Thaldor

IMO, pretty much fighting the windmills. Ubishit would spam so much money on the lawsuit it would be in the court for the next century and it would be actually cheaper to crowdfund and buy The Crew servers from Ubishit. What EVERYONE needs to do, is far more simpler. Forget Ubishit, do not give them a cent, do not even talk about their games, do not even watch reviews or ads of their games, do not give any attention to anyone using Ubishit content. Next Far Cry? Fuck that, don't care, there's 1,000,000 and 1 FPS shooters in a forests, go and play them. Next Rainbow Six? Fuck that too, too many better games with exact same content. Ass Is Greed? Well, it's in the name, rather go out and touch grass than that cancerful piece of garbage. LTT makes Ubishit sponsored video? Fuck that shit especially and tell Linus to get a haircut and get a real job. Spread the word and give Ubishit zero chances before they have actually done something and not just given empty words that every modern corporation seems to give.

Depending on what OPPO decides to do, I would probably wait a year or two until buying OPPO phone. Not that they would be any general level worse but getting the fast charging is going to be PIA unless they already next week release that they have abandoned the VOOC and jumped in PD/QC train that they pretty much need to jump within couple years especially with the OnePlus branding being used in EU. Personally, that S24+ is probably the most interesting one but I would be probably still looking at the redmagic 9 Pro or S23U, if S23U's prices drop into some mortal price levels, I still cannot fathom paying over 1000€ for a phone, maybe over some more halo phone like the flips and flops but your every day plain normal phone that really doesn't even push out of the grey mass of phones with anything and if my old S10 Lite would give up (doesn't seem like that, battery has seen better days but otherwise it's still pressing on like a tank).

One huge thing: DO NOT TOUCH THE PC IF YOU SPILLED LIQUID ON IT AND IT'S ON! Pull the plug from the wall or flip the switch on your extension cord. If you can't do either of those without touching your PC, you go and pull the fuse, if you don't know which fuse, you flip the main power switch and cut the electricity from your whole home (wait a minute, go and unplug the PC and return the power to your home). No touchy touchy with ANY part of the PSU, not even the power switch and definedly not the cable. The danger is that the PSU has shorted and now you have the mains power in the ground of the PC and your PC's case is now in the phase and you get a bit too intimate with it and happen to have something to do with the ground and all that juice coming from the wall plug, to the PSU and from there shorting to the case will go right through you and your closest ones will need to get you a headstone. So, NO, DO NOT TOUCH THE PC. Even when there's like 2 to 5 safety measures to make sure the case cannot become powered, just don't. This is electricity safety and if you don't 110% know what you're doing, you do the most safest thing even if it sounds like overdoing it. Let me put it this way: In your NA house you have 120V at behind most likely 20A fuse to power your up to 2400W PC, thou most of that isn't important, what is important is that you have 20A fuse and that is what you can get through the case of your wet PC. Your heart can go out of rhythm and you will get cardiac arrest from 0.007A running through it, 0.1A is most likely lethal, 20A and your little tiny heart will be like perfectly made baked potato, which isn't a great thing for your well-being. Also just in case, remember the right hand rule: When dealing with possibly powered electronics, use only your right hand and have grounding bracelet on it. You may get jolted and it will hurt like a motherF, but at least it will travel only a short distance in your body and stay far away from your heart.

Ain't a problem if you have a sails and flag as dark as the night and a bottle of rum and you yarr harr findle dindee, do what you want 'cause a *cough cough* is free. And before you give any moral sermons, scroll up and read the OP again and you might find how low the corporations moral fence is and just under it you might find the height that I recommend for everyone. Also, I don't have almost unlimited resources and power to do the charitable work first, especially for someone who doesn't seem to be a single bit charitable themselves.

Another corporation pisses on it's paying customers! Also aren't all of those games more or less old? At least I don't recall any of those being recent remakes but like at least SF 30th Anniversary is from 2018 and Resident Evil Revelations is from 2010 and not in the immediate remake list? Well, anyway, if you can't get updates, you can't get questionable new DRMs.

Try to wipe and reinstall the audio drivers (seems to be kind of rare Windows "feature" to F up audio device identification and start using wrong drivers), it is not once or twice that my Sound Blaster Z is recognized as Reacon3D after unsafe Windows shutdown and every time it's reinstalling the drivers because for some reason Windows is unable to reidentify the card. Also, if your monitor has speakers and HDMI-audio input, it very likely also has headphone output (at least I don't remember ever having seen HDMI monitor with speakers without one, I have seen few without speakers having one thou).

