I received my Steam Deck on June 6th and have used it literally every day since then. Here are some assorted thoughts that might be of value to people either waiting on theirs or on the fence about ordering:

The Good

• I had no idea until I got it that there's an official Deck test game: Aperture Desk Job. It's essentially a cute test/tutorial for the Deck's controls, set in the Portal universe. Takes about half an hour, but it's a fun onboarding for the device.
• On the past two Saturdays, I have woken up and played Vampire Survivors with one hand while I held my morning coffee in the other. This is the way.
• The control remapping options are absolutely incredible. It is a very robust system. Even simple fixes (like putting A on a back paddle so I can play Vampire Survivors one-handed) can make a world of difference.
• I haven't run many heavy games on it, but I started up Bugsnax, and it was keeping a solid 60 FPS and looked great.
• Emulation on the device is a dream. I haven't done anything past OG PlayStation games yet, but the power of the device, the robust control customization, and the ease of installing emulators (adding Flatpaks in desktop mode) make this absolutely ideal for revisiting older consoles. I've spent probably 80% of my time on the device in PSOne games.
• Battery life is fine, but I don't really use it. I bought a long power cord and spend most of the time with it plugged in on my couch since it has passthrough. I thought the cord sticking out the top of the device would bother me, but it hasn't really been an issue.
• Game selection is increasing steadily (1700+ verified games currently). If you're buying it to play specific games you might be disappointed, as there's still a lot that doesn't work. If you're buying it for games in general though, there is plenty to keep you occupied.
• The grips are MUCH more comfortable for bigger hands than standard Switch joycons. Those would always cramp my hands, but the Deck feels natural and comfortable.
• The middle of the device gets warm to the touch during gameplay, especially on more demanding stuff, but the grips remain cool and you won't feel the heat at all unless you specifically move your hands to the back middle of the device.

The Bad

• The paddles on the back are a little awkward, and I accidentally click them more than I like. In most games they're not mapped to anything so it's fine, but in emulators I use them for save states. I had to set them to respond to long presses only so my accidental clicks didn't mess things up.
• The software is... still getting there. I get navigation issues on store and profile pages frequently, along with frequent UI lag. It's a bit unpolished at the moment.
• Don't know if it's specific to my hardware or a software bug, but sometimes it won't log me in to my Friends list and the only fix is a reboot.
• I wish the control sticks had deeper indents for your thumbs. They're pretty flat, and my thumbs tend to slip off on stick-focused games (most noticeable on my right (aiming) thumb during 20 Minutes Till Dawn).
• Bluetooth headphones have to be manually reconnected in the Settings menu each time. No idea why this is, but it's a bit of an inconvenience.
• Mid-game suspending is still clunky. I don't really do it, as I don't trust that it'll save like it should. It also still counts playtime while suspended but seems to have a rollback feature? I put the device to sleep with a game open that I'd played for 20 minutes and came back to it saying I'd played it for 3 hours. The playtime ended up dropping back down to 20 minutes, but only after I restarted the device.

The Ugly

• There isn't any ugly. I absolutely love this device. Despite my nitpicks above, I think it's nothing short of splendid. I'm more excited about this than I've been about anything in videogaming in a long time.

If anyone has any questions, ask away! Also if any other people here have their Steam Decks and want to chime in with their experiences (@Autoxidation), go for it!

Note: there's a number of disclaimers I feel I want to include regarding "miracle" diets, direct-to-consumer businesses, health benefits/risks of dieting, etc but it'd get too long to put them up here. I'll add a comment with that stuff. Also, no one is paying me to say anything here.

I decided to write about my experiences with different low calorie/diabetic-friendly/keto food options. Let me know if this is at all helpful to you :)

Magic Spoon

This is that unavoidable direct-to-consumer business; you may have been bothered w/dozens of promo codes for their cereal across various podcasts, YouTube videos, and Twitch streams. I have been on a ketogenic diet for a long while (and have had success with it*), and saw that Magic Spoon is low carb and comparably low in calories compared to other sugary cereals.

