0x29A's recent activity
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
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Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk
0x29A (edited )Link ParentYeah and I don't intend my statement about the question to be a criticism of you asking it that way- and to be fair, the fact that people are answering it many different ways might give us more...Yeah and I don't intend my statement about the question to be a criticism of you asking it that way- and to be fair, the fact that people are answering it many different ways might give us more insight than if you had asked something narrower.
But yes, I feel like no matter which way I interpret special the word just carries a different baggage with it in each case, that just doesn't ever really get at what it's trying to describe. I think I get, in some interpretations, what it's trying to go for but it just never feels like the right way to describe it
But ultimately yeah, hold onto and be grateful for what you can, and even if you feel rather unfortunate, find the joys available, don't compare yourself to others, realize that a thousand different factors combined to bring you to whatever place in life you currently are- and just work with that the best you can. It's like- the ability to celebrate one's individuality reasonably without taking all the credit or all the blame for it, and without letting it go to the head, or sacrificing community and connections with others and realizations of what we have in common. Nothing wrong with being confident or appreciating ones own talents and skills and so on. Delicate balance and it's difficult for me to articulate well.
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Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk
0x29A LinkSpecial? Overall I don't like the entire idea around framing talking about oneself or others this way. I get that it's used in positive and negative ways both but I think it's a clunky and...Special? Overall I don't like the entire idea around framing talking about oneself or others this way. I get that it's used in positive and negative ways both but I think it's a clunky and nebulous term that lends itself to ego or bumper stickers or other trite nonsense ways of talking about humanity.
Everyone will perceive this word in different ways too- ask each person what they mean by "special" and you'll get 1000 different answers and those answers will in part be informed by the actual reality of the uniqueness of every human's experience. So let's cut beneath the layer of terms like "special" and get down to the reality. Because asking the question without being explicit about the definition makes the question itself rather meaningless.
We need to use better terms, we need to talk about humanity, and each other, in down-to-earth ways, etc. We need to cut the trite bullshit, and I think the use of "special" to describe oneself or others almost always falls in this category.
We all have our uniqueness, we all have our ways in which we're similar to one another. We all have our own life experiences, upbringings, influences, and thousands of factors that have shaped us. I am fortunate to have had, even with all of it's flaws, good material conditions, upbringing, life experiences, and plenty of circumstances completely out of my control that shaped me into who I am today. There are plenty of unfortunate parts to that same story too, but many people have had far more struggles than I have had.
None of this necessitates throwing around the word special like a trite motivational poster or an ego-fueled feeling of superiority. If you have a great talent or are extremely knowledgeable about certain things or you fit "traditional" ideas of what's considered high intelligence or whatever- fine, that makes you unique in your particular way, and maybe that trait is rare- or whatever. Be grateful for whatever benefits life has bestowed upon you- but realize at the end of the day you are simply another human being- no matter how rare and good you feel about your position in life- use it to bring others up instead of feeling superior
That superiority will turn you into an isolating and destructive person and we have enough of those ruining the world at the moment and they are an anathema to what we really need
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Comment on The next chapter for Bungie in ~games
0x29A Link ParentYeah, I tried it once and disliked it so much I never played again. Hated the bullet-sponge idea in an FPS and that proved it to me. It was so tedious and boring Guess it makes sense because I...Yeah, I tried it once and disliked it so much I never played again. Hated the bullet-sponge idea in an FPS and that proved it to me. It was so tedious and boring
Guess it makes sense because I abhor MMOs in general too
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
0x29A Link ParentI have CachyOS on a test machine and have yet to run into this, but I may just not be hitting the same exact particulars that are causing it to happen. Very curious what might be going on there....I have CachyOS on a test machine and have yet to run into this, but I may just not be hitting the same exact particulars that are causing it to happen. Very curious what might be going on there. The vast array of differences between every machine probably makes this hard to nail down. There might be ways to really dig into what's happening but they would be frustrating and i get that this is something that simply should just work
While this is simply a workaround and not a "fix" for Firefox- rather than jumping to Chromium-based options maybe it would be worth giving a Firefox fork a try? I use Waterfox on most of my machines these days. At least this might keep you in Firefox-based territory if that's what you want. Curious if it avoids the crashes. I have used both on CachyOS so far quite a bit with no crashes but I am sure our situations and hardware are very different so i don't mean this reply as a "works on my machine" dismissal of your experience
The only FF crashing I have had problems with is back when I used snap versions on Ubuntu-based systems but that shouldn't be relevant to Cachy anyway
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
0x29A Link Parent+1, as long as you play the Windows version via Proton it should work fine. The native Linux one is abandoned. I play it via Steam and not Epic but I would think it works fine through Heroic too....+1, as long as you play the Windows version via Proton it should work fine. The native Linux one is abandoned. I play it via Steam and not Epic but I would think it works fine through Heroic too.
