You have to watch the video, as Harry Potter table top games come to life, all running on Linux. Linux has to be the most powerful system on this planet, not forgetting Mars of course. This blew me away, as I leave gamingonlinux for at least two months, before I go and read up on stuff that’s happening and this well surprised the hell out of me. We may not be very big on the Desktop, but for other electronic stuff, Linux is totally taking over the world.
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And Linus’ announcement in 1991, on usenet about his new kernel that will never amount to much, only work on 386’s and support AT hard drives - has to be one of the understatements of the previous millennium 
and one of the most memorable from IT in the last ~70 years or so, probably more so than IBM boss Mr Watson stating the world will only ever need 5 computers (but it’s kinda almost “meta-prophetic” because of “cloud computing” - the world with only ever need 5 cloud systems?), and Microsoft stating that nobody will ever need more than 640 K of RAM…
20 years ago some supercomputers ran the vendor’s UNIX, or their own proprietary system, NONE of them ran Windows and now they ALL run Linux - but it’s still kinda “jarring” when you see some Microsoft “marketing” bullshit about doing “compute” on Microsoft Windows platforms (I betcha raw “compute” in Azure doesn’t run on Windows).
Looks cool (Table Top holographic gaming) : reminds me of the phrase “floop the pig” from Adventure Time… I game a fair bit, and I like RTS, but turn based strategy games turn me off, and whenever I see some game where the virtual landscape is broken up in to hexagon segments - I switch off…
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Reminds me of this:
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I still have Scalextric tracks and cars, that my father got given from his mate from work. I’d rather play that, as it’s bigger than Anki Overdrive. If I want realism with sexy voice doing count down and introducing the race, just reprogram my Sat nav.
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I think doctors at MRI / CT would benefit a lot from such a display. I mean, I see a huge potential of using it in medical equipments beside gaming…
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Good shout, as could use it whilst operating as a template, so they take the right organ away, etc
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I read some study a couple years back that found the best surgeons were also gamers… Especially in the case of keyhole surgery…
I had major surgery 10 years ago (hemi-colectomy to remove a large tumour in my bowel - it wasn’t malignant after they biopsied it on removal but best to be safe and get it out) - anyway the surgeon was okay, pretty much old school, but he didn’t do keyhole surgery, and I found out a year or two later that keyhole surgery for my operation was feasible, so I’d only have needed a 1 inch long scar in the middle of my stomach, instead of a foot+ long scar from the bottom of my rib cage to just below my navel… and my recovery would have been much shorter too (spent 10 days in hospital - and 5-6 of them were agony)!
If only I’d had a much younger surgeon who was also a keen gamer!
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…but who doesn’t mix up the surgery with the current shoot’em up…
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Since I am a strong proponent of robots doing 98% of all work that has to be done on earth, I have to explain the following to people who might be skeptic of robots and take this joke picture as an “argument” against using robots:
Computer systems, that are life threatining, if not working correctly, are programmed to work in real-time. Whether it’s the brakes in your car or a robot for heart surgery: they are programmed in a way, that assures that nothing can technically go wrong.
The only thing that could interrupt all the safety is a power outage, yet, not even that is a problem, because all vital systems are attached to at least 2 emergency power generators.
So, to be honest, this robot you see in the picture is by itself more precise and safer than any human surgeon could ever be in their entire life.
The only thing that can fail when using such a robot, is the surgeon who is controlling the robot.
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I worked at a big hospital (my 2nd time working in a hospital) - in Australia we call them “teaching hospitals” for 5 years - we had TWO massive deisel generators - one ran on idle 24x7, the other could be brought online in 5-10 minutes… Sometimes the main electricity distributor in that area, would ring up if they were anticipating a potential brown out, would ask “us” to pump some extra electrons onto their distribution network, and the hospital would spin up the main one to full power, and then even the standby one - was a really cool sound when they did - a huge kind muffled roar like a 20 huge 18 wheelers using their engine brakes at the same time… We did have UPS in some areas (theatres, emergency room, and computer room) - but mostly relied on the onsite generator…
Watched a pretty cool doco a couple years back at a control centre for a London electricity distributor, it was all SCADA stuff (I barely know what SCADA even is - but - I do actually support some Linux stuff running in firewalled [not quite, but almost, airgapped] SCADA networks that run SCADA systems). Anyway they showed the control systems they were using to cater for brownouts and stuff… With the EU - they could actually “borrow” spare electricty from France. The guy showed what they anticipated every weeknight, just before the end of that nigth’s Eastenders episode, when viewers en masse, stepped away from the TV into the kitchen and put the kettle on - it would cause brownouts in London, so they’d borrow more juice from their French buddies across the channel…
No idea how that arrangement would be affected by Brexit…
Anyway - TL;DR - I agree totally about robots doing everything… All us humans have ever done since some dudes in Central Asia decided to start riding horses instead of eating them (just read a brilliant paleo-anthropology book by David W. Anthony : “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language”), have been attempts to do less work… But - we do need to ensure those who no longer have “work” are catered for - a “living wage”, healthcare, education and housing… I’m all for the post-human future, I can’t wait to be uploaded…
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You sound like a big fan of Cyberpunk 2077. 
