Hi, I’m sbird! I like programming and am interested in Astrophysics and all things space. I also have a hobby of photography.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2025

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  • Number one thing, don’t get a “Pro” controller from Nintendo. 8BitDo, GameSir, Gulikit, etc. all have excellent options that undercut NIntendo by a lot (you have $20 controllers that perform nearly as well), and they all use hall-effect sticks (or TMR with the fancy ones) so you won’t suffer from the same stick drift. You could also get a Gulikit mod kit for the Switch 2 joycons and replace the sticks with TMR ones, but at least from my experience with the original Joy-Con, it is incredibly annoying to open it up (and you always need to do it multiple times, because you didn’t seat the ribbon cable properly, you are pinching a cable, etc.), and I doubt the new ones are any more repairable.

    As for specific controller recommendations, from 8BitDo you have the Ultimate 2C Bluetooth (C is for cheap, I think it’s $25 or something, but no gyro and other bits) and the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth (has gyro, trigger lock, dock, etc.), from Gulikit you have the TT Max (symmetrical stick layout!) and the KK3 Max (the TT Max but with hall-effect instead of TMR, older version of the 2.4 GHz dongle, and asymmetrical), and from GameSir you have the Nova 2 Lite (cheaper, no gyro) and Supernova (rubber grips, gyro, trigger locks, dock, etc.)

    Next, the Switch 2. That is a big asking price, and I personally don’t think it’s worth it, especially since there is no pack in game. If you do want a Nintendo console, you can easily find original Switches used online for very cheap (unless you already have one, which is even better!), and unless you want to play some of the Switch 2 exclusive titles, those are definitely the best from Nintendo in terms of value. Almost all the original Switch games will play exactly the same in the Switch 2 unless you get the upgrade packs (some of which are free, others are paid), which is incredibly stupid in my opinion, paid or not.

    If you are not interested in any Nintendo exclusive games and want to play cross-platform titles only (like Hades II, Silksong, etc.), I would definitely suggest getting a used Steam Deck (if available + you need a handheld) or building a PC (with AM4, DDR4 memory, and the used market if you have one, you can definitely build something decent that will outperform the Switch 2 in every metric, but the value will depend on the cost of components where you live!!).

    If you just want to play Nintendo games (or Playstation, Xbox, Sega, etc.) but don’t care for the latest and greatest “Mario Kart World” or similar, you could always go the emulation route! There are a lot of good handhelds right now:

    • the RG XX line is great for anything under PS1 (I particularly like the 34XXSP for the clamshell)
    • the TrimUI Brick is another one in that price bracket and relatively small
    • the Miyoo Mini is even smaller!
    • the RG DS is decent for DS w/ Rocknix (but it will be replaced with the RG DS Plus soon, so you might want to check if you want the better screen in exchange for a third of the memory. The new one will have the same chip though)
    • Retroid’s Pocket line is always awesome (the 5 uses the Snapdragon 865 and is good for everything up to GC and PS2, while the 6 uses the 8 Gen 2 and can do more Switch and PC emulation and will handle every GC and PS2 game with upscaling)
    • Ayn has fancier devices ($300-400 price range) like the Odin 2 Portal (beeg screen Pocket 6) and Thor (3DS champ), which both use the 8 Gen 2

  • I don’t think that’s how scaling works. I believe Drastic (and other DS emulators) use interpolation for their scaling (i.e. linear, bilinear, etc. instead of nearest neighbour). You also have the difference between the scaling of 2D and 3D elements, meaning sprites and textures are handled separately (and therefore they need to be stored somewhere: RAM!)

    But the original RG DS already underperformed when it came to DS (I believe Russ was able to run 2x with Drastic on the original in some games), having a third of the RAM certainly won’t help for playing 4x integer scale DS. I highly doubt that Anbernic will make it work with their “NNDDSS” emulator







  • Neither, the former is only on iOS / various other Apple bits, the latter is awful in terms of privacy (arguably more so than Whatsapp)

    I mainly use Matrix (Element on desktop, FluffyChat on Android, Fractal on mobile Linux) and email (Thunderbird), but I also have Halloy (IRC) installed to. As for any proprietary messaging services I use, it’s mainly WeChat for messaging Chinese friends.

    edit: I also have Signal, but pretty much no one in my circle uses it, as everybody who was bothered to switch to Signal went all the way and joined Matrix in my experience.



  • Just a small point, double negatives can get pretty confusing. Even in English, you often have double negatives becoming a negative rather than a positive, e.g. “I didn’t go nowhere” or “You don’t know nothing”. Changing which part of the phrase you emphasise can also change that, for instance, if you said “I didn’t go nowhere” it implies that you did in fact go somewhere (double negative becomes a positive when stressing the second negative). This gets all the more confusing when you bring in other languages, since they all handle double negatives differently!


  • Generally, there are a lot of used options out there (particularly from businesses upgrading their hardware), just like laptops. Even when shopping for new ones, I can find lots of cheap options (though they aren’t very good value usually, but they are enough to serve as a basic media box)

    Raspberry Pis have unfortunately gotten very expensive, yes, but those are SBCs, not mini PCs?



  • Outside, it usually sits around 65-70% humidity, over 80% during the summer. Hong Kong is like that unfortunately. Dunno about the room my printer sits in though, I don’t have a hydrometer in there, but I imagine it’s a little bit lower (maybe 60%? 70% in warmer months?). I don’t dry my PLA though and I’ve mostly had good printing experiences.



  • Well, that would depend on what’s in the other 3D “layers” of the 4D world. Like how 3D worlds can be thought of as layers of 2D ones. If you moved to another 3D “layer” that had no oxygen, food, water, etc., you would quickly die. If you moved quick enough you would also probably die, but the same could be said about the three spatial dimensions we’re used to. Also, if there was a fourth spatial dimension, it must be “compact” enough that we can’t detect it with our current technology, and I have a hunch (!!! no evidence for this, please search for some if you want good facts!!!) it would be bad for us to move through it.