gered's recent activity
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
-
Comment on YouTube is testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking in ~tech
gered Link ParentYeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The way I've finally decided to view my usage of an alternative frontend for Youtube is a "vote with my wallet" kind of ideal. It pains me that so...Yeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The way I've finally decided to view my usage of an alternative frontend for Youtube is a "vote with my wallet" kind of ideal. It pains me that so many people laugh at this ideal today (see: most of my gaming friends laughing at me when I said this was why I wouldn't play Diablo 4, 'nor any other Blizzard game ever again), but I think one of the most important things people can do today, individually, is to hold onto your ideals, especially when it causes you a bit of inconvenience. There's no better way to make a business change its course, then to hurt their bottom line. A single person is obviously like an ant pushing a boulder up-hill, but if we keep collectively giving up because "there's no point" then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You gotta start somewhere!
So yes, I also am scared of a future of rising subscription costs for all these things with a more and more enshittified user experience that you start to feel trapped in (you can see this already slowly happening with the rising cost of a Twitch Turbo subscription too, just to name another service).
-
Comment on YouTube is testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking in ~tech
gered Link ParentSimilar to you, I ended up switching to Piped this week. I run a self-hosted instance for myself. It's more than just ads for me though. Youtube's recommendations are ... kind of hit and miss....Similar to you, I ended up switching to Piped this week. I run a self-hosted instance for myself.
It's more than just ads for me though. Youtube's recommendations are ... kind of hit and miss. There is a bunch of stuff currently in my "watch later" playlist that I found purely through recommendations that came from channels I'm not subscribed to, 'nor ever watched anything from before. But I also do routinely miss new videos from channels I am subscribed to and who's videos I try to never miss. Not to mention that the "Not interested" button is, in my experience, completely useless, so my feed has usually got a bunch of crap I have no intention of watching at all. So it's very difficult to train their recommendations.
Something like Piped, or really most any other alternative frontend, helps me focus my viewing and removes the annoyance of a shitty recommendation engine trying to get me to look at what it thinks will drive the most user engagement (which seems to usually be more negative-focused videos ... ugh). Now I just see the videos that I want to see. But this does mean that I have to work harder to discover more content outside of what I'm currently following. That's a tradeoff I am happy to make.
However, I think one of the bigger issues surrounding all of these alternative frontends is how long they'll last into the future. Since some of them have been around for a while now, I'm assuming it isn't super trivial for Youtube to block otherwise they would have done so by now. But if, after so many years of not doing really anything to fight back against ad blockers (I literally have not seen a single ad on Youtube while using an ad blocker for ... gosh, at least 10 years now, easily), they now are going to start ... it makes me think that they won't just stop at fighting ad blockers, but probably will also start to fight against other forms of "free-loading" of content from Youtube. Time will tell I suppose, but I suspect these alternate front-ends are forever going to be also involved in a constant game of cat-and-mouse too.
There's also the thought in the back of my mind about supporting the content creators. I'm assuming that by using an alternate frontend for Youtube, that I'm absolutely not supporting them at all, regardless of what I watch via that frontend. And this doesn't sit right with me either, because ultimately it hurts the content creators who's content I enjoy watching. Especially so if more people switch to these methods of watching. Something I've thought of doing is subscribing to Youtube Premium anyway even if I no longer actually use the normal Youtube website, but that doesn't work either I think because the only way my Premium subscription helps content creators is if Youtube can track what I watch (which they can't, at least not down to my own personally account, if I'm using an alternate frontend).
Ugh. Anyway, I don't really have a solution here except directly donating to each content creator I watch, which is not totally feasible for me right now.
-
Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E02 - "Ad Astra per Aspera" Episode Discussion in ~tv
gered Link ParentYeah, I had similar feelings with Star Trek Picard Season 3. It's been weird to me to read the almost universal praise for it. And, I will grant you, that compared to the first two seasons, season...Yeah, I had similar feelings with Star Trek Picard Season 3. It's been weird to me to read the almost universal praise for it. And, I will grant you, that compared to the first two seasons, season 3 is absolutely much better. But I still think Season 3 was ... not good. Really felt like a high-budget fan-fiction to me. The old characters just didn't feel very consistent with the characters we knew from TNG. As you say, Picard and Riker especially just seem to be ... very immature, and short-sighted. And Captain Shaw ... oh boy. I wanted to like him, but how he just kinda gives up command of his ship with this "you got us into this, you get us out! see ya!" kind of attitude ... what is with "Nutrek" and how it paints everyone in Starfleet as children?