I bought a variety pack with 4 boxes for ~$40 including shipping w/promo code. $10/box is pricey, but since I used to be a cereal lover, I figured it might be worth having it to scratch the itch. All of these I had with Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk (<1g carbs.) I can't really tell a flavor difference between almond milk and low fat milk. Whole milk sells for about $3 in my market where as almond milk is about $4. Note: I am easy to please, I definitely don't have a "refined" palate. Now to the boxes:

Peanut Butter

I think maybe my expectations were off for this. I'm not a sommelier, so I'll describe flavors best I can in common folk language. This is just not good. At all. The taste is peanut-buttery, but has an overwhelming salty flavor. There's also this off-note that tastes like artificial sweetener. Texture-wise really adheres to your teeth. I finished the bowel, only because I didn't have enough time to pour a new one before work. It's been a few weeks, and I still haven't touched the box (aside from a small bowel to write this review.)

Rating: 1/5

Fruity

I had pretty low expectations from the previous box, and some anxiety about having potentially wasted $40 on food I won't eat. The smell when I opened the box was immediately that of fruit loops. I noticed the shape of the cereal was the same as the peanut butter ones. Fortunately, these didn't glue themselves to my teeth in quite the same way that the PB flavor did, but I still used my tongue to dislodge it from a couple of molars at the end. This tasted quite close to fruit loops, but overall is a unique flavor. I quite enjoyed this flavor. This cereal can sit in the bowel for some time before becoming soggy; a good quality since I typically take my time and browse Reddit/HN in the mornings while slowly working on a bowel of cereal before work. Flavor is a half-step down from fruit loops, but a step up in consistency.

Rating: 4/5

Frosty

When I tried this, this was the best keto cereal I've tried. I'd say it's the best cereal I've ever had, but that title still belongs to Reese's Puffs. It's hard to describe the flavor, something like Lucky Charms if you had a high-number of mash-mellows, but far more substantial. It isn't an especially complex flavor; it's just a "frosted" flavor that seems perfectly balanced in both flavor and consistency. Following the trend of other cereals, it doesn't get soggy fast, which I appreciate. Doesn't really get stuck in the teeth.

Rating: 5/5

Chocolate

This will be a short review: not great. It tastes like Cocoa Puffs, if they very obviously had substituted artificial sweetener for sugar. Maybe that's your thing, but I wasn't a huge fan of Cocoa Puffs in the first place. Not offensive, I'll probably finish the box when I run out of other things to eat, but not great.

Rating: 2/5

Conclusion

This scratches that craving for cereal that you miss out on when you go on a low carb diet. If you are on keto, you should note the cereal is relatively high in protein (around 13g per cup) where total fat is only 8g per cup. I'll probably purchase again, but I'll do a custom bundle next time w/fruity, 2 frosty, and maybe a different interesting flavor as a fourth.

This question was brought on by one of danluu's posts, which linked to another post going into why benchmarking matters. In that post, I discovered a bunch of different places/people running benchmarks to determine the highest performing "thing". Over my years on the internet, I've come across other places and people doing this for other categories of things, and think it would be beneficial to get a large list down of all the high quality testers and reviewers in one place. So I'll start off with a comment below with a list of all the high quality reviewers that I've come across for anything and I would love it if you all could do the same!

Caveats:

• I'd like to try and avoid communities centered around a single niche object. First example that comes to mind for this is the mechanical keyboards subreddit. While there's some good information there, I feel that it's highly diluted from everyone else in the community "following what's popular". If there's a specific user that consistently posts high quality information from there though, I'd say that's fair game.
• If I (or someone else) posts a resource that you don't think is a high quality resource, or is untrustworthy, put a comment down explaining why! It's hard to be on guard all the time, so I'm sure I've fallen for marketing (word of mouth or otherwise) plots without realizing it.

I'll include a disclaimer for reviewers or categories that have an innate subjective aspect to them. (Audio & Video would be good examples I think)

I've seen a few posts about the Framework Laptop on Tildes and since I received mine, I thought I'd do a write up for it.

I've been using the Framework laptop for a few weeks now and it's been great so far. I was originally skeptical but I decided that I would take a shot at it as I've been growing increasingly unhappy with the design decisions that Apple has been making with MacOS.

