The pic on the left looks lived in, just needed an update on the carpet and cushions. Pic on the right looks like the inside of a lich’s phylactery.

It’s pretty cool. I have it integrated with Lyrion via a plugin so I can generate a list of related tracks to a song, album, or artist in my play queue, and with lyrics and CLAP analysis it can also generate a music queue via text prompts via phrases like “classical music with cellos” or “relaxing ambient without bass” “aggressive melodic rock” “soothing female vocals” and so on.

As a bonus, we use Wiim Pros and Pro+ units at home to integrate with Lyrion and they can be linked and synced for whole house playback across multiple audio setups.

Everything I have is either for entertainment or home automation. Most of it is running on a mini-PC running Proxmox.

• Jellyfin
• Asset UPnP
• Lyrion
• Navidrome
• LRCLIB offline lyric server
• Home Assistant

And I’ve got a containerized Audiomuse-AI instance for music analysis and instant playlist generation.

This is pretty cool, and I’m guessing the hardware doesn’t even break a sweat.

My entire setup runs on two AMD mini-PCs, one running a Ryzen 5700u with Proxmox for VM hosting, the other is a 5500u running bare metal Ubuntu.

Proxmox server hosts:

• Asset UPnP
• Jellyfin
• Audiobookshelf
• (formerly) Plex (I ditched it)
• Lyrion
• LRCLIB offline lyrics server (via LRCLIB DB dump)
• Home Assistant VM
• Navidrome instance

Probably a few other things I forgot about…

The bare metal Ubuntu server currently just runs Audiomuse-AI for music analysis, but when not scanning it’s generally idle. Only set this up because early versions of Audiomuse-AI didn’t play nice for me in a VM even when r running with CPU in host mode.

When the hardware gets cheaper I wouldn’t mind a full size server again with a dedicated GPU (I decommissioned my old one due to defective RAM), but for now the mini-PCs have been great. They’re quiet and absolutely sip power, so efficient and quiet.

The NDS is still a solid choice. I just finished playing Puyo Puyo 7 this week.

Former smoker who switched to vaping 15 years ago (unflavored e-juice via liquid synthetic nicotine concentrate+ PG/VG)…

Nah, it’s fucking gross. I was exposed to many smokers from a young age, including close relatives and in enclosed spaces. Found myself addicted and craving cigs before I’d ever smoked one, even though I hated the smoke and the smell. FYI - smoking around your kids at all, let alone without being in a well ventilated environment, should be considered child abuse.

I smoked for a decade before switching to vaping, and don’t miss it at all. I don’t hate the nicotine, just burning stinky cigarettes, and to this day it makes me gag.

No third term presidents. At all. I don’t care who it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Hope so. If that happens, it’ll mean my wife won’t have to. We only have each other and I wouldn’t want her to have to go through that.

Thankfully I’m not paying it. Even before the AI boom I saw the overall upward trend in power costs. I went solar with battery backup when I had my house built and I bought enough to be at or above 100% offset with net metering. The only thing I pay is the grid-tie connection fee each month, and I get a small check from the power company each year for any overage I generate.

Not sure what you mean by “if everyone follows Sony’s example.” Sony is the one following, and DRM has been around since old PC games in the 80s.

Denuvo, easy anti-cheat, EA Play and Ubisoft’s platform with forced logins and online requirements, and plenty of other DRM methods have been around long before all this.

If you want to change it, you have to not buy from them entirely, not just do a short partial boycott. They only ever back down if there’s a major cost.

Fair enough. I feel more than a week boycott will be needed if you actually want to enact change, but hope you folks can convince Sony.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight, I’ve been a PC gamer since fully abandoning consoles (outside of some now retro handhelds) in 2012. Just wanted to understand why this was such a big deal, as my gaming has been pretty much fully digital now for close to 15 years. I don’t even have anything in my home that could play DVDs or Blu-rays. But I’ll admit, my platform of choice isn’t proprietary (heck, these days I game fully on Linux).

Best of luck, and hope you can enact the change you want here.

I don’t own the console, just remembered reading about it and was mistaken about the specific game. Looked it up, Doom: The Dark Ages only has 85 MB on the disc, and God of War: Ragnarok was digital code only in the case with no disc. Jedi Survivor is another one with a required day one patch.