Not to even mention that there's quite a large amount of music where the lossless doesn't really do anything because the music is mixed and mastered for the masses. Pretty much if the source is CD quality, mp3-encoding really doesn't do that much damage it would be noticeable. With higher than CD-quality releases you must be very source critical as modern studios rarely use higher than CD quality digital recording because it's enough and 99% of the listeners don't notice the difference between CD-quality and higher quality recording (even upping the bitdepth from 24 to 32 is a MAJOR investment that hardly pays back a cent). As in, if you listen any mass produced music, there's a good chance either or both the mixer and the masterer went and checked their work on car stereos, if it sounds good, to the press it goes and your thousands of dollars costing aluminium shelf with balanced floating feets is pretty much an overkill. Now a cool trick to actually HEAR the difference between whatever two almost identical sounds, like if you have mp3 and FLAC version of the same track: Get Reaper or whatever DAW you can, input the tracks, make sure they have identical timing (so one isn't even 0.whatever milliseconds ahead of another, the "base signal" of the tracks is identical), flip the phase of one of the tracks, play both tracks simultaneously and what you hear is the absolute difference between the tracks (the inverted phase will be negate itself from the other track like noise cancelling). Note: There will be something left unless the tracks are completely identical. But most of the time this is the way which will rip apart even the house valued speakers some of the audiophiles have and you can laugh at them for wasting tens/hundreds of thousands on speakers that aren't PERFECTLY identical. This is the audio equivalent of taking out the oscilloscope, zooming in and then acting like the 0.0000001V difference for 0.000001s between the signals is somehow meaningful and you should sacrifice your last kidney to fix it. Edit: As in, here is the difference between Judas Priest Metal Meltdown 16bit 44.1kHz FLAC @ 1051kbps (total size 36MB) and the same in MP3 320kbps (total size 11MB). FLAC-mp3_320.wav There's a tiny hiss with some noticeable audio if you turn your volume up, but be careful with that volume because you're going to need to turn that way up and you don't want to forget it there. And if you can't hear anything, don't worry, just means you definitely are wasting money paying for lossless streaming since your audio equipment literally cannot produce the difference between lossless FLAC and 320 mp3. And here's the difference between the same FLAC and MP3 192kbps (total size 6.64MB) FLAC-mp3_192.wav Now the hiss and the audio is a bit more audible but we are also around 850kbps lower on the bitrate.

PhysX was hardware based physics engine that later transformed into GPU based one once Nvidia made it to work with CUDA cores and technology. As in it used to require Nvidia GPU to work (GeForce 8000-series were first to have PhysX support but GeForce 9800GTX was the first to be as good in it as the dedicated PPU's, after that it hasn't mattered, your GeForce GPU has been way more powerful doing PhysX calculations even while crunching graphics that having dedicated PhysX card has been a thing only for the ultra-low budged builds with GT 720 or similar GPUs where every last drop of performance means a game isn't as bad slide show). Chaos Physics is completely software based so Unreal Engine handles what resources are used for the physics and all that. While with old PhysX games you can offload the PhysX calculations to another Nvidia GPU dedicating that for it and so free like couple percents of performance from your main GPU and while Chaos is a lot based on now long time open sourced PhysX, Chaos Physics does not have dedicated hardware support. As in, games using Chaos Physics do not understand that you have another GPU dedicated for PhysX calculations, Unreal Engine hasn't even had PhysX support since 4.26 so it probably doesn't even care to look if you have another GPU for physics. If you haven't struggled running games like Witcher 3, Borderlands 2, Fallout 4 and Batman: Arkham Knight (which all use PhysX), then the best thing you can do with another GPU would be moving your possible second monitor to it and so get probably 0.5 FPS more. Running GPU dedicated for PhysX today is pretty stupid unless you do something like massive physics simulations in 3Ds Max, Maya or other softwares that will eat even the most powerful Quadro cards for breakfast and still have PhysX support or do extra stupid stuff with game engines that still have PhysX support, it's just waste of electricity in normal gaming use if you have any GPU above GTX 1060.

