TrevMUN

So the past week I've been talking with some other folks I know about this situation; they're of the opinion that even the less expensive alternative phones in this list aren't worth it. They recommended that I just get a unopened Android phone that's a couple of years old and then "de-Google" it by installing a different operating system. I was pointed to some alternative smartphone OSes like LineageOS, and also found out about a fork called /e/ which aims to "de-Google" while still allowing access to Google APIs through free and open source implementation. Though, /e/ has a very limited set of devices on which you can easily install it. What do you guys think? If I went down this route, are there other operating systems I should look into trying instead?

Hence one reason why I am so interested in these alternate phones. Probably the most frustrating thing about smartphones is that they lack the upgradeability of a traditional PC. This is also problem that exists in most laptops, although some companies like Framework have been working to address that. But even the phones designed for sustainability and repairability don't appear upgradeable. I can only assume that the modem for a smartphone is soldered onto the phone's SoC board or motherboard. It'd be so much nicer if you could swap them out and update drivers like you would a video card. I hate generating e-waste and generally I only get rid of hardware when it's absolutely beyond help. Even when the iPhone 5S no longer can be used on a network I'm still going to have the thing on hand for using Apple Store apps where I can, and as an emergency fallback. Apparently you can still use iMessage to text people over Wifi in addition to using the phone as a WiFi-only device. I have a friend from Denmark who told me that when he went to Canada (where is phone doesn't work at all) he was still able to get by through connecting to public wireless, so at least that option is there. That's actually the reason why I called it a "clown show" and didn't reference the pandemic, but I didn't want to open a whole new can of worms by expanding on that sentiment. Yeah, that's my concern as well. Predictions are that the 4G network will last for at least a decade from now, but I don't have a whole lot of confidence. I don't know if anyone sells these alternative phones in the area, or has one on hand. I think most people just go with the mainstream phones and whatever's offered by providers.

The more I look into the whole 3G network shutdown thing and what that might mean for 4G, LTE, and so on, and whether or not any of the phones I've listed here (aside from the Fairphone, which explicitly says it's 5G ready) would work natively on 4G or 5G networks, the more I'm left with more questions than answers. For example, regarding my iPhone 5S. Through this article I found that there are four different hardware versions of the iPhone 5S (and 5C) that each have their own unique selection of frequencies they support. My iPhone is Model A1453, which supports the most frequencies out of that list, including UTMS and LTE. Though I think I just found an article which explains why the iPhone 5S is going to get left out in the cold in spite of being able to use 4G networks and seemingly supporting 4G frequencies. "To be clear, 4G LTE networks did not replace 3G UMTS but rather co-existed so that when a phone user is in an area where LTE coverage is not available, they can still access the mobile network through 3G UMTS." That's probably what's going on here with the iPhone 5S and 5C models. But I wonder if that's also true of things like the Volla, Pinephone, and Librem 5. Speaking of which, I found out about another alternate phone: Teracube, whose shtick is similar to Fairphone in that its mission is longevity and sustainability. Like the Fairphone, Teracube runs Android and has none of the killswitches in the Librem 5 and PinePhone. Though, given Teracube's company seems to be based in America, that should mean the phone would be better suited to using American networks compared to the Fairphone. The detailed specs on the Teracube 2E look like that this would beat out the Pinephone Pro, but not the Fairphone 4. One thing that concerns me is the mention of "4G LTE" as far as networking goes without any further detail. Last I heard this phone was going for $200, but it's sold out right now. Boy, it kinda sucks to have to worry about this kind of thing in the middle of a supply chain clown show.

That would be great if it worked out that way! I guess it depends on how they go about decommissioning the networks. Once they start shutting the towers down and dismantling them, though ... This is one reason why I liked the idea of phones that allow users to replace the parts themselves, even upgrade them. At least then, there'd be the potential to, say, swap out the modem as networks and technologies change. At least with the iPhone 5S, even without a SIM card it's still possible to use non-cellular functions over wifi, so I'll still be able to get some use out of the thing even after 3G goes down. Yeah. I did some looking and it seems to be related to Sprint's merger with T-Mobile, at least for now. Though it does make me wonder why they're doing that. Several carriers, including my current provider, rely on Sprint's network. Speaking of that, I double checked and it looks like Sprint's revised their timetable for shutting down the 3G network to the end of March next year, not January. But I still wonder, if I were to get the PinePhone Pro, if one would arrive before the shutdown date. I'd still need to figure out whether or not my provider'll grandfather in a replacement phone into my current plan or not. (Probably not, but it wouldn't hurt to check.) Jeez. What phones was she looking at? I know the iPhone 13 lineup is well over the $1,000 mark. And Purism sells a version of the Librem 5 which is made entirely in America for those worried about supply chain shenanigans or espionage thereof that's right around $2,000 ... Purism even goes so far as to offer an "anti-interdiction service" to make sure no one slips spyware or backdoors into a phone during shipping.

I tried looking into Jolla and although they list a number of Jolla-branded devices on their site, they only appear to sell licenses for the SailfishOS. I wonder where you'd even buy one if they don't sell them themselves ... I looked it up and found that 2G's getting the axe, too. Verizon already shut down their network, T-Mobile's slated to do so early 2023. Sprint's 2G network will go offline with their 3G network early next year. Also, Sprint's 4G LTE network is going down mid-next year. It seems like, if I want the most longevity out of my next phone, I should focus on one that's natively 5G. Yeah, I've had to get the battery replaced a few times. One annoying thing about these batteries is that they swell up with age. Which would not only be a fire hazard if they were damaged, but they also destroy other parts of the phone as they expand. The cell phone repair place I go to (I don't bother with the Apple Store since they charge a ridiculous amount and they told me upfront they wipe the phones regardless of whether or not there's software issues ... to heck with that!) had to swap out the screen on my phone when the original battery swelled up so much that it cracked the screen! But the battery and even screen replacements were relatively inexpensive, especially compared to buying a new (or used) phone. I'd been hoping someone would come up with graphene battery replacements ... Speaking of which I should look into a replacement battery for my laptop, since it barely holds a charge now. PinePhone Pro would be interesting, but I don't think I can hold out for it. it looks like the Explorer Edition won't be shipped to customers until early 2022, and my provider's 3G network goes down in January ... also, I wonder if the PinePhone Pro's modem can handle 5G natively or not. Yeah, I don't really understand them, either. It's already annoying enough to try and type on a smartphone's touchscreen, I can't imagine seriously gaming on one. I prefer a dedicated handheld gaming console, like the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. (I've got a Switch in fact.)