My understanding is around 30% of PS5 games are not playable without patch updates. This is something that started way back in PS3 with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 IIRC, as that game was literally unplayable due to crashing without a day one patch.

I feel like we have a misunderstanding. I don’t own a PS5, and sold all my consoles as of the PS3/Xb360 generation, sometime between 2010 and 2012. For ownership I can buy at GOG, or buy Steam games that don’t have DRM.

I’m not sure how this leads to Sony having a monopoly? Or how it changes it? If a game is only available on PS5, it’s only playable on PS5, with it without a disc. If it’s multi-platform the issue is moot either way.

I’m a big advocate of ownership. I strip DRM from my books, I have a NAS full of FLAC music I purchased rather than stream. I boycotted EA and bought nothing from them for nearly a decade when Madden became console exclusive, on principle.

It’s just… if you care about ownership, why play on a proprietary, locked down platform in the first place? And exactly how does a one week boycott resolve the issue? It just seems half-assed? Why not boycott altogether and/or change platforms?

And why just Sony? Nintendo is releasing carts that are literally just game codes for download. How is that different? The cart is essentially useless and conveys no ownership in that case either.

Right, but because the full content isn’t on the disc, that happens anyway even with physical media, and all you’re left with is a fancy coaster for your drinks. That’s why I don’t really get the fervor over discs.

Like, IIRC the God of War reboot was an example. The disc only held a key and about 950 MB of data. The rest (like 40 or 60 GB) had to be downloaded from their servers.

Even having a physical disc you don’t “own “ the game in the way you describe. As I said, that’s pretty much been the case for many/most games since the 7th gen consoles (XB360 and PS3).

I should disclaim that I abandoned consoles in Gen 7, partly because of this stuff (and bandwidth throttling, walled ecosystem, etc.), and that was nearly 15 years ago. I just don’t get why the discs being removed is cause for anger now when the disc itself has been materially useless in many cases for two console gens now.

I gotta ask, why do people even care about this so much?

The games in most cases haven’t been fully contained on the discs since the PS2 era. With patches, updates, and required downloads to play, the disc itself is functionally useless in most cases.

Why is this such a big deal? Why is this the hill to die on and boycott over who knows how many other horrible things and business practices around?

I meant rogue-lite. They’re technically different genres. Rogue-lites allow for permanent bonuses/boosts over time like the games I mentioned. Roguelikes do not (old school games like Rogue and Nethack, for example) and every game is a fully fresh start.

Oh, gotcha. I had a total brain fart reading this, didn’t realize it was in relation to the voting act. I hate everything about that too. Voting is a right and a responsibility. It’s not a limited privilege to be taken away because some dickhead thinks we’re a “naughty baby” or whatever.

Maybe, but that’s okay. Not every game needs to be for every player. I used to be very much into action heavy games, even did a big Nintendo Blockbuster tournament back when I was a kid and placed 4th regionally. And I was really big into the 2D fighting scene, particularly Street Fighter 3 and Guilty Gear series.

I’m in my 40s now, and I don’t really play those kinds of games much anymore. Action heavy games are fun from time to time, but they make my hands hurt. Also, I just don’t have the time to learn the meta, pokes, skills and strategies for fighting games anymore. And button mashing (like Mortal Kombat’s “test your might” sections) is right out. I don’t see the issue. Time marches on and we enjoy the things we can.

These days I’m more likely to play RPGs, indie, and retro games, with occasional dips into modern games, and while I still like fighting games, I’m more inclined to play ones that have a single player campaign and lower skill ceiling, like Soul Calibur 6. Anything with tons of button mashing or joystick waggling for range setting will have my hands hurting over time if I keep at it.

Balatro is one of the best examples of this. The game naturally gets easier as the player learns its systems and gains experience through playing.

Isn’t this the case for most Roguelites? It’s not even necessarily player skill, so much as unlocking permanent upgrades (Jokers in Balatro, abilities/cards in Across the Obelisk or Slay the Spire, stat boosts and weapon modifiers in Hades, etc.).

The “but I don’t have much time” argument feels especially weird, like would you demand a cliff notes version of a book or TV show because you don’t have the time otherwise?

Sweet Summer child…

Yes, there are dummies like that. I remember reading about someone actually bragging about “reading more” by asking for book summaries via AI.