I suppose my setup already has “Xcode command line tools” installed, so gcc works as expected. It’s been a while but IIRC the process for installing the command line tools is pretty self explanatory.

I remember WSL being a whole process to setup, but it’s been a while, and as you might guess, I’m a lot more familiar with Mac than Windows.

What I do know is I had to support a Python project on all 3 OSes and Windows was by far the hardest to get working. We were deliberately not using WSL for that scenario.

Mac is very similar to Linux in that it comes with bash (these days zsh) and a lot of the command line tools you’d expect on Linux, including gcc and python3 installed by default. You’ll want them to have a decent text editor with code coloring. Sublime is what I was taught to use in university.

Windows is more difficult. The command line is very different (it inherits from DOS instead of Unix like both Mac and Linux). It doesn’t come with Python pre-installed. I’ve generally installed git-bash when working on Windows. There are some Python libraries that work fine on both Mac and Linux but have issues on Windows.

You could look into VSCode which is a decent IDE that works on all platforms. Of course, an IDE can be a bit of an information overload for a beginner, especially something like VSCode that’s constantly pushing AI features and plug-ins.

I think the one I have is the BP60NB10 LG Slim Portable. It looks like prices are at around $100-$130 for it online now though, I think they are not made anymore. I got mine up at a local computer store a long time ago.

I strongly recommend this webpage: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19634

There are some external/portable USB blu ray drives that work with MakeMKV and cost like $30.

In smash bros, turn the launch multiplier all the way up and turn on sudden death mode so everyone starts at 300%.

Go to one of a few levels (the underground area of Hyrule Temple works, the underground area of Skyworld is better, but it’s best if you make a custom stage)

Getting hit once will send you bouncing around the screen! You only ever die if you get unlucky. It’s hilarious, and we call it “Pinball Mode”. I’ve made a couple custom stages to improve on the experience.

It’s the most plug-and-play Linux has ever been from my experience.

Backend programming is almost all Linux. I have two computer science degrees and have only ever used Windows for gaming.

I’ve always liked those magnetic levitating globes!

(You can also find magnetic levitating <insert TV show prop here> for a variety of tv shows and video games)

Unless something has changed, Amazon Music only offers low quality mp3 downloads, and sometimes even includes audio watermarks.

I add non-Steam games to Steam just so I can use Steam Input for controller rebinding

Your ISP can’t tell who you are contacting if you are using a VPN, but websites will track you by other means.

One of the biggest Minecraft servers I know of had basically no anti-cheat and just relied on user reports and bans. And it was extremely effective. It was a PvP based server, and I only encountered cheaters in like 0.1% of games, and even then they were usually banned before the match finished.

The ones that modify the world’s blocks often cause a lot of lag unfortunately.

second movement takes place in the server, to do so in the client is nuts.

For the vast majority of games, it’s in between, because the latency if you waited for the server every frame you moved would be way too much.

It’s something like you have a local model of where everything is, and send updates to the server of where your local model says your character (and whatever else your inputs affect) are. The server receives that data, potentially validates it (server side anti cheat checking that your movement makes sense, similar to the OP post, for example), and then forwards that info to all players. The client side positions of everything are updated based on that info. Usually some interpolation is added to make things move more smoothly.

It’s much better for games that were designed around VR in mind.

Some of my personal favorite recommendations:

• Beat Saber
• Super Hot
• I Expect you to Die (trilogy)
• Half Life Alyx
• The Myst and Riven remakes

I just checked and I’ve gotten over 100 hours out of mine so far.

Interesting. Optimizing the factory for your immediate current needs sounds very tedious, because those needs change all the time. I instead optimize for expandability and adaptability. The factory game genre isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in some tips:

My solution is usually something like:

• really long line of basic resources (usually a belt of smelted copper and a belt of smelted iron, eventually adding more stuff and adding more belts of iron and copper as supplies are needed)
• when I need thing 1, I make a little package that builds it, drawing resources from the line with splitters so the excess can continue down the line
• thing 2 is an independent little package farther down the line
• When it’s time for thing 3, I build copies of the packages for building thing 1 and thing 2 as necessary to feed the construction of thing 3, again as separate feeds splitting off the main resource line
• when it’s time for thing 4, its again independent of the production of things 1-3, except they are splitting off the same main resource belt
• If the resources on the main belt are insufficient to feed all of those machines, one of three things needs to happen: 1. Add more raw resource processing until your belt is full and backed up at the beginning 2. If that’s not enough, upgrade the belt 3. If you don’t have a belt upgrade available, build another main resource line and use splitters to rebalance it onto the main line

This construction allows for easy expansion without having to destroy anything. I typically don’t disassemble anything unless it’s actually a problem for some reason or I need the space. This is especially important because you often need some basic components like the level 1 belts even into the late game.

Also, once you unlock robots, you can literally copy-paste, just select an area to upgrade all belts/arms/etc. in, and a lot of other neat tricks that drastically speed things up.

And one last peace of advice: Overproduce everything and let belts backing up balance out the resource distribution. Then if you discover that belts that previously were backed up are now sparse, figure out why and optimize it, usually by adding more production of whatever the missing resource is.

Ultimately throughput is all that matters. Loss of throughput because you don’t need something isn’t wasteful. Loss of throughput because you aren’t producing enough of something is a problem to solve. Things that don’t affect throughput don’t matter and aren’t wasteful.

That’s funny, I love Slay the Spire, but I have mixed feeling about Balatro.

Balatro is addicting in that once I start playing I don’t want to stop, and yet after playing for a few hours I couldn’t say for sure I had fun at any point the whole time.

Playing Balatro feels like exploring the backrooms to me - just infinite bland nothingness.

Yeah I’ve seen people try to balance things perfectly in factorio, but my strat is always to overproduce and let belts getting backed up balance out the throughput.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided do a similar cyberpunk vibe to Cyberpunk 2077 but with better gameplay and plot IMO.