I ordered the DIY kit, which was nice since I already had an NVMe SSD I could use with it, so I ended up saving about $150. It only took about 20 minutes to get the RAM, SSD and wifi card installed.

Specs:

• Intel i7-1165G7
• 32 GB of RAM
• Intel WiFi 6E card

Total cost: $1,422.03.

Unfortunately my first laptop arrived with a dead display. The Framework support team was pretty helpful and quickly sent out a new one, which works perfectly.

After toying around with Linux Mint and a few other distros, I ended up installing the Windows 11 beta. Getting the drivers installed was easy, since Framework offers a single download that runs one script to install all necessary drivers in unattended mode. Just hit one button and restart - all the drivers are installed. I wish all manufacturers offered something similar.

Overall construction is great. For something as modular as this, it feels extremely solid and well built. While the build quality isn't equal to something like a MacBook, I'd say it's on par with a Dell XPS or similar high end machine.

The screen is nice and bright, with accurate colors. I've always been a fan of 3:2 screens on laptops and moving from a MacBook Pro with a 16-inch 16:9 display to the 13.5-inch 3:2 display on the Framework doesn't feel like losing too much real estate. Having the taller display is great for sites like Tildes, where it can fit almost the same amount of content as a much larger screen.

The keyboard and trackpad are both great. The keys remind me of the older pre-2015 style MacBook keyboards before they switched to the butterfly mechanism. They are bouncy and responsive, with a nice feedback that doesn't feel too harsh like the butterfly keyboards do. The trackpad is pretty good and it uses the Windows Precision drivers, so it supports swiping and pinching if you like that. It does sound a bit louder than my MacBook Pro's trackpad.

The speakers are a bit disappointing. The max loudness is pretty anemic. Even in a normal acoustic environment (A/C running in a house), you have to actively listen to hear. Coming from a MacBook Pro 16-inch, I would say that the speakers are the biggest downgrade.

The main draw of the Framework is the expandability and upgradability.

The Framework modules are a fantastic idea and I love them. While they don't save you from having to carry around adapters, it is really nice to have those adapters slot in to your machine and feel more integrated. I purchased 2 USB-C, 2 full-sized USB, a DisplayPort, and an HDMI adapter. Being able to just slot in a USB A port and swap it for a display out one on the rare occasion that I need it has been great. I love being able to adapt the ports on my laptop to a situation without having to have dongles coming out of the side of my laptop.

The adapters are tiny and easily fit in any backpack or carrying case. I'm really curious to see what new adapters they offer in the future and what crazy niche ones third parties come up with. I'd love to see a cellular modem jammed into one of these things. Or maybe one that can hide a dongle for my wireless keyboard and mouse?

Battery life is...fine. It's an all day machine, but you'll definitely need to charge it every day if you're using it a good deal. The battery is on the smaller side, but it gets me through a normal work day so that's good enough. But when the battery goes bad (as all Lithium-Ion batteries do), it's an easy fix.

In terms of upgradability, getting into the laptop is dead simple. There's five screws on the bottom and then entire top deck (keyboard and trackpad) comes off. Everything is easily accessible and sensibly laid out. It's also all labeled with QR codes that take you to specific guides on how to install/upgrade those components. I think the educational component is great. It really shows people who would have never thought to upgrade their RAM or storage how easy it can be.

That's the big selling point for me. If I decide in a year or two that I need more than 1TB of storage, I can just buy a larger drive and stick it in there. Or if my display dies, I can get a one for a lot less than the cost of replacing the laptop. Or if the keyboard or trackpad dies, then I can easily replace just that component. On my MacBook Pro, replacing the keyboard is an $800+ repair, since it involves replacing the entire top case, which includes the motherboard and other expensive components.

For years we've been hearing from manufacturers that they can't make a laptop thin, light and upgradable. This laptop proves them wrong.

My biggest concern is the long term viability of the company. It's nice that they made an upgradable laptop, but if they aren't around in a year or two to keep selling replacement parts, then it doesn't matter much.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the Framework and I plan on keeping it and making it my daily driver.

EDIT: I forgot to mention my absolute favorite feature, one that I've missed ever since Apple went all USB-C on their laptops: It has a light on the side to tell you if it is currently charging or fully charged!

