#Internet of things connectivity provider

[asgardian--angels]

things I wish I could relive for the first time again:

that magical window where you finish a new piece of media, having watched/read it all by yourself with no fandom contact whatsoever, and you are just so happy about it, and full of interesting theories and takeaways, and just in love with it as a gorgeous piece of art.

because I swear to god as soon as you join the fandom for anything, you're bombarded with how you're supposed to view characters and their arcs, how you're supposed to morally and ethically judge the plot and the ways it apparently failed to present the right message, and if you don't you'll either be shunned for not sharing the popular headcanons or you'll be harassed for not criticizing the source material enough.

like how is it that the fans of a piece of media are also the ones being the most negative about it? If I like a show or a movie or a book, well, I liked it. That's kind of the point. I'm actually not here to tear it apart and talk about how it didn't live up to standards other people had! I enjoyed it for what it was, and forcing myself to find negative things to say about it doesn't actually bring me more enjoyment of it or reap any benefit to me. Fandom's a double-edged sword; you want to join a community to share your love for a piece of art, and the price you pay for a modicum of joy is a mountain of negativity. that's one main reason that I never engage with fandom until I'm completely done with a show, because if I was plugged into all of that commentary and discourse during the process, I'd be completely colored by how I'm expected to interpret everything this piece of art is presenting to me without being able to even form my own opinions.

[headspace-hotel]

Y'all

Im not on tiktok and never have been, but I downloaded RedNote just to see what is up, and I am witnessing something truly amazing

The Chinese user community is giving the American tiktok refugees an overwhelmingly warm welcome, meanwhile the American users seem to have collectively agreed that not only will they not let the app be taken over with English and they will provide Mandarin subtitles for everything, they are LEARNING MANDARIN. Ive scrolled through so many videos of Americans offering greetings in Mandarin to try to acclimate to the new environment and be respectful, and speakers of both languages are posting lots of tutorials on language basics and internet slang in Mandarin

My God, there is an AMAZING outpouring of curiosity and delight among everyone to learn about each others cultures and daily lives. People are posting videos of landscapes, cities, towns, and natural areas in USA and China, posting recipes and traditional foods, vlogs of everyday life, and reaching out to find people with similar hobbies.

And it's not just young people! There are loads of videos from middle-aged American guys who have come to post about fishing or motorcycles and are now happily chatting with Chinese users sharing the same interests using Google translate

One American guy who was like. in his 60's had a comment on one of his videos that was like "Red Neck?" and he replied "Yes!" and I just about fucking lost it

Also the Chinese users love, and I mean LOVE, Luigi Mangione. He is apparently broadly adored in China. There is SO much fanart and SO many edits.

There are many threads initiating Chinese users to ask questions of American users about the USA, and vice versa, and everyone on both sides is clearing up a lot of misconceptions. Some of the questions I saw a lot from Chinese users were: "Is it true that American parents kick you out of the house as soon as you turn 18" (not often, but sometimes) "Do you all really wear shoes in bed" (NO!!! Apparently a lot of characters in American sitcoms are shown lying in bed with shoes on which I never noticed before!) and "are there really guns everywhere" (yes).

For the most part Chinese content creators seem just overwhelmed by the sudden influx of hundreds of followers that are super enthusiastic about what they're doing. A lot of them have made posts about how initially they thought the uptick in follower count was some kind of error, or that there was some kind of joke or prank, but then they realized the interest and enthusiasm was genuine and now they're welcoming all the newcomers.

I found several posts by Chinese users saying that this felt like a really profound historical moment, where these previously separated worlds are suddenly smashing together and suddenly there is freedom to learn about each other's cultures and connect. One of them said something along the lines of "This is a 21st century Tower of Babel and even though I'm an atheist I hope God lets this tower stand." OUGH MY HEART.

The app itself works a little bit like a video-based version of Pinterest. It's not really my thing so I probably won't be on there long term but it's been amazing to see what's happening.

[mangos-draws]

Whenever I boot up my laptop it's: *closes ten thousand windows that pop open before the pointer is even loaded* "Ah, time to play this game!- okay. Nevermind Steam needs an update. Ah! Now I can pl- the game needs an update too. Anyway, let's play this other game- aaand it also needs an update. Well then, I'm gonna play this old game that isn't updated anymore until the others are done."

*few rounds of said game later*

"...alright. None of the other downloads are done yet. Oh right, I wanted to look up something else! Why is the browser so slow...? Ah, yes. The 82 updates in the background. Of course. Okay, but the page loaded, so let's see... ah! "Download software"! There we go! Now I just gotta wait for it to- oh.

Oh no."

[thedarklyblue]

asked my housemate where the router is bc the wifi's been down all day and he said oh you know that global computer outage? spectrum's down. and i was pretty sure that was bullshit.

long story short i found three different routers in this goddamn house and finally figured out the one we've been using and reset it and voila we have wifi again!!! i knew he was wrong. so there. dykes do it better etc etc

[gremlingottoosilly]

kidnapper!könig with a reader who can't give two fuck because her previous life is even worse. no friend, no social life and a shitty job ><!

You have to say - living in his basement is a living space improvement. The room is large, nice, filled with things that you like - like lego sets, cool gaming laptops with shriveled internet connection so you won't call for help, books and plushies that you never had funds to buy. It's nice, it was definitely built by someone who knows you well - and you couldn't care less if the guy who made it literally kidnapped you. Living in his basement without the need to cook, clean and take care of yourself...is an improvement... is an improvement... is an improvement... is You are not sure if your therapist would agree that, to cure your depression and anxiety, you had to be kidnapped by a handsomely rough mercenary with an unhealthy obsession over you, but you'll take what you can get and then a little bit more. You'd take Konig humping you like a dog every day of the week if that means never dealing with your manager ever again. Konig is...somehow nice too. He is arrogant in his desire to make sure you love him as much as he loves you, but he is trying to mean well, at least. He is nice when he pushes your panties down your legs and fingers you for at least ten minutes before showing his cock in you. He is restraining himself and you can clearly see it - and you like it about him. Somehow, he is acting more tender than anyone ever did before him...and you can't help but lean into his touch. You even ask him to stay after sex - he is usually a bit embarrassed after bottoming down in you and giving you a pill, but you want to cuddle, and he has to provide for your every wish!! Poor guy is forced to hug his precious girlfriend for at least three hours until she falls asleep...and then he simply drags you to the upper floor, his bedroom, because he already knows a pretty little loser like you wouldn't want to run from him anyway.

[obsessedhoneycomb]

Daddy Verstappen

Max Verstappen x fem!reader

Summary: Max would never do something you didn’t give him your consent for. …are you that sure?

