Jack of random trades at random times that randomly catch my interest for a random amount of time.

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: February 12th, 2025

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  • Manjaro has been pretty quiet for a long time. There’s gotta be a point where we forgive and forget. I like Manjaro and used it as my entry point to Arch. It sets a lot more up for you out of the box and has manjaro-specific package bundles that just work on install.

    According to Manjarno, its been just under three years since their last mistake, and that was just forgetting to renew the SSL cert for their archived forums. Probably about time we let it back into the Arch family.




  • Yup, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with 10gb of VRAM and a 12b model. Hell, my profile pic (which isn’t very good, tbf) was made on that 10gb VRAM card using localhosted stable diffusion. I hate big corp AI, but I absolutely love open market and open source local models. Gonna be a shame when they start to police them.

    To OP: The problem is that they’re looking for keywords. With the amount of people under surveillance these days, they don’t give a rat’s ass if you went to your favorite coffee roasting site, they want to find the stuff they don’t want you to do.

    Piracy? You’re on a list. Any cleaning chemical that can be related to the construction of explosives? You’re on a list. These lists will then tack on more keywords that pertain to that list. For example, the explosives list will then search for matching components bought within a close span of time that would indicate you’re making them. Even searching for ways to enforce your privacy just makes them more interested.

    So then you put out a bunch of fake data. This data happens to say you viewed a page pertaining that matching component. Whelp, that list just got hotter and now there are even more eyes on you and they’re being slightly more attentive this time. Its a bad idea. The only way you’re getting out of surveillance, at least online, is to never go online.

    In reality, they probably won’t even do anything about the above. What they really want is money. Money for your info; money to sell more things to you. They want the average home to be filled with advertisements tailored from your information. Because those adverts make those companies money, which they then use to buy more information to monetize your existence. Its the largest pyramid scheme known to humanity, and we’re the unpaid grunts.

    The moment the world became connected through telephones, cable TV, and then internet this scheme was already in motion way beforehand. Let’s be honest, smartphones were the motherload. A TV, phone, and computer you always keep on you? They were salivating that day.


  • Fonts are a big one and can be a very descriptive fingerprint.

    There are applications out there that muddle your installed fonts by making it look like you have a ton of fonts you don’t actually have.

    But yes, they can see what fonts you have and can tell your OS and other computers you may have used if you’ve downloaded the same third party fonts for all of them.

    If one of those computers was known to be yours at one time, then even if you lock away your identity later on another PC your fonts can give you away.


  • I agree with you on that point. I got overly ambitious and have always wondered about making my own icon pack. When you do release, you should reach out to Delta icons in F-Droid and see if you can get your app requested! Everone gets one app request for free, and the project is completely free and open source.

    I’ll post a finished product when it’s done if you want to use it anywhere. You can freely have it and license it under your project if you wish. I’ll try to finish it by tomorrow, and in the meantime if you have any other requests for art that you need, do not hesitate to ask. I think this is an amazing idea, and honestly could see other utilization for it.

    For example, a color naming tool for the colorblind. With the way AI is, it could present examples of things of that color. For example, a lime green could show a tennis ball, bright grass, and other such samples. Could possibly used in aiding colorblind individuals in painting or digital art (though the paintings that come from a fully colorblind artist are wild and really cool when they just pick from the grays that look good to them).



  • Let me take a fresh look at this in the morning. I’m having the itch to get up, boot up Inkscape and get something going via vector, but my sleep schedule will be completely screwed if I do that.

    I’ll try to set an alarm or something, as I have pretty severe and unmedicated ADHD, but if someone could reply to this as well, as an extra reminder, I’d be grateful. I’ll probably remember when I open the app tomorrow, but better safe than sorry.

    Its not often I get the itch to draw, but this really leaps out at me and I want to try. I have an idea of how I’d go about it. An eye looking slightly skyward with Earth as the pupil (if it hasn’t been done for something else yet). I don’t know if it’s within my skill, though.

    Also, I believe there’s a way to translate vector to XML. I think I did it once when I was making a custom theme for MusicBee, but I’ll have to look again to be sure.






  • You can get away with it while having some downtime in a village. The bard is making coin in the tavern and the barbarian is drinking in the same place, the priest visits the local chapel, the warlock looks to spend some coin on magic baubles, etc. This also increases the creativity in which you can give your players their next quest.

    But once you’re out adventuring on that quest, you’re a goddamn party. If you don’t want to be a party, then go home and play a single player game.

    Edit: I have had good DMs separate the party themselves though, but we always spend it trying to find each other again.





  • Using topgrade without realizing what I was doing. Seemed okay for a few days until my headphones suddenly jacked to 1000 and began some sort of alarm-like buzzing. Thankfully they were not on my head, because it was so loud my gf and I thought there was some sort of fire alarm going off. This was on EndeavourOS.

    I tried topgrade again, not knowing that the app was what had done it. This time on vanilla Arch. I was not so fortunate this round and I took the sound full blast into my earholes. I reacted in milliseconds and Hulk-smash threw them halfway across the room. No lasting damage since I was so quick, but fuck me wearing headphones is more dangerous than I thought.

    Luckily I’ve learned from past mistakes and made Timeshift restore points before every update. I reverted to before the topgrade changes and my distro has still been holding strong since then. I think I’ll make my own alias for full upgrade and call it updawg.


  • Lol! Well, you’re probably not wrong.

    Yeah, its just a blast of feelings, hard to describe. Shooting stars can usually do it to me. Whether they’re in a game or in real life.

    I used to sit in old WoW waaaay back in the day and watch the shooting stars in Arathi Highlands. That and Winterspring were my favorite areas.


  • Sorry that this is off-topic… but your avatar hit me in the feels. I can’t explain fully. When I first became aware as a kid in school, like… first conscious memorized thoughts, I was staring at the Netscape Navigator loading animation. Now every time I see it there’s this feeling. Like super nostalgic serotonin and dopamine running through my veins.

    Such a small thing, but I almost cry every time I see it.


  • Thanks for this. Its been quite a while since I’ve played, so I was going off of fuzzy memory. I do still have all the books, but haven’t opened them in a long time.

    That’s exactly it. You choose what you want your character to do and be within the GM’s world type. Then you have one or two sessions really setting everything up for world, characters, story, progression, etc. After that you’re done with the hard part. Heck, even the GM is done with it. They may need to reference material occasionally, but the game almost plays itself.

    It’s much, much more casual and focuses more on story and narrative. Its like if Choose Your Own Adventure was a game, the rolls only being there to add flavor and excitement to your adventures.