-
Comment on Small tech companies are staying remote to attract workers, while Big Tech goes back to the office in ~comp
gered Link ParentI'm another person who holds this unpopular opinion. :-) I don't generally care where other people work from. But for myself, I've seen first hand over the past ~3 years that 100% remote work is...I'm another person who holds this unpopular opinion. :-)
I don't generally care where other people work from. But for myself, I've seen first hand over the past ~3 years that 100% remote work is not for me. There are a lot of personal reasons for this, but the most important one is that I prefer having strong work/home separation.
I also want to work for an employer who does allow people the freedom to work remotely should they desire. Even for myself, while I would prefer to be in an office the majority of the time, as you say, sometimes it is nice to work remotely to allow you more flexibility. e.g. maybe I'm having a contractor over to do some work one day, or I'm expecting a delivery, etc etc.
But I absolutely have no interest in seeing people forced back to the office just because some pointy-haired boss wants to see butts-in-seats because of some woefully outdated ideas of how to measure productivity.
-
Comment on Small tech companies are staying remote to attract workers, while Big Tech goes back to the office in ~comp
gered Link ParentHonestly, my experience is that while this seems to be a common claim among WFH proponents, the reality seems to be that the people saying this are overwhelming just people in leadership roles in...But some significant percentage of people who insist, "Everyone should work in an office!" have no empathy for the other viewpoint.
Honestly, my experience is that while this seems to be a common claim among WFH proponents, the reality seems to be that the people saying this are overwhelming just people in leadership roles in companies trying to bring people back to the office. But the people (like me) who are just regular employees who prefer to work in an office to get a semblance of work/home separation? Yeah, we don't care. Work from wherever you like.
Conversely, what I have found on Reddit (and other places, but mostly Reddit I guess) over the past couple years is that in discussions about WFH vs in-office, when I happen to say simply that I prefer to work from the office for a variety of purely personal reasons (and where I offer no opinion or claims whatsoever on what I think other people should be doing) ... I get inundated with replies from people saying "well, I am just as productive working from home as I ever was in the office" etc etc. Like ... I didn't say you should be working from the office too. I never even mention "productivity." I just stated my opinion just as everyone else was doing.
Anyway, sorry, mini-rant. :-) I get a bit annoyed by this topic as it oftentimes seems very difficult to have a reasonable objective discussion about it!
-
Comment on Let's talk retro tech in ~hobbies
gered Link ParentOh yeah the PVMs are nice, but truthfully, I think one of the older Commodore monitors that you'd have seen people use with Amiga's back in the day would make me happier. Haha. Though I've read...Oh yeah the PVMs are nice, but truthfully, I think one of the older Commodore monitors that you'd have seen people use with Amiga's back in the day would make me happier. Haha. Though I've read anecdotal reports that they weren't super reliable. Meh. I was a bit lucky in retrospect with the PVMs that I have, as I was able to find them ~8-10 years ago before the prices exploded (what I paid for them at the time was "bad", but compared to today, the prices I paid were "amazing").
That 14" PVM I use with the Amiga (and other stuff) I picked up locally from some older gentleman who ran his own home video production studio back in the 90's / early 2000's. He told me he bought this PVM for use specifically in a recording booth to show lyrics on. Apparently he didn't use it for more than a year before finding some alternative. I guess the PVM was sitting in a box in his basement since that time, so when I got it, it really did look "like new."
Let me just say that I fully support your future Windows Me build. lol. I do remember hating on it just like everyone else did at the time, but in retrospect, I can't help but think that it suffered the same problem that Windows Vista did where people ran it with not-totally-great hardware drivers and other non-ideal configurations. I remember I migrated very quickly to a pirated copy of Windows 2000 Professional back then and was infinitely happier.
