overbyte's recent activity
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Comment on What are your favorite and least favorite airports? in ~transport
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
overbyte Link ParentPersonally I consider the powerful map editor and being able to make your own fun as part of the endless "gameplay". Arma 2 gave us DayZ, and Arma 3 has Antistasi and the original PUBG. So the...Personally I consider the powerful map editor and being able to make your own fun as part of the endless "gameplay". Arma 2 gave us DayZ, and Arma 3 has Antistasi and the original PUBG. So the more DLC you add, the bigger the sandbox to play with in the editor.
Apex is the one I would call an absolute necessity. As far as modding is concerned, many "vanilla" mods assume you already have Apex. It also comes with a fun scenario called Old Man, which is a bit more like Far Cry in terms of openness and mission design than a straight up milsim. You play as a civilian able to wear disguises and such. Also helps that Tanoa is the best performing map out of all the official ones on my rig despite having patches of dense jungles.
You can also play the Apex campaign with SOG AI. It was originally designed to be a replayable co-op campaign so you'll get some AI buddies now instead of running it solo.
Marksmen is very nice for the DMRs and scopes. You'll be pixel peeping across great distances a lot in this game.
Contact for Livonia and SOG Prairie Fire for Vietnam maps are nice to have. Gorgeous maps, but requires a high-end modern CPU to brute force them into playable performance.
Laws of War and Tac Ops have well-regarded single player scenarios but I haven't played them yet.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
overbyte LinkSettling into a middle ground of Arma 3 mods while itching for a slightly different single player experience (I know). Not as hardcore as full milsim multiplayer setups with mods like ACE/RHS/etc....Settling into a middle ground of Arma 3 mods while itching for a slightly different single player experience (I know). Not as hardcore as full milsim multiplayer setups with mods like ACE/RHS/etc. or an epic co-op experience with Antistasi, but my set is tuned just right for what I want. Completed the whole Arma 3 bundle from a recent Steam sale and discovered two standout mods working together: The Forgotten Few 2 and SOG AI
The Forgotten Few 2 especially on Tanoa (the map from the Arma 3 Apex DLC) with SOG AI is what I would call the closest experience to the original Ghost Recon and Hidden and Dangerous games that I've been craving for, and I didn't have to wait for a new game to do it. The map is a gorgeous set of South Pacific-themed islands with a nice balance of lush forests, rolling hills, some urban towns, and enough water for boat insertions.
Pick a mission, outfit your squad (and turn on/off an extra AI squad), plan your insertion (and have the helis stay behind for close air support if you want), do the objectives however you want, pick your extraction then return to base, all on a persistent campaign on the same map. Every time you finish a mission the persistent campaign advances a "turn" where map control shifts around and generates a new set of missions for you to pick. Along the way you earn "progress points" which after reaching a set number you win the campaign.
Permadeath is always on and your squad gains fatigue and veterancy, so there's a lightweight XCOM-style personnel management in between missions. You pick from a choice of land/sea/air insertions and extractions, jointly or separately. You have air and artillery support, but beware of nearby anti-air emplacements so they're not "free win" buttons. They have cooldowns and maintenance so must be used strategically over the course of a lengthy campaign.
The atmosphere really settles in once you're playing hours into a campaign and a few missions deep behind enemy lines, crawling through a forest in the blackest of nights with only your NVGs on and only the sound of crickets or the idle chat of a distant enemy patrol. And if you're up for something spicy, do away with fancy modern tech and start a campaign on one of the Vietnam maps like Cam Lao Nam.
Other mods I use:
- Simple Single Player Cheat Menu (SSPCM) - no way around Arma 3's jank and the engine is showing its age. Sometimes you have to directly fix things/tune the gameplay to your liking
- Magic Mag - ordering AI to pick guns off dead enemies and resupply is still annoying, but you can configure the mod to give only your squad unlimited mags
- WebKnight's animation/quality of life mods, like Alternative Running, Flashlights and Headlamps (makes them volumetric), Death and Hit reactions
- JSRS - a soundmod that gives Arma's guns more oomph and sound less like tin cans
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Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc
overbyte LinkWent to the rabbit hole of aviation videos recently that's different from the recent discourse about the Air India crash or more known facts like the "barking dog" sound of the Airbus A320 power...Went to the rabbit hole of aviation videos recently that's different from the recent discourse about the Air India crash or more known facts like the "barking dog" sound of the Airbus A320 power transfer unit.
