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... Gundam 00. It has always felt like the black sheep of the "main" shows. Everyone makes fun of it for being a "ripoff" of Wing (to the point there are even meme pictures in the official gunpla stores in Japan) and it felt largely forgotten relative to the never ending love affair with the UC and the pushes to make SEED a thing while avoiding the acknowledgement that the vast majority of "main" Gundam shows are retelling 0079+Zeta.

So I put off the watch for a while. Because I love Wing (like most Americans, it was my first Gundam) but I also fully acknowledge that is batshit insane and mostly a retelling of 0079, Zeta, and CCA.

And... I know Japan has very strict anti-drug laws but I am pretty sure they were on the same stuff that made Wing seem like a good idea. But whereas Wing's pacing felt like complete insanity to the point you would FEEL like nothing happened and then realized three wars started and ended over the course of two episodes, 00 seemed obsessed with ending every climactic cliffhanger/battle before the first commercial break. It works amazingly well on a binge watch to make you watch "one more episode" but I REALLY wonder how people tolerated that when it aired on TV. "Oh cool. The battle we have all been waiting for is about to happen. And... it is over before we see Ibushi squirt some dashi into a pan in a suggestive manner".

But, for all its flaws? I think season 1 is up there with Iron Blooded Orphans in terms of being a genuinely good "real" Gundam show (War in the Pocket is still GOAT but that was very clearly a side story, similar to Rogue One in the Star Wars franchise). We have a roster of pilots with clear flaws and mysterious pasts that pretty much exist to explore the idea of whether you can ever truly achieve peace through violence. And... it is insanely bleak. It is clear from the start that Saji's plotline is going to be there to make us useless in the rain and... it somehow ends worse than anyone can possibly imagine on every single front of that. And the climactic battle is simultaneously more pointless and more brutal than basically anything short of IBO.

And then... we have Season 2. Which is mostly a rush to explain all those mysterious backstories as well as the overall mythos. I assume this was intended (right down to not even having the namesake gunpla model until the end of Season 1) but it really undermines almost all the "vibes" of the first season. And I kept expecting Ian to quote Rodney Dangerfield and scream "We're all gonna get laid!" with how so much of season 2 felt like a collection mission for every Gundam meister's girlfriend.

And while 00 definitely cheated by having two "end of show so everybody dies" sequences... it ends on way too hopeful of a note. Don't get me wrong, I like a Gundam that doesn't leave me staring at my TV's burn-in prevention screen while I drink whiskey. But after how ridiculously bleak Season 1 was... 2 just felt like a copout.

Also let's ignore that the Gundams were literal reality warpers. And that it is clear someone watched Beerfest and had an epiphany on how to keep such a fan favorite character around.

But, for all of Season 2's MANY MANY MANY flaws, I still frigging loved it. Because usually, the overall story is secondary to the emotional beats of a Gundam. Yes, we are all super eager to know what the latest Char clone is planning but what we really care about is what it will mean for the Pilot. And, don't get me wrong, I was very invested in all of the pilots (even frigging Tieria). But I kept watching because I needed to know what Ribbons or the Feddies or A-Law would do next.

Also, let's not overlook the sheer ballsiness of ending the show with "And we are doing a movie!".

So yeah. Gundam 00. More or less abandoned by Bandai. Mocked by Eastern audiences for being a ripoff of the Gundam that was explicitly targeted at the Sailor Moon demographic (seriously...). Mocked by Western audiences because Eastern audiences mock it and we are all weebs to one level or another. Season 1 is some of the best that "mainline" Gundam has ever been. Season 2 is... good by Gundam standards.

And two parting notes:

1. Anyone who disparages this had better speak to their (non-existent) God about their crimes against cute and adorable Haro units doing repairs on the White Base equivalent Could have done with a lot less large breasted women in skintight outfits bouncing around and more cute Haro units being cute.
2. While I still take issue at just treating it as a blatant Wing ripoff, I do have to say: in a franchise where you have a child soldier who would be fine with being executed because it means he can rest and someone with blatant split personality issues... Heero is still the craziest Gundam pilot ever. And Relena is somehow even crazier than that. The number of times Allejulah went full Hallelujah and my response was still "Still not crazier than Heero"...

Looking for a solution to manage and access the directory on my NAS that is full of ebooks. Optimally I want to be able to web reader them but also automagically send it to the email that sends it to my kindle. And e-book wise, the majority of mine are epub/mobi that I got from various kickstarters or humble bundles. But I also have some RPG books (so PDF with a LOT of pictures) and manga (PDF or CBR).

Did some research and checked the various reference lists. Mostly narrowed it down to

• Weird-ass Calibre running in Kasm and accessed through a god awful web UI: This is actually what I used for the past year or two because there was a solution that was fairly plug and play with unraid. I... would rather never do this again
• "Calibre Web" https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web. This seems to be what I actually want (an actual web interface to Calibre!) but it looks like the lead dev lost their shit with obnoxious demands from users. And while I appreciate they are still supporting it, "I am going to ignore the issues unless I feel like it" seems like a good way to get a bunch of unacknowledged CVEs...
• Kavita https://www.kavitareader.com. Only found out about this today but it looks clean and efficient (plex-like). REALLY not a fan of the subscription model already being there but I also don't want any of those features.

Thoughts? There anything better I am missing because none of these look all that great?

So over the years (decade?) I've used Ventoy a lot. For those not aware, it is basically a live USB that you can add other ISOs to to boot into those. Usually overkill but incredibly useful for those days when you need diagnostics, a simple terminal, and then to install something what you actually want.

But... it feels like I run into corner cases and issues with ventoy more often than not. Proxmox or Fedora or whatever decide to do something even slightly different and then I need to upgrade ventoy and blah blah blah. Also... I am not the most comfortable with downloading anything from Sourceforge these days. Let alone something that is going to have a LOT of power over whatever machines I provision.

So I suspect the real answer is to either set up a way to network boot (although, not all machines support that) or buy like five cheap USB drives and put them on a keychain and not over-complicate things.

But if I DID want to over-complicate them.. is there anything better than Ventoy these days?

Thanks

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?

So finally got around to watching a recent movie that I won't name since I am not sure if it was part of the marketing, but the premise was that there was an all powerful AI that was going to take over the world and it used a mixture of predictive reasoning, control of technology, and limited human agents who were given a heads up on what was coming.

It was... mostly disappointing and felt like a much tamer version of Linda Nagata's The Red (apologies as that is TECHNICALLY a spoiler, but the twist is revealed like a hundred pages into the first book that came out a decade ago). And an even weaker version still of Person of Interest.

Because if we are in the world where an AI has access to every camera on the planet and can hack communications in real time and so forth: We aren't going to have vague predictions of what someone might do. We are going to have Finch and Root at full power literally dodging bullets (and now I am sad again) and basically being untouchable. Or the soldiers of The Red who largely have what amounts to x-ray vision so long as they trust their AI overlord and shoot where told and so forth.

Or just the reality of how existential threats can be both detected and manufactured as the situation calls for utilizing existing resources/Nations.

Any suggestions for near future (although, I wouldn't be opposed to a far future space opera take on this) stories that explore this? I don't necessarily need a Frankenstein Complex "we must stop it because it is a form of life that is not us", but I would definitely prefer an understanding of just how incredibly plausible this all is (again, I cannot gush enough about Linda Nagata's The Red). Rather than vague hand waving to demonstrate the unique power of the human soul