cerebralhawks

I've been hearing about an Xbox 360 softmod that runs off a flash drive. I have an Xbox 360, and I have an iPhone, and an Android phone, and I have Macs, so it should be enough to put the softmod on a flash drive and stick it in the 360, right? Well, the instructions I'm finding (on various YouTube videos about it) all say I have to run a .EXE file (in Windows). The only access I have to Windows is at work, and we can't bring flash drives in, or run executable files there (that aren't approved). All this sounds real sketchy anyway. So, is there any truth to this softmod or are various YouTubers (none of them well known, trustworthy sources) just trying to get people to install ransomware on Windows machines?

Is there an actual package that can simply be extracted to the flash drive?

Just wondering if anyone here knows anything about it.

Edit: For what it's worth, my interest isn't even piracy, per se. The disc drive on the 360 took a shit on me, so I figure I can load the games we have on the flash drive. We're actually only concerned about one, Rockband 3, because we have a shit ton of custom songs for it. We could play via the disc if the disc drive worked. So I'm thinking we find the disc image online, if the one already on the flash drive isn't good enough (it was "ripped" or whatever using the Xbox itself, you know where it lets you copy a disc to the internal drive or a flash drive, and play it off that, but it checks the disc first. Furthermore, there's a mod for Rockband 3 called Rockband Deluxe that adds some nice QoL features. So basically we're thinking of making it a dedicated Rockband player.

Any other Xbox games I'd just play on my fully working Series X. Rockband 3, however, is not backwards compatible, and Rockband 4, which was released for the XB1, doesn't support custom songs. So the hundreds we've bought are in there and playable on the XSX. We really just want the 360 for customs. Though, I suppose it would be cool to find a download with all the DLC ever released, and just sort out the stuff we don't want.

If you’re unfamiliar with Chekhov’s Gun, Anton Chekhov was a playwright who said if you show a gun in the first act, it needs to be fired by the third act. It’s a common trope and it isn’t limited to guns.

For example, in Madea’s Family Reunion, Madea tells her daughter, if he beats you again, you serve him some grits, as in, while the cornmeal breakfast is boiling on the stove, you throw it on his face. Guess what happens in the final act?

I think my favourite in recent memory was in Deadpool & Wolverine, where Deadpool talks down about the Odyssey, the Honda minivan. We don’t even see the “gun”, but he follows it up much later with the famous line, “the Honda Odyssey fucks!” (It doesn’t actually, but there’s a fight in one.) I like that. I hope if I write a Chekhov’s gun, nobody sees it until it fires.

Google Maps or Apple Maps, they work the same way. With your permission, they detect your location and speed and collect all the information and can tell people relatively accurate traffic conditions.

So why does Weather go online to ask the temperature when you’re outside and it could just measure the actual temperature, collate all the data, and tell people the temperature it actually is?

Aside from the fact that most phones can’t tell the temperature around them. I mean if they could.

I’m starting to believe the authorities are lying to us about the heat. My car can tell me the temperature, and it’s usually like 5°F hotter than my phone says.

Crossposted from https://piefed.social/c/movies/p/2136618/steven-spielbergs-advice-for-obsession-and-backrooms-directors-dont-let-success-go-to-y

My wife and I watched Masters of the Universe at the theatre yesterday.

She'd never seen a single episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, nor the recent reboot despite Kevin Smith's involvement (she's a big fan of his) and nor has she seen the 1987 film.

I've never watched a whole episode willingly — my brother was a big He-Man fan, and I was into ThunderCats — but I have seen the movie.

Still, I knew we had to go out and see it and support it with the hopes that one day, they'd make a ThunderCats movie. The license for that one is tricky, which is probably why it hasn't been done yet. I dare say, ThunderCats is better than Masters of the Universe in every way, including marketability. Masters of the Universe started as a toy line for Mattel to quickly capitalise upon Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian. The story was always flaky as hell. You'd be forgiven if you thought Grayskull was Skeletor's castle. He has a skull for a face, and Grayskull has a skull out in front, and its "Jawbridge" is basically the thing opening its "mouth" (this was not shown in the film; nor was the Bottomless Pit which serves as the chasm — they looked down and it was not bottomless). No, Snake Mountain is Skeletor's lair — I basically gave myself a crash course in Masters of the Universe lore. It's pretty light. You have heroes and you have villains, and they basically support Skeletor or they support Prince Adam, aka He-Man. There's not that much more to it. ThunderCats went a little deeper with its lore, but, let's be real — not by much.