I am on Kubuntu and i play RL online every week. No problems with anti-cheat.
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Comment on Share your favorite live music performance recordings in ~music
0x29A LinkAURORA - Live in Nidarosdomen AURORA - Live From Honda Stage A Perfect Circle - Live at Red Rocks Alice in Chains - MTV Unplugged Opeth - Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheater 2017...AURORA - Live in Nidarosdomen
AURORA - Live From Honda Stage
A Perfect Circle - Live at Red Rocks
Alice in Chains - MTV Unplugged
Opeth - Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheater 2017
Obsequiae - Live at Fire in the Mountains 2022
Vader - Rise of the Empire Asia Tour at Hidden Agenda
Zao - Live From The Church
Dimmu Borgir (with orchestra) - Forces of the Northern Night -
Comment on Does the dryer shrink your clothes? in ~life
0x29A LinkI always wash cold (may not be relevant) and have always dried on the lowest temp for this reason. I have long heard and read that higher temps tend to be a cause of this. I don't know if proven...I always wash cold (may not be relevant) and have always dried on the lowest temp for this reason. I have long heard and read that higher temps tend to be a cause of this. I don't know if proven or one of those myths handed down over time that is assumed true
As others have said there could definitely be other contributing factors possibly- but anecdotally i believe any time i have experienced shrinking clothing in the past it was always due to drying it too warm
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Comment on Do you iron your clothes? in ~life
0x29A (edited )LinkNever have, never will. I do not own any formal clothes. I do not own an iron. I don't wear suits, I don't wear dress clothes. I actually sort of have a disdain for all of it. I try to navigate...Never have, never will. I do not own any formal clothes. I do not own an iron. I don't wear suits, I don't wear dress clothes. I actually sort of have a disdain for all of it. I try to navigate life in such a way that I am never put in a position that requires it
The dryer does enough of the work for me for the clothes I do wear and I do have a steamer that I typically use for other things, if I absolutely needed it for some reason. I don't dress up for weddings or funerals aside from casual button up (down?) shirt and jeans (which is as non-casual as i get)- though i also do not have the kind of life where i am going to these types of events almost ever
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Comment on Best options for domain registrar and static site hosting in 2026? in ~comp
0x29A Link ParentInteresting, I'm going to look into Bunny.net. Seems I could easily host all my static site stuff there and because it uses so little storage and bandwidth I could probably host all my static...Interesting, I'm going to look into Bunny.net. Seems I could easily host all my static site stuff there and because it uses so little storage and bandwidth I could probably host all my static sites for the $1/month. Also seems pricing for adding on other options and such is relatively inexpensive.