Thanks for the link to your write-up on the Arduino Turbo display stuff you did. I've bookmarked it for later reference. Arduino's are one of those things I've always looked at and thought "this is neat, but I have no idea what I'd do with one of these." I see people building things with them but none of those projects ever really seems to catch my interest so I've never had reason to dive in. Your turbo display project feels like that thing to me finally, heh.
Amiga stuff is fun to toy with, but it has such a huge cult following that it's all expensive. Especially so anything to do with Amiga 1200, 2000, 3000, and 4000. I went with an Amiga 600 purely because it is nice and small. And I think they look amazing, and the software compatibility is decent enough for me. I wanted to use it more as a retro-coding station than anything else anyway.
-
Comment on Framework laptop users: what's your build? in ~comp
gered Link ParentYeah, I've been hoping they release some fix soon for the USB-A ports as well. I actually didn't need to buy any DisplayPort or HDMI ports as I already had the necessary USB-C to DisplayPort/HDMI...Yeah, I've been hoping they release some fix soon for the USB-A ports as well. I actually didn't need to buy any DisplayPort or HDMI ports as I already had the necessary USB-C to DisplayPort/HDMI cables on-hand, so I thankfully wasn't affected by the even bigger power draw issues that those had initially.
And you're right, the situation is improving. They're a small company still so I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.
-
Comment on Let's talk retro tech in ~hobbies
gered Link ParentOh my, that 90's desk of yours is absolutely exquisite. Even the chair really speaks to the era (though perhaps a bit older). It reminds me that I gotta try to pick up that same type of...Oh my, that 90's desk of yours is absolutely exquisite. Even the chair really speaks to the era (though perhaps a bit older). It reminds me that I gotta try to pick up that same type of form-factor case, as I've been missing the "computer under the monitor" set up. ;-) I like your idea of it being a distraction-free environment, and it sounds like you've been successful at it. I try to treat my retro set up that way too, but since the modern systems are literally within arms reach of it, my mind finds it a ton easier to wander, heh. It'll be a real challenge to try to fit another small desk anywhere in my home, but I really want to attempt it.
None of the CRT VGA monitors which I have are Dell's actually. The ones I have are a Sony CPD-100SX, Sony CPD-210GS (what I currently use), and a Samsung Syncmaster 763MB.
I need to tell you that your custom Arduino turbo-display-alternative is glorious. I feel like there's just a ton of possibilities there once you've figured out how to mount a small Arduino in there. The fact that it has its own screensaver is the cherry on top, lol. I love it!
Interesting about the WebTV stuff. I love that people are doing this. I did not ever have one of those myself. For myself, since Raspberry Pi's have composite video out built-in (or had? at least my Pi 3B+ has one) something I've been thinking about doing is setting it up with one of my bigger CRT TV's with a 90's TV playlist on it. Feels like it might be a fun thing to have anyway!
-
Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv
gered Link ParentSo very much looking forward to The Bear's Season 2 starting up. What a great show that's been so far.So very much looking forward to The Bear's Season 2 starting up. What a great show that's been so far.
-
Comment on They're rebuilding the Death Star of complexity in ~comp
gered Link ParentI think this is a really good point. And it's a almost a shame to me, because such a person is obviously really enthusiastic about something. On different teams I've been on over the years,...but I think it's more motivated by hyper-nerddom than anything else
I think this is a really good point. And it's a almost a shame to me, because such a person is obviously really enthusiastic about something. On different teams I've been on over the years, sometimes I feel like building up that enthusiasm in some co-workers is half the battle! But yeah, it's just people going way too far down the rabbit hole in these cases we're talking about here. I agree with you too about it seeming to be mostly younger folks getting caught in these types of traps. I definitely notice this too.