A compilation of the infamous whale noise from the PW1000G that's seen on a lot of Airbus A220s, which I've also heard overhead when A220s were on approach.
The Boeing 787's gust suppression system showing the minute flaperon changes to dampen turbulence.
Another example where the autopilot rapidly counteracts a sudden drop.
And the A380's split ailerons. Excerpt from Airbus:
The final tuning is such that, for speeds below 300 kts, the de-flection of the inner aileron is 2.5 times the value of the outer one. The centre aileron follows the inner, but with a time delay of 350 milliseconds. Some more modifications were needed at high altitude due to the Mach effect.
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Comment on What do you need to vent about? in ~talk
overbyte Link ParentHah yeah that's still quite a bit more text than most I've seen. I appreciate that Tildes at least makes the scheduled discussion posts clear that it's generated by automation. Particular exhibits...Hah yeah that's still quite a bit more text than most I've seen. I appreciate that Tildes at least makes the scheduled discussion posts clear that it's generated by automation.
Particular exhibits of what I mean for the others:
If these are real people posting their real thoughts then I just find it utterly eerie that reddit has developed an extremely consistent vocabulary across many communities.
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Comment on When/Why/How did Cloudflare become such a critical/integral part of the Internet? in ~tech
overbyte LinkWe use and pay for Cloudflare Enterprise primarily to front our company's SaaS app, and occasionally trial out some of their solutions like WARP/Zero Trust if they can replace the company VPN....We use and pay for Cloudflare Enterprise primarily to front our company's SaaS app, and occasionally trial out some of their solutions like WARP/Zero Trust if they can replace the company VPN. Their infrastructure is still some of the fastest from our POIs whenever we compare it with other solutions.
In the age of websites pulling in enormous amounts of JS frameworks and high time-to-first-byte, Cloudflare feels like one of those old-school companies that still take performance seriously. Their documentation is one large static site built with Hugo. It is very fast. They put their money where their mouth is. They don't have any glaring surprises compared to Azure's constant UI shifting and Microsoft's regular outages.
Performance is a hard metric for us. Our SaaS is our money maker. The faster people can do things in the app the sooner we close a transaction and get things billed right away. We absolutely cannot tolerate Microsoft's casual disregard on how they treat their infrastructure, so Azure is out.
We occasionally joke that if our app had an outage, we just have to look if Youtube and Gmail are working. Our whole tech stack from GKE to Cloudflare makes that work.
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Comment on What do you need to vent about? in ~talk
overbyte LinkI've been occasionally taken back to Reddit for some niche communities that aren't on other platforms yet. One thing that caught my eye is a particular format of post where someone asks a very...I've been occasionally taken back to Reddit for some niche communities that aren't on other platforms yet.
One thing that caught my eye is a particular format of post where someone asks a very generic question to the subreddit (like "What do you wish ___ had?") and prefaces it with "I'll go first" or "For me it's ___". It's consistent across big and small subreddits. The OP essentially never answers or engages in the thread again.
I'd love to actually know if this is some way of stealthily promoting engagement on the sub or a normal shift of how the demographics of reddit engage with online communities now.
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Comment on Travel tips? in ~travel
overbyte LinkAround 1-2 weeks before the trip, I meal prep high fiber meals. Like burrito bowls or rice and beans with more beans than usual. Absolutely liberating and frugal to just not be hungry for an...- Around 1-2 weeks before the trip, I meal prep high fiber meals. Like burrito bowls or rice and beans with more beans than usual. Absolutely liberating and frugal to just not be hungry for an entire day and pretty much only have to eat the next day after a single meal in the morning. Don't do this if a dinner reservation is a part of your trip right after arrival as it might kill the experience.