I'm on the Netlify free tier currently but have been eyeing moving to something else. Inexpensive but far more flexible is nice. Appears on Bunny it's possible to set up edge rules that can catch/block scrapers and such too. I do want to avoid having tons of unnecessary extra AI scraper traffic if possible. Thankfully I have very little for them to scrape, but if I do eventually want to have pages with lots of images/etc I want to avoid wasteful scraper bandwidth hogging
Might also consider Mythic Beasts or Neocities or something else. I'm just not sure yet. I just want to keep hosting some very small size static sites for as close to $0 as possible while having some flexibility
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Comment on Best options for domain registrar and static site hosting in 2026? in ~comp
0x29A LinkAnother +1 here for Porkbun for domains. Moved from Hover to Porkbun to save money a long time ago and never looked back. Very inexpensive. UI is great for DNS and making adjustments. All very...Another +1 here for Porkbun for domains. Moved from Hover to Porkbun to save money a long time ago and never looked back. Very inexpensive. UI is great for DNS and making adjustments. All very simple and easy. Porkbun emails way ahead of time when domains are going to renew. Often has sales on the first year for new domains. Fast/efficient site and everything. No BS, no dark patterns, no marketing layers to dig through to just order what you want.
Currently statically host everything on the free tier of Netlify. Might change that at some point, but for my purposes it's fine for now
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
0x29A LinkHarsh-vox metal Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb - grindcore Ammonite - Devonian Dreams - black metal / dungeon synth unkindness - paraworld blue - raw atmospheric black metal Worm Altar (single from...Harsh-vox metal
Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb - grindcore
Ammonite - Devonian Dreams - black metal / dungeon synth
unkindness - paraworld blue - raw atmospheric black metal
Worm Altar (single from Pillars of Eternal Dusk) - death / doom
Sulphuric Deity - Extermination Hammer - black / death / war metal
Lobotomite - Physical Strains - sick bass-only grindcoreClean-sung metal
Cirith Ungol - All the Shadows - traditional heavy metal / epic doom
Torpor - Dungeon Descent - traditional clean-sung heavy metal with black metal riffs (if you want the reverse of this- black metal vocals on heavy metal riffs - try Malokarpatan)Non-metal
The War on Drugs' new single - rock / americana
Kontravoid - Sound of the Void - goth / industrial / ebm
Modest Mouse - An Eraser And A Maze - indie rock / alternative
Actors - Our Love Will Live Forever - post-punk / darkwave
Soft Vein - All We've Known of Heaven - darkwave / synthpop
Death Cassette (single, Cheaper to Die) - grunge punk -
Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
0x29A LinkReorganizing my web domains and sites and trying to decide exactly what to keep/toss/reorg both to save money on domains and to just rethink through what I want on my sites. Messing around with...Reorganizing my web domains and sites and trying to decide exactly what to keep/toss/reorg both to save money on domains and to just rethink through what I want on my sites.
Messing around with unfamiliar mediums (pixel art).
More work on my music projects and related visuals. I love messing with the Glitch Studio app on iOS to toss in some images and then output gifs/videos/images of all sorts of wild multi-layered glitch and deterministic "generative" (but not in the AI sense) visuals/edits. I often end up with some really neat new artworks out of the process (here's an example)
Made a glitchy 30 second animated loop of artwork with my death/black industrial/noise music in the background so i could post a snippet on social media. Used that same app for that.
Took self portraits of me yelling into a microphone while playing my bass, in my home studio where band merch covers the walls, then used the glitch app to make some dithered and fun versions of those images.
Been a good few days.
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Comment on Angine de Poitrine review – mind-boggling math rock mastery from freaky Québécois duo in ~music
0x29A Link ParentYeah i remember a friend sharing it before it went viral. It was enjoyable as another take (and a very accessible one) on something microtonal and with some great pedal work by the guitarist to...Yeah i remember a friend sharing it before it went viral. It was enjoyable as another take (and a very accessible one) on something microtonal and with some great pedal work by the guitarist to make it all happen in the performance
It does feel weird enjoying something like that and then somehow seeing the entire world knowing about it weeks later lol
That one YT performance then went everywhere. I think the "novelty" (not meant derogatorily) of the weirdness of the visuals and microtonal being less broadly known about and just all the right place and timing and everything made them go massive.