I mentioned in another thread that I've got a hand-me-down iPhone 5S I've been using since 2016. Originally I planned to keep using that until the phone finally breaks down irreparably, but to my chagrin I found out that due to the planned shut down of the 3G networks in America early next year, I've no choice but to get a new phone soon. So I'm wondering if anyone here who uses smartphones has recommendations. As far as usage goes, I'm not looking for some high-end phone that can double as a gaming device. I mainly just talk and text, surf the web, and listen to YouTube videos while driving via Bluetooth/USB hookup. I do use apps, especially now that some sites don't simply just do 2FA but specifically require you to use a security app like Duo Mobile or something. I've had some interest in alternative phones, and I'd like your opinions on those as well. I really liked Purism's privacy-oriented Librem 5 with its hardware killswitches that physically disconnect components, but it's ridiculously expensive for a phone that's roughly on par with 2013 phones and even then I'd be waiting well over a year if I ordered one. The Pinephone, which is all about open source and has some a (less user friendly) set of killswitches too, is a lot more reasonably priced ($149~$199) but it's still a phone with 2013-ish specs. I've read some comparison reviews on both, as well as a one-year review of the Pinephone. I also really liked the concept behind the Fairphone 4 since it's about longevity, repairability, and reducing e-waste, and for a phone that costs about $670 its specs are not too far behind current mainline phones. But the phone only ships within the EU and even if I could get one via a reseller, compatibility with frequencies used by American networks is iffy. There's also a Canadian company called Xfone that's refurbishing Google Pixel 3As, wiping Android and installing Ubuntu Touch on them instead (and using Waydroid to allow for Android app compatibility) ... but I wonder if it would be worth the $325 (in USD) compared to just getting a refurbished Pixel 3A for $150 and doing it myself ... if I can. On the other hand there's a German company that's come out with the Volla Phone, which does have a "worldwide" edition that would cost about $420 after customs, and apparently Volla OS does have Android app compatibility (with the exception of paid apps relying on Android Play Services, but I don't use paid apps). The warning that it's only CE certified makes me wonder if there would be issues getting one stateside. It also would have similar compatibility issues with the 4G networks in America as the Fairphone 4 would, as it uses frequencies 800 / 850 / 900 / 1800 / 2100 / 2600 MHz. Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions on phones or opinions on these alternative phones I've been looking at, I could use some advice. I've got until the end of the year, since my provider's 3G network's going down come January 2022.

Still using XP on two different machines over here! One as my daily driver and the other as ... my mobile daily driver, haha. And it's all thanks to you guys! Without MSFN I wouldn't have known about the SABERTOOTH X99 drivers I used for my main rig's latest overhaul, ProxHTTPSProxy, NoVirusThanks' OSArmor, and the multitude of XP-friendly browser projects. Or, for that matter, the PAE patch and the 2009POSReady updates available for XP32. I'm hoping projects like One Core API, or even the possibility of porting over ReactOS features, will help keep XP from not falling too far behind.

