towerful
@towerful@programming.dev
- Comment on Question: Is there a Self Hosted Discord like app? 1 day ago:
Mumble was awesome. It probably still is, to be fair
- Comment on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month 2 days ago:
Discord is going to be the age-verification-service for gaming, if they can get laws to follow fast enough.
They have the gaming community, they have chats/friends/DMs/VoIP.
If they release a dev toolkit that implements in-game chat, in-game VoIP, friends list and age verification… All while not being tied to steam? Imagine if they offered a system for in-game purchases and gifting purchases to friends (oh yeh gam3s.gg/…/discord-adds-in-app-purchases-for-in-g… )
They are positioning themselves to offer a huge range of features, easy navigation of legal minefields, and no distribution-platform tie-in - while also offering out-of-game functionality of all of that (likely leading to player retention for games that leverage it properly).They are positioning themselves to be a market-leader/industry-standard for game social networks. Everyone that has ever used discord is the product they are selling, and they are now releasing the features and tools for companies to leverage that.
- Comment on The Department of Homeland Security Is Demanding That Google Turn Over Information About Random Critics 2 days ago:
I hear the 3rd best is tomorrow, and that fits with my energy levels
- Comment on System Redundancy 1 week ago:
Wireshark*
- Comment on SpaceX is seeking FCC approval to launch 1M satellites into space; SpaceX claims the fleet will orbit the Earth and use the sun to power AI data centers 1 week ago:
Scott Manley has a video on this:
youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoIMy takeaway is that it isn’t unfeasible. We already have satellites that do a couple kilowatts, so a cluster of them might make sense. In isolation, it makes sense.
But there is launch cost, and the fact that de-orbiting/de-commissioning is a write-off, and the fact that preferred orbits (lots of sun) will very quickly become unavailable.
So there is kinda a graph where you get the preferred orbit, your efficiency is good enough, your launch costs are low enough.
But it’s junk.
It’s literally investing in junk.
There is no way this is a legitimate investment.It has a finite life, regardless of how you stretch your tech. At some point, it can’t stay in orbit.
It’s AI. There is no way humans are in a position to lock in 4 years of hardware.
It’s satellites. There are so many factors outside of our control that (beyond launch orbit success), that there is a massive failure rate.
It’s rockets. They are controlled explosives with 1 shot to get it right. Again, massive failure rate.It just doesn’t make sense.
It’s feasible. I’m sure humanity would learn a lot. AI is not a good use of kilowatts of power in space. AI is not a good use of the finite resource of earth to launch satellites (never mind a million?!). AI is not a good reason to pullute the “good” bits of LEO - Comment on The TV industry finally concedes that the future may not be in 8K 1 week ago:
Yeh, do: 60fps, 30 bit color… and I guess HDR?
Do things that people can actually appreciate.
And do them in the way that utilises the new tech. 60fps looks completely different from 24fps… Work with that, it’s a new media format. Express your talent - Comment on Getting worn out with all these docker images and CLI hosted apps 1 week ago:
I love cli and config files, so I can write some scripts to automate it all.
It documents itself.
Whenever I have to do GUI stuff I always forget a step or do things out of order or something. - Comment on Keir Starmer abandons plans for compulsory digital ID 4 weeks ago:
I’d rather they u-turned shitty ideas than waffle-stomp them through.
How the fuck the OSA seemed to just drift through is astounding - Comment on Microsoft kills official way to activate windows without internet 5 weeks ago:
FCKGW?
- Comment on The whole "toilet seat up, toilet seat down" gender debate could be solved by everybody putting the seat and lid down. 5 weeks ago:
While true, quantity of poop particles also matters.
Your body can fight off loads of bacteria. But once it gets to an infection point, it can’t keep up and you become ill.So yeh, poop is everywhere. As long as it’s small amounts, it’s fine.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
I also hope Embark do the right thing and get VAs back in to voice quests and cut scenes.
Use the generated voice for items and locations only. Maybe, as an emergency, for continuity.I guess it gives them unbelievable leverage over the VAs: “We are offering you $10 to do 4 hours of voice lines. Or we will just use the model we have already trained”.
