I found Xbox 360 copies on ebay but no PC ones. They’re not expensive so maybe I’ll just do that and then try to get an Xbox 360 emulator working on my (Linux) gaming system. My 360 works but is def on borrowed time.

Plus, some of the mechanics are maybe a bit spicy for modern sensibilities.

Not that you’re wrong (Wikipedia alludes to the same thing) but the only spicy mechanic I can recall is hacking an enemy’s brain chip to make them temporarily fight on your side and commit suicide after it wears off. That’s literally the exact same thing as “Possession” in Bioshock: Infinite that came out a year later.

I thought it was profound at the time, but no, it wasn’t at all.

This was a meme I posted a while back and based on a true story:

Basically I thought that plants were the manifestation of God himself. All around us, providing us with live-sustaining oxygen and food.

I dunno, but it did.

My original hard drive died and when I got a replacement, I just went to my purchase history and re-downloaded it. When I wanted to play it a few years ago and noticed it wasn’t on my Xbox anymore, I went back to re-download it and it wasn’t anywhere to be found in my history.

Probably something buried in the XB:Live ToS that says they can do whatever they want.

I just have a Linux-based “DIY Steam Machine” so it’d have to be able to run under Proton. I may just buy a physical disc on eBay for ~$22 and hope my 360 doesn’t crap out on me lol. It’s the later “slim” model with an upgraded hard drive, so as long as I can install it and it reads the disc enough to start the game, I should be okay.

It kind of looks like Stephen Fry.

Nice! I bought the XBLA Perfect Dark remake and really liked it. The Github repo is just the wrapper so I’ll have to track down the actual assets, though.

Yeah, I like it after figuring out how to get it in the right modes. Bought it for playing emulators but works great with Steam.

That’s literally what Mitchell is ranting about. Like, the entire video is about how that is the correct phrase and “could care less” makes absolutely no sense.

I’m with David Mitchell, and the hill I will die on is hating the phrase “could care less”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

eBay (US) like a week ago. I got it for $125 but they were going for under $100 before I heard about them.

I don’t think you can buy them new anymore. All the stock I’m aware of are from decommissioned crypto-mining rigs and being sold secondhand.

I included an eBay search link in the Resources (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=bc-250) and just checked it. Looks like they jumped in price again and are $180+ now.

Assuming you’re in US or Canada, here’s the listing for the one I bought (same seller). It’s the least expensive at $165 with $16 shipping. Some listings include the SSD, so that may be why some cost more. Basically I think the cat is just out of the bag and now that people have found an easy way to repurpose these, demand and price is up.

Oh, nice! Yeah, I had yet to come across that project but will probably give it a try later.

Ooh, that might fit this. When I have time, I’m gonna look for a different case that’ll let me add more active cooling and incorporate something like that.

https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/system/40cu-unlock/#performance

I haven’t done it yet, but it seems to require a patched amdgpu kernel module and setting two values at build time. I’m content with it as-is but may explore that later. I’m also waiting until I have some more cooling before doing anything that will generate more heat. That’ll require a different case, and I just don’t feel like that right now (I’ve got games to play and all lol).

About one roll for $17-20. It used close to a full 1kg roll (half a roll of black, half a roll of red). So if you did it all in one color, you’d just need at most one roll (assuming no failed prints).

I didn’t factor that in since I already have a bunch I bought last year on sale and that money was already spent and waiting for a use.

Yep. You’ll need 25.1 (or higher) and a fairly recent kernel to have all of the drivers in mainline though it’s possible to build them for older distros if you really want to. Basically the guidance is to avoid LTS distros and use something more bleeding edge.

Bazzite has most/all you need already baked in. The only special consideration I had to make with Bazzite was installing the GPU governor. It’ll work fine without the governor, but it’s running full tilt the whole time even when it doesn’t need to.

Yep, it’s not the most energy efficient build but definitely affordable since it’s upcycling what would otherwise be e-waste. It’s not something I’m going to leave running 24/7 so I can deal with it eating some power (I’m pretty big on efficient computing since I’m installing a PV system).

A single 120mm fan is sufficient for gaming if you don’t unlock the extra CUs or overclock it, and you need to either use a shroud to direct the airflow through the heatsink fins or, like I did, 3D print a spreader tool and break the fins apart so more air can make contact with it.

If you’re gonna use it for LLM workloads or heavy sustained loads, you’re gonna need at least two fans and some airflow over the back where the VRAM is. I’ve seem some liquid cooled builds which look awesome but I can’t justify that expense haha.

Me, too, when I used to sell my old crap on eBay. I feel like it’s just common courtesy. Basically I’d go an hour before they closed and ship out all the orders for the day.

I run Synapse currently but last I looked at Conduit it wasn’t at feature parity with Synapse (granted, that has been a while). The other two I wouldn’t touch with a 50 foot pole because of their stupid-ass names.

If it’s a relatively recent laptop, it should be fine.

Many of them will let you set custom charge limits. If yours supports that, limit it to like 60% or thereabouts. Long enough that you can get some UPS use out of it but not full enough it’s ever gonna go spicy pillow on you.

If it won’t let you set a charge limit, they’ll still kind of float around full charge but not stay at 100% all the time. Even plugged in, mine will drop down from 100% to eventually 92% before it will start charging back to 100 again. That’s over the course of several days to a week.

If the laptop is older than about 2017 or so, or still has a removable battery, you might want to just take the battery out and use an external UPS as those typically don’t have the extra charge management features newer ones do.

To run them full time, you either want to remove the screen or “tent” them because a lot of heat is dissipated through the keyboard, and it’s normally expected to be open while running because of that. By “tent”, I mean open it halfway and put the screen facing down so it’s standing up and shaped like a tent.