Warnings: mentions of sex, slight manipulation (I guess?), obsession, slight possessive behaviour, pregnancy

Word count: 0.9k

A/N: I should be working but all I can do is scroll through the socials. Hormones are hormoning, PMS is coming down on me like a train. (I’m obsessed with pregnancy things now because my new man is up to have babies one day so that makes me feral.)

———

Max stood in the garage with the headset on, watching the screen with ongoing free practise. He insisted that this weekend he’s gonna be just watching, letting rookies have his car and get some experience on the track.

You were in the VIP lounge, chatting with some people, your buddy for the day was Max’s sister Victoria. Seeing all those people chugging their champagne made you thirsty, you were stuck on water or some lemonade, because of your very pregnant state.

Once you went out with the pregnancy, everybody nearly lost their mind, the internet shut down for a while.

MAX VERSTAPPEN IS GONNA BE A DAD!

NEXT GENERATION OF MAD VERSTAPPEN!

And etc.

You were happy with Max, he was your soulmate, providing you with a lots of love and support, and when he found out you’re pregnant (you didn’t want to tell him at first), he became even more possessive of you.

“What is this?” He asked holding a pregnancy test in his hand while looking at you.

You instinctively wrapped your arms around your belly and he understood. “It’s-“

“I know.” He took a few steps closer to you, eyeing your belly when he smiled smugly. “I got you pregnant.”

You shuddered at the way he said it. You two were just messing around with each other, not really caring about the way it goes. But Max cared more than you knew. He actually had plans with you. And you carrying his child was one of them. Because one night when you were celebrating his win in Brasil, you were so drunk that he took his chance and didn’t put on the condom and filled you with his very fertile seed to the brim.

And you were clueless.

Victoria noticed how you’re zoned out and she nudged your shoulder. “Hey, what’s up? Everything okay?”

You smiled. “Yeah, I’m perfectly fine. Just baby is kicking.”

Glancing at the diamond ring on your left hand, you bit into your lip remembering how Max insisted on marrying you for not birthing a child outside of the wedlock.

“I can’t believe my brother will be a father soon. Its so surreal but he’s the one who’s perfect for this role. And he couldn’t find a more perfect woman.” Victoria had tendencies to be emotional with you at how much she was happy for her brother.

You chuckled, caressing your baby belly with your hands, feeling the warmth and intense maternal energy flowing through your body. “He’s gonna be a little menace.”

Victoria gave you a confused look and then she glanced at your stomach. “Wait a- is it gonna be a boy?”

You just nodded, looking around the other people who were minding their own business. “Yeah, but don’t tell Max. It’s a surprise.”

———

“Oh, here’s my love and the mother of my child.” His voice made you shiver, his hand squeezing your shoulder a little as he gave you a gentle kiss on your temple.

“Here watching and waiting for you.” You smiled with warmth, your hand reaching for his waist. Through the time your connection grew stronger and you really loved him deeply.

“How’s the little one?” His hand wandered down to your belly, brushing over it with a soft hum.

“Giving me a little hard time today, but overall good. He’s-“ you immediately stooped when you realised that you said it.

Max shot you a look, he caught the information very clearly.

“He?”

You stared into his icy blue eyes, the intensity of them making you weak in your knees.

“It’s gonna be a boy.” You whispered.

Max smirked widely, cupping your cheeks, kissing your forehead. “You wanted to keep that information from me, don’t you? Tsk, tsk.”

When he was tsking at you, you knew you were in big trouble pregnant or not.

His fingertips grazed your jaw, making their way to the back of your neck. “You’re gonna give me a boy. That’s the sexiest thing I ever thought of. But still… you need to be punished for not telling me the exact moment you found out. I thought you learned your lesson the last time you kept something from me.”

You gulped and clutched on his shirt, while looking up with a desperate look. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean to. I wanted to surprise you. Really.”

Max’s face softened a little, he leaned down to peck your lips and he pinched your cheek.

“I know you had the best intentions. But… it doesn’t mean that I can’t have my fun with my pregnant wife. I know you love it. I bet you’re soaking wet just from the way we’re talking here.”

You shook your head no, but that was a lie. You felt it.

“Tsk. Don’t be a liar, sweetheart.” He slipped his fingers under your dress to the direction of your panties, just to dip them into the wet fabric, making you whimper a little.

“Hm… you’re making me crazy. All pregnant and craving me. I’m so fucking lucky.”

And with that he got down on his knees, his head disappearing under your dress, making you see stars with his tongue dancing through your wet folds.

———

Please don’t use my writings without a permission! Pictures found on Pinterest.

-

Tags: @chilling-seavey

[shanastoryteller]

okay now that i've had some coffee, let's chat

specifically, about how you act on the internet is a blueprint on how other people will treat you and how this intersects with the functionality of anon asks

if you've followed me for any significant amount of time, none of this will be anything i haven't said before, or i think be at all surprising to the rest of you, but i guess it bears repeating

so let's repeat: how you act on the internet is a guidebook on how other people will interact with you

like invites like. if you talk about a topic, you're going to get more commentary on that topic. this is because you're demonstrating that this topic is something you're comfortable talking about because you are talking about it

if you respond one way to something, people are going to reasonably assume you will respond the same way to them if they send you something similar. if someone asks for advice and you give it, people are going to think you're comfortable giving out advice and that asking for advice is an appropriate way to interact with you. if someone asks for information and resources and you provide them, people are going to think it's appropriate and acceptable to ask you for information and resources

i've seen this come up with other people before, where they do one thing and get frustrated and upset when that generates more of that thing. but people are just following your lead

now, anon asks

the function of anon asks is that the only way to reply to them is to respond to them publicly. you cannot privately reply to an anon

this means that every anon ask answered tells people how to interact with you. it is not and cannot be treated the same as a 1 on 1 conversation. it doesn't matter if that's not intention or what the anon wants. it's the reality of the situation

i don't answer non-anon asks publicly, with rare exceptions like it's funny or i think my answer to them would be interesting to others and non-upsetting for the askee for me to share (there are times i've given things like writing advice or commentary that i've thought might be interesting to the rest of you, but the askee had something in their original ask that i though they potentially wouldn't appreciate being immortalized on my blog)

if there's ever anything that someone doesn't want me to answer publicly no matter what, they can ensure this by just including it in their ask. even if i was inclined to be a hypocrite and ignore how people want to be interacted with (i am not) i am obviously not going to post it publicly if you ask me not to because then everyone would see me do that and think, rightfully, that i'm a huge jerk

when someone is rude or critical of me on anon, they're putting me in an unfair position. i can either not answer them or i have to turn their answer into a public performance, consumable by everyone. there is no other option

the vast majority of people use anon to say something kind or neutral where my public and private response would be basically identical and that's not what this is about. if i had an issue with anon asks in general, i wouldn't have them on

by sending criticism on anon, they're protecting themselves by not having any of their opinions or thoughts associated with them. nothing they say is connected to them and they're free of any consequences of their actions. in contrast, if i respond, my only option is to respond publicly. which means not only is my response attached to me and my name, but it has to be publicly consumable, i have to open myself up to the thoughts and commentary of everyone else if i'm going to reply

that means, before we get into anything the anon is saying, they're demonstrating both that they're a coward and they don't care about my comfort or my privacy - something they obviously highly prioritize for themselves

if that's the premise, why would i take kindly to anything they have to say after that, no matter what it is?