- Cities are further than they appear on the map. Even on the Nozomi it still takes a few hours between major stops like Osaka and Tokyo. The shinkansen is fast, but not that fast compared to a plane (which is offset by waiting at the airport). Also Australia is big. Takes around 3-4 hours of flight to clear the continent from the east coast cities to Asia.
- If you're taking public transport, double check how to actually get the transport card, pay for paper tickets or if you can actually tap your credit card in (check for international fees). In places like Perth Airport there's quirks like the T3/T4 domestic terminal not having a store to get a card to actually take the train to the city (which itself needs a bus ride or if you can spare a walk to get there)
- Triple check your airline's luggage rules if you're packing a bunch. Singapore Airlines lets me bring 2x7kg carry-ons in business class compared to Cathay's 1x10kg.
- When traveling alone in business class, many long-range widebodies have the single window seats staggered so row numbers sometimes matter for privacy or space reasons. I have weird facts like these in my head like booking odd numbered rows on Qantas 787s and even rows on A330s where the console separates you from the aisle and the seat is closer to the window. I use AeroLOPA to see the actual business class seats when planning out long haul trips.
- If I don't know what to eat on the plane, I generally pick the stews or closest to a stew. They hold up best given how they are prepared, and from my own meal prep experiences.
- The laksa in the SilverKris lounges are nice.
- Qantas has way better lounges internationally than the infamous toasted sandwiches on Australian capital city airports. At least you can drink enough alcohol to offset the cost of lounge access while still being allowed to board. And when you're spoiled by the lounges at Changi or The Wing at Hong Kong, everything else feels like a downgrade given similar fares.
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Comment on Starsector 0.98a released in ~games
overbyte Link ParentA lot of Starsector's mechanics feels heavily inspired by Star Control 2. From the starmap that shows your FTL range, how ships move and rotate in combat (entire fleets in Starsector instead of...A lot of Starsector's mechanics feels heavily inspired by Star Control 2.
From the starmap that shows your FTL range, how ships move and rotate in combat (entire fleets in Starsector instead of just 1v1), how you physically move between systems by going through hyperspace (red in Star Control, blue in Starsector) and how you fall into a star's gravity well to approach your destination.
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Comment on Starsector 0.98a released in ~games
overbyte Link ParentThere's jump points but FTL is not portrayed like Escape Velocity or Stellaris where systems are linked to another with hyperspace lanes. Starsector is more like an open world game where you're...There's jump points but FTL is not portrayed like Escape Velocity or Stellaris where systems are linked to another with hyperspace lanes. Starsector is more like an open world game where you're dropped into the eponymous sector and you're free to move your fleet between systems from the get go.
Navigating through hyperspace and the moment to moment traversal forms a huge part of Starsector's gameplay whenever you're not in combat.
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Comment on Ask Tildes: Job security - does it exist, how to deal with lack of, how to process being fired / unemployment in ~life
overbyte LinkDefensively. After learning the concept of FIRE (financial independence/retire early) a decade ago, I've stopped assuming any guarantees to anything and I've taken it upon myself to proactively...Defensively. After learning the concept of FIRE (financial independence/retire early) a decade ago, I've stopped assuming any guarantees to anything and I've taken it upon myself to proactively mitigate risk to my own finances like building up an emergency fund while I can instead of waiting for social safety nets to catch me. Personally I'd rather be self-sufficient and leave that system to people who desperately need it. Similar to fitness in that a hospital is the very last place I want to be at any point in time.
I've been on multiple sides of IT offshoring as the one who ended up with the job, being a part of an industrial scale transition to take the jobs from somebody else, and the one that lost jobs to the same process. So there's an element of spending some time for personal development to stay ahead. I learn tech on my own time and I wouldn't have my current job right now if I didn't know the things I learned on my off time. A few hours a month in the homelab translated into a very liveable income that gives me a lot of options with regards to personal finance. Money makes money, so it speeds up the whole process even more.
