Spyke

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There Are 100 Computers Hiding in Your Car Right Now (You’re Riding a Data Center on Wheels)

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04 Tundra with a tape deck. And a 6 CD changer! Although I think that has some stripped out gears, bad motor, or something 'cause it stopped working years ago. I took it apart once to get the discs out but didn't bother making a diagnosis since I rock a cassette adapter anyway.

The more I see about the mid 90s through 00s Toyotas, the more I really don't want anything newer. Unfortunately everyone else seems to have the same opinion. There's not a single gen 1 Tundra at any pick'n'pull junkyard within 20 miles of me, and running ones are selling for more than I paid for mine used 14 years ago. Blows my mind my little 22 year old pickup has somehow maintained or increased in value in this ridiculous market.

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Dispute over fate of Kenyan workers who saw Meta AI glasses films

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The actual article title is only slightly more decipherable. Meta hired a company, which employs a number of people in Kenya, to review videos recorded by Meta's AI/Smart glasses. The employees were to provide manual annotations to the videos in order to train Meta's AI. Meta terminated the arrangement stating expectations weren't met. The employees of the firm claim they had to review obscene or intimate content. Examples mentioned include a man leaving his glasses on, on a nightstand, where his wife later came in an undressed, instances of glasses wearers engaged in intercourse, etc.

So 1100 people are out of work. Meta says they axed them for poor performance/redundancy. The company says "that's bull" and it's because employees raised awareness about what was being recorded.

Sucks for the folks out of work. With regard to the users, I personally can't feel bad for anyone who willingly brings a Meta device into their home or who uses their apps. As for third parties, who don't want to find themselves part of a porno they didn't agree to star in, I guess people need to add "glasses go in the drawer" to their pre-coitus checklist. Maybe just file all Facebook and Insta users under "unfuckable" and call it a day.

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"Are they still alive?"

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Cover of Utopia Zukunftsroman #299, 1961 by Karl Stephan. I'd never heard of it but it reminded me of the cover art for Truckfighters' album "Gravity X" (which itself is from the cover of an issue of Space:1999). Turns out he didn't do that cover but he did actually do some work for Space:1999.

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Were you blessed to experience this masterpiece? 😼

I played a little PSO on Dreamcast but never got far; spotty dial-up made it difficult to enjoy online play. Still a console "MMO" was mind-blowing to me at the time, and it was a beautiful game. (Q3A became my primary addiction. Much easier to just connect, mindlessly frag for a few, and not be upset when someone inevitably picked up the phone and starting dialing without listening for the modem first.)

I've emulated Dreamcast PSO on my Steam Deck and I know private servers still exist for Dreamcast (and it can made to get back online with an RPi and a little fiddling) but is Blue Burst the preferred game these days? PC version? I'm tempted to give it a proper playthrough sometime.

piracy

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If you know, you know

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Had to look it up myself. The song was used as the main theme to an older web miniseries about a fictitious scene group. Just watched through the first episode and it tickled some nostalgia; mIRC, ICQ and such. Might have to give the rest of it a watch.

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Grand Theft Auto LM Edtion

KEEP LONDON TIDY

Photo taken from eBay but somewhere packed up is my own copy of GTA Director's Cut for the PSX. Rockstar hammed up the cockney slang/accent in the London 1969 cutscenes, and I remember enjoying the radio stations way more than the base game. Pretty sure there were some themes paralleling old spy films but it has been a minute since I've played. This might be the sign for me to finally revisit the classics.

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Bittorrule

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Neat, navigable UI. Pulls posters, metadata, etc. Can generate "trickplay" images so you've thumbnails when scrolling the progress bar. You can sync playback across connected clients (I mostly use that feature for multi-room music playback). Restrictions by account and/or tags so the little ones don't end up watching Ichi the Killer, Saló, your complete Cronenberg collection, or that library you created populated by a script routinely checking the e621 API for the latest animation uploads.

Runs in browser and on clients for Windows, Linux, Android, probably iOS too but homie don't Apple. Took every bit of space but I even sideloaded it onto my old Samsung Tizen TV (wouldn't actually recommend, little slow, build an HTPC or just nab an Nvidia Shield).

