it, so it’s playable.

Also, why was I given massively OP equipment and piles of loot just for logging in? The entire early game is now so easy that it’s not fun. I’m only 3 tutorials + 1 “real” mission into the game, so I’m going to try starting over without the EZ-mode loot and give it a second chance, but so far, I’m not impressed.

If I’d bought this through Steam, I’d have refunded it already before the 2-hour playtime window closed.

TL;DR: Terrible new-player onboarding has me questioning if I should push through.

Grow: Song of the Evertree has lots of crafting materials, but no money. I haven’t played it much, but it mostly seems to be about gathering daily to grow the Evertree, then using the resources to expand the town.

I haven’t been following PoE2 very closely, but I hope it plays well on Steam Deck. If it plays well, then I’m going to play the hell out of this…

Exactly my thought on reading the article.

In the US, even regulatory capture follows partisan divisions… Insanity.

I just looked it up and I already own it from the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine. I should play it sometime! Also on sale on GOG rn at a historical low price DRM-free.

I think that’s fine, tbh. Not as many customers will pay $80+ for a subscription. Then companies that sell games with more ethical business models will be more competitive, too.

It seems like the Archive.org .zip dump’s “size” is just 12580366816. I assume that’s bytes, which is only 12½ GB. That seems way too small to include all the romhacks, doesn’t it? I thought a lot created assets and HD textures and such. But that also seems like way too much to just be website data, and most hacks are tiny files.

Does anyone know what’s in that data dump? I’m tempted to download everything, even though I’d only ever use a miniscule percentage of it.

The most interesting insight from this article, imho, is that abortion rights in Florida are on the ballot in 2024, abortion rights have passed in every referendum on the topic since the recent Supreme Court fuckery, and that women coming to the polls to vote for their reproductive rights might skew the numbers more in favour of Democrats, independent of polling.

So Democrat victories in Florida (including a senator seat) are looking like a real possibility.

I had completely forgotten about the quest mode and tetronimo ball mode.

I’ve long-ago lost (or sold, maybe?) all my original DS stuff, but it’s nice how cheap and easy it is to buy a used DSi/DS Lite and then get a flash cart or soft mod. I should pull it out and play it again. Highly recommended as a console; the DS has lots of timeless games.

You could also try booting something from MicroSD so it’s easier to revert.

Seconding contacting Valve support, too.

Oh, maybe? Windows 10 EOL is coming up soon, though, so Windows 11 is relevant for almost all Windows 10 users.

The actual analysis itself makes it clear that the research specifically on cell phone bans is lacking. In particular, of the 1317 studies, only 22 were relevant, more than half of which were Master Degree research projects, not peer-reviewed studies. It’s fair that the evidence for cell phone bans in schools is inconclusive, but that’s because there isn’t enough quality reach yet to draw conclusions.

I was actually referring above to studies on cell phones in general for task success, non-specific to schools.

You’re missing the point entirely, I think.

If you want to learn about the research, Jonathan Haidt’s book includes links to studies on the effects of cell phones. I don’t have time to find the sources for you right now, but you can look there if you want to learn more.

Sure, but lots of people are looking to install it anyway because they “need” it to play Valorant or whatever.

It’s a shame your child’s teacher used the tool incorrectly. That was unprofessional of them.

If it helps, there are people like me running training sessions for educators to let them know what LLMs are (and are not) capable of. The main point I was pushing this year was that LLMs don’t know or understand anything. “The I in LLM stands for Intelligence.”

By age 16, there’s reason to think that youth can handle the addictive nature of phones, with support. Same for adults.

That said, yes, we probably should make dark patterns illegal, in general.

Smart phones in pockets being a problem is supported by robust psychology research. People do the worst at tasks when phones are on the desk in front of them, worse when phones are in their pockets, and best when phones are left in another room even if the devices are turned off, in all cases. It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration. (And, obviously, notifications make things increasingly terrible.)

The research is not at all unclear or anecdotal; it is very strong. Phones are damaging to attention, task completion, and learning. This is established; the only disagreement is to the degree of the effect.

Re: phones in “class”, I think we’re misunderstanding each other due to terminology. Here, “a class” means a single instruction period. I thought you were for banning use during instruction time, but against phones being fully banned at school, but if you mean “class” to be the entire time from first bell to last bell, then we’re in agreement. No smart phones at all during school hours would be a good step.

Hopefully, that might also make parents more aware of the damage smart phones are causing and support a societal move away from giving youth addiction machines.