If I slack off in my career right now or stay for the "cozy" jobs I know it will eventually be offshored, so I have to be always ahead doing something or have a skill that a team of overseas labor can't do yet. Soft skills and on the spot decision making I've found are big ones in my experience. My personal bet is by the time both sides of labor has equalized, I'm hopefully already retired and off the rat race. I don't find it stressful or anything, just a fact of life that companies now have a global pool of labor to choose from in my industry. On the aspect of things I can control, I could either complain against it (never moving my own personal state forward), or I can do something about it.
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Comment on As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders in ~tech
overbyte Link ParentThe modern trend of governments having dedicated digital teams and consolidating government websites into a cohesive, consistent whole. Essentially kickstarted by the UK GDS with the Gov.uk...The modern trend of governments having dedicated digital teams and consolidating government websites into a cohesive, consistent whole. Essentially kickstarted by the UK GDS with the Gov.uk website. Fantastic examples in how to lay out a lot of information into an accessible form. Their design system is open on Github and used as a basis by other governments.
If you've seen US websites that have that "An official website of the United States government" banner, that site was built on the USWDS. Singapore has something similar with the SGDS.
And for all the complaints around them, the Australian taxation and banking systems are still steadily improving as a whole. The New Payments Platform is a set of tech built by SWIFT with the Reserve Bank that enables a nationwide real-time 24/7 payments clearinghouse and widely supported by local banks. So concepts like T+2 settlement or NET 30 or "we can't pay you on a weekend" are entirely a bottleneck of company processes now, not due to the underlying platform.
Want instant payments on a weekend, with emojis in the description? Sure why not, just use your regular bank app. No Venmo, no Apple Cash. That's on top of the already existing tech like contactless payments, merchant identification, customizable notifications like when you get paid, a system that lets account owners securely give time-limited read-only access to data to say budget apps (and revoke them at any time), REST APIs and being able to sign up for a new bank account or credit card completely online in a few minutes (and cancel the previous one) without ever talking to a human.
On the tax side, Single Touch Payroll streamlines backend systems by linking company payroll directly to government taxation systems and retirement funds, and invoked during payroll runs. Reporting and payment happens in the same run when people get paid, no more waiting for end of fiscal year and such for the company to crunch the numbers so you can file your own returns. Come tax time, the tax return form (also completely online, not a PDF form) is already heavily prefilled and for simple setups you just have to confirm the numbers shown before filing it. You can actually see your income and withheld tax being reported incrementally throughout the year if you check it every month or so.
And speaking of Australian tax, the government portal to access federal services like taxation and universal healthcare (myGov) supports passkeys and lets you completely disable password logins.
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Comment on What things do you have are surprisingly good / handy? in ~life
overbyte Link ParentNone that I have experienced yet given they're both acids, and the main risk with acid in the washing machine is degrading the rubber. I don't think I've ever used it to soften laundry, so it's...None that I have experienced yet given they're both acids, and the main risk with acid in the washing machine is degrading the rubber. I don't think I've ever used it to soften laundry, so it's purely more for descaling.
Most cleaners and descalers I can buy contain citric acid and come in small 250ml bottles. So I personally don't go above 200g or so and run the descale monthly with a cycle that pumps and holds a lot of water in to ensure it's completely diluted (like the bedding cycle). Haven't seen degradation in the rubber seals so far, but they're cleaned and dried completely as well.
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Comment on China's new stealth aircraft - "J-36" and the challenge to US air power (with Justin Bronk) in ~news
overbyte Link ParentHis playthrough of X4: Foundations is what convinced me to revisit that game in a new light. It's a complex sandbox game with a lot of underlying mechanics presented with an unintuitive and janky...His playthrough of X4: Foundations is what convinced me to revisit that game in a new light. It's a complex sandbox game with a lot of underlying mechanics presented with an unintuitive and janky UI.