additionally, if i respond kindly and measured to these types of asks, that tells other people that it's an acceptable way to interact with me

it is not

if this ask had been sent off anon, my response would have been: "glad you enjoyed the story. feel free to toss any typos you notice into a comment (easiest way for me to keep track) and i'll correct them when i have a chance"

when it's just me talking to another person, i can choose to ignore or gloss over any awkwardness or mild rudeness because it's not going to come back to bite me. it's not a performance or a guidebook on how others will treat me. it's just you and me talking

but because it's anon, i have to keep in mind that i'm not just talking to them - i'm talking to everyone else too. so i have to establish that: i'm not interested in a beta, but am more than happy to correct typos; i don't care to hear about about how my typos personally upset you; and, in this case, that this is the type of message i don't want to receive on anon

because if i don't make it clear what i don't want, i'm going to receive more of it. that's simply a neutral fact of how people and the internet work

the more considerate you are of me, the more considerate of you i'm going to be in return

tldr: if you want a response meant just for you, you have to ask in a way that i can respond only to you. which isn't an anon ask. them's the breaks

[subjectsix]

KIP'S BIG POST OF THINGS TO MAKE THE INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY SUCK A LITTLE LESS

Post last updated November 23, 2024. Will continue to update!

Here are my favorite things to use to navigate technology my own way:

A refurbished iPod loaded with Rockbox OS (Rockbox is free, iPods range in price. I linked the site I got mine from. Note that iPods get finicky about syncing and the kind of cord it has— it may still charge but might not recognize the device to sync. Getting an original Apple cord sometimes helps). Rockbox has ports for other MP3 players as well.

This Windows debloater program (there are viable alternatives out there, this one works for me). It has a powershell script that give you a little UI and buttons to press, which I appreciate, as I'm still a bit shy with tech.

Firefox with the following extensions: - Consent-O-Matic (set your responses to ALL privacy/cookie pop-ups in the extension, and it will answer all pop-ups for you. I can see reasons to not use it, but I appreciate it) - Facebook Container ("contains" Meta on Facebook and Instagram pages to keep it from tracking you or getting third party cookies, since Meta is fairly egregious about it) - Redirect Amp to HTML (AMP is designed for mobile phones, this forces pages to go to their HTML version) - A WebP/AVIF image converter - uBlock Origin and uBlacklist, with the AI blacklist loaded in to kill any generative AI results from appearing in search engines or anywhere.

Handbrake for ripping DVDs— I haven’t used this in awhile as I haven’t been making video edits. I used this back when I had a Mac OS

VLC Media Player (ol’ reliable)

Unsplash & Pexels for free-to-use images

A password manager (these often are paid. I use Dashlane. There are many options, feel free to search around and ask for recs!). There is a lot that goes into cybersecurity— find the option you feel is best for you.

Things I suggest:

Understanding Royalty Free and the Creative Commons licenses

Familiarity with boolean operators for searching

Investing in a backup drive and external drive

A few good USBs, including one that has a backup of your OS on it

Adapter cables

Avoiding Fandom “wikias” (as in the brand “Fandom”) and supporting other, fan-run or supported wikis. Consider contributing if its something you find yourself passionate or joyful about.

Finding Forums for the things you like, or creating your own*

Create an email specifically for ads/shopping— use it to receive all promotional emails to keep your inbox clean. Upkeep it.

Stop putting so much of your personal information online— be willing to separate your personal online identity from your “online identity”. You don’t owe people your name, location, pronouns, diagnoses, or any of that. It’s your choice, but be discerning in what you give and why. I recommend avoiding providing your phone number to sites as much as possible.

Be intentional

Ask questions

Talk to people

Remember that you can lurk all you want

Things that are fun to check out:

BBSes-- here's a portal to access them.

Neocities

*Forums-- find some to join, or maybe host your own? The system I was most familiar with was vbulletin.

MMM.page

Things that have worked well for me but might work for you, YMMV:

Limit your app usage time on your smartphone if you’re prone to going back to them— this is a tangible way to “practice mindfulness”, a term I find frustratingly vague ansjdbdj

Things I’m looking into:

The “Pi Hole”— a raspberry pi set up to block all ads on a specific internet connection

VPNs-- this is one that was recommended to me.

How to use computers (I mean it): Resources on how to understand your machine and what you’re doing, even if your skill and knowledge level is currently 0:

This section I'll come back an add to. I know that messing with computers can be intimidating, especially if you feel out of your depth. HTML and regedits and especially things like dualbooting or linux feel impossible. So I want to put things here that explain exactly how the internet and your computer functions, and how you can learn and work with that. Yippee!

[elodieunderglass]

had an incident where someone behaved like how you described and they contacted my family and friends over it — I quit streaming for the public because I am genuinely very tired of that sort of behavior

it's very difficult to go to someone you care about and say "well, I know this stranger said horrible things about me, but they might not be entirely connected to reality and maybe their perspective should not be a reflection of me as a person" especially when whatever proof you have is, well, also horrible

I think this is in reference to me mentioning an experience I had. someone who was clearly unwell accused myself (and other people) of reblogging certain posts in a pattern designed to deliberately mock them. they believed that I and other mildly-visible bloggers were in a groupchat where we decided on coordinated attacks on this user, which we performed by reblogging (perfectly innocuous) posts at the same time. This is not true; if I had that sort of time, you can only imagine what I’d be doing with it (not bullying, for one thing, and certainly not bullying randoms.)

In my case, it was easy enough for me to go, there isn’t really a version of the universe where I have time, attention, interest, or inclination for all that. Even if they managed to get other people to believe them, the sheer logistical impracticality would make people think twice. Why the FUCK would elodie do that, I hope the sensible ones among you would think.