Dang, and I thought I had a lot of hardware! The amount of computers I have has, ironically, dramatically increased since my career required me to move to California and go from room rental to room rental. Despite not having a permanent place to live at the moment! Starting with the machines I've got set up—and yes, I name my computers, haha: Palouser: The big one, an XP64 rig which handles everything from my excessive browsing habits, to illustration, 3D modeling, animation, and video production, and most of the gaming that I do. She's named for an infamous wind from the state where I was born. This computer's gone through many overhauls over the years. The current configuration is thanks to @XP-x64-Lover discovering XP64 drivers for the SABERTOOTH X99 motherboard. At the moment, Palouser's got a NZXT Phantom 820 case, an ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH X99 motherboard, an Intel i7-6950X CPU, 128 GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM (as 4 x 16 GB sticks of white Corsair VENGEANCE RGB, 2 x 16 GB VENGEANCE RGB in black, and 2 x 16 GB VENGEANCE RGB PRO sticks Corsair sent as a replacement when I had to RMA the other pair of black VENGEANCE RGB sticks) and an EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X 126-P4-2992-KR 12GB SC video card. Aside from that Palouser has two 1 TB WD Blue drives, but I've got a Samsung 970 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD I want to use as her OS drive. Just ... haven't set aside time to try and get that set up. The case is now the oldest thing in Palouser's setup, dating back to 2012 when I had gotten the case specifically because the previous case, an APEVIA X-Dreamer II ATXB4KLW, lacked airflow and was killing my hard drives. For her 2019 overhaul, I went for hardware that's about as good as I can get for an X99 chipset, with the TITAN X being the highest performing card the XP family can use (albeit with some .ini shenanigans). Etesia: My personal laptop, a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge e431 running XP32 Home Edition. She replaced an ASUS Eee PC 1005HAB (more on that later) in 2014; I got her from a custom PC building company, XOTIC PC. Etesia mostly handles tasks on the go, as well as some of my multimedia production work. I named her after the etesian winds in the Mediterranean, since that's an important wind for sailing in the Med and lends itself well to the whole mobile nature of a laptop. XOTIC gave her a custom wrap I designed that resembles Minoan Greek art. I had specifically sought out a model of laptop which allows the user to swap out the RAM and hard drive easily after what happened to the Eee PC. Such as it is, I've actually had to send Etesia back for repairs multiple times ... and more recently XOTIC's RMA team's work hasn't been great (usually damaging something in the process of fixing something else) so I'll probably have to take matters into my own hands in the future. When I first got Etesia, she had an Intel i5-3230M CPU with HD 4000 Graphics integrated, 4GB DDR3 1600MHz of RAM, and a Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 500 GB hard drive. She's also got a Matshita BD-RE UJ242 optical drive. For some reason the RMA team swapped out the perfectly-functioning motherboard and CPU for reasons I don't understand, though, which downgraded her CPU to an Intel i3-3120M. They added a second 4 GB DDR3 stick (different manufacturer though, so now she has one each from Corsair and SK Hynix) though, so after they did this I installed the PAE patch for XP 32 so Etesia can at least make use of all 8 GB. Marin: This is actually the first PC my family owned, a Gateway P5-120. I named her after a wind that blows in the Gulf of Lion. Marin's a Windows 95 machine that sports an Intel Pentium 120MHz CPU and I believe 16 MB of RAM. Offhand I forget the type of hard drive she's got. I keep Marin around not only as a memento to halcyon days but also to natively play games and run programs from the 90's that I can't run on other systems. Aside from having the original CD drive swapped out for a DVD-RW drive, Marin's otherwise unmodified. Some day, I'll probably max out her RAM to 128 MB. Maybe find a good 3D acceleration card from the era for her, too, turn her into a real old-school battlestation. Levanter: Back in 2018, Palouser's previous set of hardware started having serious problems. I still don't quite know what the culprit is, but it seems it might be heat stress on the motherboard, making running that hardware for too long without shutting down periodically and letting things cool off untenable. While I was trying to figure this all out, a friend of mine in the area gave me his 2013-vintage gaming PC since he'd been looking for someone in need of a hand-me-down and knew about my hardware woes. He put Windows 10 on there, though I took steps to strip out all the telemetry I could. This PC's very Corsair-themed: Corsair Carbide 500R case in black, ASUS P8Z68-V motherboard, Intel i5-2500K CPU, 16 GB (as 4 x 4 GB sticks) of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1333Mhz RAM with big blue heat spreaders matching the motherboard's look, and an AMD Radeon HD 6950 video card. For storage she's got an OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB SSD and a Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB HDD. All the Corsair parts and the pure black case inspired me to name her after the Levant wind in the Mediterranean after I found out that "Levanter" was sometimes used as slang for pirates and privateers. I mostly use Levanter for anything that Palouser and Etesia can't do. For now, that's mostly relegated to downloading updates for my Steam library and handling video conferencing. Ostwind: Palouser's previous setup included an ASUS P5Q-PRO TURBO motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, 4 GB of 4 x 1 GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 800 mhz memory, and an MSI N560GTX-Ti HAWK video card. Most of that dates back to 2009, although originally this setup had a GIGABYTE GA-X38-DQ6 board and a BFG Tech GeForce 8800GT that were lost due to an annoyingly (un)lucky lightning strike. Initially, when I first made plans to overhaul Palouser (especially once DDR4 RAM was coming out) I was going to use these parts in another computer for a different purpose; I'm no fan of tossing out usable hardware. The hardware failures that started happening in 2018, though, put to bed any notions I had of using the hardware for anything that would involve long uptimes. Still, the parts work, just that any prolonged use involves memory errors. Rather than throw the parts out (I hate contributing to e-waste) and because I always had a fondness for the Crucial Ballistix Tracer's blinkenlights, in 2019 I bought a cheap Compucase HEC HX300 case and spraypainted it gray and red, then got the old setup installed in that case. The Tracer LEDs look kind of like those that are on the ties worn by Kraftwerk in the 1970s, so I went full in on a paint scheme that resembled their uniform in those days. Red interior, grey exterior with red accents; I might even see about getting the acrylic window replaced with a transparent red one. The Kraftwerk theme is also why I named her "Ostwind," though it doesn't seem like people in Kraftwerk's hometown name a lot of the local winds. I had a Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow V300 I'd bought for Palouser's 2019 overhaul, but when I found that Palouser's new setup works as-is with the current OS install on her WD Blues, I repurposed that SSD for the machine I now call Ostwind. Right now, I've been messing with OpenBSD on this machine. I might use Ostwind for anything involving PII, though given the RAM errors that occur from prolonged uptimes that might not be a good idea. We'll see, I suppose. Friagem: Something I wanted to do for a while was dabble in cryptocurrency mining, but not with brand new hardware or any of my main computers. Instead, I wanted to try and use older, inexpensive, second-hand hardware. Back when Fry's Electronics closed, I found out that a liquidation company was handling the sell-off of store fixtures, including decorations, tools, and a bunch of computers and peripherals. I was able to pick up one of the computers used for running a cashier terminal for $25: a late 90's/early 00's beige box case with a Gigabyte F2A68HM-DS2H motherboard with an AMD A8-7650K Radeon R7 APU. For RAM, the machine has two 8 GB as 2 x 4 GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 ... unsure of the speed. Although the PC did have a Patriot Blaze SSD, I've set that aside since I don't really want to get rid of the original Fry's point-of-sale software that was on it. It's kind of like a digital archaeological artifact now. Instead I got a fresh, cheap PNY CS900 120 GB SSD and installed Hive OS on that. I was also able to get, for free, a broken Radeon R9 380 video card off of Craigslist. I figured it'd be worth seeing if I can still find a use for the card and keep it out of the e-waste garbage bin. Turns out the thing's video output is kaput, but it can still crunch numbers just fine. So, in addition to mining hashes, I could use Friagem to fold proteins or help SETI search for intelligent life, too. (Though I don't think I can do that through Hive OS, haha.) Given the whole "treasure hunting aspect" and the fact that the store where I got her (the San Jose location) is themed after a Mayan temple, that inspired me to name her after seasonal winds from the antarctic that blow in the Amazon. I only run Friagem occasionally, and generally only when the weather is cold and in lieu of running the HVAC. That way, I can save on heating bills. In spite of having only a single video card, Friagem's already mined enough ETC to pay back what I spent to get her going. Of course, it's not every day you find someone giving away a semi-functional video card ... These are all the PCs I've got set up for use, even if only occasionally. In addition to those, I have more here and in storage half the country away. I hung on to (what's left) of the PC my father was going to throw away, as well as the family PC that came after Marin (a Windows 98 machine that has an AMD K6 if I recall) ... I'm fairly sure the Windows 98 machine is toast but some day when I leave California I'm going to see what I can do with it. There's also an HP Pavillion ze5700us laptop I have in storage; used to be my Dad's work laptop until he no longer needed it. There have been times I used it as an emergency fallback, like when my ASUS Eee PC broke and I hadn't yet gotten Etesia from XOTIC, but still needed a laptop for doing college work. I posted about that back in 2014, actually. I still have that APEVIA X-Dreamer II case in storage, too, and maybe I can put it to use for something that won't require a lot of cooling. (It was the MSI N560GTX-Ti HAWK that was frying my hard drives when Palouser was still using that case.) There was also a Enermax Coenus computer case I got for cheap years ago, which I had planned to use for Palouser's 2009 parts. Now I'll have to think of something ELSE to do with that case; for a number of reasons, it wasn't feasible to get that case for building Ostwind. Speaking of, when I was looking for options to build Ostwind I had originally thought about just seeing if I could get a cheap used case, maybe one from the 90's. I never found any that would have been feasible, but in the process of trying to find one, I wound up being given a Compaq DeskPro EN (PD1006 if I recall) and a Dell Optiplex GX1, both of them never used. The GX1 was in mint condition, until something tore huge scratches into the top panel when I moved to my next room rental. P***ed me off. On top of that, before finding out about the liquidation at Fry's this year I had gotten an old banged up NZXT Source 220 case for real cheap. That was originally going to be the basis for a low-cost protein folding/hash crunching PC, but then I discovered the liquidation at Fry's. Maybe in the future if more dirt-cheap or broken but usable hardware turns up, I can put together a second PC like that. The ASUS Eee PC is actually in a box here with me; back in 2014, I'd run into a hard drive issue and was attempting to take the drive out so I could try and back up the data on it before the drive completely failed. Having never disassembled a netbook before, that turned into a nightmare. Especially when an SMD component snapped off the motherboard and disappeared. For that reason I don't think I can revive that motherboard, at least not by myself. It would take a specialist, I think, to figure out what's missing, get a replacement, and put it on the mobo. Once I finally have a place of my own I'd like to put some of that hardware in storage to good use. For years now, I've had a mind to take the old family Windows 98 machine (if it even works at all) and mod the case into something that you'd see out of vaporwave or Miami's South Beach, then use the machine as a centerpiece and jukebox that plays ambient vaporwave/synthwave music over speakers via Bluetooth. (Why Windows 98 specifically? That's the first Windows OS that supported Bluetooth if I recall, and Windows 98 features heavily in vaporwave motifs.) I might use the Optiplex GX1 instead now that the case had been damaged, but I preferred the idea of converting the generic "beige box." I'd been thinking about using the Compaq DeskPro as some form of NAS. Someone had done so with a different Pentium II machine using Debian 2.7; I also thought about using something like Kolibri OS, but I don't know if that OS has NAS functionality yet. I also mentioned recently (and I believe in past posts on MSFN) I had wanted to make a router/modem/firewall PC. @jaclaz had suggested a thin client for that. Truth be told, it's what I had originally wanted to do with the parts I used to make Ostwind until they no longer were fit for continuous use. Still, might be fun trying to see if I can throw together a low-power PC of my own. If I ever get a chance to have a home of my own, I'd also thought about installing some kind of smart home network that's not reliant on proprietary products and having a dedicated PC to manage that. Though I'd probably not get too crazy with it, and keep the system separate from the LAN and not accessible remotely for safety reasons. I've also thought about other purpose-built PCs. Especially due to the shenanigans with Steam no longer supporting XP yet still having lots of games which do run on XP, I'd liked the idea of building a Steam cache server that would let my computers download updates closer to home. ( @i430VX might remember me talking about that on Discord.) I want an excuse to find as many of those old UV reactive transparent computer parts as possible, and a Steam cache server would be a good excuse. I'd probably not actually use a blacklight in such a machine as I understand that they eventually cause UV reactive plastic/acrylic to fog up or go brittle, but a computer whose theme is solely "look as much like a plastic squirt gun as possible in as many colors as possible" would be one heck of a conversation piece. Aside from that, I've had a lot of interest in the Commodore 64 scene; now that they've got reproduction C64C cases, replica systems like the Ultimate 64 and the C64 Reloaded Mk2, and the Mechboard keyboard, all that's really missing these days is brand-new C64 keycaps. Perifractic found a solution with Legos, while someone's working on making replacement keycaps. (Originally these were going to have the same double-shot method to making the keys, but the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans.) ... Jeez, now that I look back on how much I wrote, I think this might have been overkill.

