Month: November 2023

Enlarge (credit: Google Drive)

Did Google Drive lose some people’s data? That’s the question swirling around the Internet right now as Google announces it’s investigating “sync issues” for Google Drive for desktop. On Monday The Register spotted a trending post on the Google Drive forums where a user claimed that months of Drive data suddenly disappeared, and their files went back to a state from May 2023. A few other users chimed in with the same issue, the worst of which says: “This is going to cause me major issues if I cannot get the files back. It’s all my work for the last 1-2 years. All my business work, all my personal files. Everything, just vanished. It must be 100’s of files suddenly gone.”

Google has a post up on the Google Drive help forums more or less acknowledging the issue. The post, titled “Drive for desktop (v84.0.0.0 – 84.0.4.0) Sync Issue,” says, “We’re investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users and will follow up with more updates.” Google adds an ominous list of things to not do in the meantime like:

• Do not click “Disconnect account” within Drive for desktop
• Do not delete or move the app data folder:
  • Windows: %USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalGoogleDriveFS
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS 
• Optional: If you have room on your hard drive, we recommend making a copy of the app data folder.

Those instructions sound like they are aimed at preserving whatever possible file cache would exist on your computer. The description of this being a “sync” issue doesn’t really make a ton of sense, since no matter what, the Drive web interface should show all your files and let you download them. If the problem is uploading, you should still have your local files.

Enlarge / Conscience do cost, as a certain fictional denizen of Baltimore’s East Side once said. (credit: Larian Studios)

One of the best things about playing Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is the way that it simulates the feeling of having an actual Dungeon Master overseeing your session. The second-person narration, the dice rolls, and even the willingness to say “Yes” to your quirkiest ideas all add to the impression that there’s some conscious intelligence on the other side.

But consciousness can sometimes be a curse, and a recent patch to BG3 introduce burdensome complexity into the game’s thinking. Essentially, the game was suffering from lag and slowdowns as players progressed because the game’s decision engine couldn’t stop assessing previous instances where a party member had gotten away with theft, murder, or other nefarious deeds.

The performance issues have affected some players ever since Patch 4, released on Nov. 2 with more than 1,000 changes. One of those changes was a seemingly small-scope, situational bit: “Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers will now only react to theft and vandalism if they see the crime being committed.” The floating orbs in that area were, apparently, ignoring players’ best attempts at sneaking, invisibility, or other cover-ups.

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes you can win in this year’s charity drive sweepstakes. (credit: Kyle Orland)

It’s once again that special time of year when we give you a chance to do well by doing good. That’s right—it’s time for the 2023 edition of our annual Charity Drive!

Every year since 2007, we’ve encouraged readers to give to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, which provides toys and games to kids being treated in hospitals around the world. In recent years, we’ve added the Electronic Frontier Foundation to our charity push, aiding in their efforts to defend Internet freedom. This year, as always, we’re providing some extra incentive for those donations by offering donors a chance to win pieces of our big pile of vendor-provided swag. We can’t keep it, and we don’t want it clogging up our offices, so it’s now yours to win.

This year’s swag pile is full of high-value geek goodies. We have 40 prizes valued at over $2,500 total, including gaming hardware and accessories, collectibles, books, apparel, and more. In 2022, Ars readers raised over $31,500 for charity, contributing to a total haul of more than $465,000 since 2007. We want to raise even more this year, and we can do it if readers dig deep.

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  2023’s ugly Microsoft sweater is based on the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper. [credit:
  Microsoft ]

Windows XP was an actively supported Microsoft product for 13 years, including five years where it was the newest version available and another three years where it was vastly more popular than its successor. That longevity—plus Microsoft’s total domination of personal computing in the pre-iPhone, pre-Android world—helped make its default wallpaper one of the most recognizable images on the planet.

Microsoft is returning to the Bliss hill once again with this year’s entry in its now-traditional ugly retro-computing sweater series. Blue hemming at the bottom and on the sleeves evokes Windows XP’s bright-blue taskbar, and in case people don’t immediately recognize Bliss as “a computer thing,” there’s also a giant mouse pointer hovering over it.

The sweater is available from size small up to a 3XL, and costs $70 regardless of which version you buy. All sizes are currently expected to arrive sometime between December 2 and 6.