I will take the L for the current limits. But I will still die on the hill saying that the 12VHPWR should use more modern connector for the other things like the double sided locking, guiderails and similar pretty much QoL upgrades the Mini-Fit Jr. has received. and even when the 12VHPWR actually uses the micro-fit connector I still stand on the hill saying it should have more than the flimsy one clip on the top to secure it. At least it should use the more common with wire-to-wore applications side locking where there's clips on the both sides of the connector.

2 still lands you at 24A per connector which isn't recommended by MOLEX, you would need 3 to get under that 20A per connector. Like seriously, the ATX3.0 is supposed to replace the ATX2.whatever and be pretty much incompatible with it because we need more power than the ATX2.whatever standards can handle. We will need new PSU's in the future when they figure out do they go the Intel way, use some backplane for power distribution or remain the same but change up the connector keying and add some shit into them. At least they could update the Mini-Fit Jr. connectors to have some modern safety systems that aren't fucking rocket science, like throw the clip on top away and add two beefier clips to the sides (which some companies already use with their extension cables), that already would help a lot. Moving to something like Stac64 that is used in automotive industry (I haven't heard them having any connector problems, unlike people with 2000€ GPUs) would be like starting a new era, it still cannot hold the wanted 50A@12V without heating up, just 30A but that is still more than 20A that the current connectors are rated for.

You know that we do figure out and find better ways to do things and that while in theory something can be good enough, in practice it isn't? Stuff like if the connectors correct attachment is important we don't use one flimsy clip to hold it but put two beefier clips to the sides of the connector or we use a latching system which cannot be locked unless the connector is inserted correctly, or that we don't rely only on the crimp housings and their keying for connector alignment but guiderails that prevent the connector from flopping around while being attached, use double locking where both sides of the connector physically lock into each other, change pin shape to increase contact area, use check pins to make the machine know the connector is correctly attached etc. On the power side of things the most I have seen MOLEX stating the power limit of a Mini-Fit Jr. connector as whole has been 20.5A, maximum I have seen tested without rising the temperature was around 28A as whole. Single circuit maximum current is often stated to be 9A. 12VHPWR is said to support up to 600W which makes 50A@12V, while on single circuit level that makes only 4.2A and is so way under the stated single circuit current, the whole thing goes way past what MOLEX rates their connectors. That first tread patterned tires came out in 1920's and would probably still work as tires, but you would never put them, even if manufactured today exactly same as in the 1920's, under your brand spanking new sports car and head to the track. They hold air, they go under a car and you can drive a car with them, they would still fulfill the function of tires today, but the rubber composition is crap, there's no steel reinforcements, the pattern doesn't even compete to the grip of modern patterns, generally they aren't as durable and safe as modern tires. Also 12VHPWR is more ATX standard than PCIe standard. It's part of the big change to ATX3.0 which is kind of still question mark what else will change but 12VHPWR will be the PCIe connector and while time passes the ATX2.0 support will be starting to fade (so no more janky 2-4x 8-pin PCIe to 12VHPWR adapters).

I have said it every time this melting piece of firehazard has been on topic, I will continue to say it every time this piece of firehazard is on topic. This is Molex Mini-Fit (actual modern Molex version, you can probably notice the little differences to "modern" ATX standard connector): It was designed in the 60's, not 2060's, 1960's, it is well over 60 years old connector designed for wire-to-board connections back then with plenty of headroom because over-engineering a board connector isn't that hard. Why the f**k we are using 60 years old design that is by the manufacturers standards right at the upper limits of its design with 2000€ GPUs in the lords year 2023? Because Chinese are so cheap they cannot buy new connector molds to make a lot newer connector designs that have been developed in the 60 years after Molex Mini-Fit? Because actually changing to newer connector would require end-users to renew pretty much everything as they need to do anyway because pin changes and all that? And yes, there's a LOT more wire-to-board connector designs than this piece of antique firehazard.