I, of course, would have no particular proof to bring to the table of me NOT being in a secretive groupchat dedicated to reblogging patterns, apart from everyone having to go “that doesn’t really sound like something Elodie would do. The logistics alone sound far too boring and tiresome for a person with 1150 messages in their tumblr inbox alone.” Which is not an easy thing to rely on.

It strikes at the heart of a very primal human fear, the knowledge that everyone can and will turn on you.

And it’s super unfortunate and rubbish when it comes from a distressed person who clearly needs help (that you are literally in no way able, qualified, or even reccomended to provide.)

I’m sorry. There’s no manual for this stuff. Contrary to what people seem to believe, you don’t get issued a secret instruction booklet on how to Behave Perfectly when you become moderately visible on the internet. It would be grand if there was such a thing! But in the absence we can only do our best.

I am very sorry this happened, and I think that stepping back from your online activities, even if it’s only an interlude while you balance yourself, is the most sensible approach. It is always super unfortunate when you have to pause doing something creative because you’ve attracted unwanted attention. Unfortunately, I believe it is the only way to achieve the distance needed to recover from the primal “under attack” feeling. In the “under attack” space you cannot create well or react well, so it is best to retreat, reflect and recover. Also, I promise, with distance, time, and something else to hang your attention on, the feelings will become manageable. 

I think that you will return to streaming at a point in your life where you are able to, and I will be very proud when you do. In the meantime, I am sorry that it happened, and I am sure that you have not been diminished in the eyes of people who love you.

[merl-merl]

Loved this post (all credit goes to the OP):

“I just realized that the reason the “male loneliness epidemic” discourse is so infuriating is because it’s basically a collective version of something that always happens to me in my serious relationships with straight men - men asking for sex via asking for “intimacy” and “companionship”, and being forced to take the “bid for intimacy” topic seriously when you know what it’s really about.

Everyone has run into an internet misogynist, who seems to hate women so much that women can no longer provide him with the patriarchal validation he craves to the point where people openly dunk on him for potentially being gay, but centering convos about the worst assholes on the planet isn’t very productive. Especially because even Good Men do this.

Have you ever been dating a decent man exclusively when he starts a conversation about “needs” and “physical intimacy” and “just wanted to make sure things are okay” and “just checking in” and while you’re waiting for him to spit it out, you realize… this is about how we haven’t fucked in X days. And even he hasn’t made that connection.

Have you ever dated a mostly ok man who talked a big game about consent and never pouted or guilted you when you aren’t in the mood, but if that goes on for a couple of days, he will start a conversation asking if “everything is okay” and “just wanted to communicate” and “things have seemed off recently”, and you’re like…. things seem off because we haven’t fucked in X days?

But you can’t say that!!! You’re painting him as a sex-crazed monster!!! He was talking about intimacy!!! How is he supposed to communicate about his needs if you’re just gonna call him a horndog???

“Needs”? Ooops, he meant, uh… things he enjoys doing only when I am comfy and safe and enthusiastically consenting.

But you haven’t wanted to do them in X days and now he feels like you don’t love him anymore 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺Some assurance would go a long way. Assurance and a fuck even further. And if you fuck him, this conversation gets dropped entirely. At least for the next X days.

This pattern of men being so emotionally backed up by patriarchy that they can’t recognize that they aren’t “putting out bids for intimacy”, they want to fuck and anything else is an emotional and physical cop out that doesn’t soothe the wound, is why I flip my lid at the first talk of “male loneliness”.

Men aren’t deconstructing why they have been groomed to be emotionally and sexually dependent on women to the point where friendship and familial support doesn’t soothe their loneliness; they are just finding new and creative ways to continue nagging us for not supplying them with the sex they have been told they need to feel whole.

We women allllllllllll know what men mean when they say “loneliness”. They don’t want friendship with any gender, the don’t want to get a massage to sate their touch starvation, they don’t want companionship with a woman: they want a woman to fuck and nothing else will do, and we have to therapy-speak our way around these conversations because they’re framed as anything but a request for sex, and I have fucking had it.

Men grow the fuck up and confront patriarchy directly without making women do it for you, challenge level: impossible”

[communistkenobi]

Why are people who are so gung-ho about media morality on here also so incredibly inconsistent about it on here? It’s like ‘hey don’t even *mention* xyz game or show or whatever but several of my main interests are things that are even more egregious’. I’m not a fan of anything with that rep in the first place but it’s always been really silly to me.

Because I don’t think it’s a position that is reached systematically or scientifically (I think this is true of a lot of positions people hold - again I’m including myself in this). It’s hard to systematically figure out what your principles are. Nevermind the fact that there are irreconcilable contradictions embedded within these principles. But that aspect is less interesting to me, because I suspect that it’s not actually about the show/movie/actor/etc at all a lot of the time, but rather that mass media provides a set of common and mutually intelligible terms and modes of understanding for people to interact with strangers on the internet. 

This is going to sound like an insane tangent but I promise it’s relevant lol: I had to read Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities for a course recently where he talks about the emergence of national consciousness and identity in Europe through the invention of the printing press. The production of texts meant to be read by many people is much easier to achieve when language is standardised (this is prior to mass standard education), and so to print something “in German” requires a social agreement about what the German language “is,” something he argues wasn’t really a thing in Europe prior to this point in history. So while many people across vast distances may speak many different local dialects that are all roughly ‘German,’ they now all read a singular, standardised “German language.” Anderson argues that this produces an experience of ‘simultaneous time’ across space, where you now feel a sudden connection to anyone who also “reads German” despite them being complete strangers and people whom you will never meet. This is part of his argument of how national consciousness gets cultivated, and allows people to articulate a common identity and set of goals with others whom they share no other bond with (Anderson’s definition of nationalism being “an imagined political community” - imagined in the sense of socially constructed and produced, not as in fake).

And I’m talking about this because I think a similar thing is happening here, but re: mass media. I use the term ‘mass’ media in the sense that it is consumed by mass amounts of people through industrialised telecommunications technology such as internet, television, and radio (and we can include celebrities as mass media here for the sake of convenience). And the internet is an interesting place because you are constantly interacting with an incomprehensibly large volume of strangers, and often these interactions are not in your control (harassment, people ‘barging into’ your mentions or replies, people lurking your blog, etc). In order for this to not be completely overwhelming, even in a relatively niche space like “fandom,” you need some shared set of terms to navigate around.