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Comment on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2) | Zelda 40th anniversary Direct trailer in ~games
0x29A Link ParentOh yeah, don't even get me started on Nintendo hardware. I'm with ya there. To me, Nintendo hardware, which I would not touch with a 10-foot-pole in 2026 (though tbf same goes for all consoles) is...Oh yeah, don't even get me started on Nintendo hardware. I'm with ya there. To me, Nintendo hardware, which I would not touch with a 10-foot-pole in 2026 (though tbf same goes for all consoles) is a prison their IPs are trapped in. I continuously wish that Nintendo had become a software/game-only company the way Sega did, or at a minimum, didn't keep their IPs permanently trapped and exclusively tied to their hardware
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Comment on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2) | Zelda 40th anniversary Direct trailer in ~games
0x29A (edited )Link ParentI find it interesting, myself as an AI and DLSS5 hater, and someone that isn't even a Nintendo fan anymore (and very critical of them these days), and someone that has a hell of a soft spot for...I find it interesting, myself as an AI and DLSS5 hater, and someone that isn't even a Nintendo fan anymore (and very critical of them these days), and someone that has a hell of a soft spot for the original OoT, I thought the remake actually looked great for the most part and even retained some of the feel. Just hit us very differently I suppose
I don't feel like it got bland or averaged out in the way the art is handled in this remake. It all looks pretty great to me.
Well, except young Link... who looks a bit wonky to me for some reason and just a bit "off"
Maybe the nostalgia is so strong that it's significantly affecting my perception of how the remake looks. I'm surprised there's a lot of people critical of it. That said, I'm not really "up to date" with a lot of modern gaming titles, and definitely far outside of any console ecosystems and such, so maybe I just have expectations set differently than a lot of others on this one. My expectations when it comes to Nintendo are fairly low so this to me I thought was a pleasant surprise
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Comment on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2) | Zelda 40th anniversary Direct trailer in ~games
0x29A (edited )LinkI do think it looks respectfully and beautifully done. I grew up on the early LoZ games. N64 OoT was a huge hit for me (though almost zero interest in any post-N64 Nintendo IP releases). Never...I do think it looks respectfully and beautifully done. I grew up on the early LoZ games. N64 OoT was a huge hit for me (though almost zero interest in any post-N64 Nintendo IP releases). Never owned a GC but Smash or something else was fun at a friend's house or whatever.
The remakes are the main thing on Nintendo's platform I'd still be interested in (no interest in modern Mario/Donkey Kong/whatever else) - just Link's Awakening and OoT. Maybe Animal Crossing as a singular non-remake title
Nintendo just kinda lost me after the N64 era. I dipped a toe in during the Wii days and regretted it and just as an ecosystem/company as a whole they really just lost me (but all console companies did, really). I'm long past the point of owning consoles anymore, so any good IPs trapped in Nintendo's ecosystem will be unreachable territory for me (that is until the time when it is able to be emulated)
That said, with it being the 40th anniversary of LoZ, it's nice to see it mostly being given a good treatment with some respectful nods to the past to try and retain some of the feel of the original.
I do think they still got a bit gimmicky/novelty with it (which is Nintendo's M.O., I know...), and of course there will be all sorts of (probably overpriced) nostalgia-bait products to go along with it. Things where I think "oh that's neat" but are just something to sit on my shelf collecting dust that cost me too much because I liked it as a kid. But hey if that brings you joy, that's fine! I have plenty of skulls and trinkets, and cassette tapes and vinyl collecting dust similarly that bring me joy. (I just realize how easily I'm initially woo'd and swayed by nostalgia and somewhat have come to resent how easy a company can get its hooks in me that way...)
I might just be old man yelling at Nintendo-shaped-cloud at this point.
The one place they may still be able to get me is the LoZ concerts/orchestra, though.