That's a pretty slick documentary. The use of 3D assets and vintage clips set to narration reminds me a lot of Mustard's style. I remember seeing another video on Teletext, but I can't find it. It covered some of the games available over Teletext. I could have sworn Techmoan did one about it but apparently not ... Also, that moment when I realize that the "chat on Teletext via SMS" function was, in a way, an ancestor to Twitter. neo's observation that "Teletext is a good example that if the constraints of a medium are truly embraced, the result can be a unique visual language that fits extraordinary well" is one I would say anyone familiar with the demoscene or retro game development (and I'm talking actually developing games for old platforms!) would be all too aware. Watching the "making of" videos for the NES game Micro Mages, or the early MS-DOS era game Planet X3, are fascinating in how they discuss the constraints of the target platforms. That reminds me, I got a text from my cellular service informing me that they're shutting down the 3G network in a few months, and my phone is affected. I've got a hand-me-down iPhone 5S I've been using since 2016. Annoyingly, even though apparently the iPhone 5S' hardware does have native 4G LTE support, the phone cannot natively use a 4G network thanks to Apple shenanigans. I'd resolved to only switch phones until my 5S finally, irreparably gave up the ghost. Now I'm gonna have to get a new one anyway, and probably a new plan too, since I had a pretty sweet "bring your own phone" deal specifically for that device.