I think this is what leads to the emergence of the terminology of “pro vs anti,” a universal set of discursive terms that cuts across all of fandom space that allows you to position yourself in relation to a large amount of people you don’t know. It acts as a sorting and filtering mechanism (“proshippers DNI”), it acts as a declaration of belief that can be intelligible to many other people (“fiction affects reality” - an objectively vacuous phrase that is nonetheless freighted with a lot of social meaning to anyone within fandom), and it allows you to “engage in fandom” broadly as an online social terrain, allowing you to move from one fandom to another yet retain common terminology to communicate with others. Everyone knows that each fandom has their own set of ‘local’ community terms, which takes time and energy to learn and requires you to likewise learn the social stakes of each of those terms. Sorry to bring up Supernatural but as an example, you can read someone’s entire orientation towards the show based on whether they spell Castiel’s name as “Cas” (destiel shipper) or “Cass” (wincestie/bronly/J2er) + all the attendant opinions that come with those positions. But that takes a long time to learn, and it’s hard, and it requires you to declare a lot of your own positions re: the local context of a given show or video game, but the pro vs anti divide is universal and therefore extremely helpful in social navigation.

So, much like pro vs anti, I think when people say “DNI if you like irredeemable media” and then you go on their blog and they’re like, shipping South Park characters together, I think staking these moral positions re: mass media has less to do with any deeper principled convictions regarding the moral impact of art or how one should relate to it, but rather that you are engaging in a common discursive terrain that allows you to navigate a basically infinite sea of strangers in order to rapidly locate a common community of people. Again Harry Potter is instructive here - it was popular for a while for terfs to put Hogwarts Houses in their bio, particularly if they are crypto terfs. The ‘common terrain’ of transphobia in online spaces being used here is mass media - if I say Potterheads DNI on my Homestuck blog, I’m not really staking my position on the moral consumption of media, I’m signalling my political allegiances via the common language of mass media. This is perhaps why these stakes are so bafflingly inconsistent, because mass media is serving as a proxy for articulating political positions (which can likewise be inconsistent) as a result of the fact that they are much easier shorthands to communicate belief than outright stating your ideological commitments. Nobody knows what neoliberal means, or socialism means, or white supremacy or cissexualism or capitalism or imperialism or blah blah blah, because these are not part of the common terminology of fandom spaces, so declaring your positions using these terms will not get you very far. but people know that Harry Potter = transphobia, so potterheads dni! 

[donjuaninhell]

How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows 10/11 when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on how to build and set up your own personal media server using Ubuntu as an operating system and Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media, but to also stream that media to your devices both at home and abroad anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. Its intent is to show you how building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, TV, and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy various legal methods will free you to completely ditch paid streaming services. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+, Crave or any other streaming service that is not named Criterion Channel. Instead whenever you want to watch your favourite films and television shows, you’ll have your own personal service that only features things that you want to see, with files that you have control over. And for music fans out there, both Jellyfin and Plex support music streaming, meaning you can even ditch music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 (or FLAC) collections.

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards different budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server up and running using this guide will cost you anywhere from $450 CAD/$325 USD at the low end to $1500 CAD/$1100 USD at the high end (it could go higher). My server was priced closer to the higher figure, but I went and got a lot more storage than most people need. If that seems like a little much, consider for a moment, do you have a roommate, a close friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project provided they get access? Well that's how I funded my server. It might also be worth thinking about the cost over time, i.e. how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting up a server. Additionally there's just the joy of being able to scream "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, library deleting, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios through denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you step-by-step through installing Ubuntu as your server's operating system, configuring your storage as a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection between your server and your Windows PC, and then a little about started with Plex/Jellyfin. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I even share a custom #bash script that will make used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic and using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and had fun putting everything together, then I would encourage you to return in a year’s time, do your research and set up everything with Docker Containers.

Lastly, this is a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with various Linux distributions (mostly Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users, but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up for yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise. All you will need is a basic computer literacy (i.e. an understanding of what a filesystem and directory are, and a degree of comfort in the settings menu) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at first glance, it is only because I want to be as thorough as possible. I want you to understand exactly what it is you're doing, I don't want you to just blindly follow steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you will be much better prepared if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it shouldn't take more than an afternoon or two to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, depending on the distribution there's close to no bloat. There are recent distributions available at this very moment that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, running Plex or Jellyfin isn’t resource intensive in 90% of use cases. All this is to say, we don’t require an expensive or powerful computer. This means that there are several options available: 1) use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using 2) buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 3) order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution being lower than the file's internal resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware. This means we should be looking for a computer with an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This specialized hardware makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software. This takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and requires much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop for a used workstation on eBay

Any Intel processor from second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) onward has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that the cores support the H.265 HEVC codec. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors introduce support for 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors brought with them hardware AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to hardware transcode a H.265 encoded file, it will fall back to software transcoding if given a 10bit H.265 file. If you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go shopping shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 on a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CAD/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology. It was only introduced with the first generation Ryzen CPUs and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores that feature support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less of a used workstation you can pick up a mini-PC with an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync cores. These little processors offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw. Otherwise they perform equivalent to an i5-6500, which isn't a terrible CPU. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system and it does everything up to 6th generation consoles just fine. The N100 is also a remarkably efficient chip, it sips power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CAD/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CAD/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS. A 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive, but going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the type of power adapter it ships with. The mini-PC I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are easy to find and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build. It is also the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also the most easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a more limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this one from Western Digital or this one from Seagate. One of these external drives will cost you in the area of $200 CAD/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up such as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people with larger media libraries (12TB+), who prefer media in 4k, or care who about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC or used workstatiom as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives into the case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with three to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives, if we configured our drives in a RAIDz1 array we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, we don't need anything with hardware RAID controls (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform perfectly fine. Don’t worry too much about USB speed bottlenecks. A mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but many people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, search for drives designed specifically for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7. They will also often make use of CMR (conventional magnetic recording) as opposed to SMR (shingled magnetic recording). This nets them a sizable read/write performance bump over typical desktop drives. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS are both well regarded brands when it comes to NAS drives. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark quite often when there is nothing at all wrong with that drive. It will likely even be good for another six, seven, or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, an .ISO of Ubuntu, and a way to make that thumbdrive bootable media.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against the server release. The server release is strictly command line interface only, and having a GUI is very helpful for most people. Not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through the command line, I'm certainly not one of them, and I grew up with DOS 6.0. 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC. BalenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or you old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it directly into your router with an ethernet cable, and then plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Now, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running, and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down as we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing by two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, as it is capable of automatically checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving in this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is dying well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". This poil will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command will look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If as an example you bought five HDDs and decided you wanted more redundancy dedicating two drive to this purpose, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this is known as RAIDz2 and is able to survive two disk failures.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that a pool is ready to go immediately after creation. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go right out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but we won't be dealing with them extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your Ubuntu user password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable. Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Our next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read and write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = /home/"yourlinuxusername"/dfree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, everything will appear to work fine, and you will even be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, but you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file next in the queue. And at the end it would reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around. 99% of the time they’ll go through that second try, but this is still all a major pain in the ass. Especially if you’ve got a lot of data to transfer or you want to step away from the computer for a while.