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Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech
0x29A (edited )Link ParentYep, this is similar to what I do. Very much depends on peoples' use cases and if they MUST have a "screen of apps" and a remote-navigable interface. I prefer a full desktop PC experience with a...Yep, this is similar to what I do. Very much depends on peoples' use cases and if they MUST have a "screen of apps" and a remote-navigable interface. I prefer a full desktop PC experience with a mouse/keyboard.
I have an inexpensive 58 inch Insignia "smart" TV that has FireTV built in- but it stays disconnected from any networks and has not attempted to connect to any access points without my explicit permission. It is set to startup on the same HDMI input every time and never go to the smart interface unless I explicitly request it via the remote to change settings.
For me, after having tried a Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV and ditching them all for various reasons (each of them just being too annoying, restrictive, poorly-designed, or otherwise, for the amount of control I need/want to exert over my experience), I landed on my "set top box" being a mini PC with linux. Apps would have wildly different audio levels or be extremely buggy compared to their web counterparts, and so on.
I use a browser fullscreen for everything (Youtube, Twitch, Jellyfin- the occasional other service or video, depending). However, I acknowledge that I do not watch live TV or Netflix or any movies/TV in general, with very few exceptions to that rule, so my use case is quite different from many others.
I strongly prefer tabbed interfaces and don't like the "made-for-TV UIs" and "app" ecosystems. Strongly prefer being able to modify/compress/equalize my audio. Strongly prefer having an information-dense interface with no ads. Prefer having access to a full browser, alt-tabbing, and not being forced to use the "app" version of a particular service (like Twitch) which often is garbage compared to the website experience (especially since I use browser extensions and such to customize my experience on various services). I queue up things to watch in tabs. These tabs are synced where I can easily open them on my other devices if I desire. Etc.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
0x29A LinkMostly doing some hygiene and making sure my OPNsense router and Unraid server (and it's containers/etc) are all fully up-to-date. Been a smooth and easy process doing so. Plan on adding some...Mostly doing some hygiene and making sure my OPNsense router and Unraid server (and it's containers/etc) are all fully up-to-date. Been a smooth and easy process doing so. Plan on adding some additional stuff to my Syncthing to mirror some media to my server automatically when I download it to my PC.
Also been making changes to my site, moving other sites around because of domain name price increases and such. It's been a good catalyst for me deciding how to reorganize things and what I want to keep and what I want to swap domains on. It seems less common TLDs are increasing in price more over time than their more common counterparts (like com/net/org), so aside from my one .garden address, i'm going to migrate anything else to be a subdomain under it OR to its own com/net/org instead for now.
Continuing to brainstorm ideas for my sites and such. Been doing some pixel art for fun (I'm very much not a visual artist but I like stretching my skillset and brain this way, even just for my own amusement and personal betterment, or simply being a living middle finger to AI every goddamn day of my life going forward).
Been considering diving into learning some programming, which I haven't really done much of in any depth since college many many years ago. I've got some interest in Lua among others, so who knows where that might lead eventually.
Trying out HaikuOS live on a few systems to see how that goes. Same for BSD variants. Just messing with various live forms of distros and seeing if anything interests me so much I want to stick with it on a test machine or my laptop (which is rarely used, so easy to be another test machine).
Might actually buy a few-dollar pi camera to add on to one of my pis for 3D print monitoring.
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Comment on X corp is taking down Nitter instances and demands takedown of project repository in ~tech
0x29A Link ParentXCancel and a number of other Nitter/Shitter instances are active again, which is great news, esp for anyone using something like LibRedirect or similar to divert all X URL requests to one of the...XCancel and a number of other Nitter/Shitter instances are active again, which is great news, esp for anyone using something like LibRedirect or similar to divert all X URL requests to one of the instances.
Listening to the Session #01 and yeah I love this. Great set with all the CRTs too. Love the synth/sampling live performances.