If you can get by without any/all of that, nothing wrong just browsing directories and playing media with your local player on a single device. In my case I'd need to set up overly complicated network shares and then configure every single device I want to have access. I'd need to change how I organize my libraries, then probably spend a little time writing an ansible playbook (that'd only really be worth it when adding new devices in the future) but... no thanks.

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Bruce Lee Collection *in original language*?

If I'm to believe the AI overview (as you said, Google is useless), Enter the Dragon was the first film to feature his actual voice and it's an English film. I don't think I have but one audio track for that . Earlier stuff is dubbed. Search result explanations is that many Hong Kong movies at the time were shot silent then dubbed afterwards. That would make sense, since the "Chinese" audio track I have for Way of the Dragon seems to fit the lip movements rather precisely but it isn't his voice. I'd have to check the other films to confirm they're the same.

Your list, sure you're aware, matches the Bruce Lee Criterion Collection set. I'd be adding "criterion" to the searches, if you're not already, and hoping someone has full-set rip with multi audio and subs. I got remarkably lucky and my local library actually had the Criterion set (along with some "Universal Horror" Karloff and Lugosi films) so I was able to check them out and rip them myself. Depending on where you are and your local infrastructure, might be a good shout to check your local library too.

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Bro left freedom on read

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The 2A crowd opposed to the current regime isn't declaring war for the same reasons the people bold enough to cry out loud "please, now is the time to shoot these people" don't find the stones to do it themselves. Nobody wants to be the first. Nobody wants to risk winding up in a sting trying to recruit/join others. Nobody wants to go it alone and end up a crazed, lone gunman that maybe clips one head off the hydra before their own brains are splattered by a sniper team and their family is left with a closed casket and the shame of whatever propaganda gets cooked up to explain their actions. "He was a bad dude. A real bad guy. It has been said he had terabytes of transvestite furotica and a pet cat named Karl. He once took a picture of a rainbow. A disgusting man." Then, two weeks and two fresh heads later, the media cycle has moved on and the world is just a little worse than before.

It's not worth it if they're still comfortable. It's not even worth it if there's a sliver of hope to continue eking out a tolerably miserable existence - "at least I'm not dead." They'll carry on until there's a knock at their door then either go out in a hail of gunfire or hand over their arms and freedom because "False, indefinite imprisonment? At least I'm not dead."

That was mostly directed at OP, who is welcome to show us how it's done. To your own point - Years ago, and probably still, "tanks and drones" was a routine troll over on /k/ and the answer to it is always "Asymmetric Warfare." You don't go toe-to-toe and fist fight the wrecking ball swinging toward you. You blast the tracks off the crane. You hydrolock the engine. You make people too scared to sit in the operator's seat. Guerilla tactics, sabotage, etc.

You also don't police with military drones. You surveil and exact precision strikes. The second the American military launches missiles at Americans in America, we'll have that civil war that nobody with a brain actually wants. In our current political climate I genuinely believe that would kick things off. Point of no return, war were declared, hope you stockpiled canned goods and water because the supply chain is getting disrupted.

As for tanks, you can ruin the streets with them to stick them on the corners but it'll only be a show of force - an intimidation tactic. Tanks are rolling shields for infantry and other equipment, with a few bullet hoses and a big gun to blast encampments and other tanks. They also need those same foot soldiers, willing to kill their fellow citizens, to defend them from folks flinging molotovs or dropping DIY explosives down the barrel.

If you've got a water jug of pre-1982 pennies, that you haven't been bothered turning into pizza and beer or selling for the slightly higher scrap value, and you never stared at it and thought "I could smelt these down into cones because... I just really like the shape of cones," you're not trying hard enough to break the illusion that you're already defeated.

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Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]

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Going back roughly a decade you can find blog posts and some bits on Twitter. I don't see anything outright gay-bashing but his moral worldview, when he speaks on the matter, seems to be shaped by his Catholic faith. I don't think he hates homosexuals, and I can't guess at how his beliefs effect others (who for, or how, he votes and such), but he certainly seems to have a moral opposition and hasn't since stated otherwise that I am aware.

