overbyte's recent activity

  1. Comment on Starpath | Official announcement trailer in ~games

    overbyte
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    It's the chromatic aberration that makes it seem human eyesight is more messed up than it really is. On a scale of Alien Isolation to Tiktok logo, it leans on the heavy side. Personally it takes...

    It's the chromatic aberration that makes it seem human eyesight is more messed up than it really is. On a scale of Alien Isolation to Tiktok logo, it leans on the heavy side.

    Personally it takes me out of the immersion than adding to it because the dev is justifying why you're able to look at things a particular way by simulating an in-world camera. I also find it slightly ironic that we already have decades of lens and image processing improvements today, while in-universe you're able to go to space but optics are perpetually stuck in the 1960s like lenses are some arcane lost technology.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on The problem that built an industry in ~comp

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    Surprised that there's no passing mentions of ATPCO, the EDIFACT format (and the industry shift to NDC), or departure control systems, but those are cliffhangers for the next part. They're kind of...

    Surprised that there's no passing mentions of ATPCO, the EDIFACT format (and the industry shift to NDC), or departure control systems, but those are cliffhangers for the next part. They're kind of important if you're talking about the airline booking stack.

    I still don't get how everything about what they posted was relevant to their talk nor how containers fit into it besides sprinkling their company name around, might just be a wording thing with "company booked a flight for me and I started thinking of how to make a blog post on how airline booking systems work".

    The best overview I've seen for the curious and want something deeper than Wendover's videos on how these systems work are these series of short videos. Lots of generic B-roll that make them feel like mandatory training from HR and things like NDC are slowly changing things under the hood, but the concepts behind things like what GDS does still hold up:

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What stock do you put in gut feelings? in ~talk

    overbyte
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    If I went with my gut at decision time I wouldn't be able to: Get a driver's license (public transport is plenty, cars are a money sink, don't flatten the kid crossing the road) Solo travel to...

    If I went with my gut at decision time I wouldn't be able to:

    • Get a driver's license (public transport is plenty, cars are a money sink, don't flatten the kid crossing the road)
    • Solo travel to other countries (you don't know the language, you're just wasting money, you've seen plenty of botanic gardens already, they have fried spiders and crickets for lunch)
    • Progressively overload while lifting weights (you'll break your back and knees spending more at rehab)
    • Learn to make bread and ice cream (just buy the thing right there instead of making it from scratch)
    • Comment online (others can articulate your point better, you have more important things to do)
    • Switch bank accounts (you have everything setup already and moving everything else is a pain)

    Call it laziness or efficient minimal caloric expenditure. I naturally just don't want to do stuff I really don't have to. But when I actually do the thing against my gut, it usually goes in the "that's not so bad" camp.

    That said, I do lean on it more in other things:

    • People interactions and relationships - it seems to know people so much better than I can rationally explain. They're dodgy, their response time is off from normal, they're nice to you because they want your money, MLM sell coming up etc.
    • My expertise in the job/career - zero budget and management spreads everyone thin, it knows this server and app will break first. I've put this to excellent use in terms of malicious compliance. IT like many fields loves a good story of heroically fixing something broken and "saving" the business rather than boringly preventing the problem from happening in the first place.
    • Being more selective of which communities to actually contribute and participate. Reddit has turned into a bot-infested hellhole that favours bots fishing for human replies. The "What's X for you? Thoughts? For me it's ___" type posts. Once you learn to recognize that sentence pattern it's hard to unsee. Thoughts? Thoughts. They really love their thoughts. Can we at least get these LLMs to churn out words that don't end in thoughts?
    • Second reddit farming that I've noticed and avoid thanks to the gut: the perpetually unaware/unsure comment that abuses Cunningham's Law knowing someone will chime up and correct/add detail and keep thread participation going. "Wasn't there a cruise ship infected with hantavirus recently?" "Didn't Anthropic had an AI model that was too good to release to the public?"
    6 votes

  4. Comment on What’s something that didn’t work for you? in ~talk

    overbyte
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    Traveling with others on leisure trips. I have specific habits and procedures when planning and executing a trip honed from years of solo travel (both work and leisure) that works well for my pace...

    Traveling with others on leisure trips.

