Admittedly I don’t use the D-pad all that much - does it not register inputs well? I guess it’s pretty important if you’re playing a fighting or retro game that require precise inputs. For the games I’ve played, it hasn’t been an issue.

No the pro controller doesn’t have hall effect sticks, but I’ve not experienced any drift. I did take it apart once to clean the insides however.

I had no end of problems with the joy cons, and have replaced those sticks with hall effect ones. Since doing that I’ve not had any problems, touch wood!

To be fair I’ve had the pro controller for several years and it has held up really well. Really ergonomic and the vibration’s good, plus it has gyro. Perfect for my needs on Switch. I think it was worth what I paid.

The 8Bitdo Pro+ has been great - works really well with my Steam Deck and Switch. Sounds like the Pro 2 is the superior version with hall effect sticks.

The Switch Pro controller has always been good too. And the DualSense is really neat with the haptics and adaptive triggers - expensive, but not that much more than a Pro controller surprisingly.

I finally got round to picking up a PS5 this week and have been really enjoying Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart - it’s just beautiful to look at and genuinely fun to play. Looking forward to more of that over the weekend! I’ve also been trying out Astro’s Playroom, the free tech demo that comes with the console. I was half expecting it to be a gimmicky piece of advertising - but it’s really well made! The platforming is excellent and all the little references to games are cute.

As for a book from a different cultural background, I remember reading The White Tiger by Indian author Aravind Adiga about 10 years ago and really enjoying it.

I’m not familiar with this work, but it seems like a fascinating topic and still as relevant today as it was back then. Thanks for the summary/review.

Interesting article, and a worrying trend. Stamping a bit of text like ‘Generated by Midjourney’ is ridiculously weak protection though. I wonder if some kind of hidden visual data could be embedded within AI images - like a QR code that can be read by computers but is invisible to humans.

Just found the wikipedia page for steganography. Have any AI companies tried using this technique I wonder? 🤔

Are you a bit further in now? I wasn’t a huge fan of the second, so hopefully things have improved with the third!

I played the remastered Spyro trilogy recently (great games) and it took me about half of the first game to work out how the gem chests work. You hit them and the gem shoots out the top, which you then have to grab before it returns in order to unlock the chest. For a while I thought you just had to ground pound the chest at the right angle to get it to open and I couldn’t work out why it didn’t always work.

After realising the correct way I felt pretty dumb lol.

I don’t know if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but Neal Stephenson springs to mind. He grapples with some big ideas regarding technology and philosophy. Snow Crash is a good start. I wouldn’t say it’s an ‘easy’ read but I think it might have a similar vibe to the stuff you like

An ‘easy’ book I read recently was Legends & Lattes - low stakes and cosy.

But if you want something with more of a substantial plot, Children of Time has a really fascinating and easy to follow sci-fi story if that’s your thing. Or how about a Terry Pratchett novel? Guards! Guards! is a great place to start with those and they’re always great fun.

I also found the Red Rising books very gripping.

Personally I feel like piracy shouldn’t be criminalised in the way it is, and certainly any attempts to worsen the punishments should be fought against. However your reddit comment is quite bizarre to be honest… I think laws protecting children and animals against harm are a good idea!

I think this model can work, and has its benefits (like with Game Pass). To be clear though, Ubisoft’s offering is shit and not worth the price they’re asking. And one thing I absolutely hate is the (sometimes timed) exclusivity on some of these platforms. The Lost Crown looks great for example, but Ubisoft are trying to force people to use their service by not offering it on Steam.

Personally I don’t really mind not ‘owning’ the game in most cases. 9 times out of 10, I’ll play a game and be done with it. Short, linear indie games for example are perfect for a Game Pass type model. What we don’t need is 10 similar subscriptions with their own exclusives.

Ah neat! Is it like a monthly subscription sorta deal?

I’ll definitely check out some of the ones you mentioned. Diaspora speculative fiction sounds like a very specific genre!

I wasn’t aware that this was a thing, but I’m interested now! Are these printed magazines?

Can I also ask what CNF is?