He is very clear in easing a complete newcomer into the series with explaining the game's many obtuse or unintuitive mechanics while keeping use of game's terminology to a minimum. Like a breakdown of the game's simulated economy, why a faction behaves in a particular way, or why a particular ship or weapon loadout is chosen. Other videos would rattle off in-universe terms on the first few videos of a series that would leave a newcomer likely more confused than if they'd played the game without looking anything up.
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Comment on Move over toasters: Doom is now playable inside a PDF in ~games
overbyte Link ParentI don't want or need PDFs to be phased out, just stripped down of its bloat down to basics with the original goal of being good at preserving document layout and presentation across systems. I...I don't want or need PDFs to be phased out, just stripped down of its bloat down to basics with the original goal of being good at preserving document layout and presentation across systems. I wouldn't mind a combination of PDF/A and form support becoming the standard instead of Adobe's arbitrary code execution as a feature.
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Comment on What it's like to create a simple, free website in 2025 in ~comp
overbyte Link ParentOther than HTTPS (how do you know you're looking at the actual site the owner intended it to be?), Cloudflare operates a massive global content delivery network that can push that content closer...Other than HTTPS (how do you know you're looking at the actual site the owner intended it to be?), Cloudflare operates a massive global content delivery network that can push that content closer to your users. A battle-tested front door that you can use for free and relatively easy to setup.
Fast websites are a joy to browse. Your random pile of HTML pages hosted in a server in the US is still subject of the laws of physics when a user from NZ decides to browse it for the first time. Now replace that blog with say, a static site for a small business. Now the stakes are much higher when you want that site to grow your business. Walmart has a whole slide deck on why page performance matters. Even if that small business website isn't operating on the scale of Amazon, you don't want a slow site to be a factor that stalls a business given the relative ease of setting it up.
Even if you've never contributed to something like the Runescape Wiki, readers can still perceive how fast that wiki loads even for the occasional search of information.
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Comment on Starting a community-maintained Tildes source code fork in ~tildes
overbyte LinkAs someone currently in the middle of migrating our internal company Python codebase to the Future™ with the Astral toolset (ruff, rye, and uv) on top of containerizing everything for GKE, all I...As someone currently in the middle of migrating our internal company Python codebase to the Future™ with the Astral toolset (
ruff,rye, anduv) on top of containerizing everything for GKE, all I can say is best of luck with the fork. I'm more suited to YAML engineering Kubernetes than digging in with Pyramid.I'll pop in with some PRs when free.
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Comment on Server admins, PHP/Symfony experts: I need your guidance in ~comp
overbyte (edited )LinkFirst off, check if you have a recent snapshot and database backup. That will help you safely try out things so you can go back to the current state. If the database is on the same VM hosting the...First off, check if you have a recent snapshot and database backup. That will help you safely try out things so you can go back to the current state. If the database is on the same VM hosting the web server, I'd split that off first.
For something in between a traditional VM and Kubernetes, don't bother with installing an OS then Docker on the VM, just provide a container image directly to Compute Engine and it will handle all the setup for you with it running COS instead of a regular Linux distro. Once you get that working you can move on to a managed instance group to give some autoscaling.
Personally I'd run a setup like this on GKE and the DB in CloudSQL (if you haven't moved it there already), but we host a heap of things more than a site and I'm familiar with GKE already.
As a reference, we're fully containerized and have Github Actions workflows build and push an image into Artifact Registry, our manifests are configured to pull images from GAR and the applications on the cluster use a CloudSQL Proxy sidecar to connect to their designated databases so we don't have to stick TLS certificates to pods or anything.
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Comment on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is reaching end of standard support soon: April 2025. Plan to upgrade soon! in ~tech
overbyte Link ParentWe use them in the sense that upstream/public container images use them. Most of our base images are built on Noble now. We could spend the manpower and time rolling our own base images, shave...We use them in the sense that upstream/public container images use them. Most of our base images are built on Noble now.