It does vex me a lot when climate activists go after Western countries and yet are utterly silent elsewhere. A month before Greta Thunberg went to the and said "'Build Back Better,' blah blah blah," China made plans to build 43 new coal-burning power plants. I'd really like to see more work on thorium reactors. There is a lot of good to say about that technology, the only real drawbacks being cost to develop the infrastructure. Not to mention the taboo over nuclear power in general, even though compared to traditional nuke plants thorium reactors would be much safer. California last year and Texas this year both demonstrated how reliance on just solar and wind energy can and will come back to haunt such societies. And while having batteries to store energy generated by solar and wind would definitely help when there's disruptions or unexpected demand, I still think you're going to need a source of stable energy to bootstrap everything.

Most of the games I've got on GOG are from their free deals, and I hadn't tried buying any recently, but New Moon is the only browser I've got which appears to retain complete functionality. Though, I use New Moon 28 specifically for better compatibility.

Speaking as someone who watches gas prices like a hawk, tries to take into consideration cost in gas consumed for trips, and figure out the most cost-efficient way to run errands based on that, I can say that it can take a bit of effort and time to figure all that out. And that might be part of the problem. GPS and the various navigation apps on our phones make it very easy for us to know how to get where we're going, how far away it is, and how much time it will take to get there. If you use sites/apps like GasBuddy (can I just say how much I hate that sites like that have intentionally made their sites harder to use on mobile devices to encourage you to install their app instead?) you can find out which gas stations in the area have the lowest prices. However, what's less obvious is how much money in gas you'll spend going to all those places. You'd have to know the fuel efficiency of your car to even begin to sort that out, and for me I had to look up special calculators to even get an estimate of what I'd be spending to go to and from somewhere. Since this information isn't as easily obtainable for people as "what station in my area sells the cheapest gas," it gets overlooked. As a side note: I've been so frugal about gas consumption (especially now, as the average price of gas where I live is over $5 per gallon) it's actually come back to bite me. I've learned the hard way that if you don't drive your car or at least turn the engine over at least once a week, the car battery will run dry. And then if you want to charge it, you'll have to spend twenty minutes or so with the engine going at or above 2,000 RPM.

Maybe not for the original game, but it does come in handy for mods/maps with a lot of action happening at once!

Huh, so the Focus PX was too noisy, even with that Fanless Mode button? I was just looking at Seasonic's page on that model and it says it's a successor to the model my computer's power supply uses. So I suppose the problems would be the same (or worse) if you had sought out the model I've got. If noise is an issue, have you thought about fanless PSUs? I know SeaSonic makes one, though @Mr.Scienceman2000 would be the guy to say whether or not it's any good I think. Outside of really generic brands like Sparkle Power or something, I'm not sure if any manufacturers still make old-style unpainted power supplies with a fan grill instead of a mesh panel. Corsair's most basic offering right now appears to be the VS series, which have basic levels of power efficiency. But even those feature a black finish, mesh panel instead of fan grill, and sleeved cables. Even Antec's EarthWatts line appears to have gone for that aesthetic, though it looks like Newegg still sells the ones that were painted green and have a fan grill instead of mesh panel. Which, I suppose, would be pretty novel. But then we're getting into aesthetics instead of function and performance. If you really want to go for older style power supplies, though, you might want to look for one you can repair and maintain. I don't know how easy it is to do with newer power supplies, but given the [H]ard forum had people talking about recapping older power supplies, it should be possible. Thin clients are a good option, too. I'd poked around Parky Towers before looking to see what's out there, and some of those models have amazing low power consumption! I wonder how they do with thermals, though. I know that commercial routers can have problems with overheating, so I thought one fix (once I finally have a place of my own!) would be to just take matters into my own hands.

I think that will depend on if GZDoom implements more features in the future. The source ports for Doom are known to add extra bells and whistles which have been taken advantage of by mod and map makers. For example, GZDoom has an OpenGL renderer which allows for fully 3D floors including slopes (which the original Doom's engine can not handle) as well as reflective floors, dynamic lights, brightmaps (so, for example, demons' eyes can glow in the dark) as well as a bunch of other modernizations like 32-bit colors so that sprites aren't limited to the original Doom's palette. So you get maps that look like this rather than like this.

Wow, you weren't kidding. People like that Rachael admin are a massive turnoff. I've had the displeasure of seeing people like that well before Microsoft ended support for Windows XP, but as soon as tech journalists began trumpeting the "death" of the OS it seemed like they turned out in droves. It's really irritating to see such attitudes involving old games, too, such as DooM. (The most obnoxious example I recall was in 2014ish when the 90's SNK arcade run-and-gun Metal Slug got ported to Steam, but did not support XP. Some doofus snarkily mocked disappointed XP users with "What about MS-DOS support?! What about Windows 3.1 support?!!!" even though, y'know, the game was ahem "ported" to such OSes in the past.) By comparison Graf Zahl at least provides some rationale for the decision, even if I disagree with it. You could try seeing if XomPie would get the newer versions of GZDoom running on XP, though from what it sounds like the real solution would involve the projects to implement the API/libraries/features in the newer Windows versions.