I gave the movie a solid 8/10. I was expecting campiness, corniness, and I was expecting it to be a bit shit. Two out of three ain't bad. It was absolutely campy and corny, but it was not shit in the least. It had feeling where you'd expect, and some where you didn't.

I hope if they make a ThunderCats movie, Snarf doesn't show up until right before the credits. I like Orko a bit more than I like Snarf, but I don't think you can separate Snarf from Lion-O as easily as you can separate Orko from He-Man. (Orko, the flying mage with the big O on his red shirt and no face but glowing eyes, was created for the cartoon, but became a fan favourite because he resonated with children. He served as the moral compass, a role similar to Snarf's.)

What I did not expect was...

...though I knew the post-credits scene was going to be there, as well as the pre-credits scene with Orko. The spoiler concerns the mid-credits scene. All I'm gonna say is, fans are gonna love that scene. Click if you want, it doesn't give anything from the main movie away, but you should see it not knowing what it's about. Just know you gotta watch the whole credits to get the last scene.

I've heard about these books for about 6 months to a year, but I thought they'd be silly (they are and I'm here for it) and not for me (flat out wrong). But the hype built up and I was real curious, so I picked up the first book as an audiobook. I have less time to read text than I do to listen (commute), so I went with the audiobook. Plus, I've heard nothing but good things about Jeff Hays' narration.

From the first chapter I'm pretty much committed to finishing the series. They got me. I love a good narrator. I've listened to Wil Wheaton (e.g. Ready Player One and Two), LeVar Burton (Aftermath, which is his book — he was the host of Reading Rainbow and he was Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation and its four films), Stephen King (The Wind Through the Keyhole was one of his he narrated; there were others), Cherami Leigh (Cyberpunk 2077: No_Coincidence; she also voices the player character in the video game; and the Sword Art Online audiobooks, in which case she voices the female lead), and others... If Jeff Hays isn't the best of the lot, he's definitely top five. I'm looking forward to the rest of the first book and the next seven (though, at the rate Dinniman writes, he may have book 9 out by the time I get there — anyone know how long he's planning on running the series?).

Anyway, if I can tell you where I'm at without spoilers, they just survived the encounter after their second neighbourhood boss (the one they didn't fight directly and Donut revealed something about the boss room after Carl did what he did). Oh, the app says I am 38% of the way in.

But the best part? I've been dangling awesome audiobooks in front of my wife for years now. Over a decade, really. She won't do it. I figure if we both listen, the value of the book doubles since it's being enjoyed by two people. But she's not into reading so much... Used to be. Not so much these days. But I played a few samples and read some excerpts of mob descriptions (we started with Bad Llama, and went into some I haven't encountered yet in my reading) and now she wants in as well. So when I'm done with the first one, she'll pick it up while I listen to the second one.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/69737327

My wife and I are straight allies, and we’re doing three vendor markets next month that are Pride themed. I think I’ve put together a good Pride playlist, but I’m looking for suggestions! They have to be family friendly (no explicit tags, no profanity, no crude language, etc.). So nothing from Hazbin Hotel or Alien Stage!

The image is the playlist cover. I took the Wikipedia Pride flag and added text. Pretty easy.

I can’t share the playlist because Apple Music will attach my real name to it. They used to just use a nickname I entered, but now they insist on using my full government! So that’s a no can do.

I’ve got Queen. I’ve got Elton John. Got some Harry Styles. I got a lot of songs that aren’t necessarily associated with the LGBTQ+ movement but feature themes of love against odds and love winning, people who don’t fit in but stay strong, etc.

All suggestions are welcome and appreciated, even if it’s already on the list.

And if anyone knows how to share an Apple Music playlist anonymously (could do screenshots) let me know!

I didn't like the second one (Galaxy) as much as the first, but I never played the Galaxy game. I think I was still able to judge it on its own merits (for example, the twist at the end was not in the game) and I did enjoy it, just not as much as the first.

I'd really like to see them do an Animal Crossing movie. I am aware that they did do one, but it was really bad and it never got released outside of Japan or translated to English. It can be found online with fan subs and/or a fan dub (my copy has both). But for a game where you basically just do whatever, there's not much you can do, and the earlier film reflects that, going completely off the rails in the second half. But Animal Crossing actually has a dark secret that fans love to share, but casual players may never pick up on:

I've had this wild take on the NFL for years. They're called the National Football League, and never mind that what they call football, the rest of the world doesn't recognise and what they call football, the Americans call soccer (association football; the slang soccer was actually not coined in America, but whatever).