My educated guess is that the development stopped months ago and Microsoft is burying the feature and all their hopes for VR/MR/XR future. Most likely biggest things for this are that Microsoft really wasn't interested from the market especially after Facebook just ate most of it, sales figures weren't there compared to the development costs and then the pretty well flopped Hololens 2 (seriously, $3500 + $125 per month for company license per device or $99 per month for single developer, not to include the pretty awful plexi glass AR that after the initial hype, everyone wanted rid off because it is bad compared to camera+screens AR (main problem is that everything is transparent the projector technology just isn't there yet to get good vibrant images. But this doesn't mean your WMR headset will stop working. Do notice that the features are being "deprecated" not "removed". The difference being that deprecated features won't be shipping with Windows but they also are in end of their lives and so no new updates and no official support. Most likely these features will be still installed more or less automatically when WMR headset is connected to Windows and they won't be automatically removed from systems (so those who don't want them can remove them and they won't be coming back automatically).

Jitter is something that happened when we were talking about 8-bit depth and quite a lot in 16-bit depth time with low sample rates. Bit depth plays in as the accuracy of the sample so 8-bit gives you 255 values per sample, if you're like 5 values off it is noticeable difference, but with 24-bit depth you have 16 million possible values per sample, if you're even 100 values off it's miniscule difference in sound. Does it show on oscilloscope? Yeah, but oscilloscope will show that your $20k per piece speakers are also "turds" because they are only 99.9999% identical with their frequency responses. Is it meaningful? Making 100% identical speakers is impossible, everyone just gets close enough that it's practically identical and call it a day, after all even the most finest listener won't notice if there's like 0.001% difference between a stereo pair in responses. Also we are talking about differences in fractions of singular sound waves. That piano note you hear isn't one wave but frequency amount per second distorted waves. If the algorithm gets 1/10th of waves tiny bit wrong the other 9 will mask that mistake. And then we have that humans can hear 24kHz in optimal situations and some super hearers can hear all the way to 28kHz. BUT, those are singular signal tests and in very optimal environment with constant signal and just right volume. Good luck hearing something like even 20Hz difference in above 15kHz frequencies of a music piece because your DAC has "jittering" problem.

Jitter more often is caused by bad DAC, like real bad. Like your typical recording standard is 24-bit 48kHz (or 44.1kHz, rarely anything higher since handling the raw files is PIA), that is 48,000 samples per second, the middle A in piano is typically 440hz so the sound wave happens 440 times per second, that ends up you have around 110 samples per one wave. If your clock is few hertzes off, it doesn't mean anything, especially when you count in that you're taking 24-bit sample, like a bit there or bit here doesn't matter that much. Even less if we go into the audiophile category that insists using 32-bit samples at 96 or even 192kHz rates (yeah, sorry guys, very few studios handle that high digital audio, just because it's PIA and there's really no return to the investment). You will be more likely to hear the tiny scratches from few times listened LP record (the usual wear, no damages) than a bit off clock in ADC or DAC. Thing is different if the clock is unstable and way a lot off, but then your whole signal line is F'ed up and there's a lot bigger problems than the sound wave not being exactly as the original analog.

Would have been neat then and very interesting thing to find out. But still PS1 emulation is on great level and you can skip the whole get a game and whatever part completely by sacrificing few games and just get older "fat" PS2, network expansion card, a HDD (original network expansion requires IDE HDD, but if you don't need network functions just get a clone one which are made just for adding SATA or IDE HDD into PS2, SATA SSD's may or may not work) and softmod the hell out of it.

Firstly, known "bug" (more like they just don't care since most of their customers don't complain enough) in Shopify, it collects the EU taxes even when it shouldn't do it in the first place with orders totaling higher than 150€. Backpack is still over 150€ so the VAT is collected by the customs and not by the seller. Secondly, "bug" in the Wizmo tracking. Generally the IOSS (paid VAT) info is logged with the tracking number, but since with LTTStore purchases, at least sometimes, the tracking number changes in the middle of the delivery because Wizmo uses their own tracking number system that isn't the same as the global standard tracking number system so IOSS can be lost in the middle of that change because everyone else does use standard system. As in, Wizmo doesn't use standard "CA948752475NL" ("[origin country code]tracking number[destination country code]") tracking number system which DHL or whoever does the shipping from Wizmo center to the customer do use. Not really fault of the LTTStore but their partners. LTTStore probably has a ton of these cases in line waiting for processing so if you already sent them the receipt for paying the customs again, just wait, they will process and refund you when they get so far down the line.