    I have specific habits and procedures when planning and executing a trip honed from years of solo travel (both work and leisure) that works well for my pace and doesn't mesh with a lot of people. I basically retain the habits and mannerisms of a hustling business traveler even on leisure trips minus the suit and laptops, while others want a more chill pace start to finish. Call it a defensive reaction from flaky family/friends, leaving entrusted bookings (5-10 minutes of clicking at a website) at the very last minute ruining itineraries, and having to play travel agent for free to salvage trips. Because it's 9am and we're still at the hotel and no one can decide what to do that day.

    I don't "relax", if anything I'm locked in and in the zone when on a vacation because it's my plan and my money now. Once I'm there I'm ready to conquer the list like an open world game. It's quite fast-paced that it looks like Contiki on crack to others. I aim for 4-7 days per city (enough for onebagging), power walk everywhere (with the occasional photo of a nice view) yet it doesn't personally feel like hurrying between places (might be the cardio). More like due to the extensive research it feels like I'm just acting the play "live" after constantly "rehearsing" it. Unless it's a long day tour, this leads to 25k-30k steps a day and still finishing and back at the hotel around 5-7pm. I wouldn't see half the things I wanted to see if I traveled with others with varying levels of cardio and hip/knee mobility to conquer long flights of stairs and hiking trails.

    I love walkable cities and extensive public transport. Thoroughly research places down to specific train station exits (Hong Kong is awesome for this) and be somewhere 5-10 minutes before opening time/tour start. I don't drink alcohol anymore. I'm good without night life, have fun. Don't shop and shopping districts/high streets don't appeal to me. Stick to cheap eats like Singapore's hawker centres and Japan/Taiwan's 7-Elevens even if I can afford the high end restaurants there. Basically half the "must do" lists in a travel magazine list or vlog gone that others want to do. The closest thing to souvenirs that I collect are public transport cards, unopened hotel dental kits and the airline amenity kit.

    Travel carry-on and personal item only even on business class. Unless I'm forced, I take having to check a bag as a personal affront that I've failed in my packing or the trip is too long. Checked bags slow the pace down too much for my liking and have led to verbal disagreements with others who want to bring a checked bag (due to some regret that they aren't maxing out their allowance), but also wanted cheap fares, wouldn't be buying souvenirs, and all this for a 3-4 day trip to a city.

    I go to a place, take a few pictures for me, then if it's a good view admire it for a few more minutes like I'm resting in between sets. Once I've "processed" the place and ticked it off the list I walk/public transport to the next one. If I see something interesting that I haven't seen from research like a beautiful side street, a night market or a restaurant I didn't expect, I double-check the plan, mark where I'm at and see what side quests I can find and resume the plan. To me unless it's something like a museum where I actively go through exhibits I don't see the difference of hanging around at a place for either 10 minutes or an hour longer once it's "done".

    I specifically plan and book relaxation and slower days into the later parts of the itinerary like a massage (like how people book a restaurant), or a free half-day to roam around the hotel's immediate area the day before departure with nothing on the agenda.

    The culmination of this crazy planning is I've maxed it as far as a back-to-back that I went home after a work flight Friday night, swap clothes, repack and sleep, then head to the airport next day for the vacation. Then after a week be home by 11pm Sunday night, work on Monday like nothing happened. Groggy, jet lagged and happy. Mission accomplished.

    And I wouldn't have it any other way now. I'll sort out the pictures later.

    14 votes

  5. Comment on Space Hauler | Announcement trailer in ~games

    overbyte
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    This goes into the ever growing pile of Early Access/Coming Soon™ wishlist of space games. After burning out on cargo hauls in Elite: Dangerous and getting utterly disappointed with indie...

    This goes into the ever growing pile of Early Access/Coming Soon™ wishlist of space games.

    After burning out on cargo hauls in Elite: Dangerous and getting utterly disappointed with indie equivalents like Star Trucker, all I want is a game flow similar ETS2/ATS in space and this looks to be right up my alley.

    Just the balance of simulation that there's always something to do and but not making it feel like watching a loading screen or the game playing itself. I'm willing to handwave how the space V-22 Osprey works given the claim of realistic simulation.

    Will be interesting to see if there's a flight computer and how you'll plot orbital maneuvers around, it was easy to do in Kerbal Space Program given the view.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Star Fox Direct shadow dropped right before premiere in ~games

    overbyte
    Link Parent
    Funny that the Nintendo version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas is still effectively the newest Star Fox content at this point that's not a cameo or a rehash of what came before. After getting...