So the way it is now, an American football team, like the Seattle Seahawks, which won the Super Bowl this year, back in February, are based out of the US state of Washington, and that's fine, but most of their players were not born, raised, or trained in the state of Washington. They come from all over. But they are not Washingtonians, nor are they required to be.

So here's how I'd change American Football.

1. Each state gets one team, and one team only. It can be based in the capital, the largest city, or a place that is justified as being culturally significant to the state.

2. Every player on the team, plus the coaches, managers, and whatnot, must have been born, raised, and trained in that state. I'm not 100% sure it matters they were born there, but they should have done most of their schooling there and been trained there. Anywhere in the state is good, not just the city where the team is based out of. If you moved states in high school you don't get to play professionally. Sorry, them's the breaks.

3. The team should be a point of pride for the state. In many cases that's how it currently works, but I'd like to see more people supporting the local team because everyone in your state's team came from your state. This does make more sense in the smaller northeastern states than the larger southwestern ones, but I think it still fits. I think Texas could still all get behind one team, because Texas kind of has that identity that, even though you have Texans in one part who are very different from Texans in another part, they're still all proud Texans, so I think they'd all rally behind the same team, if they had one.

4. Likewise to the first point, the team should be called something relevant to the state. The 49ers, in California, work because the gold rush was an important part of that state's history. State bird, state animal, things like that would be valid choices, and of course anything culturally relevant, but especially so if no other state can easily claim it. For example, cowboys aren't unique to Texas, though Texas might have the best claim. Oilers is another team from Texas and is also good. But what TF is a Seahawk? Also, Rams, Lions, Bears, and Dolphins (oh, and Patriots) are everywhere. So those would be out. Now if Florida wants to call their team the Gators, that would fit for two reasons: one, the gators that live there, and two, Gatorade which, IIRC, was first made or sold there. (Though I'd be opposed to corporate names on principle.)

...Now, I know football fans would be able to tear this idea apart. It's not meant to survive them. It's more of a "what-if." But I'm more interested on the cultural impact of each state having one team to support (and states without a team now having a team of their own, and no sharing like the Carolinas do, though the Panthers technically play in North Carolina, in Charlotte, clearly over the state line... but they are right on the state line).

It seems like Firefox crashes all the time on macOS. When you exist (⌘+Q) it says it crashed and wants to send a report back to Mozilla. I just realised I've been doing that for the 3 years I've been a Mac user, and Mozilla still can't be arsed to fix the problem. I'm beginning to think their code is not well ported to ARM64 and they don't care enough to fix it.

So now I'm wondering if one of the Firefox clones, which would be built from source, might be better ported to macOS.

Yes, I could use Safari, and I don't hate it, but I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, so like 20-25 years? Safari is completely different. My biggest gripe is that it doesn't support free ad blockers, but I did pay for Wipr2 so that should alleviate the issue. There are ad blocking options on Safari, but I don't think they're quite as good as uBlock Origin on Firefox.

Maybe you're fortunate enough that your mother is still alive and in your life. Maybe you have a sister or a cousin or a niece who is a mother you love. Or maybe you're married to a mother, or maybe you're a mother yourself. Either way, there aren't a lot of great movies out there about moms. But one of the best movies I've seen is also the best tribute to hard working single moms out there, and I don't mean that with any snark or sarcasm.

Wolf Children ([English trailer)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SlB-SpDMKI); also available in Japanese with English subtitles) (known locally as Ōkami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki, lit. “Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki”) is a story about a single mother trying to raise two special-needs children (in this faerie tale, their special needs are that they’re literally werewolves, but it could be a stand-in for any atypical children). The city life doesn’t work for them, so they find a deal on a cheap house out in the country where they expect to be left alone. But, living off the land is harder than they thought, and they have to rely on a small town community to get by, but their mother has never been afraid of hard work.

While living in the country, she gives her kids (cubs?) the opportunity to grow as humans, or as wolves, or as a combination of both, but they also must face the consequences of their choice, since the family is known to not have pets, and wolves are endangered (and thus, rare, and considered pests) in Japan.