It really is insane how much time some people will spend working on building automation. I've also been on teams where I've seen people throw way too much time into something that just isn't needed. A company I was at several years ago, one developer on one of the other teams spent way too much time building up a complex set of tools to dynamically build Kubernetes YAML files from a custom DSL he built specifically for this tool. When you looked at the Kubernetes scripts they ended up deploying ... it was just super simple
Deployment,ServiceandConfigMapresources. Nothing complex. Not even a lot of them, only 2-3 as I recall. Just totally over-engineered for the task at hand. Appropriately, the tool he built for this was called "albatross." Heh. -
Comment on They're rebuilding the Death Star of complexity in ~comp
gered Link ParentIt's a sad state of affairs where building something simple, performant, and maintainable that satisfies the business's needs on schedule and under budget does not stand out on a CV. ;-) And the...It's a sad state of affairs where building something simple, performant, and maintainable that satisfies the business's needs on schedule and under budget does not stand out on a CV. ;-) And the sad part is that I know you're 100% correct.
I totally agree with you re: docker-compose by the way. I really think that's kind of the sweet spot that has emerged out of the past 8-10-ish years of infrastructure and deployment tools. Sometimes you don't need it, but when you do it (can be) damned simple to get going and provide a consistent environment with.
-
Comment on They're rebuilding the Death Star of complexity in ~comp
gered LinkI read this article around when it originally was posted and while I'm not a fan of DHH in general, I do generally agree with his take on the ever-ballooning-complexity we see in this industry...I read this article around when it originally was posted and while I'm not a fan of DHH in general, I do generally agree with his take on the ever-ballooning-complexity we see in this industry with each passing year.
But I don't know what the solution is. What I find is that when you propose not using something like K8S, or "the cloud", microservices, etc etc, you get a lot of push back from most other devs. Even if what you're building doesn't really warrant this complexity. Like, when you know that you're only targeting internal users now and into the future, and the number of users is predictable, and so the load is also predictable. But you inevitably get other devs talking about scaling and endless other "what if" scenarios. And it's just this crazy battle to get devs to consider other simpler solutions that were commonplace just 10 years ago. But we gotta instead use whatever FAD is "in" today because devs on the team want it (who will undoubtedly leave in the next 1-2 years and so will never have to maintain what they build).
I'm actually not even against Docker or containerization in general, but I disagree oh-so-strongly that everything needs to be architected as some microservices spiderweb of complexity (which often times just devolves into a "distributed monolith" anyway) and that we need to deploy into AWS or Azure. I guess if you don't have servers on-premises already maybe there's some important considerations there, but the places I'm thinking of as I'm writing this post are places that already had existing physical data centers (which were not going away any time soon).
My perhaps overly cynical take on this is that I think many devs today are, consciously or not, practicing a form of "resume-driven-development." So-and-so tech firm is using XYZ stack, so I better too, so when the next project starts, or maybe even during this one, I'll push for us to use XYZ as well. And the justification? Well, FAANG is doing it, so we should do. Ugh. Just ugh.
Thanks for reading my mini rant. lol.
-
Comment on Framework laptop users: what's your build? in ~comp
gered LinkI bought an i5-1240P and put in 32GB of RAM, a WD SN770 500GB disk, and 2x USB-A and 2x USB-C ports. I went with Gentoo Linux because, well, after almost 20 years, it's by far the Linux distro...I bought an i5-1240P and put in 32GB of RAM, a WD SN770 500GB disk, and 2x USB-A and 2x USB-C ports. I went with Gentoo Linux because, well, after almost 20 years, it's by far the Linux distro that I know the best, so why not. These Intel 12th gen CPUs have a bunch of extra cores now to throw at compiling so it wasn't too bad setting everything up. I also went with KDE, after trying both XFCE and Cinnamon on the Framework. I'm traditionally an XFCE user, but I was just so impressed with KDE's out-of-the-box fractional scaling support that I switched over. XFCE was a close runner-up for me (only if you do it via adjusting the font DPI setting, that is).
It's been smooth sailing. I really like this laptop. The 3:2 aspect ratio display is just amazing to me. I love it so much. I find the keyboard and touchpad to be surprisingly good. Much better than I was initially expecting.
The recent upgrades released have me feeling a bit jealous, I'm not going to lie. In particular, I'd love to get a matte display at some point in the future. But not anytime soon. I also like that AMD options are available. But again, I'll not be upgrading anytime soon.
Honestly, I am fully expecting that I'll be keeping my Framework laptop build as-is for at least the next few years. It's a very speedy laptop that works great for everything I need it for currently.