If you need a smoking gun, here's a quote from Twitter around 2017. Context is that this apparently stemmed from the removal of developer Larry "Crell" Garfield over "Gorean" (?) beliefs or participation in that subculture. Relating to some BDSM, male-domination, female slaves "Gor" novel series, that I cannot be assed to dig deeper into, and concerns he'd carry the "misogyny" into into the workplace. Anyway:

The Drupal community is treading perilous waters right now. Risk of excluding more members than just Crell. Careful with moral equivalence! It's a heck of a lot more nuanced than that. But basically, if the criteria for being part of the Drupal community anymore is "Must both publicly and privately support Gay marriage, etc." then... I think I might be excluded.

As an atheist looking in, I find Abrahamic faiths fundamentally incompatible with homosexuality. Having a gay Christian marriage, for example, is an absurdity to me. To be clear I'm not personally opposed to it. I find very much wrong with his faith but I don't believe Jeff is wrong about his faith. But kudos and power to whoever wants to lie to themselves and retcon Christianity in order to believe (what I perceive to be) a bigger, more comforting lie. If we can keep eroding at it maybe we'll finally get over the hatred and hangups it causes, or at least no longer be able to point to it as a justifying source.

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Sesame Street is full of life lessons

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You had it in the form of the comment, made by the person they were replying to, calling out tokenism on the show. That was your context. All they did was ask, in response, if those characters were what was being called out because they seemed "a bit much." Which isn't gay bashing or racist on its face. All it tells you is they felt those characters were exemplary of tokenism for whatever reason. You could've worked all that out if you'd acknowledged the context you already had. Instead you bit their head off over a slight you made up in your head. Damn. :-/

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How/what to start self-hosting?

What are your other hobbies/interests? What are some things you're completely uninterested in but it's annoying shit you would really like a better way of handling? Got some answers? Now check the awesome self hosted page to see if there are any existing solutions that look promising. If so, now you know at least some things to host.

How to go about it? When I started I was an idiot kid, on Windows ninety-something (or maybe ME), running Apache, MySQL and phpBB. Copy-pasting snippets in Notepad and not comprehending everything. I found desktop Linux later, learned about init systems, watched that go out the window with systemd, etc. I was installing Ubuntu on every beige clunker I could get my hands on back when the Beryl (Compiz) cube desktop video went semi-viral. Eventually moved on to Arch, learned more about CLI tools, editing configs, etc. If you have something that can host VMs, and you want to play with mock bare-metal setups where you create the users, directories, set permissions, blah blah blah - VMs aren't a bad way to go. It's good stuff to learn and know. Gives you an excuse to play with tmux's synchronized input feature, maybe learn some Ansible, and whatever else. If you just have one dust collector sitting around, start trying distros on it. Mess with stuff til it breaks, boot into install/recovery media and try to unbreak it, repeat. As long as it's fun (or tolerably annoying enough to reach some end goal).

I've personally gotten lazy and I'm nearly all-in on containers. A few things are manual but I've come to like Docker. I do still manage mine with compose files, even on my TrueNAS system with their "apps," because compose files are easy to read, keep track of, and modify. My non-TrueNAS machines, I use Docker + Portainer. I should maybe look into podman and quadlets but haven't bothered yet.

My recent hardware went from RPi4B to Thinkcentre mini PC to building out a 2U TrueNAS system. A PoE switch powers a Home Assistant Yellow and a few cameras. The RPi was repurposed to only host Homepage, NUT (server, watches my UPS and tells more power hungry machines to shut down during outages) and might eventually host Grafana if I ever get into learning it. Another 4B is my Pi-Hole. The Thinkcentre has an 8TB external plugged in and scheduled rsync tasks, on the TrueNAS machine, push back ups of my more important files to it. It also has a couple users set up strictly for running game servers (ioquake and teeworlds at the moment). Those aren't containerized and things like rcon, config management, map rotation, mods, etc are all handled manually.