It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and look for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window. In the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is sluggish, adjust the display options. Lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, barring edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in a corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running. We’ve got Ubuntu up and running, our storage array is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex. It just works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too, even if it is rougher around the edges. Some people run both simultaneously, it’s not that big of an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers, but as a quick run down, consider some of the following points:

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things: for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly or yearly subscription basis) in order to access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) or automated intro/credits detection and skipping, Jellyfin offers some of these features for free through plugins. Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said, Jellyfin's Android and iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android and iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. But that $6 fee gets you a mobile app that is much more functional and features a unified UI across platforms, the Plex mobile apps are simply a more polished experience. The Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and the iOS and Android versions are very different from each other.

Jellyfin’s actual media player is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files unless you've got it set up a certain way. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I had a pretty easy time getting my boomer parents and tech illiterate brother introduced to and using Plex and I don't know if I would've had as easy a time doing that with Jellyfin. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV in the office and the Android TV app for our smart TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

[voftdubsofficial]

Do you like how chaotic and mean spirited homestuck^2 has become????

Oh boy do I have so many thoughts about this topic haha. This is going to be a long one and I’m sorry in advance.

Personally I absolutely love Homestuck^2 and Beyond Canon. Tbh I wouldn’t be putting so much effort into a dub of it if I didn’t. And when it comes to Homestuck^2 and the epilogues, they were made to evoke specific emotions and the fact that some people feel that it was “mean spirited” and “chaotic” means that they are doing their job well.

I’ve always stated that, while one of the major themes of Homestuck proper was about being a kid growing up on the internet, one of the major themes of Post canon Homestuck is about living in the world as a traumatized adult. I may be a little biased about this because I waited to read the epilogues until I was 20 and felt very connected to the 23 y/o cast of post canon, but it struck me as very relatable watching the way their lives were playing out. Anyone past high school knows that when you finally get out into the real world, a lot of things and people change, even the ones you’ve grown incredibly close to. Some end up incredibly depressed, some end up fully occupied by their jobs and responsibilities, some become people that you barely even recognize anymore and no longer like, and some end up disappearing one way or another. It’s the way of life and it was really relatable to read through.

Another part of it is trauma and how the story has affected our cast. I think a whole lot about what comes after the story, how the protagonists return to their lives, how the adventures have changed them. When it comes to Homestuck, these were kids who were plucked from their normal lives at 13 years old and for some even younger, a time in your life you’re supposed to be doing the most growing up and maturing, and they had to spend it in a traumatizing life or death scenario that caused them to watch their friends die multiple times over. And then… they’re just dropped into the new world as gods, disconnected from society yet trying to just exist within it as well. There was no way for them to end up with a perfectly happy ending, not without a lot of bumps along the way.

Similarly the main conflict of the story is once again about endings. Much like in Homestuck proper Calliope is cast as an insert for one side of the fandom, however this time the other side is cast as Dirk. With Dirk being the side of the fandom that is scared for the story to come to an end, scared for him and all the friends he cares about fading away in to non-canon, scared to the point that he makes himself the villain to keep the story going. Calliope is the side of the fandom that just wishes for Homestuck to have an ending, attempting to rip the narrative away from Dirk, trying to stop his plans on Deltritus, and even so far as placing the candy timeline in a black hole completely severed from canon. I think it does a really good job of representing both halves quite nicely.

Speaking of meat and candy. They both are also meant to evoke specific emotions. The epilogues as a whole do a really good job with making you feel specific way. With the whole thing being text with no pictures, it feels a lot less accessible to the fandom because it’s not what we’ve expected from homestuck in the past. It already starts you off feeling off, just like John is. Then as you go on slowly you get more and more comfy before you’re given The Choice. Meat or Candy? Meat presents you with a story that is grounded, familiar, canon. Something that feels a lot like the Homestuck you know. While candy provides you with something that feels… off, unsettling, non-canon. In a way you can’t really pinpoint until John states that he feels it too. And there’s a lot of things that help provide this but the one I want to point out is Gamzee. He’s present all throughout the candy epilogue, showing up in places no one wants him and places he shouldn’t be. However, when a piece of canon finally pierces into the isolated timeline, when Vriska falls from the battle with lord english, the clown finally dies. Stuff like this just shows how well post canon does at making you feel the things it wants you to.

Overall the main point i’m trying to make here is that post canon in general is really good at making you feel emotions that match the themes and tone it’s trying to get across. It’s a coming of age story not for teens but for adults. So if you’re feeling like the story is chaotic and mean spirited, that’s because you’re supposed to. And I think that’s pretty cool.

[nopanamaman]

How does the stalker business work?

Loredump. October 2023

A web of alliances, insiders, clients, and territorial disputes - this is what forms the stalker business, a domain that’s as illegal as it is profitable.

Today, we’ll delve into the basic origins and inner workings of this peculiar profession. Let’s find out how these glorified marauders operate!

How did the stalker business develop?

The stalker business emerged almost as soon as the Zone itself was born. But, much like every structure based around the Zone itself, it became more refined - and more corrupt - as years went on.

What started as individuals travelling the Zone completely on their own accord grew into a network of organised groups with their own informants, clientele and designated territories. Yet when it looked like major alliances had become fully solidified with a couple of large groups operating across vast stretches of the Zone, the development of the internet put a dent in the system.

Yura: Do I really need to know the territorial policies of 70s factions Sergei: YES Olya: No.

As many information-gathering and order-related operations moved online, doing business in smaller groups became a more viable option. Nowadays, the majority choose to operate in gangs of up to 30 people.

Since the business has grown more decentralised and, in a way, accessible, the competition within it has increased dramatically. Territories are less clearly defined and run-ins with members of rivalling gangs are commonplace. When it comes to the human factor, it’s more dangerous than it ever was.

How are the little groups organised?

Modern stalker groups are typically formed around somebody who has direct connections to potential clients or those able to nicely aggregate information about the Zone’s current state. So any group needs at least one product reseller and one strategic leader, which can sometimes be the same person.

The latter is true for Sergei's group, for instance.

He is responsible for processing orders, evaluating the delivered artefacts, reselling them, gathering up to date information about the Zone’s landscape and traffic, and helping the available stalkers plan their trips accordingly. It’s a heavy workload, so having just one person performing all of those tasks wouldn’t be manageable on a larger scale.