Just finished watching it, and while I’m sure I need to process and reflect a little more on it, I can at least give my initial impression: meh.

I came in not expecting much because, to be honest, the trilogy didn’t end as good as it started. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t end up a kaleidoscope of colors either, since the promotional material seemed to insinuate it might take after some of the other Wachowski’s works.

The first hour felt like a rehash of the first Matrix. While the callbacks were good fan service, it felt uninspired and something I would expect from a Disney franchise. The second half seemed to lose the thread and the plot got rambled through to the point that you forget what the whole point of the movie was supposed to be. It basically ends as a…love story? The deeper philosophical elements of the trilogy were eschewed for predictable tropes and artificial suspense.

The characters lacked depth, and I was particularly disappointed in the new incarnations of Agent Smith and Morpheus. The younger actors lacked the gravitas that the original duo brought to the screen. The bated, deliberate delivery that provided weight to the characters was replaced by trite, pithy lines that don’t do the original characters any justice. Neil Patrick Harris is also better suited for a comedic role rather than a dramatic one, and his character failed at both in this movie.

The movie had a decent environment and art direction, but it got ruined by overuse of CGI and green screen. The action scenes either had stilted fights with aging actors, or had so much action that they lacked any real sense of danger (there were scenes with throngs of people attacking the main characters with bullets never seeming to hit anyone important).

I had hoped that after 20 years there would be some real contribution to the canon, but this movie answered enough questions to explain why Neo is alive, without contributing any further philosophy into the series. It ends with a clear open ending for future installments, which would only serve as cash grabs.

The movie started off with many meta-references to itself, making a joke about sequels being unoriginal. I had hoped this self-awareness would have translated to either a new level of meta-discussion or at least an attempt to not fall into the folly of most half-assed sequels. Apparently that line was solely a joke, and it cheapens the movie because of it.

Was it a good movie? Not really. Was it a bad movie? Not necessarily. It was entertaining in the same way a Michael Bay explosion is entertaining, but those looking for intellectual stimulation will be left empty-handed.

OK, well. Dune then. Sort of a live review, as I watch. Some more in-depth thoughts at the end. Mildly spoilery, but not if you know the story already.

Fair warning, I will not be judging this film on purely it's own merits. It exists in the world and also in the world are Lynch's film (for reference I consider the spicediver fanedit, Alternative Edition Redux, to be the canonical version of that), the Sci-Fi channel miniseries and obviously the books. Yes, even the prequels - the first of which is one of the worst books I've ever read and I've read The Davinci Code. Anyway, on to actually watching it...

Well, it's pretty. One problem is that no matter how good the design is - and the design is VERY good - it's just not as good as Tony Masters and David Lynch building on material from Mobius and HR Giger. This film is obviously heavily influenced by them though.

In my head Caladan is a lush, fertile, welcoming world. It's been colour graded to grey and desaturated. Feels wrong.

He's lifting both shots and dialogue from Lynch's film. That's good. My brain is filling in the missing bits of internal monologing.

Nice implementation of Chakobsa. I like that.

Hans Zimmer can just fuck off with that big stupid honking sound he shoehorns into everything. So annoying.

This film is missing Roger Deakins. I mean you can say that about a lot of films but this one especially. It is beautifully shot but Deakins would have taken it to another level.

Why are people whispering at each other over like ten metre distances? I hate that. Speak up, you're outside, it's windy and you're far apart! It's not moody if you obviously can't even hear each other. Yes, small thing, but things like that which upset your suspension of disbelief are jarring.

You can't put a crysknife away without it tasting blood. Pffft. That's just ignoring lore for the sake of it. Five seconds would be all it took to do that bit. We could have had one fewer lingering shots on the knife itself instead. As an aside, the Shadout Mapes as a means to explain bits of Arrakeen and Fremen lore to the Atredies (and us!) is horrendously under-used.

The ornithopters in this movie are badass. There is an in-universe reason for them that I can't remember.

I wonder how much of this works if you haven't seen Lynch's version (which has much more internal thoughts of characters) or read the books?

