With the removal of the Tidal API from Plexamp, I will be sorely missing my discovery recommendations. Will need to give this a shot using Last.fm scrobbling (already supported in Plex).

WTF you think happened in 2020? No one could leave their house, so video game went gang busters.

I worked at a video game retailer then, and it was the busiest we’ve ever been.

Welcome to the existentialist crew! It’s a great and humbling place to be.

Great game made by some devs who used to work at Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja/Jetpack Joyride fame). Highly recommend playing with an actual DJ turntable for the full fantasy. Also had a recently released VR mode.

On top of all that, https://spinsha.re/

They were definitely worth the effort before if you were specifically going for the Mysterious Chests. Now those have been boosted in cost, it may be less worthwhile.

That being said, uniques can now drop from Helltide chests, and drop rates for non-Mysterious chests have been increased so it might be a zero-sum change.

Another vote for Synology here. I previously had a DS418play for almost 8 years. Just picked up a DS423+ recently to upgrade and the process was literally as simple as removing the drives from the old NAS, chucking them in the new NAS, and booting up. All my Docker containers, all my credentials, all my licenses were all just there and working, despite being in a new shell.

Also want to call out the importance of 4-bay vs. 2-bay. With 2-bay you get 1-drive fault tolerance in RAID mode, which is nice. With 4-bay, you can still opt for 1-drive fault tolerance and with SHR you can have 4 drives active (of varying sizes) giving you much more available space and making the upgrade path of storage significantly easier.

• Nova Lands just came out and has native controller support. Works very well, even if it’s somewhat simplistic.
• Factorio just released controller support which works well most of the time but it’s kinda fiddly.

Also, beware that DSP does not support cloud saves because the devs can’t compress their save data enough to fit in the Steam cloud requirements.

I’ve been using this for around 8 months now on PC and Deck.

• Having multiple sync profiles each with different configurations is great if you use a variety of devices.
• The hall effect sticks are obviously great.
• Some of the programmable button combos can come in handy.

The only things I don’t like about them are:

• Sometimes it doesn’t connect first try to my PC.
• The right trigger developed a squeak after Diablo 4.

Would still definitely recommend though because you’re basically getting an Xbox Elite controller for the price of a standard Xbox controller.

I’m not sure that I would need this very much. I’m mostly interested in a sort of ephemeral surveilance system; I only really need to store, at most, a few days, and then rewrite over it all.

This is exactly what I do. I simply cloud backup any event/object clips but only retain last 5 days. The cloud is if law enforcement needs it, or in the event of hardware failure/catastrophic house damage.

What tweaking do you generally need to do for the camera server?

Recording schedules change based on time of day/when we’re in/out of the house. This is all handled as automations through Home Assistant, but is set up through Surveillance Station NVR.

This is exactly what I do. Record at 15FPS, event detection at 5FPS (at quarter resolution too).

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That’s quite a few cameras. I would do an audit on how many you will actually need first, because you will likely find you could get by with 5-10.

In terms of what you’ll need - any Intel chip that supports QuickSync will likely do for the main ffmpeg processing of the image, but you will definitely want a Google Coral TPU. If you do end up needing 10-15 cameras, you may end up needing the M2 with dual TPU version of the Coral. You will also want some form of reliable storage for your clips (NAS local or NFS), as well as the ability to back up those clips/shots to the cloud somewhere.

I’m personally running 4 cameras (3x1080 @ 15fps, 1x4k @ 25fps) through my ~7 year old Synology DS418play NAS using Surveillance Station as the first ingestion point, then restreaming from there to Frigate. Now that Surveillance Station can accept external events via webhook, I may look to swap the direction, and ingest into Frigate first, then restream out to Surveillance Station for long-term storage.

“Why not directly use Frigate?” I hear you ask. Mostly because Frigate is pretty static. It’s all set up via YAML with no config UI currently, whereas I can tweak stuff on Surveillance Station quite easily.

You are very welcome. The more people that play Control, the better!

I’d hold on Cyberpunk. There will undoubtedly be a bundled/discounted version of it when Phantom Liberty comes out in September.

As a counter offer, may I present Control? One of the best action games I’ve played in decades that also has a really interesting story (if you like trippy Twin Peaks/X-Files style stories) and it’s only $10USD currently in the sale. Runs pretty well on the Deck, and if you have a beefy PC to play on as well, has some really great RTX features.

The only other game that really fits your criteria that I would recommend is Hades which has already been mentioned. I put over 300 hours into Hades across PC and Switch (pre Steam Deck), and it’s one of the only roguelike games that has a super compelling story.

I think that one of the most disappointing things about D4 is that it actively punishes you for wanting to try new things via high respec costs and gearing/aspect requirements. This is especially true at end game because there is no “Refund All” for paragon boards. Hence why (accurate) build guides are so important.

Another thing that makes theorycrafting difficult yourself is that due to all skills being %age based, it’s much harder to plan out the math behind a build.

Finally, while it’s relatively easy to try out different builds while you’re leveling, the landscape of what is viable when you hit WT3/WT4 completely changes as Glyphs start generating more of your DPS/survivability than the skills in your previous build, which dramatically changes what your build may look like. This change at end-game is great for variety (leveling builds are different to end-game builds), but due to the aforementioned way that D4 punishes you for wanting to try new things, it makes it pretty difficult in WT4+ to play anything but the “meta” builds.

All that being said, the Dev update tomorrow mentioned that they’ll be going over Season 1 details as well as a bunch of QoL changes that are upcoming. So my fingers are crossed for at least a “Refund all” for paragon boards, if not multiple “Spec”/Armory slots.

Control got me to build a new PC. I had an average laptop before, but sold the laptop and built a PC with a 3080 in it for the sweet raytracing. Managed to pick the 3080 up at RRP before all the Crypto boom started, so I was stoked! Still going very strong after almost 3 years.

Here’s my decent haul. Some of them aren’t really in the “Sale” as they just launched but have launch discounts.

• Control Ultimate Edition: Already own it on Epic, but was cheap enough to re-buy for easier Steam Deck play.
• Crab Champions: The meme song that become a really competent roguelike shooter!
• Dave the Diver: What if Lucasarts made a mini-game filled roguelike?
• DROP - System Breach: Sleeper hit for me. Intense puzzle/pattern recognition game with a great, simplistic hacking theme/style.
• The Entropy Centre: Big Portal vibes, but using time!
• Humanity: What if Lemmings, but you’re an omniscient Shiba Inu. Plays great in VR too.
• Prey: Loved Deathloop but never had a chance to play Prey.
• Shogun Showdown: Crypt of the Necrodancer meets Slay the Spire - SIGN ME UP!

Same, saw the huge ad and promoted post and did a double take, like “Did I open the wrong app?”.

• Diablo 4: plays great on Deck and is the perfect way to kill time during lunch break.
• DROP - System Breach: surprisingly tense hacking puzzle/pattern recognition game. Sleeper hit for me.
• Humanity: Lemmings meets Robo Rally, but designed by the Rez/Tetris Effect people.