Obviously enough, smaller groups are more reliant on the quality of their individual members, even more so when they have a specific role to fill. If we use known members of Sergei’s group as examples, they fit pretty neatly into the following roles:

Radar (радар). Formerly fulfilled by Kolya – a stalker with an outstanding sense for anomalies. Irreplaceable for navigating the more treacherous parts of the Zone. Yura was going to inherit that role.

Doctor (доктор). Self-explanatory. While it’s recommended that all stalkers undergo some form of first aid training, it never hurts to have someone with a deeper knowledge of medicine on the team. This role was filled by Nikita.

Insider (свояк). As the name suggests, it’s a person that helps in various aspects of stalker work by providing client contacts, guard post information, info about other gangs’ operations, and so on depending on their position. Insiders don’t usually take part in actual trips or even work with specific stalker groups, but Olya is built different.

Ram (таран). The muscle of the group. You don’t need to be especially physically fit to navigate the Zone,but when things become dire, it absolutely helps. This was Sergei’s role when he still travelled the Zone.

These are arbitrary designations and many don’t fit into one particular role. That said, creating a balanced group of 3 is easier when there’s a fair understanding of each person’s strengths.

Yura: Oh, kinda like video game classes! Sanya: Yeah, I guess. Yura: So who would I be? Sanya: Support.

What does the typical work cycle look like?

An order is either placed on an online marketplace or is mailed directly to a trusted trader. The trader then passes the information to the strategist, who analyses the current Zone layout, as well as the latest available information about the placements of various artefacts and anomalies.

The strategist then determines the optimal routes to retrieving the ordered goods. Some use special software to aid in the process. The service price is then estimated based on the difficulty of retrieval and transportation. If the initial price suggested in the order is lower than this estimate, price negotiations will ensue.

Once the minimal price is agreed on, the actual planning starts. A group of three is gathered from the pool of available stalkers. They are all informed about the mission specifics and the route they need to travel - this is when the team can discuss and make adjustments to the plan.

Nikita: No, no, this route will be way too stressful for Olyechka. Perhaps, she should sit this one out? Olya: If we don't make this route shorter, Nikita won't come back, I'm afraid. Nikita: Well, aren't you a treat. Anyways, Serozha, my leg has been getting worse and I won't make this climb. Olya: Perhaps, you should sit this one out.

After the artefacts are delivered to the trader, their quality is evaluated. Stalkers tend to pick up whatever valuables they find on the way, which means extra cash for them and more work for the trader.

Once the evaluation is complete, stalkers are paid off and the products are resold at a significantly higher price. The artefacts that were specifically ordered are exchanged for the agreed upon amount of money and the extra stuff is peddled to other high-paying customers.

Since selling artefacts is a risky and complicated endeavour in itself, most stalkers are content with the paychecks they get from their trader.

Finally, when everything is done, stalkers may anonymously share information about their trip to the online community. But considering the competitive nature of the business, not everyone is willing to help out their fellow colleagues – or really, not everyone wants to talk about the things they’ve seen.

What is the online stalker community like?

As was already mentioned, the internet has majorly changed how stalkers went about receiving orders and information about the Zone. It has become an important channel for communication and securing deals.

Firstly, all of the relevant platforms are on the deep web. Secondly, all of them are invite-only.

The three major platforms are:

Doska (literally “the board” as in bulletin board)

A marketplace where orders are placed and taken up by anyone interested, as well as an auction platform for selling off artefacts. Widely used by groups and stalkers who have not yet gained established clients.

Krematorii (crematorium)

A closed forum. Discussions, rumours, shitposting.

10K Crematorium karma

14KKM (as in 14 thousand kilometers, the approximate area of the Zone)

A dynamically updated map of the Zone. User-managed, hence chaotic and unreliable.

Users can mark locations of witnessed anomalies and artefact positions, which others can confirm or downvote. A marking needs to be confirmed by at least 4 people before it is put down and is removed if at least 4 people downvote it. All markings can be commented on.

Most of the community tries to maintain it more or less accurately for the sake of their own future missions, but there are malefactors that will add false markers to it. Should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Of course, it bears mentioning that there are plenty of fake online communities on the surface web. Those are rife with people roleplaying as stalkers, scammers, kids, and just shitposters. No actual stalker uses those for business.

Rules regarding the Zone

Though the information side of things has changed a lot, the core methodology of travelling the Zone itself remained the same. Sets of universal rules became solidified over the years, which can be described as a mixture of operational protocols and esoteric beliefs.

What are the basic operational protocols?

Basic operational protocols outline best practices for dealing with simple anomalies, traversing the Zone, bypassing guard posts, and handling difficult situations (mercy kills, painless death, encountering other stalkers).

Some common recommendations include:

use projectiles (usually bolts with pieces of cloth attached for visibility) to check for gravitational anomalies;

operate in groups of three - two do the job, the third one watches on;

do not consume any food or drinks you find;

avoid unnatural shadows;

do not stay at the Hollow for over 20 minutes (your body will start to decay);

do not approach the Town (your body will permanently distort);

do not handle fizzy clay without rubber gloves (will leave you debilitated or addicted to the substance);

always send the draisine back;

don't photograph ghosts;

etc.

They are objective results of many years of trial and error. Going against them is likely to end in death or injury regardless of your personal qualities. In other words, there is little dispute over the validity of these rules. The same cannot be set for the second ruleset.

What are stalker beliefs?

The Zone favours the miserable. The desperate, the broken, the lonely. The Zone favours ones that are willing to give up their whole being to her, to completely entrust themselves to her whims. She rewards dejection.

These are common truths to some and hogwash to others. There is no solid proof for any of these claims - how can there be? However, there is no happy stalker, and there is no living stalker without a scar. To many, that's evidence enough.

On top of that, there are some group-specific philosophies. They include:

the Zone is a holy place that needs to be revered;

the Zone is an ulcer of the world that needs to be cleansed;

the Zone is the new stage of Earth’s evolution;

the Zone is divine punishment;

the Zone is a point of contact with a parallel universe;

and many others.

These philosophies dictate how people go about their activities in the Zone in a more ritualistic sense. It’s hard to devise whether or not those little rituals have any effect that isn’t purely psychological.

There is a good number of people that hold a purely cynical view of the Zone. But whether they admit it or not, everyone gradually develops a sense of fear and reverence for it. How they compartmentalise it is a different question.

Conclusion

I could write more about the topic, but as of now, I think this general outline should suffice. The stalker business is a multifaceted enterprise to say the least, so hopefully this article has shed the light on its most essential aspects.