I am still kind of disappointed why we steered off from the external cooling solutions. I give that they weren't "elegant" solutions and there was certain problems with them and back then liquid cooling itself was exotic already. But considering todays power requirements and cooling needs, I would say stuff like Zalman Reserator and Alphacool Eiswand could actually make a comeback, especially if the cooling requirements keep getting crazier and people notice the 4-slot GPU is just idiotic and you could just as well use one PCIe IO cutout to get tubes out and so remove the space restrictions from the cooler (thou that would need a company to use actually good quick connectors and not the cheapest designs they can find, as it seems to be the PC company goal these days when it comes to connectors).

Why would you? Do you pay more depending on what devices you have? If there isn't some magical kingdom where energy companies go around and snoop what devices customers have, no, your rate will remain the same, you will pay the same for your energy. If your consumption changes then your monthly bill will change but your rate for the energy will be the same no matter even if you bought a supercomputer or just extremely wasteful space heater.

From my quite limited use of Apple products, I don't know what to say. They do great products and their marketing and brand building is the best in the world, but then there's the dirt that I feel is good to call out. With dirt I don't mean the usual stuff there is but the far bigger and more omitted dirt that seems to be lost in the mass of "kind-of" dirt. The over the top configured Macs are one thing that everyone likes to bash because they seem stupid, but that's not my problem with Mac pricing, those are speciality machines and so is the price. My problem is more often the lowest end pricing, like the newest MBP which is pretty stupid buy compared to MBA with almost the same specs but just smaller and a lot cheaper. Everybody was laughing at the $20k+ costing Mac Pro and how ridiculous that price it and really the more ridiculous one was the cheapest configuration going for closer to $10k and being just bad in everyway (not impressive CPU, barely any RAM or storage and nothing extra, you basicly paid for extreme high-end MB, PSU and designer case). The repair options. It must be nice in countries where there is real Apple stores and not just Apple Retailers, you can walk in, pay $800 and have mainboard of your iDevice changed in hours. Here where there's only Apple retailers you are looking at $800 and couple weeks easily. And then that $800 doesn't even guarantee you a new mainboard, you pay the same and it's up to luck do you get a new one or a refurbished one, you're paying for the new one eitherway. On top of that is the always swapping parts repairing, like at least clean the things and try once at least. Seriously, I got my MBA for saving the files in it because it didn't charge anymore and the problem was some shit in the charging port, cotton swap, some alcohol and works great, repair centers quote: "New mainboard and daughter board, new keyboard because dirty and liquid damage, cheaper to buy a new machine" and literally just cleaning it fixed the problem and it has now worked years without any hiccups. Using security as a scapegoat for using anti-consumer storage options. Security is always double-edged weapon, the higher your security is, the more trouble it is in use. The soldered, encrypted and basicly controless storage is just so annoying when something goes wrong that 90% or more people don't need that level of security in their personal machine. I am not saying it from the perspective of it being impossible to swap the storage to bigger or something like that, but from the perspective of data recovery. For background: I FUCKING hated it when any computer repair shop had the small print that they wiped your HDD during almost every repair because "that was the way to be sure the problem wasn't in the software", like yeah sure, but even when IDE was the thing using separate OS installation to test the machine was completely possible solution, SATA and more "portable" OS architecture became a thing, it was just pure incompetence not to have HDD with pretty clean Linux/Windows install to test that the problem wasn't in the software without wiping the customers storage, pure stupidity and malice when Linux live CD's became a thing. I made sure everyone around me knew to ask that before taking any of their PC's into any repairshops, if they did say that, bring the machine to me and I will take a look or at least take the backups if they didn't have those. I even made some serious money out of that, like you would be surprised how much people are willing to pay to get their vacation photos back from the brink of destruction. I wouldn't have any bone to pick if Apple was straight and said it is business decision or it is for the performance with some BS chart how much faster the in-CPU controller is over separated controller and how much faster the soldered SSD is over M.2. But the security excuse is just gabarge, like seriously, burner storage (storage that is completely destroyed when done its purpose or if compromised) in consumer product is pretty much the same as installing $500 lock into a almost rundown shed to secure $50 lawnmower. Criminals are far more interested to get passwords and accounts than to get a ton of vacation photos, they're very rarely interested about the mails in some random email account and far more interested to use that account to send more spam, they don't start hacking into random peoples computers to get their photos and whatelse to start blackmailing and whatelse because that would require time and effort and has a possibility to be aimed at a person without anything to give, they far rather use their time and effort to send massive amount of spam, build a virus that self-replicates and works without any supervision, go after company servers etc. stuff that is low-effort or has guaranteed big wins if successful. Even the thief on the street isn't interested about what's in some random laptop or phone they stole, they want to sell it ASAP for money. Otherwise Apple has some halo products that do raise eyebrows but so has so many other companies. Everyone is trying to do business and I really want someone to find a one big corporation who wouldn't have any skeletons in their closet and don't try to extort people in any way, because everyone has/is/tries to do something like that. They do certain things differently and have certain different targets from the rest of the industry, but so do everyone else if you look hard enough. People like their products, so they are at least doing something right.

