I’ve read this a number of times over the years, but here’s a good article on the topic of cement:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844

A recent article (one of many) on how the wasteful building and deceptive investment practices that are rampant in China are impacting ordinary people:

https://news.sky.com/story/inside-chinas-derelict-housing-developments-and-the-bleak-reality-for-families-13181026

This statement from a former official illustrates the absurd scale of the problem:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/23/business/china-too-many-homes-for-1-4-billion-people-intl-hnk/index.html

I was in a different camp back then. Our CRT TV was high quality and produced a very sharp image, especially with the 3D consoles of the '90s hooked up to it through SCART. Similarly, the first CRT monitor I ever owned was an excellent Sony Trinitron with a flat image, no blur, no perceivable scanlines (I used it for a decade, because I was unable to find flat screen displays that came close). That’s why I felt absolutely no love for those scanline filters and didn’t get their appeal until many years later, when I realized that the art of most '80s and '90s games was intended for highly flawed CRTs. By that point, those simple filters had evolved into complex shaders that are much more accurate too.

A couple of years ago, I configured PS1 emulator DuckStation into what a fictional (and entirely impossible) “PS1 Pro”. Extremely high rendering resolution in the 6K range to remove any hint of jagged edges, with a scanline shader and some carefully tuned bloom on top to simulate the phosphor glow. I kept textures unfiltered, but enabled settings that fix the console’s unstable geometry and texture distortion. I then got a modified version of Gran Turismo 2 with enhanced draw distance (and some bug fixes). The effect is remarkable: The original art is preserved, but enhanced, there’s remarkable clarity, yet the scanlines and bloom still create the illusion of a high res CRT. It looks amazing.

Exception: Old pixel art that was meant to be smoothed out by blurry CRT monitors and TVs. Yes, I know those are not algorithms, but still.

This could end up working better than foldable devices. No creases to worry about.

I think both of you are overlooking that a significant portion of China’s CO2 emissions are solely caused by their wasteful construction of useless buildings that solely exist as investments and will never be occupied by anyone.

This reminds me of a scathing bit in I think “Bowling for Columbine” that covered a group of well-meaning women and their ineffective political activism. They made a bit of ruckus in some senator’s office, then had tea and cake afterwards patting each other on the back.

Correct. It’s the one game in the series that pushed Xbox One and PS4 a bit too far, but has, for the same reason, aged rather nicely.

A PS5 port might come later. Microsoft execs have repeatedly (including recently) talked about bringing Xbox games to PlayStation - and it’s not just talk: Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves were eventually ported over after some timed exclusivity. This doesn’t guarantee a port and there is no official word on this game yet, but still.

It might take a year though - or longer. The upshot is that by that point, most serious bugs should have been fixed. The downside is that you’ll miss out on the PC modding scene. Older games in the series have one of the best modding communities out there and I hope they’ll refine and expand this game as well.

Until then, you might want to take a look at Chernobylite. It’s a smaller title, but clearly inspired by the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

Not quite. Take a closer look at the icons.

Do you mean Skraper?

https://www.skraper.net/

Could be a DRM issue. Maybe this site is using some sort of DRM that’s not working on Linux, similar to streaming sites. I’m just speculating however. Have you tried a fresh install of Firefox instead of your current configuration?

Let’s play “guess the Ubisoft game”:

DLSS seems to be virtually immune to these issues, unlike all of the alternatives. I’ve been an obsessive pixel peeper for decades and am having a hard time finding any faults with it. In fact, it usually improves image clarity and stability.

Every acronym should be run past a bunch of ten year olds. No idea how they thought this was a good idea, but then again, they greenlit Concord at about the same time.

Firefox works, on Windows and Android. Seems like you misconfigured it in some way.

Noclip works, just remove the double tilde from your link.

Happy to help! Did you find a headset that is attractive to you?

I read the Bible cover to cover as a kid and this was one of many passages that contributed to me losing my faith.

A more subtle approach would be to mark the worst passages with color-coded post-its. Red for murder, blue for slavery, yellow for sexism, etc.

Consider reading the article.