NuXCOM_90Percent

So I finally broke down and made a very poor purchasing decision and ordered an e-ink writer to be a notepad/e-reader hybrid. Partially so that it is less of a hassle to read books I got from kickstarters and the like while still using the kindle app for the disturbing amounts of money I throw at Amazon.

Historically? I loved goodreads because theoretically I would get good recommendations based on what I liked. In practice, that has never happened but it is still nice to see if I read something in the past. And once I have multiple ebook ecosystems, it will be nice to actually check that rather than spend the first 100 pages wondering if this is familiar.

So any good recommendations? I suspect what I SHOULD do (and will likely start doing more as a self betterment thing) is just put a note in my personal nextcloud every time I finish a book with a quick summary and some thoughts. But having the big database is also really nice.

Thanks

So I've been grabbing a few shows I want to watch reruns of while playing Balatro that don't have good blu ray releases. My piracy is fairly limited these days so I don't bother with private trackers (do have a VPN though). In the past, I never really had an issue with grabbing a few one offs off the popular, maybe honeypot, sites like rarbg and 1337x.

But over the past month or so, I've noticed I have gotten a lot of shitty files. Skips here and there or garbled colors for a scene or two. At first I though it was just a bad file since re-downloading the torrent had the exact same problem.

But, on a whim, I did a recheck and had to download like 40% of a torrent. And then 20% the next time. Which made me assume my NAS was fucked or I was dealing with a lot of packet lsos (... I AM dealing with a lot of packet loss from my ISP). But when I redownloaded a "known bad" torrent I had the exact same corrupted file.

So am I just REALLY unlucky? Or is there an epidemic of shitty/malicious seeds on the public trackers these days?

So for the past few years (?) I have been using wireguard to vpn into (effectively) my firewall and a dynamic dns setup to access that remotely. But with the shitshow that is google domains and the like, this seems like a good opportunity to look into a few of the alternatives. I am not entirely opposed to just going in and changing the dns server once I figure out what I am going to do on that front, but wireguard has always been a bit of a mess to set up for less "tech savvy" people who need access to the home network.

Every so often I see some cloud based solutions get suggested. Which is sketchy but I already have a few alerts set up to be able to remotely shut my network down if wireguard is acting up when it shouldn't be and shutting down a VM is a lot less of a "do I really need to do this?" than shutting off the entire network. But most of those solutions seem built around selling seats which means they want you to add individual devices rather than just setting up a tunnel.

So is wireguard still the gold standard? Or is there a more user friendly solution that will let me compromise a bit but also have a setup that doesn't require me to be physically on site to fix the inevitable hiccups because it takes hours of reading articles to understand the setup?

Thanks

Framework as in the laptop company, just for clarity. https://frame.work/. For those unaware, the idea is that these are laptops built with a high degree of modularity so that you can replace far more than a single stick of SODIMM with the goal of even upgrading your CPU and mainboard a few years down the line.

Also, Framework is partially owned by Linus Sebastien (Linus Tech Tips) so their marketing is "off the chain" as it were.

Over the past few years I have tried to convince myself to get one a few times. But... the pricing never made sense. As a quick exercise:

• A DIY (so no Windows key) 13th gen intel starts at 850 USD https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-intel?q=processor
• The associated mainboard+cpu is 450 USD https://frame.work/products/mainboard-13th-gen-intel-core?v=FRANGJCP04
• A Dell Inspiron 16 inch (since the samsung with the same specs was on a ridiculous sale and I am trying to prove a point) is 900 USD (on sale for 600) with a windows key https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-16-0-2-in-1-touch-laptop-13th-gen-intel-evo-i5-8gb-memory-512gb-ssd-platinum-silver/6539908.p?skuId=6539908
• 850+450=1300. So you really aren't even saving that much unless you actively refuse to shop a sale at Best Buy or pretend you are still a student when they ask. And that assumes you ONLY want to upgrade your mobo+cpu and nothing else.

But I still like the fundamental concept (of the marketing...) of upgradable laptops.

But then I finally watched the Tested teardown video with Norm (the heart and soul of Tested and has been since the Whiskey days) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drxOpMsr6sM and... the general takeaways were that there is a LOT of cool tech involved in the modularity but that the vast majority of people would never mess around with it after assembling their laptop for the first time. Also, Adam Savage has stickers.

Combine that with all of their modular ports being 20 dollar USB-C dongles with single ports and... this feels a lot more like the kind of bullshit Apple does than anything else. Why use the USB C dongle/hub that works with all your other devices when you can buy a 20 dollar HDMI port instead?

Same with stuff like the (honestly insanely cool) modular keyboard layout. Basically, the keyboard, touchpad, etc are all panels that can be popped off and swapped around. So if you want stupid LEDs, you can have them. If you want an offset keyboard, you can do it. If you want a 10key numpad, you can do that too. It is a genuinely awesome idea but... it is a lot of engineering for something that people will use maybe twice in their ownership of the laptop (once to configure, one to replace when they spill their drink). Same with things like being able to swap out the back module to have a GPU when you want it. You do that once.

Which... makes it feel like people are paying a premium for easier assembly at a factory.

And as for the upgradable hardware? Storage and ram are on point and they should be praised. But you are basically buying whole new modules for the CPU/mobo and the GPU and so forth. Which... is kind of necessary because it is so rare to find an actual mobile sized GPU in a consumer available format. But it continues to just feel like you are buying proprietary parts from a company (Framework want other companies to make parts but I have not looked through the terms and licensing).

But also? A friend pointed out: How many sticks of DDR3 ram do you still have? Because I know that I have a big bin of computer parts "just in case" that I will never use but also can't be bothered to throw away because maybe I will. And that is what these modular parts become. You COULD recycle your old mainboad+cpu... or you can keep it in case you want to do a project that you never will and that would be perfectly fine with a raspberry pi or a cheap nuc anyway.

Contrast that with wiping your laptop and giving it to a nephew or dropping it off in an e-waste bin (and many stores offer incentives to do that).

All of which combines to... this feels a lot like the kind of "poison pill" compliance that Apple is doing on the right to repair side. They make a big deal about how they allow people to repair their shit now (that various governments threatened action...). But they tightly control the parts and rent out the hardware AND price it to strongly discourage hobbyists to the point that it mostly feels like they are just squeezing out the third party shops even more.

I'm torn because I do think the stated ethos is awesome. I... also have had no issues replacing my storage or upgrading my ram in my last few laptops but I tend to not get "flagship" models so there is that. But it is increasingly feeling like Framework is just building up IP to sell to manufacturers while having a net negative on the amount of e-waste in the laptop space.

So I was watching a few youtubes and remembered how the vast majority (of like the ten) nes games me and my sister had were hard as all hell. I loved to play Little Nemo and Street Fighter 2010 but I am pretty sure I never made it past the third level of either. Let alone infamously hard games like The Lion King.

Which got me thinking. Basically every game for the past 20 years has been designed around instant gratification and being accessible. We outright had to make a new concept "hard but fair" to account for games like Dark Souls that are designed to be difficult but beatable as opposed to putting you in a death spiral if you hesitate too long on a hard jump (hello Ninja Gaiden).

So do the younger folk even have a concept of a "favorite game" where you likely never experienced more than fifteen minutes worth of content?