Yes. Ironically, I think that the biggest problem with that is not the idea or that we need it, but that people are mixing up that idea into different contexts, making it worse. For example, for this to work, we need Robots already available to take over most of our work. Which currently is not the case. However, there are enough people, that want to have such a “living wage” right now, when the time is not right, yet.
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I’ve read somewhere that if you’ve got a high end Radeon GPU (none of this RTX rubbish ), it plays nearly perfect through Proton / Steamplay…
I’ve got a low end GTX1650 - I don’t think I’ll bother risking disappointment as I won’t dual boot not even for top shelf games… My daughter plays it on her PS/5 (she was one of the lucky minority to actually get one for less than $500 AUD - with an OPTICAL DRIVE).
I am however a big fan of some cyberpunk authors - Neal Stephenson mainly… love everything that guy’s written… I may be braking the mold a bit here, but I’m not too crazy about William Gibson’s cyberpunk (yeah I know he’s the godfather of the genre!) stuff like Neuromancer (couldn’t finish it) - but he did co-write a steampunk novel with another author which I quite enjoyed… Stephenson knows his computer shit too…
Another Cyberpunk author I quite like is John Shirley (who also co-writes lyrics with the rock band Blue Oyster Cult). But these days his main claim to fame is writing novels based on game franchises like Borderlands (I love the game, but this novel didn’t convince me to past the end of chapter 1), and Bioshock…
Clearly, a real Linux Gamer talking. 
I liked the story and how it was told in Cyberpunk 2077 a lot. Was very intriguing and immersing.
I also really like Bioshock, even Bioshock Infinite, which most Bioshock fans do not seem to like.
As for the novels, I didn’t read any Cyberpunk stuff. By the time I got to know the genre, I stopped reading fictional books, altogether.
I read about 3-4 books a week… 60-75% is probably sci fi or fantasy, but I can’t be arsed with formulaic “elves n orcs” n shit, pulp fiction for pimply nerds… The only sub-genre of fantasy I really like is “grimdark”… Tried re-reading the Hobbit (maybe my 6th read over 40+ years) recently and I found it tedious and one dimensional… I like my main characters to be anti-heroes with a dark side (but not psychopaths, just flawed, even deeply so )… I do sometimes vary this with actual “literature” (I love most of the Russian authors up to Boris Pasternak, and other authors like Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Love all of Andy Weir’s stuff (he wrote the book “The Martian” is based on - it’s “hard science” - but his most recent work is his best “Project Hail Mary”).
But the other 25% is non-fiction… Mostly about biological science (popular science - not academic stuff!), mostly about evolution, and usually about human evolution, it’s fascinating… a great “science” book (popular science) I read recently was “Kindred” by Patricia Syke Wraggs, about Neanderthals, and with up to the minute stuff about breakthroughs that are emerging thanks to places like the Planck Institute (and also “depicting” neanderthals with a lot more dignity and “value” than others that portray them as non-human knuckle-dragging unsapient [they’re “homo sapiens neanderthalensis”!] virtual animals - a culture that survived in Europe for HUNDREDS of thousands years longer than moden humans have even existed)… Favourite science authors are Stephen J. Gould (my dad, when he was alive, used to send me one of his books nearly every Christmas), and Richard Dawkins (my dad despaired of my atheism, but even so would gift me Dawkins books). I do also occasionally read books about modern international affairs by the likes of Noam Chomsky, and Christopher Hitchens… Very infrequently, I will read books about IT, e.g. “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, and “Soul of a New Machine” (** about developing a new hardware platform at Data General - incidentally also the title of a great Fear Factory album!) - but mostly reading books about IT feels too much like work to me - and - I am definitely in the DID NOT RTFM category…
– edit –
It was the DG Nova computer :
I would love to do my night shift work from home, using Linux to control a robot on night duty, a screen with my face on live feed of course, so that the person I see to knows it’s me. I work in care looking after two residents who have learning difficulties. All the tools I need to do the job on a tool belt wrapped round the robot.
The screen could have 360 turning capabilities, meaning I could literally see behind me like an owl. I wonder if an owl ever tried flying whilst looking up in the air with it’s head facing it’s back end, like The Exorcist? I digress. Unfortunately knowing my luck when that tech comes along I’ll either be retired, or had left this mortal coil. Robots are the future, but programmed to make the right choice, when dealing in emergency situations. Weighing up the odds of what ifs?