Which then puts even more downwards pressure on VA wages.I bet Embark has made bank, and it would be a massive PR win to get the VAs back in at an industry standard rate to do the quests and cutscenes.
- Comment on Unifi Anonymous...? 1 month ago:
Pretty much any mikrotik is a fantastic piece of kit to have.
It is so unbelievably versatile.
I love the various mikrotik routers, switches and APs I have. I use them all the time for little ad-hoc networks and projects and stuff.
You will learn a lot about networking when using them.But Unifi is a hell of a lot easier to use, and I have not found anything I can’t do on unifi (but I don’t do bgp, mlag, etc at home).
- Comment on RAM prices soar, but popular Windows 11 apps are using more RAM due to Electron, Web components 2 months ago:
Pretty sure all ram manufacturers are Korean? I guess China puts chips on PCBs, maybe? But South Korea has the knowledge . And it had met domestic demand. RAM prices have been acceptable for many many years.
It’s the AI sector that is inflating demand (maybe by circular investment and contracts).
So, I don’t see anyone investing 10 years into the future to make ddr6 ram where their business plan relies on current trends. - Comment on RAM prices soar, but popular Windows 11 apps are using more RAM due to Electron, Web components 2 months ago:
It must take so much R&D to achieve anything remotely comparable to what Samsung, Micron (/Crucial… RIP) and SK Hynix can produce.
Fingers crossed they can either undercut the 3(now 2) big producers, which is doubtful. But hopefully they can help reduce the maximum price that decent memory can inflate to. Because at some point a medium sized customer is gonna get fed up of the Samsung/micron/skHynix bullshit, and custom order the ram they need, and such a smaller producer will provide a much better service for a similar price
- Comment on RAM prices soar, but popular Windows 11 apps are using more RAM due to Electron, Web components 2 months ago:
Only for multi CPU mobos (and that would be pinning a thread to a CPU/core with NUMA enabled where a task accessed local ram instead of all system ram). Even then, I think all ram would run at the lowest frequency.
I’ve never mixed CPUs and RAM speeds. I’ve only ever worked on systems with matching CPUs and ram modules.I think the hardware cost and software complexity to achieve this is beyond the cost of more ram or faster storage (for faster swap)
- Comment on Would a cheap, used raspberry pi 3 make for a good test server for following random self hosted tutorials? 2 months ago:
Oh, and on the “fail often” thing…
Get a basic/old/free pc/laptop and install Proxmox on it.
Loads of tutorials out there, but the basic installer will get you to a “I’m learning” stage.Create a VM, install Debian, play around.
Then: create a new VM, install Debian, create a snapshot, play around until it does what you want, restore the snapshot, do the steps that got you from vanilla to what you want. Create snapshots along the way as checkpoints.Proxmox is amazing for learning VMs and server things
- Comment on Would a cheap, used raspberry pi 3 make for a good test server for following random self hosted tutorials? 2 months ago:
Raspberry pis are an easy intro to actually using computers (instead of using something like windows).
Raspbian is great (based on Debian) and there is a HUGE community for it.So yeh, it’s a great started for $25, as long as you have a PSU and SD Card. And an hdmi cable + monitor + keyboard at your disposal (and a mouse if you are installing a desktop environment (IE something like windows, whereas headless is a full screen CLI).
And don’t get your hopes up for a windows replacement.But… Why not run a Virtual Machine? If you have a windows machine, run VirtualBox, create a VM and install Debian on it?
That’s free. You can tinker and play.
And the only thing you are missing from an actual raspberry pi is that it isn’t a standalone device (IE your desktop has to be on for it to be running), and it doesn’t have GPIO (ie hardware pins. And if this is your goal, there are other ways).If you really really want a computer that is on all the time running Linux (Debian, a derivative (like raspbian) or some other distro) - aka a server - then there are plenty of other options where the only drawback is lack of GPIO (which, in my experience, is rarely a drawback).