The only pain-point I'd love for them to finally address is the excessive power draw from non USB-C ports (yes, even USB-A ports have this issue! to a certain extent anyway) when the system is suspended. But for now I just use a suspend-then-hibernate configuration via systemd to limit the issue as much as I reasonably can.
-
Comment on Let's talk retro tech in ~hobbies
gered LinkYeah, retro tech! I love DOS stuff. I have limited space at home, so a decent chunk of my retro tech is "integrated" into my modern / day-to-day tech stuff as can be seen in this...Yeah, retro tech!
I love DOS stuff. I have limited space at home, so a decent chunk of my retro tech is "integrated" into my modern / day-to-day tech stuff as can be seen in this somewhat-out-of-date pic of my "home office"
I've written about both of the retro PC builds pictured here and here. But the TL;DR is one is a Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 64MB, Matrox Mystique + 3dfx Voodoo2 and the other is a somewhat more classic 486DX2 66Mhz build.
I do game on these systems, but I also enjoy programming on them using all era-appropriate tools on the systems themselves (as opposed to cross compiling on a modern system and/or using DOSBox as I think many people today would prefer... I've never been a fan of this myself!). A couple years ago I wrote some semi-crappy game in Turbo Pascal. I've been itching to do another real soon.
I also fiddle a very small bit with Amiga stuff, but Amiga's are not something I grew up with, so it's more of a curiosity to me. I was born in '84 so I missed these by a few years (my family's first PC was a DOS/Win3.1 386 system).
Finally, I do some retro gaming and am big into CRTs. I have all my old childhood gaming systems and games still (so happy I was never one to sell off my old games!) and have cleaned them up, done recapping where needed, replaced savegame batteries, modded where needed for RGB video output, etc etc.
-
Comment on When was the golden age of the internet to you? in ~tech
gered Link ParentAgreed, definitely early 2000's. Basically before mainstream social media. The internet still felt like people were doing things primarily to share. As well, you still had banner ads and such on...Agreed, definitely early 2000's. Basically before mainstream social media. The internet still felt like people were doing things primarily to share. As well, you still had banner ads and such on many sites, but they weren't taking up obscene amounts of screen real-estate like they tend to today. You could still reasonably browse the internet, even on crappy dialup (source: this was me until 2005) even without an adblocker (when they were available that is).
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
gered LinkThe past couple weeks I've put in ~65 hours apparently into Torchlight 2 on the Switch. Some may already be familiar with this game, which was originally released on PC in 2012. It was ported to...The past couple weeks I've put in ~65 hours apparently into Torchlight 2 on the Switch. Some may already be familiar with this game, which was originally released on PC in 2012. It was ported to some consoles a few years ago. It's not receiving any content updates since Runic Games went kaput a bunch of years back. Torchlight 2 kind of reminds me of Diablo 2 in some ways (not surprising considering some of the people from Blizzard North worked at Runic Games). It definitely feels simpler / more streamlined and does not approach the complexity of other ARPG's like Path of Exile.
I dunno exactly what it is about this game, but it really hooked me. I'd been playing a bunch of Path of Exile earlier this year and I guess I find it refreshing to get into an ARPG that I can actually understand and reasonably build a character myself. As well, the end game doesn't feel like it's trying to punish me at every turn like Path of Exile does. But content-wise, it's nowhere near Path of Exile, 'nor any other modern ARPG really.
Otherwise, been having some fun with yet another playthrough of Stardew Valley, my ultimate cozy comfort game that always seems to manage to put a smile on my face.
-
Comment on What does your self-hosted server setup look like? in ~comp
gered LinkCurrently my home server is a Mac Pro 5,1 (2x Intel X5680 CPUs, 48GB of RAM, Radeon Pro WX 3200 4GB, Samsung 860 EVO M.2 SSD main disk plus a bunch of spinning rust storage disks) which used to be...Currently my home server is a Mac Pro 5,1 (2x Intel X5680 CPUs, 48GB of RAM, Radeon Pro WX 3200 4GB, Samsung 860 EVO M.2 SSD main disk plus a bunch of spinning rust storage disks) which used to be my main desktop. While it does perform home server duties, it also serves as an HTPC and is hooked up to my TV. I have limited space, so currently using this same machine for both purposes works best for me even though it would probably be more ideal to switch the HTPC duties to a separate mini PC or whatever.