Perhaps, there will one day be a more in-depth follow-up! Who knows. As we continue to unveil the enigmatic layers of the Zone, only time will reveal the full extent of its mysteries... And the engimatic layers of shitty Stalker forums, I guess.

[mysteryshoptls]

SSR Azul Ashengrotto - Room Relaxation Voice Lines

I wonder how our newest little business campaign will come to fruition... Heh, oh how I so look forward tomorrow's sales numbers.

Summon: One will usually interact with more people on their birthday than any other ordinary day. In order to deepen personal connections, I must act strategically.

Groovification: I should dress myself promptly. I'd like to make the most of what little time I have available in the mornings.

Home: It's my private time from here on out.

Swap Looks: A wonderful morning.

Home Transition 1: I appreciate how everyone seeks me out for counsel... After all, the more I know of other people's quandaries, the better.

Home Transition 2: A moment ago, Deuce-san shouted his birthday greetings towards me with such fervor. I can't say I'm used to that sort of well wishing...

Home Transition 3: I've started seriously looking into stocks recently. It's never a bad thing to learn all you can before trading.

Home Transition - Login: I refuse to receive gifts as a rule, however birthday cards are another matter. I make sure to read through each one and keep them well.

Home Transition - Groovy: Not only did he wish me happy birthday before classes began, but he also intends to visit the Mostro Lounge... Epel-san is a model freshman.

Home Tap 1: Better sleep quality leads to a more productive performance during the day. It was absolutely worth investing in proper nightwear.

Home Tap 2: Whenever Cater-san graces the Lounge, there is an uptick in the number of customers we see. Now may be the time to unfurl yet another trendy new dish!

Home Tap 3: Hairstyle is an important factor when it comes to first impression. I am always careful to set it so as to give off a professional appearance.

Home Tap 4: Of course, I fully understand the sentiment that money is not a necessity when it comes to celebrating someone's birthday... Yet Ruggie-san takes it to a whole different level!

Home Tap 5: The internet may be quick with how it disseminates information, but sometimes newspapers can still provide unexpectedly valuable reports. How about you give reading one a try?

Home Tap - Groovy: You would like me to teach you some makeup tips? Of course, I don't mind at all. That is, if you are willing to pay a suitable fee.

Duo: [AZUL]: Epel-san, there's no need to gift me anything. [EPEL]: No need to shy away, Azul-san.

Birthday Login Message: [Yuu]-san. Have you, by chance, come to celebrate my birthday? Good timing, I had just hit a roadblock with what I was doing, so I welcome the change of pace. You're curious what this is? Well, it's a new board game. The other day, I only just barely lost to Idia-san, you see. I absolutely must figure out a winning play before our next bout...! Oh, are you intrigued by this board game as well? Perfect, how does a friendly match sound, as I work through possible strategies?

Requested by @oya-oya-okay.

[do-you-have-a-flag]

i'm just gonna call it that we need to practice mindful tech usage and security and i don't mean screentime tracking apps and vpns or whatever i mean starting from early childhood and going into adult wellbeing culture to encourage tactile hobbies and long-form work and the understanding of online devices as commodifying the user with spyware

i'm talking throwback word processors with the same ergonomics as regular smart devices for general educational work and dedicated subjects for working with digital technologies so you have theory in practice and then applying that theory in a contemporary work context. that's where you learn applications, digital safety, and how to implement the generative tools. separately. once you've already developed the critical analysis and expressive skills first.

i have been basically addicted to the internet since i was 13, i've had ups and downs with it, but i've always had a little bit of over caution when it comes to information and identity online. i overshare what i chose to but i think the break down of privacy as a norm when it comes to personal data tracking is genuinely awful.

i like algorithms in some places but i do not think this super-customisation is worth this panopticon of tech.

have you heard about how phone locations can still be triangulated when the phone is off? this is incidentally why if you are gong to protests and you think you are in danger it might be best to leave it at home. but generally if you want to avoid audio and video being used to build a marketing profile you can just switch it off and pop it in a bag or the next room. but with fb trying to make voice command smart glasses a thing (after snapchat and google both failed to sustain the same product) it bears caution that so called wearable tech such as glasses, pendants, watches, earbuds, ect.... even outside of smart cars there's the risk of passive listening for user marketing profiles. we already have location based advertising, ads that track your useage to predict your menstrual cycle or life events, public ads that react to nearby phones

i am going off on this tangent to say that i am not naïve to the fact that we already have to constantly dig into 'dark patterns' of settings to opt out of surveillance and commodification. i'm aware that the easiest path is to do nothing and use the shortcut machines even when they don't actually help or save much time or effort beyond selling you tools that already exist with a new price tag. i'm aware that the plagiarism software with no idea what it's talking about and runs on resource wasting pollution and underpaid remote human labour that also gets slapped in every function role despite basically being fancy autofil and pixel pulp not only has all of those issues but the lay person is either unaware or does not care and companies only care that it is a new way to pretend they're innovating. i know all this just like i know that mass automation is just exploitation unless it is balanced with social structures for all that mean emancipation from the need for labour.

but while i think all tech can be used for good, facilitating human connection across physical distance, carefully trained data analysis on a rapid large scale, removing the tedium of technical drudgery where needed, just providing light entertainment. but we have gotta be better about legislating, moderating, and use culture.

use culture goes hand in hand with convenience. it's why vinyl records are still trendy, not only are they good at what they do, but there is enough cool factor that the inconvenience becomes a feature. CDs are also convenient still! but CDs do not have the cool factor so they get wiped out by the convenience of streaming. playlists in streaming have a cool factor that radio does not despite radio still being convenient. and remember no matter how much streaming claims you can pay to opt out of ads that's usually something that you get payment tiered out of eventually so the convenience facilitated by accessibility is debatable the longer time passes.

looping back to my original point, if we can encourage an understanding of digital privacy as something you shouldn't be complacent about, that you shouldn't have to pay for tools to get out of the spotlight, that it is immensely embarrassing to be too into exploitation by tech companies and make that the problem of everyone around you. user control should be synonymous with convenience. customisability/personalisation through individual control rather than passive scraping. you can still commodify decorative tech.

we gotta make slop and babying algorithm brained tech usage cringe. people don't care to hear that it's immoral so just make them feel uncool at this point. because it is embarrassing that you have the universe of resources at your fingertips and you're too scared to do anything with it other than beg it to put words in your mouth. who cares if you're chronically online or too busy irl to learn a new skill. you are like a little bird pecking at it's own reflection, that's sad. try saying something mediocre and honest. we gotta stop tap dancing into technofeudalism just because we're too complacent to actually talk to each-other.