Category: Gaming. Tech, and Oatmeal Creme Pies

Amazon keeps effectively bricking Kindles. The latest round just happened, and I know I’m never buying a Kindle again. There are a lot of tools and packages out there for better ecosystems, and the nice walled garden of Amazonia just isn’t worth it in the long term.

Some interesting thoughts on NAS drives and constant spin up and spin down wear. Enterprise drives will easily last 20 years in my experience, and some of this could be contributed to this, along with the fact that they’re not cost cut into oblivion. I’ve successfully used second hand enterprise drives in my setup for years. I’ve found I comfortably get to a point where I need to upgrade storage before these drives quit.

I’ve long known that a lot of hotel and airline companies have terrible login policies as it relates to passwords and methods to log in. I’m honestly shocked I haven’t see more security issues because of it. This article highlights some actual incidents, and highly recommends using a password manager to secure your logins if the companies won’t. This is always good advice. I can’t recommend LastPass though, as their past policies have been anti-consumer. I personally use Bitwarden, but there are many good options out there.

Apparently we’re now in a world where an accidental price posting on a Dutch game retailer website is an “official” price confirmation. But here we are with GTA6 going up on a store for $115. Bananaland all around.

I frequently see articles from Make Use Of, and I swear the site is a sponsored website by the big tech companies. I think every single article I’ve seen reads like a sponsored ad/article, and glosses over a lot of opposing viewpoints. This article though on frame gen does actually discuss issues, even if partially dismissed because the author has a 5090. Happy for them. But it’s still an interesting read on the commentary around frame gen and what it’s supposed to do – namely, more frames for heavy hitting games when card brute performance uplift generation to generation has largely stagnated it seems.

One thing I’ve been looking at for LXOG is PC recycling. I’d love to provide this locally. This benefits people who don’t otherwise have a place to easily drop off old electronics, and I might be able to profit a bit by either refurbishing and selling, parting out, or small profits from teardowns and selling for scrap recycling. This article talks about some common places to recycle electronics, which works well for a lot of people.

Another MUO article. This is more in line with what I addressed above about sponsored articles. They never have any disclaimers about being a sponsored post, but you read it and tell me. Maybe it’s just a lot of articles from passionate people. But an article that’s about ditching Cloudflare and moving to a paid service…yeah kinda screams sponsored. But I do have some skepticism around Cloudflare’s actual privacy, so it piqued my interest.

How To Geek takes a look at Google’s promise of first 5, then updating to 7 years of updates for Pixel phones, and sees if it played out. Spoiler: nope. Support has been lackluster and the bare minimum, only getting about 1 in 3 security updates, and no OS updates.

Could more J.R.R. Tolkien content be coming? Could it be true? Peter Jackson wants it to be, and the Tolkien Estate may actually be amenable to the idea. “It would be nice to get away from some of the appendices and get something meatier,” Jackson says.

GameRant speculates about how Bethesda quietly changing its update “policy” on games and supporting them for longer may actually be a good sign for the next Elder Scrolls game. I mean, I’d call Starfield “updates” a long shot from the ideal support state of a game, but it’s something I guess?

Ok this one is a bit hefty, and I’d love some discussion going on in #🐙︱general about it. Again with How To Geek, but a commentary on backups and how to best do them. The 3-2-1 strategy has long been a mantra (3 copies, 2 different storage media, 1 copy offsite), but this delves into a little more how-to (coincidence?) and some options. I’ve long been tossing this over in my head of how to make this more accessible to people in general without over reliance on the cloud, and…there aren’t great solutions. It does touch on the problems with cloud and it being a two way sync, which has definitely caused me some issues before with files straight up disappearing. The article talks about Windows Backup (which last I knew was a poorly carried over Win 7 feature and kept yelling at you not to use it anymore), Veeam Agent, Hasleo Backup Suite, and Macrium Reflect. I’ve looked at a few, but they’re either too expensive imo or open source and not user friendly. There needs to be a lower barrier to entry here, and I haven’t found it yet.

MS is trying to make Windows Update less of a pain by not auto rolling back bad driver releases, but updating them to an older version from the cloud. Too bad I can’t think of any better way to do this. Or any issues with needing the cloud to roll back say, a bad network driver. Or one that keeps blue screening as soon as you get to Windows.

A new Xbox Series 3 Elite controller leaked with…scroll wheels? Prolly not fixed rubber grips and joysticks tho. Bc why would they fix a money stream.

Looks like Google may be starting to decrease some mailboxes from 15GB to 5GB. Observations are mixed on which accounts, but a start is a start nonetheless. Gemini needs all that storage now.

Thanks, Exodus, for the wonderful name suggestion. To everyone else, you’re welcome. This started as a joke. It may still be, who really knows.

This is a new segment where we talk about Gaming, Tech, and anything not in between (Oatmeal Creme Pies – the lifeblood of LXOG). So I present, GTO. Or GTOCP. Idk. “Comment below with your best suggestion” in a very youtubery voice.

Yesterday’s post included an article announcing that the GTX 1080 Ti is now too old for gaming, the Wilhelm scream easter egg in the Valve Controller, and the Googlebook announcement. Mostly presented without comment. But I will say for the Googlebook, it’s an odd name, and it ties back to the story the day before about Google’s AI assistant running a cafe into the ground. No thanks.

So what articles do I have up my sleeve for today? More OCP than anything else. I don’t think anyone has a problem with that.

Lego announced a LOTR tie in. Their biggest set is Minas Tirith. It’s massive at over 8000 pieces.

A zero day exploit was published that bypasses Bitlocker. That’s good news for anyone trying to recover a laptop drive (or any drive now that MS Bitlockers everything), bad news for anyone with sensitive data and a stolen computer. The security researcher had notified MS about the exploit, but was brushed off, so he published it. The article alleges that this reeks of a backdoor, which is…not a good look. GG MS, yet again. I’m sure this isn’t the last time we’ll see MS getting some bad news, cuz it seems like they like it.

NASA gets a spot here whenever they want.

Last up, Fast & Furious is now coming out with a TV show on Peacock. Not much has been said besides Vin Diesel producing it and starring in it. Announcing it a few days ago, he said “For the last decade, we have realized that the fans have wanted more. They wanted us to expand the legacy characters, their stories. And for the last decade, the desire has been for us to enter the TV space . . . And I had to wait ’til it was right.”