Notices by Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange), page 2

What is happening with Yuzu and Citra is a travesty. It will have a chilling effect on future console development. Tomorrow’s developers are today’s emulator hackers.

Good, give Apple all the scrutiny. https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/26/24083511/apple-eu-investigation-web-app-support

While some of you are out here living vicariously through @ActionRetro I'm out here proving his point

It’s confirmed. The Vice website is shutting down.

My God.

via @willsommer

I bought a laptop today. I tried to make it as cost-effective as possible. Went with Intel, though I almost went team AMD.

(For those wondering: HP Envy 12th gen; CPU performance seemed very similar to 13th gen, and my previous Windows PC was a Spectre.

I had considered a Thinkpad Z16 but I couldn’t find any models on my preferred shopping sites with a nice enough screen.)

Upgradeability was a big factor. I looked at models from Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and LG, and it was the one that hit all the boxes, including price.

Not enough machines come with two SSDs, upgradeable RAM, and upgradeable WiFi in 2023.

The one knock on it is that it uses the Intel Arc GPU. If I find the GPU sucks, I’ll return it.

I plan on running it with Linux full-time and keeping the M1 Air as a secondary machine.

A 16-inch M1 was in the mix, but I was trying to keep things cost-effective this time out. Paying the Apple tax to get non-upgradable storage just feels like a ripoff.

Just got the Envy in, it’s actually quite nice. My previous PC was a Spectre so it feels like a freshened-up version of that.

I did get a weird “fan isn’t working” error which I’m going to keep an eye on.

The gray on gray is a little weird. Keys are comfortable though

It weighs more but is dimensionally similar to my 2017 Spectre, which only has a 15 inch screen (and full disclosure, I paid a few hundred bucks more for pre-inflation)

Nice machine but it appears to have one meh feature in Linux: no sound support, at least with the built-in speakers.

The sound seems fixable but I’m having trouble getting it to work. Going to keep at it. Far as I can tell, the only thing not working is the speakers, which can be worked around by simply using headphones. Even the mic appears to work.

Need to test the graphics, but I did throw a second SSD in the machine.

I don’t love the keys not being black, but the layout is great and very comfortable. The monitor’s resolution is less of an issue than I thought it would be (the Spectre was 4K, so a little bit of a resolution dip).

Keeping the backlight on in daylight, even accidentally, is a real problem. It makes the keys invisible.

Also don't love the shadow the monitor leaves on the keyboard deck. Hm.

This may not be the one for me.

Like who designs keyboards like this? People who fear contrast?

It's absurd that this laptop would actually be a lot better if they didn't make this weird design decision

After trying PopOS for a bit, moved back to Fedora. My problem with Pop at this juncture is that they’re moving away from GNOME, which I really like, and as a result GNOME works a lot worse than it has in the past.

Fedora just feels more polished these days.

I’m using the Nobara Linux community build of Fedora, which comes with a bunch of stuff preloaded. (If you know Glorious Eggroll’s work with Proton, same person.) https://nobaraproject.org

One of those things is not sound, alas.