I'm late to the party, but my daily driver's got a SeaSonic PSU: FOCUS PLUS Platinum SSR-850PX. It's not in the list @Mr.Scienceman2000 provided, but it is a Focus PX model, so I assume it would still pass muster. Granted, when I was picking parts back in 2019, I was more concerned with something that might give my system "room to grow," for example if I wanted to dabble in overclocking. I've heard that if you're more concerned about maximizing efficiency, you'll want to get a power supply that's at or near peak efficiency for the typical wattage used by your computer. "The FOCUS PLUS Platinum Series achieves 80 PLUS® Platinum certification with its 92 % efficiency at 50 % system load" according to SeaSonic's site, so Palouser would need to be drawing 425W for that kind of efficiency. I just looked into that and found that the Titan X Maxwell idles at 8W, games at 224W, and has a TDP of 250W; Palouser's CPU, an Intel i7-6950X, idles at 60 W and can go from 250 to 290W depending on the game ... huh. Without even realizing it I went for a power supply that's already efficient for gaming with Palouser's current setup ... Oh hey! I saw mention of these a few days ago when I was looking into ideas for building a low-power PC that could be used as a custom router/modem/LAN firewall. The guy building the PC in that post didn't go with one because he wanted the ability to slot in a big graphics card in the future. Though I bet a Pico would be great for a custom router/modem/firewall PC. They only seem to go up to 120W, though, so that could still pose an issue for vintage setups with thirstier power requirements.

Something I forgot to add: I discovered the error involving the Crypto API doesn't happen if you run ProxHTTPSProxy before connecting to Steam. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve the problems with XCOM: Enemy Unknown not wanting to launch with the modified zernel32.dll executable, or games reliant on Steamworks Common Redistributables. Yes, Steam abandoning support for Windows XP and Vista and stranding a lot of games which are best played under those operating systems highlighted the issue. People used to praise Steam as "DRM done right" and, well, unfortunately many still do. Mostly those who aren't affected by these problems. That being said, going to GOG.com for games is only feasible for titles you don't already own on Steam, unless you want to buy them all over again. So I've got an interest in trying to make the games I already own (many of which I owned long before Good Old Games was a thing) still work.

It used to work, I think. I just gave it another shot and now Steam gives me an error when I try to launch the game. I tried launching Steam with the -console launch parameter to see what might be going on behind the scenes. This is what it says when I try to launch XCOM with the file set to read-only: Error: texture file 'graphics\new_button' does not exist or is invalid Couldn't create IPolicyConfigVista: 0x80040154 ExecCommandLine: "E:\Games\Steam\Steam.exe -noverifyfiles -console" IPC server is in my process - could/should be using an in process pipe System startup time: 4.26 seconds Crypto API failed certificate check, error flags 0x00000008 for '/C=US/ST=Massachusetts/L=Cambridge/O=Akamai Technologies, Inc./CN=a248.e.akamai.net' IPC server is in my process - could/should be using an in process pipe CEG response for AppId 200510, result = Corrupted or unrecoverable data error. Crypto API failed certificate check, error flags 0x00000008 for '/C=US/ST=Massachusetts/L=Cambridge/O=Akamai Technologies, Inc./CN=a248.e.akamai.net' GameAction [AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to Starting with "" GameAction [AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to ShowingEula with "" GameAction [AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp waiting for user response to ShowingEula "https://store.steampowered.com//eula/200510_eula_0" GameAction[AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp continues with user response "ShowingEula" GameAction [AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to UpdatingDRM with "" CEG response for AppId 200510, result = Corrupted or unrecoverable data error. GameAction[AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp failed with UpdatingDRM with "53" GameAction [AppID 200510, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to Failed with "" Also, here's what happens when I run into the issue with Steamworks Common Redistributables: Crypto API failed certificate check, error flags 0x00000008 for '/C=US/ST=Massachusetts/L=Cambridge/O=Akamai Technologies, Inc./CN=a248.e.akamai.net' GameAction [AppID 219640, ActionID 3] : RunGame waiting for user response to LaunchOption "" GameAction[AppID 219640, ActionID 3] : RunGame continues with user response "0" GameAction [AppID 219640, ActionID 4] : LaunchApp changed task to Starting with "" GameAction[AppID 219640, ActionID 4] : LaunchApp failed with AppError_17 with "Steamworks Common Redistributables" GameAction [AppID 219640, ActionID 4] : LaunchApp changed task to Failed with ""