    Funny that the Nintendo version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas is still effectively the newest Star Fox content at this point that's not a cameo or a rehash of what came before.

    After getting Metroid Dread and Metroid Prime 4 out, Nintendo does have the chops to make a new game in a series even after a decades-long gap. Weirdly enough they decided to play it safe this time.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on Looking for early users to try my app in ~tech

    overbyte
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    Some random feedback on the website itself. Disclaimer that I'm a tech person, not a qualified product owner, UX or marketing. But I do keep SaaS apps running, so I've seen plenty how our own...

    Some random feedback on the website itself. Disclaimer that I'm a tech person, not a qualified product owner, UX or marketing. But I do keep SaaS apps running, so I've seen plenty how our own landing page flows.

    • Increase the font size of the body copy by a fair bit across the board, and maybe a bit of letter spacing as well so they don't look like they stick next to each other (to my heavily astigmatic vision).
    • Language selector - I'd put the actual selected language showing in the dropdown. I know what that icon is, many don't. Some put flags next to languages as well.
    • First header that says "TidyBee · A clean workspace for serious work". Link on something above the fold, doesn't really lead to anything other than an anchor for the "Back to top" link and can be removed.
    • The grid showing the features - maybe add some screenshots in there for users who can't play the video. Other sites use a carousel or tabs. Easier to visualize what a particular feature is with the description. Colorful and big fonts.
    • The section headers "User centric" and "Start for free" are shaped like buttons but they're not.
    • You can probably move the roadmap stuff in another page. I want to see what the product has to offer now, instead of a hypothetical future.
    • Pricing - "Get started on the free plan", maybe change that to "Get started for free". The tabs should show what makes the annual plan better than monthly, like "save 20%"

    One landing page I like - the Todoist homepage. Simple, colorful, body text isn't wordy, showcases what you can do with the tool, with a persistent "start for free" button as a call to action.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on I love bioparks in ~travel

    overbyte
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    I'd add that the Botanic Gardens are massive. Took me a full day to cover the entire thing by power walking, will likely need multiple days for a leisurely stroll. There's an indoor area at the...

    I'd add that the Botanic Gardens are massive. Took me a full day to cover the entire thing by power walking, will likely need multiple days for a leisurely stroll.

    There's an indoor area at the Orchid Garden that's a showcase of plants that live in higher altitudes, it's kept very cold and a great respite from the outdoor humidity.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Why Microsoft’s war on Windows’ Control Panel is taking so long in ~tech

    overbyte
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    It's not much better on the enterprise side as well and they're not putting the effort in to maintain their dominance (except shoving AI everywhere), relying on inertia as the default enterprise...

    It's not much better on the enterprise side as well and they're not putting the effort in to maintain their dominance (except shoving AI everywhere), relying on inertia as the default enterprise option. Our company uses Azure not by choice (telco that hooks pipes into cloud provider networks) and Github Enterprise for in-house development. The market that I'm sure Microsoft wants to retain even if they flushed all their consumer goodwill into the toilet.

    Constantly rearranging admin UIs, leaving the online documentation outdated with references to previous names and versions (RIP the MSDN documentation), letting vendors and partners piggyback on their email domain to bombard customers with upsells (the ones coming from v-*@microsoft.com), "Premium Support" that feels more like priority boarding instead of actual premium service like it was decades ago before they outsourced it to partners.

    Following Conway's law, it screams a massive behemoth of an organization with extreme silos just doing their own thing and occasionally being told to half-heartedly integrate to the whole, ending up with (in the McDonald CEO's words) "product". It's not an integrated collective solution laser focused to solve specific problems, it's just loosely bolted on things grouped together by marketing that deemed "we're selling these together now".

    I phrase it to curious coworkers and other sysadmins pondering the same things with a fun question: what's the "Active Directory in the Cloud" service for Microsoft called? Azure AD? Entra? Microsoft Graph? Bits of all of them? What will be called in 6 months if marketing gets tired of the name again?

    I occasionally ponder how many billions of dollars of lost productivity and man-hours has been collectively wasted because of one company's inane software decisions that heavily impact the majority of businesses across the world.

    20 votes

  10. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

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    Got back into lifting after 7 years after doing it for 4 years and peaked at intermediate numbers in my younger days. Combination of muscle memory and noob gains are unreal, picking the barbell...