TrueNAS hosts everything else. If you need ideas based on what others are hosting, here's some of what is on it:

  • Jellyfin, for TA (see below) and my legally obtained DVD backups.
  • TubeArchivist, (TA) for backing up YouTube videos, descriptions, comments. Has a Jellyfin plugin so your backup library is watchable in JF
  • Homebox, for home inventory management. I use it to keep track of my tools mostly. You can have locations, sub locations, items... if I pull a rail of sockets, stick them in my toolbag, then carry it out to the shed - so long as I bothered to update their locations in Homebox I won't waste time digging in the back of my truck, tool chest or other bags because I can't remember where I last used my 1/2" drive 14mm deep impact. It's a mildly inconvenient extra step to essentially "check in/out" my own tools, as if I'm working in an aircraft hangar or I'm doing IT asset management, but I find it worth it.
  • LubeLogger, for keeping track of vehicle service. Early this year I put a lot of money into fixing my truck. A lot of tools, fluids, and parts to handle a broken water pump and do some preventative maintenance. Still a quarter of what a shop might've charged. Since I'm becoming my own mechanic, I wanted something to properly record what I do and how much I spend on it. LubeLogger fits the bill.
  • Factorio, for the factory must grow.
  • Dawarich, self hosted GPS logs. Seems decent but I might shop around still. I just wanted an alternative to Google Maps for tracking my travel history.
  • Audiobookshelf, for some audiobooks but mainly for archiving a small handful of podcasts.
  • Romm, because I'm compelled to hoard old games and occasionally even play them.
  • Immich, because I'm not paying Google to store my photos.
  • FreshRSS, because there's still a dwindling number of sites that don't force you to visit them to read an article in its entirety. Mainly for Hack A Day, a couple devlogs from game makers, the latest CVEs, some global news sites, NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" (APOD), etc.
  • Samba, for some SMB shares that family can dump files into
  • ClamAV, because family is dumping files into their SMB shares

I'm looking at hosting lemon-manuals (successor to charm.li). It's basically a massive collection of service procedures, bulletins, fluid/torque/etc specs, and so on for decades worth of automobiles. Stuff the industry would like to force you into paying AllData, Identifix, or whoever for. I just haven't had a chance to review their provided "server." It's also over 1TB. It's overkill when I'm only working on three vehicles (mine and my folks') but I'd like to have it all in case an auto industry lawyer tries to shut them down or i inevitably get a new set of wheels.

I've also got intentions of implementing some sort of documentation system but I haven't settled on one yet. It's not really for me. I can read my configs and go off plain text. Mainly it needs to be simple enough for my family to work with. My homelab has a bus factor of Me. Whoever has to deal with it when I'm gone needs to know enough to retrieve my encrypted password database so they can get into my emails/bank account to cancel/pay for things or whatever, back up any media of mine they want to keep, back up their own stuff, probably some instructions on how to burn their shows/movies/music back to discs, and shut everything down. Because one day things will break, servers they don't understand will have failures, they'll sell the hardware or give it away to designated friends/family members who can hopefully use it... all that unhappy stuff most of us don't think about until it happens. In fact some sort of contingency plan should probably have been the first thing I recommended, but with some luck you've read this far and will put your own into place.

Anyway, hopefully something in the above rambling helps you on your way.

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What game recently hooked you on the Deck, more than on PC ?

Instead of a gaming computer, the last time I had some spare cash, I built a NAS. When I had a little again, but not enough to really build out a high end rig, I got the OLED Deck and immediately bought Factorio. I'd been binging Factorio content, recently found some channels like Dosh Doshington, DocJade, etc and knew I wanted in. For a PC game, that really wants a keyboard and mouse, it plays friggin fantastic on Deck.

More recently, because I was watching SMW romhack players a while back and Pangaea Panga just released Super Dram World 3, I've gone all in on learning Kaizo Mario games. Panga's "Kaizo Kindergarten" is a great intro, along with "2Kaizo2Learn." "Joy of Kaizo" is a beautiful dedication to Bob Ross' "Joy of Painting" where level backgrounds are recreations of paintings from actual episodes of the show. It also features difficulty options and the beginner mode is pretty noob friendly. At least for someone like me who hasn't played SMW since my SNES was hooked up in the 90s. Anyway, if you've fond memories of SMW it's almost a crime not to revisit it and its hacks, either on a Deck or any portable emulator.