I’m not sure actually. I’m into the hobby but I have only a New 3DS. I plan to get one of those handhelds at some point but I’m not there yet!

I believe a lot of the folks into these retro handhelds ditch the default Android system and install a community made distro specifically for running these retro emulators! TechDweeb talks about them.

Hey thanks for the recs!

Ahhh okay. I tend to leave my N3DS turned off all the time. I only use sleep mode for short term. Maybe that’s why I don’t have an issue?

Some of those definitely look like weird and creative games!

I’m not too fond of the post-6 Final Fantasy games, mostly for their looks, so Dissidia doesn’t appeal to me. I do really like Final Fantasy Tactics though I can play it on my N3DS (along with FFTA and A2).

My friend has been begging me to get into the Fire Emblem series and when I do that will be a big rabbit hole. I also want to play the Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton games (which really take advantage of the DS hardware).

Did you try it on a 3DS or a New 3DS? They look so similar and have such similar names that it’s easy to confuse them but the hardware difference is enormous.

Also when did you last try it? There’s been a ton of work put into the dynarec PSX core (I forget the exact name of the emulator. It’s basically an alphabet soup name) for RetroArch that’s made night and day performance improvements.

I can’t help much on the travelling bit. I’m actually surprised that a PS Vita would last multiple days of all-day gaming while travelling without being able to charge.

My N3DS runs PSX games just fine via RetroArch.

The Bluetooth audio sounds really nice though.

I don’t know anything about the PSP or Vita libraries so I don’t know why I would want them. The DS and 3DS library is absolutely ginormous so that’s a big draw for me.

As for sleeping/power drain, I haven’t had too many issues since I turned the brightness down. I don’t have enough free time in a day to drain the whole battery and I plug it in to charge every night. Maybe the sleep issues with emulators have been fixed? I use RetroArch and it seems to work fine coming in and out of sleep.

There are loads and loads of really cheap Android-based emulator handhelds. The YouTuber TechDweeb does lots of reviews of these devices. These things have effectively spawned their own retro gaming ecosystem around them.

An alternative is to pick up a used New Nintendo 3DS (New being part of the name, distinguishing it from the original 3DS which is way less powerful). This device can be hacked to run many different emulators and play thousands of games. While the screens are not as good as the best Android handhelds, the form factor is ideally suited for running DS and 3DS games (which obviously run natively on the device) while still being great for older single-screen systems (the unused touch screen is excellent for emulator controls such as pause/resume and save/load state).

But how long was it, how much more of this would they have to endure, or could they endure? The breathlessness of the air was growing as they climbed; and now they seemed often in the blind dark to sense some resistance thicker than the foul air.

As they thrust forward they felt things brush against their heads, or against their hands, long tentacles, or hanging growths perhaps: they could not tell what they were. And still the stench grew. It grew, until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them, and that was for their torment. One hour, two hours, three hours: how many had they passed in this lightless hole? Hours - days, weeks rather. Sam left the tunnel-side and shrank towards Frodo, and their hands met and clasped, and so together they still went on.

At length Frodo, groping along the left-hand wall, came suddenly to a void.

Almost he fell sideways into the emptiness. Here was some opening in the rock far wider than any they had yet passed; and out of it came a reek so foul, and a sense of lurking malice so intense, that Frodo reeled. And at that moment Sam too lurched and fell forwards.

Fighting off both the sickness and the fear, Frodo gripped Sam’s hand. ‘Up!’ he said in a hoarse breath without voice. ‘It all comes from here, the stench and the peril. Now for it! Quick!’

Calling up his remaining strength and resolution, he dragged Sam to his feet, and forced his own limbs to move. Sam stumbled beside him. One step, two steps, three steps - at last six steps. Maybe they had passed the dreadful unseen opening, but whether that was so or not, suddenly it was easier to move, as if some hostile will for the moment had released them. They struggled on, still hand in hand…

— J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Not really. Suppose he invaded China. Do you think he’d get away with that?

Russia’s economy is roughly comparable in size to the Netherlands. Putin has destroyed so much of it. He’s caused enormous brain drain by driving young men with any means and intelligence out of the country. He’s devastated his own industrial base and now he’s on the brink of losing to Ukraine, a country far smaller than Russia.