Summary Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has officially stated that once the biggest and flashiest game expo E3 won't happen anymore. In the past couple years we have seen E3 being digital and then being cancelled and moved forward because COVID and then lack of industry interest. Quotes My thoughts I had the chance to see one of the last "real" E3's in the early 2010's when it wasn't open to the public. Back then it was great event, you could talk to devs and they were very open about the tech they were working with and there was really raw demos shown, which was awesome because while there was marketing for the magazines to write about and showrooms to lure interest, there was this openness and sincerity around because there was just devs, suits and media, everyone knew not everything there was for everyone not there. What changed was that it became pissing contest to attain public interest for stuff not really done, turning from SIGGRAPH or GDC aimed for professionals into another public expo really didn't do it well, just Like The Game Awards show turning into The Game Trailer show doesn't seem to be going that well. As I have said to many, "concentrate to achieve your set goals before expanding them", E3 met the end that waits for any event that is just too wide and common, it lacked focus and turned into something no one cared about anymore. I don't think any PAX or GDC would live long if they turned into same kind of pissing contests as E3 turned, I don't think The Game Awards will pull same interest if they continue keeping the awards as a secondary thing for unrealistic game trailers, first they will lose industry care (no one cares to go and receive awards) and then they lose public interest because shown trailers are pretty much lies. Also just that releasing trailers and paying a lot for those seconds compared to just uploading YouTube video is really stupid comparison for marketing since other can cost millions while the other is pretty much free. Sources https://www.gamesindustry.biz/e3-officially-abandoned-by-the-esa

So, not only should YouTube start editing videos to fit the viewing standards a decade later the videos were uploaded but also edit them so they are advertiser friendly without the consent of the uploader? As in you're demanding Valve to not only open up the games in Steam and remove the DRM from them (the few that actually use CEG, most of the games don't use it but have their own DRM salt in them), without the consent of the developer, but also start coding and editing them so they will work on modern systems. That's pretty damn dark shit right there. If it wasn't clear yet, Valve is doing nothing to the games, they are just (most likely) starting to update the Chrome/Chromium based core of the Steam and Google dropped the Windows 7 / macOS Mohave support from that core earlier this year. It's pretty much asked from Valve to either halt their development or start building support for Google products so that "retro gamers" (as stated earlier I don't consider Win7 games retro, there's probably single digit percentage of them that don't really work on Win10/11 and most that don't work didn't work on Win7 either because incompetent developers) don't need to do shit to uphold their systems. Also the Chrome/Chromium base seems to more link into the Steam store side so if Google does huge changes and breaks everything for Win7 then probably still on Win7 running people will lose the storefront of the Steam. The library seems to run on that but use much lower level stuff so it might be good to go for long time for Win7 users. And this seems to be the same case as with Windows XP but without the hard hammer dropping just yet (you can install and even run the newest version of Steam on Windows XP 64-bit. but you will be unable to install any games because Steam blocks access to the servers from WinXP machines, so, all you must do is download the games on different PC and transfer them to the XP machine and, voilá, they should work).