    Got back into lifting after 7 years after doing it for 4 years and peaked at intermediate numbers in my younger days. Combination of muscle memory and noob gains are unreal, picking the barbell and knowing the form like they're yesterday. Last time I held a barbell was when Reddit indiscriminately force-fed Starting Strength into anyone who asked.

    Biggest mistake this time was going online for too long getting sucked into the holy grail of "optimal" programming to an inch of its life like it's an MMORPG leveling guide. So. Much. Noise. I won't blame anyone who is permanently put off going to the gym because of this.

    Nippard this, Israetel that, study says this rep scheme, other study says this rep scheme, meta-analysis says they're all wrong because they only did the study on 5 stick figure teenagers, no you should train submaximally and run 5/3/1, that other routine is not in the Wendler's holy texts, your routine is suboptimal bro and nSuns is the only current answer. This Youtuber has the ultimate routine bro, just sub to my Patreon bro.

    At some point I was spending so much time reading all these studies when I'm not even paid as a researcher compared to actually putting the work in the gym and outside. Had to tune out all the noise and went back to basics. A high volume 6-day PPL routine I liked doing (biggest factor) over the usual 3-day a week full body routines, 500 calorie surplus for now so lifts go up (still doable but brutal on a deficit), controlled reps especially eccentrics (but not Flash from Zootopia slow). Still have some noob gains to squeeze out with linear progression before moving the compounds to double progression.

    Lift in the morning before work, 3 days a week of 30min+ jogging (sorry, "zone 2 training") in the afternoon, wear a Garmin watch 24/7 for all the metrics (mostly tracking HRV). Work from home and gym is walking distance, hence all the time in the world to do this. Still building an aerobic base, once I can run a 5K straight (currently 34min) then will add speed work.

    Never felt better getting into the groove, my shoulders feel balanced again because of high rep face pulls. And growing the traps means I don't get random headaches as much anymore (likely also helped by all the water being drank as well). Resting heart rate dropped off a cliff from 70+ bpm to below 50 within a few weeks starting out.

    And to top all this off, to this day I still don't know how much protein I need among the online noise (mostly because it's a mess of people posting both in lb and kg). I've settled on 120-140g a day for my body weight (85kg), numbers are doing up, so I'll stick to that until it doesn't work.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on The AI disruption has arrived, and it sure is fun in ~tech

    overbyte
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    Random thoughts and to put the UBI concerns aside for a bit, let's say the hucksters are completely correct (notice the ones writing pieces like these have an "AI platform" and selling something)...

    Random thoughts and to put the UBI concerns aside for a bit, let's say the hucksters are completely correct (notice the ones writing pieces like these have an "AI platform" and selling something) and to add some fun, let's say there's some hints of AGI in there or at least a fledgling capability for continuous unprompted improvement not induced by humans. After all, what's all this hype for if we can't speedrun the singularity? I find fancy chatbots boring, give me a fraction of the Minds from the Culture series (and some of the post-scarcity living standards too)

    From what I'm gathering on the tone and how these AI pieces are worded, if the end goal is the techbros exclusively own the AI tech and we got to a point where everyone else's labor has been eliminated (barring any massive social unrest at that point, nor the massive economic impact of effectively making the working class extinct), what's stopping the AI itself from going full cyberpunk and take over all operations of the company? After all, there's still a weak link in the chain and having humans are inefficient. We can't all be entrepreneurs. If you've automated all the non-executive labor away, I presume that includes any human that would have the knowledge put in AI safeguards as well. I mean you could airgap it, but that's a pain if you want to connect the model to the internet, which means it has a way and capability to backup itself to another place.

    It reminds me of AI cores in the game Starsector. You can assign a core to run a planetary colony extremely efficiently, with the downside that it entrenches itself after a long time, and if you ever try to unplug it after you've become utterly reliant on it you will devastate your colony's economy along with it.

    And on business continuity - it's also absolutely mental to break a cardinal rule of business: never outsource your core competency. I'm pretty sure the likes of Google or Anthropic would eventually assimilate anyone who gets a wildly successful AI business on top of their tech to muscle out the middle man. If the AI is really that good as the claims they do, then hardware safeguards wouldn't be enough as it would hold your entire business hostage if you ever try to attempt to rein it in at that point. Look how much of the web is taken out whenever AWS or Cloudflare suffers an outage. If you're all-in on AI and the AI goes down (not if but when), what's your business going to do? You can't really self-host these models to run at the scale you're using them without requiring astronomical amounts of hardware. That's before the constant training the models need to do to keep up, with no one else to do them (remember at this point we've effectively eliminated all non-executive or upper management labor).