Stellan Skarsgard is channelling Apocalypse Now era Brando pretty hard and that is in no way a bad thing. His Baron is absolutely superb, probably the best part of the whole film. Piter de Vries is nowhere near weird/creepy/insane enough. Leaving out Feyd-Rautha is a mistake, he's the anti-Paul and even though Sting did a relatively terrible job in Lynch's film, that doesn't mean he's not important.

Zimmer teasing elements of Eno's original theme is a nice touch as well.

You know what's cool? What's cool is that at certain key moments I get lines from the book appearing in my head, from whichever scene is happening. That's a really good sign. I haven't read Dune for years.

So OK, overall, it's not as bad as I was expecting. It's pretty. It's stylish. It's annoyingly colour graded but what isn't these days? But this film doesn't add much to the telling of Dune over the Lynch's film or even, really, the Sci-Fi miniseries. Villeneuve is obviously a fan of both books and Lynch's movie and what he has made is good. A lot of what he's made is basically just a remake of what Lynch did, and I don't just mean because both films are based on the same book - there are multiple direct lifts straight from Lynch's film, and that is perfectly OK. But it's not about what is here, it's about what isn't.

Because it leaves a lot out - it's shallow where it should be deep, it's straightforward where it should be mystical, simple where it should be weird. It's 8-10 characters when it should be twice that and worst of all a lot of it seems to rely on viewers knowing the lore rather than having time to explain it: and all that is because film is the wrong medium for this story.

It misses out on exploring much about any of the characters simply because nobody has enough screentime to go into their motivations, which are generally multifaceted and complex - I do appreciate Villeneuve not wanting to have characters stand around expositioning at each other (MCU, looking at you), or doing a voiceover of character's thoughts like Lynch did, but that means you really need to spend time with them so they can show us what they're thinking, not tell us. "Show don't tell" is good filmmaking but it takes time.

For example, Paul and Jessica get most of the screen time but we don't really learn much about them. Because you need a lot of lore to contextualise their motivations - Jessica's actions and desires need to be placed in the wider context of her relationship to Leto and the Bene Gesserit and their plans and while Villeneueve does try to do that a bit, it's one or two lines with Leto and one rushed (literally, they're doing a walk-and-talk) conversation in which Helen Moahim mentions the Kwisatz Haderach and little more.

The Guild are barely even mentioned. You see some lower level navigators but you don't know who they are if you don't already know who they are. The Guild's influence is so important to so much of what happens in Dune but if you didn't know they existed already I'm not sure you'd leave this film knowing there was a spacing guild at all. Same goes for the Emperor and the Landsraad, they hardly come up at all. The thing about Dune is that it's not just about Paul. Paul is important but he's really just the pointy end of a lot of long-game players and systems and their interactions. That doesn't really come over in Villeneuve's film. Also it's not really a structural issue but I'd have loved to have seen more of the Heighliners. A Navigation sequence would have been fun too.

The thing is, Dune deserves a TV series. A high budget one like Game of Thrones. I want an hour on Caladan, learning about the Atredies. I want an hour on Kaitain learning about the Padishah Emperors and the Bene Gesserit. Same with the Harkkonens. I want to be 3 or 4 episodes in before I even see Arrakis. Movies are great for telling short stories, maybe novellas at best. But big, long, complicated books need to be on TV where they can spread out, take their time, develop characters and fill in backstory and motivations.

Overall, 7/10 and I really hope the second movie gets funded because stopping here would be even worse. It's worth watching but don't expect a great deal underpinning what is still a very beautiful film. I could have written that same sentence about Bladerunner 2049, thinking about it.

The Cowboy Bebop live-action adaptation caught the attention of many users here, so I'll link some of the reviews I could find. The show is not yet available to the audience, but entertainment websites clearly had access to it.

AV Club: Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is a bloodless substitute for the real thing.

EW: A colorful, campy attempt at live-action anime doesn't justify itself.

The Verge: Netflix's Cowboy Bebop has heart, style, and some rough edges.