He’s very, very, very far from owning the planet.

No one is untouchable. No one is invincible. No one has unlimited resources.

One day Putin will seem untouchable. The next day he gets pulled out of a ditch like Gaddafi.

I really feel for Ukraine. They never wanted to take this step. They know exactly what they’re getting into: antipersonnel mines can halt Russian advances but they represent a bleak future of maimed and killed Ukrainian civilians in those areas.

Thanks for this.

Greed is a dangerous word on Lemmy. It’s usually associated with billionaires, not people from Latin America trying to make a better life for themselves.

The problem is you’ve created a false binary between refugee and economic migrant. In reality there’s a huge spectrum of economic and political conditions which drive people to leave their home country and seek opportunities elsewhere, none of which has anything to do with greed. In so doing you’ve painted vast swathes of people as greedy, the same thing the Trump admin has been doing to justify using ICE to break up families.

Real refugees are a very narrow class of migrants. They’re narrowly defined by the UN because their acceptance is controversial in international politics. Almost all migrants are economic but almost none of those I would classify as greedy (people travelling from wealthy liberal countries to the US to pay lower taxes and make more money). Many economic migrants are people travelling from poor countries with corrupt/oppressive governments to seek a better life in the US, Canada, or Western Europe. These folks end up working as cleaning staff for businesses, delivery/Uber drivers, or working on farms picking produce. Hard jobs that no one would accept out of greedy motivations alone.

The remaining are international students (or recent graduates), usually from Asia, who are classified as economic migrants but I would consider political/social migrants. I know A LOT of these folks. I wouldn’t call any of them greedy. They’re here for a better opportunity, yes, but also to get away from their parents and the social/political problems back home.

That’s flat out wrong. You may be an immigrant but you have a warped picture of the landscape. Countless economic migrants are borderline refugees. They’re fleeing corrupt, crime-ridden, and low opportunity countries in the hopes of a better life. They aren’t qualified refugees because they aren’t fleeing imminent threats of violence but they’re definitely not doing so out of greed. They’re taking enormous personal risks with the dream of a better life. Many end up being economically exploited in their destination countries, hated, abused, and even arrested by ICE (in the case of many South and Central Americans moving to the US).

You’re also wrong about refugees being left wing. The most conservative people I’ve ever met belong to refugee communities from Somalia. They have extremely tight knit families and they support every new family who arrives from Somalia. They are extremely warm and loving people but they are devoutly conservative Muslims in their beliefs and practices.

Perhaps this map will help:

To get from Iran to Israel, the Iranian soldiers would have to cross Iraq (and Jordan) or Syria, both very unfriendly countries full of mountainous terrain. Not a viable ground invasion whatsoever!

Nothing Russia has done including (or since) the invasion in 2022 was smart. It was all stupid.

Russia’s wasted a million soldiers on grabbing a rather small amount of Ukrainian land. They’ve destroyed their own economy, their trade relationships with most of the world, and their demographic future. Take a million men off the streets of most countries and it’s going to crash your population within a generation or two.

Also known as kicking the can down the road.

If you don’t fail a kid in elementary school they’re gonna fail in high school. If you don’t fail them in high school they’re gonna fail in university or in life in general.

Life has consequences for making mistakes and not learning from them. If we try to shelter children from their mistakes and bad habits then we raise adults who are poorly equipped for handling the challenges of life.

When I was in first year of university I met so many nice, seemingly-well-adjusted people who hit a brick wall with their coursework. I believe around a third of my peers failed to graduate at all in their programs. Many dropped out or transferred to other departments or other universities.

But here’s the thing: my peers had already been subject to a rigorous selection process to get in (only about 10% of applicants were admitted). If you had put all applicants through the rigours of the coursework far more would have failed.

The really tragic part of this whole story is when you factor in the degrees of the consequences for failure. In elementary school the consequences for failure would be very low. Children who are older than their peers tend to outperform them anyway. In university, however, the consequences for failure are very high (thousands of dollars wasted on failed courses that need to be repeated).

The consequences for failure outside of school (real life as they call it) are even higher: unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, and even violence and death.

They did mention being a driving instructor. Driving (and teaching students to drive) all day every day is going to put a lot more wear on the tires than a typical driver.