I've been having a weird issue where a lot of games which should work with Windows XP won't launch because Steam insists Steamworks Common Redistributables needs to be updated first. I've tried the trick of copying over the entire Steamworks Common Redistributables directory from a Windows 10 machine as well as the corresponding appmanifest file. However, it's not been working. Has anyone had that problem and figured out how to fix it? I've got a lot more games I need to go through at some point, but so far those are the ones I've played recently. If anyone's got advice on how to fix the Steamworks Common Redistributables problem, I really want to know. I want to play some Civilization V ... EDIT FEBRUARY 09 2022: I think I solved it! After beating my head on this wall for months like a madman, somehow I got my copy of Steam to download updates again, and it's currently redownloading Steamworks Common Redistributables. I'm not sure what the winning trick was, but it started working after I did the following: Copied the "CS" list of servers from the config.vdf file available in the comments of @spaztron64's Archived copy of Steam and completely replaced the "CM" list of IP addresses with it Marked config.vdf as read-only (which normally doesn't work as Steam just produces a temporary "async" version and uses that) Copy-pasted my last known working copies of packageinfo.vdf, appinfo.vdf, and localization.vdf (packageinfo.vdf had been run through PackageInfoConverter) into the appache directory and marked all three as read-only While Steam still wound up producing an "async" temporary version of packageinfo.vdf, it still launched and started downloading updates! Hopefully this fixes my issues, but I won't know for sure until the downloads finish. EDIT FEBRUARY 23 2022: Any time I close Steam I still need to copy the PackageInfoConverter'd packageinfo.vdf back into the appache directory because Steam downloads an incompatible version that prevents it from launching otherwise. Also, I've encountered a new problem now that Steam has been updating my games. Some of the games no longer work with my copy of Steam because they downloaded a new version of steam_api.dll for that game which does not recognize my version of Steam and therefore claims that Steam isn't running if I try to play the game. I'm going to update my list of games that I've played with the current status for each. Ace Combat Assault Horizon still launches, though I haven't really played that yet either, so I don't know how it is to play the game online. Aquaria still works, but I haven't done more than launch the game so far. Awesomenauts has been doing some weird crap when I tried launching it. The game launches, but then it takes me to a black screen where I can hear characters repeatedly spawning, respawning, and dying. Bastion still works with XP as far as I know. Addendum February 23 2022: Despite a recent update the game still works, thankfully. I did make sure to copy steam_api.dll for this just in case. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare wouldn't launch from Steam without Steamworks Common Redistributables updated, though it's also a game that can be launched outside of running Steam. If you do that, though, you can't join any online games. Playing offline with bots is hit-or-miss since most team objective/capture the flags maps aren't set up to properly instruct the bots on where to go for each objective or where the flag is and how to return it. Also, offline, any team objective maps whose final objective involves killing the "king" (highest scoring player on the defending team) automatically complete (probably because, again, bots are a bit daft in Chiv). Addendum February 23 2022: Whatever it was I did to get Steam to download updates to games again fixed the issue with Chivalry not seeing servers anymore, but it took a restart of Steam to do it. So for now, I can play the game online again! Crusader Kings II is a game that should work, but there was an update to the game that keeps it from running on XP now. At the time when I got the game back in 2018, Paradox devs suggested keeping an older version of the game, but I didn't have an older version to do that. XomPie ALMOST got the game to work, except it now insists that it can't find one of the DLL files XomPie points to (ws2_xp.dll). Deus Ex: Human Revolution still works; messed around in it recently. I have The Missing Link DLC, too. DogFighter still works, but even when I got the game back in 2011ish I never found any online games. The game does let you play offline against bots, but I imagine this would be a lot more enjoyable against other players. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still works, but I have one of the original editions of the game. I DO have the Dragonborn DLC though. Flotilla used to work, but it stopped working in 2019 after an update. I tried running it through XomPie, but now it crashes with a "this program encountered an error and needs to close, we're sorry for the inconvenience" type error. Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition still works. Gratuitous Space Battles still works. Guns of Icarus Online/Alliance was affected by the Steamworks Common Redistributables crap, but after I got Steam to download updates again, I was able to launch the game and play the tutorials. I've yet to play the game online though. GunZ 2: The Second Duel still launches, but I never actually tried playing the game. Half-Life 2, including Episode One, Episode Two, and Lost Coast, all stopped working ever since I got Steam to download updates again. I don't understand why; unlike Team Fortress 2, the games will appear to launch and silently close. Hammerfight still works. Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 used to work during the time Steam wouldn't download updates ... sort of. I could launch the games outside of Steam if Steam was running, but I couldn't join online games. Now, however, both games have been affected by that steam_api.dll crap. They launch, but once I get to the menu of either game, they close with a message saying Steam needs to be running. LISA: The Painful still works as far as I know. Addendum February 23 2022: Yep, still works. Machinarium used to work, until I got Steam to download updates again. This is another game that fell prey to the steam_api.dll update which insists I'm not running Steam. Maybe if I can get the previous versions of the steam_api.dll files from a backup I can get it to run again. Metro 2033 still works. NEStalgia also worked when I launched it, but I haven't really tried playing it. One-Way Heroics still works. Orwell is also XP-friendly from my most recent test of it. Addendum February 23 2022: However, I can only get the game to run in Open GL mode. Doesn't really bother me much. Osmos still works as well. Portal still works. Phantasy Star Online 2 never worked with XP64 even in its beta back in 2012; the game has some kind of ridiculous version check that prevents any executable from running specifically on XP64, be it the installer, the game itself, or the patcher. I never understood why Sonic Team did that because at the time PSO2 supported XP32 and Vista. I don't know if PSO2 still supports XP32 these days. Sid Meier's Civilization V was another game affected by the Steamworks Common Redistributables crap. But once I got that fixed, the game STILL won't launch, even though it should support XP ... because now Steam says I've got an incompatible version. (By which it means operating system.) Palouser's an XP64 machine, so it may possibly be Steam needlessly forbidding XP64 from playing a game that supports XP32. Saviors was a game affected by the Steamworks Common Redistributables problem, but once I got that sorted out I was able to play the game again. SpaceChem stopped working for me, however, if you use XomPie the game will start working again. Spiral Knights still works and I've played it some recently. Spec Ops: The Line launched when I tested it, I haven't really played it yet. Stronghold Kingdoms still seems capable of running, but I haven't played that game in years so I didn't do more than attempt to launch the game. (It's one heck of a timesink.) Team Fortress 2 doesn't work anymore. The same problem that prevents me from playing FFXIV on XP ever since the Endwalker expansion is happening with TF2, but unlike FFXIV, I'm unable to pin down WHICH executable or DLL is triggering the SRW Lock errors. VVVVVV still works fine. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine works with Windows XP, as does the online mode. I haven't tried playing the game with the Chaos Rising or Dreadnought Assault DLCs though, so I don't know if getting that DLC does something to the game to render it unplayable. Addendum February 23 2022: Apparently my copy got upgraded the Anniversary Edition automatically and I wound up getting some of the DLC content, but the game still works. If you want to play this game online, though, it would be a great idea to join the Space Marine without Cheaters, Glitchers, and Hackers community. The few people who still play online tend to play in private or scheduled games, or in clan matches. They also have a Discord, you can ask to join on their chat room. War Thunder stopped working for me, and I haven't had any success in XomPie making it work. XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within don't officially support XP, but it's all due to the executable calling functions not normally present in XP. Apparently Microsoft did release an API for XP that implements these functions, but XCOM's executables won't use them even if you do. However, there is a workaround available which involves editing the binary of the executables to point to a modified DLL which has those functions. I don't know if I can link to the Steam thread, but there's guides on how to do it there. (XCOM is another game which should work and has worked for me using this method, but recently Steam has been automatically "fixing" the game's modified executables and keeping me from playing the game any time I try to launch it. I don't know how to make it stop.) Addendum February 23 2022: I still haven't gotten this issue fixed. For some reason, Steam still refuses to let me play the game with the modified executable, refusing to launch if I make the executable read-only, and automatically replacing the executable with an unmodified one if I don't.

