Oh.

Starting November 15th, 2025, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock and all its DLCs will no longer be available for purchase on any platform. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/544610/view/570395033724780780?l=english

It seems to be currently on sale on GOG so mebbe grab it if you don’t have it yet: https://www.gog.com/en/game/battlestar_galactica_deadlock

That was one of the better space fleet pew pews. Sad to see this going. Guess their license expired. That leaves `X4` BSG mods and `Diaspora` (`FreeSpace 2 Open` mod), of course. Speaking of: There isn’t much talk about `Diaspora` but apparently they are cooking another campaign behind the curtains.

The Day My Smart Vacuum Turned Against Me by HarishankarHarishankar (Small World)
Would you allow a stranger to drive a camera-equipped computer around your living room? You might have already done so without even realizing it. The Beginning: A Curious Experiment It all started innocently enough. I had recently bought an iLife A11 smart vacuum—a sleek, affordable, and technologically advanced robot promising effortless cleaning and intelligent navigation. As a curious engineer, I was fascinated by its workings. After leaving it to operate for the entire year, my curiosity

❤️ https://codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-my-smart-vacuum-turned-against-me/

Pretty sure that won’t be the last we’ll read ott. Devices that get bricked when privacy is enforced.

“Ah,” said Mr Pin. “Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.” He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’. Terry Pratchett, „The Truth“.

This is one of my favourite quotes from the books and one of the writers that influenced me most while growing up.

List of menu key bindings from a PC game demonstrating various bound buttons with an ungodly long menu entry for each option

Looks like has a broken Input.ini parser resulting in my mappings to be gone on restart. The problem is that some special characters, like a comma, break the INI format used by their controls implementation [/Script/Engine.InputSettings].

Have an example what the game writes to AppData/Local/ProjectWingman/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/Input.ini


AxisMappings=(AxisName="Pitch Axis",Scale=-1.000000,Key=Joystick_ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1)

The name for the key is something homebrew the game produces based on the controller type (Joystick_ or Gamepad_) and the HID device descriptor name. This example mapped fine ingame but breaks on reload of the game resulting in only ThrustMaster for each mapped control – and that joystick can not be found, of course.

The “fix” is to manually edit the file and add quotation marks for the key:

AxisMappings=(AxisName="Pitch Axis",Scale=-1.000000,Key="Joystick_ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1")

Now the game finds the proper joystick and all controls are mapped to something like ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1 again, as expected.

Needless to say that the file should probably be write protected after that – or at least saved again under a different name, because any change to the controls will overwrite this fix again. This problem does probably also happen with other special characters, like the © sign that some vendors are known to use.

Bringing Linux Administration to Everyone: Free Online Course Starting Soon by Jochen LillichJochen Lillich (monospacementor.com)

I had planned to start the cohort-based course “Basic Linux System Administration” later this week. When this cohort unfortunately didn’t fill up, I realized this was the perfect opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to try for a while: offer my Linux System Administration course completely free as a livestreaming experience. Starting this month, I’ll…

♻️ https://monospacementor.com/2025/09/free-linux-sysadmin-course/

Even with Fedora 👌

This is Project Wingman mission 01 Black Flag played on a Linux PC with Proton Experimental, OpenTrack with the Neuralnet Tracker plugin and my DIY HOTAS / rudder system based on Arduino Pro Micros replacing the original electronics in my Thrustmaster FLCS/Cougar gear:

Pick your poison: https://makertube.net/w/8MyoVSzDfwMuQR6bCqtbie / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0sihlgW_Y

I got Project Wingman on a sale months ago and I finally gave it a try. As an Ace Combat player I felt right at home. My initial experiment was with the XR glasses and woah that feels good in 3D and all but today I remembered that old Plasma TV in the basement. Got it second hand a year ago for dead cheap. Today I brought it upstairs to try it with the ViperPit and now I’m not sure what’s more awesome.

Well, that is if I feel like burning ~470W on top for that thing but hey this is for very specific gaming sessions only anyway 🤷

Guess I’ll spend more time in the ViperPit again 😀

I Can Spot AI Writing Instantly — Here’s How You Can Too by Evan Edinger (YouTube)
How can you tell if something is written by AI?

Re: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ch4a6ffPZY

I really lost it when YT provided me with an AI summary of this video ticking all the boxes 🤣 Anyway, what others mentioned before: As a non native speaker I feel cooked. I’m already constantly pivoting between English, American and Aussie (that’s my 3 points as we were taught in school btw). Mostly _phrases_ picked up here and there especially from movies but lately also from AI because – (ndash :D) let’s face it: We see it everywhere so it slowly gets adopted to the own lingo assuming this is how people talk nowadays. Kinda similar to the jargon of the youth that always sports their own lingo as well. Anyway, IMHO the more important thing is not really being able to detect AI but being able to understand if there is a human behind a comment, trying to bring a point along, or simply a gorram bot tasked with influencing/advertising.

AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning by Abdelkader Boudih (Seuros Blog)
After 10 years as an AWS customer and open-source contributor, they deleted my account and all data with zero warning. Here's how AWS's 'verification' process became a digital execution, and why you should never trust cloud providers with your only copy of anything.

This reads like a horror show and sounds like a worst of the worst case scenario. Tried to avoid cloud like Covid before thanks to a deep rooted distrust against big corporations, that can and will terminate accounts on a whim. This report is fuel to my trust issues but it’s far too easy to just yell “self-host” now. The admin tax is just too real and it sounds like you did everything properly. Thanks for this epic write-up Abdelkader and while Ruby isn’t my wheelhouse I love that you don’t let other devs bleed for the disgraceful treatment you experience. Best wishes for you and your future projects and keep speaking up!

RE: https://www.seuros.com/blog/aws-deleted-my-10-year-account-without-warning/