ClassyHatter

Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Just finished the story mode. It’s Steam Deck Verified, so it runs and plays well, and it’s easy to play with a controller because it has a bit of auto-aim/aim correction.

I did enjoy it. Not a must play by any means, but it does add to the lore of the Alan Wake series. If you are a fan of that game series, I recommend playing this. And if you aren’t, you probably should play the other games in the series. 😉

This is a Bluetooth issue, not Linux or Deck specific. When microphone is enabled on a headset, Bluetooth will switch to a different audio codec. That codec supports one output channel (microphone) and one input channel, so it will be mono audio. The sound quality is good enough for audio calls but not for anything else. The only thing you can do is to disable the microphone. Or, you can do what people have done for couple decades now: complain at Bluetooth Special Interest Group until they improve the standard.

Peerless Assassin isn’t much more expensive. I have it on my Ryzen 5700x, and it’s never audible. At idle my PC is pretty much silent and while playing games GPU and case fans hides any noise the PA makes.

This is a good point. Black PSU and motherboard might stand out too much in that light, white-ish case.

I agree with this. Could easily save $200 buying some older and lower spec components. CPU choice is probably because of the iGPU, but there are other cheaper CPUs with iGPU. I don't think the use case is going to require more computing power in the future, so I don't know if future proofing is really necessary. If the use case changes some few years from now, you need to buy new components regardless of your choices today. Save some money now and put it towards a future upgrade.

16GB DDR4 is enough. That's about $40 off. SSD is pointlessly big for the use case. 250GB might be enough, but even 512GB would be a bit cheaper.

CPU could be downgraded to something a couple generations older. Motherboard can also be downgraded, unless that one has some important features. That saves at least $150 total.

PSU is a complicated question. Cheaper would be enough, but you might lose money over time in your electricity bill. That's kind of difficult to calculate.

Depending on your needs, virtual machine might be the easiest solution.

There's a bug with the side buttons. After you long press a side button, the next short press won't do anything. Kind of annoying.

Their "brand-new UI" isn't much of a change. At least, I haven't noticed any significant improvements. Toggle buttons are now rectangle, instead of the rounded pill shape, and some icons are different. I think they changed the system font, but I changed it back.

Dark Mode in Neo Reader is an improvement, except that I don't use that app. Quickly tested it, and it doesn't seem to invert images, so you won't see them in dark mode. Systemwide dark mode would have been a significant UI improvement. Hopefully they'll come up with one some day.

The best improvement I have noticed is the new anti-flicker feature. When using "speed" refresh mode (I think it's called "balanced" on other devices), the display flickered annoyingly if there was any animation.

Loose-leaf tea steeped in a gaiwan, which ever tea leaves I happen to have.

I am so oversensitive to caffeine, that I tend to lose my sleep if I drink even a cup of coffee a day. So, if I drink coffee, I prefer decaf. There are some good decaf coffees nowadays.

Fun fact: Black tea is called red tea in China, because of the color.

L-theanine might help with caffeine's side effects. Theanine is a compound found in tea. It's believed to reduce the negative side effects of caffeine, without affecting the positive effects of it.

Absolutely bonkers, they were testing that thing so close to population. There are residential areas within about 1km/mile from the test site. In one of the videos, it sounds like the blast wave destroyed some window. So, even if that thing would have only exploded during the test, it would have caused harm in those areas. Luckily, it landed on an empty area.

Finland indeed is UTC+3 (EEST, East European Summer Time), so your times seem correct.