I’m a big gamer, and was a massive HP fan. I did not buy the game, or even consider it, specifically because of JKR’s bullshit.

I may be in the minority, but I guarantee I’m not the only one in this boat. So now you’ve talked to someone who cares, if you count this as talking.

And just to say a little more, no I didn’t crusade against the game, nor do I villainize people who bought it and enjoyed it. I do think it’s possible to enjoy art without liking the artist. Hell, my favorite book series of all time is the Ender’s Game series, and Orson Scott Card is probably just as bad as JKR, though maybe not quite as famous/public about it.

But I can’t bring myself to buy it. I’m trans, and her rhetoric, and how public it is, has been specifically harmful to me, directly. But that’s just me. I won’t tell other people how to live their lives or enjoy their free time, so long as they’re not actively hurting others. And no, I don’t consider buying a game where one person who is profiting from it might spend a sliver of that profit on anti-trans BS to be actively harming others, especially when she already has enough money to do whatever the hell she wants anyways.

This doesn’t make a dent, and ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible anyways. I just hope that some portion of people who bought the game heard about the protests and maybe donated a fraction of what they paid for the game to some pro-LGBTQ groups. I have to believe there’s at least a handful of people like that. I do believe that people are mostly good, and want to do good.

Yeesh, I wrote a lot more than I planned to here. I’ll stop now lol.

Lol. Yes I am! How did you know?? 😜

Not sure how uncommon you’re looking for, but I think I already did this.

I chose Sage.

According to some quick googling (read: not sure how accurate this is), Sage wasn’t in the top 500 names for my birth year, but my given name was top 100.

Though both names I’ve used have been trending towards more common for most of my life. Looks like my original name is now a top 35 most common, but Sage is still outside the top 100 for females and outside top 300 for males.(Really wish there was more data for the popularity of nonbinary names. I think Sage is probably one of the more popular enby names, so maybe it’s not all that uncommon, depending on how you define it.)

I guess I probably have more experience than the average player, about 25 hours so far. But I also learned my 3rd point the hard way, by doing ~10 hours of research outside of playing to try to optimize. It mostly just drove me crazy, but I did pick up a lot of little helpful tidbits. So if anyone has any general gameplay questions I’m happy to do my best to answer!

Just know I definitely don’t consider myself an expert by any means. I’m not even at the level cap yet.

Oh that’s my bad. I missed what community this was in. I don’t have any steam deck specific knowledge.

I’ve heard about some performance issues on multiplayer servers for console users, but iirc most people don’t have issues for single player. Wish I could say more but I’ve only played on PC, sorry.

Palworld is mine. I’ve been loving it so far.

I’d say a couple things though:

1. Don’t expect perfection. It’s still early access and there are bugs. They put out a patch last night that fixed some of the most glaring issues, but there’s still some wonky stuff. I’d recommend, when you build your base, to keep all the workstations that pals use on the ground level, and build your ceiling/second floor two units high. Some larger pals can’t get through single tall doorways.

2. Feel free to play around with your server settings if you want things a little easier/harder (but I’d say definitely turn off structure decay right away, and maybe increase pal spawn rate slightly, mine is at 1.2x and feels good). The game is almost entirely customizable to what you want it to be, everything between super casual fun and hardcore survival is easy to set up.

3. Don’t stress about min/maxing everything just yet. First of all, you probably simply don’t need it while leveling up. Second, people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about yet. There are conflicting sources for the best of pretty much everything. So just play how you like (but I’d say wait until you have a pal you know you’ll use endgame before powering it up with essence/condensing, those can’t be refunded to my knowledge).

This is good advice, I appreciate it. But I should clarify, I definitely won’t be launching my practice before I’m comfortable with the OS. I’m probably going to take some other user’s suggestions and do some test runs on my home machine to figure things out. I’m not launching tomorrow, there’s no real rush. My current contract runs until May 2024. So I’ve got 6 months ahead of me to figure things out.

Oh I’m aware the OS is free. The affordability I was asking for was for the actual computer to run it. I guess that part wasn’t Linux-specific. Mostly just looking for a good option for a work computer that will last a while. Will probably just get some kind of refurb laptop, I’ve always had good success with those.

But if someone has a specific recommendation I’m all ears.

Yes, mostly paperwork and email for sure. Some basic spreadsheet stuff for tracking clients and payments and whatnot, but there’s also programs for that.

One less common, yet essential, thing I haven’t gotten a specific response on yet, is converting word docs to PDFs with searchable text. Not sure if you know things about that, but it popped into my head while responding here so hopefully someone who sees this knows something.

And, a generic thank you to everyone who has responded, this has all been very helpful. Even if I don’t respond to you specifically, I appreciate it.

Yeah some counties use pointlessly complicated programs to distribute videos. I often have to try a few different players on windows to find one that works. If VLC has trouble with something, are there others you’d recommend as well?

This is a great tip, I’ll definitely do some test runs, thanks!

This seems like a good thread to ask this… I’m sure I could find the answers I need myself but frankly I trust the userbase here more than most online articles.

As my username hints at, I’m a lawyer. I’m considering starting my own firm as a solo practitioner. I need a computer and/or laptop for it, and as a new business my budget would be pretty tight. I’ve mostly only ever used windows, but I’m getting fed up with the bullshit, so I’m considering going with Linux.

I assume Linux is capable of doing everything I need, which is primarily handling word documents, viewing PDFs, watching evidence videos, and online research. But my concern is that some of the more commonly used video types might have trouble on Linux, or that some of the word document templates I use in Windows might have compatibility issues.

I’m also nervous about using an OS I’m not familiar with for business purposes right away.

So I guess I’m asking a few questions. What is a reliable yet affordable option to get started? Are my concerns based in reality or is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues? What else might I need to know to use Linux comfortably from the get go? Is it going to take a lot of time and effort to get Linux running how I need it to?

For reference, I do consider myself to be somewhat tech-savvy. I don’t code or anything, but I’ve built my last two home computers myself and I’m not scared of general software management, I just don’t make it myself.

So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

So I don’t have one yet, but it’s on my list and I’m curious: what is it about it that makes you actually finish games?

Actually, here’s my fun fact: Alaska is the farthest North, East, and West state in the U.S.

See, e.g., the war on “drugs”

The GOP has been working towards making the US a dictatorship since the 60s. We passed the civil rights act and the right was so appalled that they had to treat people of color like, well, people, that they’ve been coming up with new ways to ensure progress never happens again ever since.