While the film is set in Japan, it’s been nearly fully translated to English. You can watch the full movie in English, with the exception of the song that plays at the end (and at times throughout). The song is only subtitled at the end, but you might not notice it’s saying anything as the lyrics seem to be hummed. Watch it through the credits, not because there’s a post-credits scene (there isn’t), but because the song will be subtitled… and you’re probably going to need a moment after the ending, anyway. Also, while the film takes place in both Tokyo and the rural countryside, there’s nothing you wouldn’t understand, not being from there. It’s all relatively straightforward. Even the names are explained. Hana (pronounced “hah-nuh”) means flower, and she is constantly shown in a field of flowers or with flowers. Yuki (pronounced “you-key”) means snow (the name of the girl) and ame (pronounced “ah-may”) means rain (the name of the boy), as it was snowing when she was born, and raining when he was. Rain and snow also feature later in the film as well, and this is deliberate. It’s a faerie tale, after all.

A lot of people like the snow chase scene (shown in the trailer), but my two favorite scenes are the classroom slide (as in, the camera will slide back and forth between the siblings’ classrooms) and the curtain scene. You will absolutely know what the curtain scene is when it happens.

Anyway, the point of posting this on Mothers Day is, while a lot of attention will be focused on the adorable werewolf cubs/wolf children, the mother really is the main character. The point of the movie never deviates from showing how hard mothers work and how much they sacrifice for their children, and that point isn’t any less clear by the time the credits roll. Is it a sad film? At times, yes, but mostly it’s an inspirational film. Wolf Children is also filmmaker Hosoda’s best work. His films Belle (based on Beauty and the Beast) is absolutely worth watching in 4K on a big screen. Summer Wars is also pretty, but a bit shallow. The Boy and the Beast, and Mirai (Japanese for “future”) both fell flat, IMO. That leaves The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which is a solid time travel/time manipulation story that is worth watching, and his second best film.

You could do a lot worse for Mothers Day, but you’d be hard pressed to do better, at least as far as films go.

Robin Hood. Steal from the rich to give to the poor. Maid Marian. The Sheriff of Nottingham, and/or Prince John as villains. Friar Tuck and Little John as allies. It's an old story with at least a dozen adaptations. But which one is your favourite? Do you think one of them stands head and shoulders as the best? And was it your first adventure through Sherwood Forest?

My first Robin Hood was probably the Disney one, but I never thought of it as the same story as the Kevin Reynolds film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I knew they were both Robin Hood, but they were vastly different stories. Different villains. And different target audiences. Disney didn't have an evil witch, an evil Sheriff, and Kevin Costner's bare ass. Or flaming arrows. Or Morgan Freeman or Alan Rickman. It did have cute animals, though.

So, for me, Prince of Thieves was like, the definitive Robin Hood, and one of my favourite movies of all time. Still ranks pretty high up there, actually. Even after learning Kevin Costner couldn't pull off an English accent, so Kevin Reynolds said "fuck it, just speak American." I don't care. I don't think most people did, except the British. Why does Robin Hood speak like a modern American? Gee, I don't know, Karen, why do Americans and Europeans speak Japanese in anime? Because it was made there. Same thing. So it's fine. It's an American Robin Hood tale. Plenty of productions have insisted upon using only British talent, such as Harry Potter. And Doctor Who, up until they opened it up with the Eleventh Doctor and had the American season.

A lot of people say it's Men in Tights, which was made to make fun of Prince of Thieves, much in the same way Weird Al Yankovic parodies pop songs and Spaceballs was made to parody Star Wars. That being said, it's a legitimate Robin Hood movie and is decent in its own right. Look past the jokes and the Prince of Thieves stuff, and you have a decent movie, if not a good one.

Then there's The Adventures of Robin Hood... from 1938. This one might be the best one, but I like Prince of Thieves's modern take, especially with the Directors Cut which explores the origin of the Sheriff and his real motives, which were only briefly hinted at. These days, I think that's the version that people are getting, but back in the day, you just had the regular one on VHS and DVD.

However, any Robin Hood after Men in Tights basically sucks. I will watch them all, but none have impressed me at all. I especially hated the 2010 version with Russel Crowe.

I wish Japan would take a crack at it. We do have the animated one from Disney, but I mean anime. The other really old story that has been adapted a dozen times (and also by Kevin Reynolds), The Count of Monte Cristo, has an anime. It takes place in the future, and the art style is kind of jarring, but it's a Count of Monte Cristo adaptation and it's actually quite good. (They also made a soap opera version called Revenge on ABC in the United States — not the Japanese, I mean an adaptation in general — and that was good, too. Outside my favourites, I think Monte Cristo fares better than Robin Hood — even the weird ones, like Revenge and the anime. But I feel like it would be way easier to cock up Monte Cristo than Robin Hood.

Anyone else got an opinion on Robin Hood movies?