That how you install Steam on machine running OS that basicly everyone has abandoned isn't Valve's problem, that's why they are now giving the warning that they're most likely going to upgrade the Chromium core and that probably will break stuff on OS's that aren't supported by Google or even the makers of said OS's anymore. That is pretty much what retro gaming community has always dealt with and why something like GoG is so fucking amazing. When it comes to Valve removing games from Steam. Just remember it was a HUGE thing that Valve gave the warning and then removed literal scams and partially illegal games from Steam because Valve had never done something like that. If Valve was to remove games based on the hardware or software they support, they would probably first start with the games that have been abandoned a decade or more ago and don't work at all, but no, stuff like "Nether" is still available (not for buy, luckily, but if you have in your library you can download the un-MMO'd still pre-alpha at the best version of it). Not to even start with stuff that hasn't really been ever released, like only from my library there's "Gauntlet Quest" (from the maker's of "Dwarf Fortress" or "Dwarfs!?", something like 10-40k keys for it were given away when some game giveaway site opened, I would remember Indiegala but I can be wrong), "Stuntfest" and "Wreckfest Throw-a-Santa + Sneak Peak 2.0" (Wreckfest's early access bonuses when they still had hope to make the other side of the Flatout series into their own game beside Wreckfest) and around 10 "playtest" titles that I am not sure am I still under NDA's to even talk about them. Not to mention there's already games in Steam that aren't anymore "supported" and you still can even buy them. Like "Thief Gold" (Windows XP/Vista), "Star Wars: Jedi Knight Dark Forces" (Windows 2000/XP/Vista, CPU: 486), "Sniper Elite" (OG Windows XP/Vista), "Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines" (shit gets fun when the first line is "IBM PC or 100% compatible", Windows 9X/ME), "Commandos: Beyond Call of Duty" (even better with recommended OS being "Windows 95/98"), "DEFCON" (Windows XP) and so on. Those are all in my library, you can buy them if you want, I can install them but while some of those are from still active developers, I don't think they are willing to put sticks across to support them more than "they are what they are". There's tons of shit in Steam that is 1000-times more probable to be booted than Win7 games. I would say I would receive email from Valve about deleting my couple projects from Steam long before they are going to remove Win7 games because I have couple projects in there as developer and none of them have even store pages and there's just couple other people who can even see them. I am actually wasting like 20-40GB (probably even more, haven't checked those in couple of years, even less what I have stored in them) of Steams server space just because I can and Valve doesn't give a shit. Not to mention that we are talking about Windows 7 games. Mac side can be a bit more sucky but that's Apple, their policies around backwards support have sucked for a long time especially when it comes to games (good luck running any games requiring old QuickTime versions). Most of the Win7 games run fine on Win10/11, so there isn't any emergency to start hoarding them and panicking over how you're going to run them in the near future. I would hardly even consider them retro games because you can run them on the newest hardware you can get, like they aren't something like DOS games that are going to go haywire because you have faster CPU than 486 or require some hardware that wasn't still compatible with the modern ones (except stuff like "Dark Fall" 1 and 2 which are awful to play because forced full screen and made for 640x480 resolution). Even the SteamDRM isn't a huge problem because most of the games don't use it. If you start them from their exe-files, they may pop-up in Steam because they use the Steam hooks but in the end very few games really used the SteamDRM. Getting past that is also trivial thing, just have some Steam version that can run on the system and you're past it. Valve could completely put out LegacySteam or something for older systems but at least currently there's hardly any reason to do so especially when NO ONE knows to what extent their updates will break Steam on older systems. It could be whole Steam becomes unusable but it can also be just that the store side doesn't work and the library works just fine.

I don't get what the outcry here is. If you're now running a system which support Valve is dropping, go to the settings and remove the mark from automatic updates, you're eitherway losing the support so might as well keep what is still working as long as it works. Valve isn't removing any games from Steam, at least by what they are saying, it's another thing what the neckbeards pull from their asses. You can stil ldownload the games with the system you can make Steam work. Games working on different systems, the complaints address is still the same as it has been these almost 20 years: The game developers. If their game doesn't work, call them, it's not Valves job to make sure the Stick And Stone from 1865 works on Windows 3.1.

Oh no, no no no no and just in case once more no. You need at least 3M VHB tape to hold SSD anywhere near your PC, Loctite Super Glue Gel (Gel part is important so it doesn't cure completely hard) is a good substitute for VHB tape. To be very sure you should weld the SSD into the case to be sure it will never move again. Joking. The velcro is just fine. Unless something goes horribly wrong nothing in your PC will catch on fire, even if you were to fill it with paper scraps. It's an SSD so you can pretty much mount it with few all sticky rolls (you take a piece of tape and roll it on itself so the glue side stays outside) of scotch tape. If you want to be super sure just tape them on the floor of the case they cannot drop even if the adhesive in the tape gets too old and crumbles away.