And that is literally any computer you can get your hands on. Because the raspberry pi trades A LOT for its form factor, the ethernet speed is limited, the bus speed is limited (impacting USB and ethernet (and ram?)), the SD card is slower and will fail faster than any HDD/SSD. The benefit is the GPIO and the very low power draw - rarely actually a benefit.I’d say, play around with some virtual box VMs. See what you want, other than Fear Of Missing Out (things like PiHole? They run on Debian, or even in a docker container). Then see if you actually want a home server, and what you want to run on it.
It’s likely you won’t want a raspberry pi, but a $150 mini pc that can actually do what you want. - Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 2 months ago:
Yeh, bath/shower ones seem affordable.
But for a standalone sink, they seem to be significantly more. - Comment on ‘Too little, too late’: damning report condemns UK’s Covid response 2 months ago:
That sounds like a fantastic contribution to the fediverse.
Sounds like suspicious behaviour. So removing and even tracking that kinda crap would be some great tooling!
Perhaps an addition would be something that notifies people that interact with the deleted post/user to let them know of the deleted accounts behaviour. - Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 2 months ago:
I’m amazed at the comments explaining incoming water temperature fluctuations and pressures…
No no, thermostatic tap/faucet mixes waters depending on the output temperature. Ignores all of the variables except the thermal mass (I guess reaction speed) of the thermostatic system.
I think they are normally like 10x the price of a standard mixer tap tho.
So, it’s a budget choice - Comment on Is Fast Charging Killing the Battery? A 2-Year Test on 40 Phones 2 months ago:
The planned obsolescence is most likely a deliberate trade off rather than actual planned obsolescence.
If fast charging did do significant damage to battery life and this was known at the time of implementation, the decision would have been “users want fast charging phones” Vs “users want devices that last a long time”.
In this instance, the convenience of fast charging absolutely would have won.“Users want a clear and easy to use device” Vs “users want a robust device”. Which is why we all have glass screens, and the glass technology had to catch up to further expectations.
“Users want easy wireless connectivity” Vs “users want fast and reliable network speeds”. WiFi wins, and has to catch up to further expectations.
- Comment on What's your favorite case of a game making fun of you? 3 months ago:
And you finally get to jump
- Comment on Why isn't the rest of the world doing anything about the USA? 3 months ago:
I hear that the US has oil and WMDs
- Comment on YSK - the crazy questions all jobs on usajobs.gov now ask 3 months ago:
Id love to believe this is to weed out the bad applicants.
People that answer “lol, I just want a job” actually get the interviews - Comment on Today's Massive AWS Outage That Took Down Your Favorite Sites Is Still Going On 3 months ago:
Um, akshually it’s a DNS issue not a router issue.
I think.
It looks like a router issue. But it’s always a DNS issue - Comment on Microsoft is making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC 3 months ago:
I installed endeavouros on my windows laptop.
The installer guided me through the partitioning, setting up systemd-boot, and it was all great.
I had to disable bitlocker in windows (not that bothered about) and secure boot in bios (also not that bothered about).Ran smoothly dual booting both for about 4 months.
Then a windows update hit, and fucked the boot.Thankfully, this is a common enough thing that there are plenty of tutorials out there.
A liveUSB of endeavouros, some tinkering, and I was back up and running.The cause seems to be FastBoot, where windows keeps the boot partition mounted. What I think happens is that bios tries to read the boot partition, which is configured/loaded for windows (because it never cleaned up after itself due to FastBoot being on) and boots into windows.
Since turning off FastBoot, I haven’t had any issues in the past 8 months. - Comment on Microsoft is making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC 3 months ago:
Steam took the cap off the toothpaste tube.
Microsoft is giving the toothpaste tube a good squeeze! - Comment on Today's Massive AWS Outage That Took Down Your Favorite Sites Is Still Going On 3 months ago:
Oh look, fediverse is still working.
You can share in the smug grin - Comment on £6 million repaid to workers as Government cracks down on employers underpaying their staff 3 months ago:
Is this labour doing an actual labour thing?
- Comment on Those who are hosting on bare metal: What is stopping you from using Containers or VM's? What are you self hosting? 4 months ago:
Ah, fair.