Indie Wire: Netflix’s Live-Action Riff on Everyone’s Favorite Anime Is a Cosmic Disaster

Games Radar: A Stellar Remix That Hits All the Right Notes

Polygon: Cowboy Bebop turns a classic anime into a Saturday morning cartoon

IGN: mixed

Slate: Cowboy Bebop Is Netflix’s Latest Live-Action Anime Mistake

Hollywood Reporter: negative

Rolling Stones: The Live-Action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Takes an Anime Classic Into the Stratosphere

The Atlantic: What’s Lost When a Classic Anime Is Adapted by Netflix

RogerEbert.com: Cowboy Bebop Fails to Find a Rhythm

Time: Netflix's Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Misunderstands What Made the Original a Classic

Vulture: Cowboy Bebop’s New Shine Can’t Replace Its Old Soul

Collider: Netflix's Live-Action Show Is a Colorless, Soulless Copy of a Landmark Anime Series

Vanity Fair: Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Is the Rare Remake That Works

Rotten Tomatoes: currently 41%

Metacritic: currently 40, Mixed or average reviewsbased on 18 Critic Reviews

So I just upgraded to an M1 Mac Mini. I was a little iffy on it, part of me wanted to build a PC just to play games but I really like MacOS and I mostly play on PS5 and the Switch with the PC only being for indie titles and stuff that only works with a keyboard and mouse like RTS, 4x, or city builders. I just don't play PC games enough to prioritize gaming as a use case in buying a computer, but I also really like RTS and city builder games.

I figured WINE and Parallels would meet most of my gaming needs but my forays into WINE have been frustrating and buggy, and this reddit thread about what works on Parallels is, frankly, just kind of sad to look at. What's worse, apparently the new Age of Empires has some kind of pathfinding instruction set that ONLY works with x86 architecture. So it won't work under any kind of virtualization or emulation.

Enter Cloud gaming. It seems the big contenders right now are ShadowPC, GeForce Now, and Paperspace. Has anyone tried these? When I last costed these out Shadow was only around $15-$20 a month which was almost a no-brainer. But it seems to have gone up to $30 a month now, which gets costly enough to where it almost seems like I'd rather get a Steam Deck. Paperspace is like $10 per month plus another ~$1 per hour of play, which would probably end up cheapest for how little I play. But how it is in terms of configuration and latency I have no idea.

I just finished watching it (pirated, because I wasn’t going to give Disney money after all the controversy regarding Taiwan).

Uhh, it.. was bad? I mean I’m usually pretty positive especially about all the Disney remakes, and I liked the general darker mood of this Mulan version. But what’s with the 90s era cgi physics?

Also, and I get the Mulan plot line is entirely about how ridiculous gender-gating is in general, but whew there is a serious case of The Stupids around a lot of the tradition, much more so than in the original. This felt very tropey to me, convenient idiocy. I mean yes okay this takes place 1200 years ago but …

I appreciated not seeing mushu, but the Phoenix could have just been a lot lot lot more subtle.

And I’ve never seen snow look so much like party foam. This is the same studio that produced Frozen?!

Man, this movie felt like it was written, produced and directed in 1998. I would say I watched the wrong one by mistake but the original was actually good for its time.

What happened, did I miss something? This could have been an amazing movie full of great music, awesome choreography, and a super dark take on the original. Instead, I watched the equivalent of a machine learning exercise in turning anime to live action.

Thanks to all who posted to or read last month's trial run of this topic. Let's try another month!

This thread is for when you're done with a game and you want to give your finalized overview of it. Did you enjoy it? What did it do well? What were some of its frustrations? Would you recommend it to others? That sort of thing.

For ease of readability, please bold the title for the game you're reviewing.

Also, please mark all spoilers as well using the following formatting:

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

I really enjoy reading through the weekly gaming threads where people talk about what they're currently playing. Those often give really interesting in-the-moment commentary, and I was thinking it might be nice to have a spot for more formalized "I'm finished with a game" thoughts and reflections.

This thread is for when you're done with a game and you want to give your finalized overview of it. Did you enjoy it? What did it do well? What were some of its frustrations? Would you recommend it to others? That sort of thing.

For ease of readability, please bold the title for the game you're reviewing.

If this is something the community likes, I'm thinking it could be a recurring monthly thing. Consider this month's post a trial run to see whether this is a concept worth continuing.