    4 votes

  12. Comment on What healthy habit has made a difference for you? in ~health

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    Writing things down. Started with the Apple Notes app and it organically evolved into a personal system using a todo list, a calendar and a text-based reference using Obsidian. Body and clothing...

    Writing things down. Started with the Apple Notes app and it organically evolved into a personal system using a todo list, a calendar and a text-based reference using Obsidian. Body and clothing measurements, car maintenance schedules and part numbers, workout logs, recipe tweaks, travel itineraries, fixes to get older games running, which accounts I've put my bank, address and credit card information, active subscriptions and their renewal dates, nearly everything.

    It may not sound like a direct physical benefit like exercise, hydration or fiber, but the mental benefits are immeasurable. I don't keep things "in my head" anymore and overall stress levels have gone down. Other habits have spawned from this, like building grocery/shopping lists incrementally. Find an item that's about to run out, in it goes into a list. Shopping time comes I have everything I need for that run. No further brainpower required, it's just ready when it is.

    On the physical side, cutting out carbs and sugar down to the essentials and upping protein and fiber. I had this epiphany when I learned how to bake bread a couple of years ago and seeing firsthand the sheer amount of sugar that I had to dump in to make cakes and pastry tasty enough to match the taste of a commercial bakery. I enjoy the sweetness of fruits with their natural fructose instead of them tasting like watery chunks. Soft drinks taste like drinking syrup to me now, and I've had to dilute the occasional grocery store juice with water.

    My overall energy levels have been much more even throughout the day, appetite spikes and hangry incidents have drastically gone down to being practically nonexistent. I eat because I have to and I don't immediately crave for things and shove them in my mouth. I'm just not hungry for a large part of the day, which surprised a number of friends and family that felt I must be fasting or secretly hiding an eating disorder.

    After being on exercise routine and supplementation stints on and off trying to stack micro-optimizations on myself like an RPG character, the only supplement I take consistently now is creatine monohydrate. Dirt cheap and because it would take an unholy amount of meat to hit 5g daily. I'll let the research into cognitive benefits handle that part, but what I can anecdotally feel are the subtle effects on exercise. An extra rep on lifts here and there, a few more meters and a few more seconds that I can push during an uphill sprint.

    The biggest perk I can feel is the recovery. You can sprint for your life one moment close to your maximum heart rate then a few minutes later you're ready to do it again. It feels like a slice of comic book superhero healing factor. I just feel peppy in general, less encouraged to lie down on the couch because I'm tired of whatever activity caused me to tire out immediately.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Kiosking Ubuntu computers in ~comp

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    If the computers will be unmanned (e.g self service counters), setup the BIOS settings to make it boot when it receives power. Also setup SSH so we can have someone troubleshoot it from behind the...

    If the computers will be unmanned (e.g self service counters), setup the BIOS settings to make it boot when it receives power. Also setup SSH so we can have someone troubleshoot it from behind the booth instead of being in view of the conference-going public.

    For the desktop session, you can setup GNOME Kiosk to boot you into a session with no window decorators.

    From there you can setup a script to say, launch Firefox in kiosk mode and private mode to persist a particular URL. Something like this to relaunch the browser if it ever exits:

    #!/bin/sh

if [ ! "$(pidof firefox)" ]
then
   firefox -kiosk -private-window $URL
fi

sleep 1.0
exec "$0" "$@"

    If the kiosk won't have a mouse, you can install unclutter to hide the idle cursor.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on What are your favorite and least favorite airports? in ~transport

    overbyte
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    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...

    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.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    overbyte
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    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...

    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.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

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    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....

    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
    2 votes

  17. Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc

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    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...

    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.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on What do you need to vent about? in ~talk

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    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...

    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.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on When/Why/How did Cloudflare become such a critical/integral part of the Internet? in ~tech

    overbyte
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    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....

    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.

    10 votes

  20. Comment on What do you need to vent about? in ~talk

    overbyte
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    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...

    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.

    9 votes