We could spend the manpower and time rolling our own base images, shave every MB off with a switch to Alpine and hit some
muslweirdness, or we can just pull the public Debian/Ubuntu images, slapdumb-initon them and call it a day. -
Comment on How do you generate and record your goals for the year? in ~talk
overbyte LinkMy life currently revolves around an Obsidian vault for personal notes and whatever free cross-platform to-do list application I can use (previously Trello, currently MS To-Do, don't have a Mac so...My life currently revolves around an Obsidian vault for personal notes and whatever free cross-platform to-do list application I can use (previously Trello, currently MS To-Do, don't have a Mac so Reminders is out). I do all my goal planning in Obsidian where I have a list of goals for this year and things I've carried over from last year in an ever-growing list. Once I'm ready to commit to something they get planned out in the to-do list.
On methodology, I use an adapted form of Scrum's ceremonies like sprint planning and backlog refinement applied to a personal to-do list. It's essentially a lightweight version of what I've seen and used daily across my career, so why not use it for myself.
I use the concepts of the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done when planning out bigger endeavours. Ready: can I actually do this thing now? Done: how do I know I've achieved the thing I want to achieve with this task? Just a lightweight version, nothing too hardcore and it would be utterly ironic to stick to dogmatic ceremonies with regards to agile methodologies. They're essentially checklists or bullet points when you plan out your tasks.
For high-level goals, I hash them out into the objectives and key results (OKR) format so they're somewhat measurable as a nice middle ground between random personal goals with no metrics and going all out with SMART. You have an objective with let's say 2-3 supporting key results which would be how you measure that objective. If my goal for the year is to "learn something new with the homelab", the key result would be something like "deployed a high-availability application in a multi-node Kubernetes cluster"
In line with the goals, I also set up scheduled tasks and fixed routines first that have to be done either way. As espoused by Getting Things Done (the original system I've used to track tasks before this one), this includes even the most mundane chores like cooking or cleaning the house so you never keep anything in your head. This includes fun and entertainment like watching movies or playing games. Other people have a different approach with blocking out their calendars. From there I can see my free time, then comes the work of breaking down tasks into actionable units.
Tasks are generally planned in weekly blocks up to 3-6 months out, with fewer tasks scheduled further out in time. In terms of capacity planning my weekly are planned out about 70-80%. This lets me adapt and slot in things like last-minute errands or rearrange tasks meant for this week into next week.
Then every month at most I run a review for the whole year to see if I'm still on track and readjust as necessary. One personal benefit I've seen with this setup is I like the certainty of an entire week's worth of tasks already planned out in advance, so I just have to dig in and start doing things off the list. I've used GTD previously and struggled with a massive next actions list, looking back I should've separated the backlog and the actionable list sooner with more deliberate planning periods, which this current system does.
Terminal 4 has central security, and the upcoming Terminal 5 reverts back to gate security. I'm not sure if it's still per gate or they'll do clusters of it like how some gates in Changi T1-T3 share security screening.
The airport has extensive carpeting. A pain to drag rollers around but it makes the airport much quieter. Many of the public seating is on the level of what you'd find at lounges at other airports. Another difference is public announcements are kept to a minimum instead of being repeatedly blasted through the airport. In return there's so much more flight information displays that you can just look at, or connect to the fast Wi-Fi and open up your airline's app. Adds to the quiet ambiance alongside the carpeting for the number of people going through.
It also has some of the most efficient automated checkpoints I've experienced. Scan passport, fingerprint, look at camera, you're in/out in seconds. They also double as departure control so you're going back through the same gates, and there's a lot of them across multiple places at the terminals so there's no bottleneck. Compare that to say, Australia where a "smart" gate kiosk gives you a paper slip with your mugshot, then you go through the actual passport control gates, and you give that slip to a customs officer.
Between the cheap swimming pool and jacuzzi at T1, the free movie theater at T3, the free arcades at T4, and everything else, Changi is definitely my pick if I'm stuck for 8 hours at an airport and with zero problems to kill time.
And back when they still did manual immigration the most memorable thing to me that stood out was the small bowl of candies on the booth while the officer chatted you up.