It now runs Gentoo (because I always run Gentoo on any personal device which runs Linux ;-) ). The main things I run on it are Apache, NextCloud, SABnzbd, ProFTPD, Samba. Occasionally I'll spin up some random game server on it (e.g. Minecraft) depending on what I'm currently playing.
Since I depend on this machine for HTPC uses too, I try to keep all these services running in Docker containers to somewhat isolate things from the host OS. For a long while, I used to install these services directly on the host system, but occasionally I'd accidentally break something and that ended up becoming annoying especially if it somehow broke my ability to watch some show or movie at the end of the day until I fixed the problem. For a brief while years ago I switched to running most of the services in VM's hosted on this machine (via VirtualBox headless), but in recent years I just switched this all to Docker and have spent time to ensure everything is set up nicely, starts up automatically, and most importantly, is documented for my future self! Much easier than VM's and containers provides enough isolation that I'm happy with. I briefly dabbled with the idea of something like K3S, but decided I didn't want to over-complicate for my future self.
For the HTPC stuff, nothing special, I just use Kodi.
-
Comment on How much are GitHub stars worth to you? in ~tech
gered LinkJust for myself, much more important to judge a random repo by is it's README and/or other supporting documentation. Stars doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I guess it's kinda cool to see that...Just for myself, much more important to judge a random repo by is it's README and/or other supporting documentation.
Stars doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I guess it's kinda cool to see that something is popular, but there's a lot of very useful stuff out there with a small number of stars. Plus as time goes on, I feel like there's too many developers trying to live an almost "influencer" lifestyle of sorts and spend a ton of time (maybe too much time) self-promoting. Sorry, this may be too cynical a point of view!
(I don't necessarily have anything against self-promotion, but I've worked with a few developers in my career who's top priority was clearly their "e-fame" and I've become somewhat allergic to that.)
Hearing that you can buy stars is disappointing but not all that surprising these days. Sadly.
Lack of recent commits isn't necessarily a good judge of anything. It depends. The repo in question may just be functionally complete and hasn't needed any additional work (yet) and might still work just fine with current updates of the language, runtime, dependencies, etc. But I won't lie and claim I don't look at that too. I definitely do.
But really, to me, the repo's README file is by far the most important thing. Does it have a clear explanation of what this repo is about? Including decent-ish instructions for basic usage? Inline examples and/or links to example code (if included elsewhere)? Links to external documentation? Does it look like it's been kept up to date along with any recent modifications to the code? etc etc. It doesn't usually take too long to glance at a README and get a general sense of how approachable this repo will be.
Another person who's been playing Palworld over the weekend. I've never been huge into Pokemon by any means (the last Pokemon game I played for more than 30 minutes was Pokemon Red ... heh). But I was a big fan of Valheim, so figured with people describing Palworld as "survival/crafting game meets Pokemon" I thought "why not."
And yeah, I think that description of Palworld is quite apt. I think the building right now is quite simplistic overall, compared to say, Valheim. At least in some ways anyway. Haven't played anything like Ark, so cannot compare there. The Pals are neat, though quite obviously Pokemon inspired. That doesn't bug me though.
I really like the character control in this game so far. It feels very close to BotW in a lot of ways, which I think is a good thing. There's even a parachute you can craft, if you needed any proof that BotW is at least part of their inspiration for this game, heh. I'd appreciate the ability to zoom the camera out further though.
What I am worried about so far is that after I captured a flying Pal and crafted a saddle for it and went flying around the world ... I'm starting to get that same sorta feeling I had with BotW after playing it for a while. That the world is looks somewhat empty / devoid-of-meaning. Not a whole ton of interesting landmarks (not to say there aren't any, but it seems a little sparse currently). I might still be wrong and maybe there's a ton more to come, as I'm "only" 10 hours play-time in so far.
Anyway, the game is early access, so who knows. Maybe it's something I play for a couple weeks or so until I get to the end, and then pick up again in a years time when there's more content added. If so, I'd still be happy and consider it well worth my $35 CAD.