@roytam1 might not see this thread unless you ping him (I just did for you, though). I have to say, I salute your diligence on this matter. And you're not the only one who is repulsed by DeviantArt's changes in recent years, believe me. (Fellow XP enthusiast with a DA presence here!) Among other things, I know many, many people vocally opposed the Eclipse redesign and even more so when DeviantArt, as is typical of practically any online organization/business these days, forced the changes on its userbase ... Almost certainly because DeviantArt's managers were confident the users will likely just keep using the site anyway. (It is, after all, the same pattern that's happened with every YouTube redesign, every Twitter redesign, every Facebook redesign, etc. ... I remember when DasBoSchitt spent a whole GMod id*** Box intro in 2010 castigating YouTube for the forced layout change in; now, there's a whole subreddit dedicated to trying to hang on to that pre-Polymer/Kevlar layout.) I myself have been looking into restoring my old Newgrounds account and posting my art there from now on, as others have done. Also thinking about starting to post my stuff to Pixiv. That all being said, the problem might be less XP-compatible browsers being less capable of efficiently handling the current state of websites like DeviantArt and more that such websites are just demanding too much damn resources these days. When you look at the source code for sites like, say, DeviantArt or YouTube these days, there's pages upon pages of script code, and of course as all sites have done for a decade now, heavy reliance on off-site scripts and CDNs. (Which is ironic because when YouTube announced the incoming Polymer layout in 2017, they crooned about its simplicity. Ahaha, no.) Many years ago I had seen an article discussing how websites have dramatically increased their use of system resources (both CPU and RAM) ... and that was probably more than a decade ago by this point. Even back in 2016 some sites could hog 25% of a computer's CPU, which this author attributed to ads. It might just be that a lot of older machines won't be able to use most websites as-is anymore because the companies running them have become less and less concerned about efficient use of a computer's resources. They probably figure just about everyone's got 3Ghz multicore CPUs and at least 16 GB of RAM, and therefore no need to bother being frugal. Never mind that even if you have the resources, such a burden from a mere webpage (especially one which used to be very snappy and lightweight before a redesign) is not a welcome experience ...

That p***ed me off so much. I started using Discord in its early days, back around December 2015. As web-based VoIP it worked perfectly back then. Chrome 49 still had the best experience out of the browsers I have; Firefox-based browsers would either constantly blank out or display those scroll bars as @VistaLover saw in Serpent. Advanced Chrome would turn up a blank page, ironically. I didn't try testing VoIP with New Moon 28, but I imagine it would not have been a good experience given the way Discord behaves on any Firefox-based browser. For now, I've sworn off using Discord, using Steam and IRC instead. They spontaneously locked me out of my account a few months ago for no reason whatsoever; just started demanding I fork over a cell phone number. Specifically a cell phone number, they would not allow Google Voice, burner, or even landline numbers. Their support staff outright refused to tell me why my account had been locked, too, citing reasons of "safety" and "security." Which rang absolutely hollow considering I own the account and I'm the one asking why they locked it. They've changed a lot since 2015, and not for the better.

If I might ask, what happened when you tried? Did you use a GPU known to work with XP? Because far as I know, on the nVidia side the 9XX/TITAN X Maxwell series is the newest line known to work with XP and XP64, though that requires a bit of INI hacking. I'm not sure how new you can go with Team Red.

That's precisely why I'm trying to keep Etesia going. Does your Windows XP laptop have a removable battery? Etesia does, and I've had the same problem you have had (battery life has become nonexistent with age) ... I'm pretty sure there are replacement aftermarket batteries I can buy, but I'm hoping I might be able to mod a battery pack to use graphene cells or something. If only that technology would come to market faster. Haha, this is actually how I use Etesia these days when I'm on the go. She's always tethered to a wall outlet on road trips. XOTIC (the OEM that I bought her from) actually shipped her with a vehicle AC adapter that lets her charge on the go, using the cigarette lighter in my car. Wild stuff. It certainly seemed we were heading that way, and will probably be doing so again in the near future, but the pandemic certainly caused a rather dramatic reversal of trends. From what I had been hearing on the Tech YouTube channels, 2020 saw a massive increase in the sale of desktop PCs and computer parts, since many of us were under stay-at-home orders or otherwise working from home. (My current employer still has me doing this.) From what I'd been hearing, that took the chip and hardware manufacturers completely off guard as they were not expecting such a massive reversal of trends. But now, everyone needed a computer that could handle videoconferencing and/or the sort of work they would normally be doing at the office. Not to mention gaming. Oh yeah! That's the Ship of Theseus Paradox, right? I heard about a philosopher who came up with an interesting way to solve the paradox, if you think of objects four dimensionally. The idea being that an object's span of existence is like a river of time, and the individual things that make up that object could be thought of as smaller streams that join or branch off of the main "time stream."

If I remember from when I set up W10 on Levanter (that hand-me-down gaming PC) I had to actually go in and disable the telemetry options. They were still there, just you had additional levels of telemetry control not available on other versions.