#USB-A Vs USB-C

[fonaccgadgets]

[xoshepard]

so apparently apple is using usb-c cables now which i didn't fucking know and of course the cables that come with the phone are usb-c on both ends so that you have to buy their stupid fucking charging blocks too and my idiot car decided that it refuses to connect to anything via bluetooth anymore, meaning until i get a usb-c/usb-a cable (ordered one that's supposed to get here today but it's looking more like tomorrow) i have to listen to the radio in my car, which is less than ideal bc i don't like the commercials, but i did hear edge of seventeen for the first time in ages this morning so maybe it's not all bad

[asharid]

Apple iPhone 16e: Evolusi Teknologi Smartphone yang Mengubah Permainan

Di dunia smartphone yang penuh kompetisi, Apple selalu berhasil mencuri perhatian dengan inovasi terbaru mereka. Tahun 2025 tidak berbeda, karena mereka telah meluncurkan Apple iPhone 16e, sebuah perangkat yang membawa teknologi smartphone ke level berikutnya. Artikel ini akan membahas fitur unggulan, kelebihan, dan alasan mengapa iPhone 16e menjadi pilihan yang tepat untuk penggemar…

[mahamid110]

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[netscapenavigator-official]

Honestly, SAE-J1772 and CCS1 wouldn't be that bad of a charging standard if they hadn't given it the USB Type B SuperSpeed treatment.

[androidaddictsx]

Gamesir X2S Android Controller Review and Comparison

The brand new X2S Controller from Gamesir is out so let's take a look and compare it to the older X2 model. Are the new features enough to make you want to upgrade? Let's find out!

The brand new X2S Controller from Gamesir is out so let’s take a look and compare it to the older X2 model. Are the new features enough to make you want to upgrade? Let’s find out! 0:00 Intro 00:51 Unboxing 01:43 Comparison with X2 03:42 Gamepad Tester 05:58 Programmable Features 06:29 Gamesir App 06:51 Genshin Impact Gameplay 07:42 Dead Cells Gameplay 08:25 Xbox Game Pass/Remote Play 09:04…

[kremlin]

after many years my old company has finally allowed people back into the office, haha, not to go to work, no no, solely to collect their belongings from their desks. i picked up my stuff and remembered what a psycho i was about my office back then, let me show you..

i set up an old VT-420 on a side of my desk to read my email on (to flex my computer dick) which is unfortunately a bit too yellowed now for me to post exposed but hilariously enough i did take the chance to fix the faulty RS-232 chip in it and i no longer get a bunch of keystrokes interpreted as ŸŸŸŸs randomly. the fix was great too, instead of having to throw the whole thing out like you'd need to today, i literally just had to pull the PTH chip out of its socket, didn't even need to desolder. nor throw the old one out. i blasted it with a blowtorch for about half a second and it's fine now.

(it is amber by the way, which is the best color)

the keyboard is another story, i think a lot of like, entry-level vintage computing people get this concept that every old keyboard is some treasure, and boy let me tell you, some of them make you want throw up, like the vt420's:

you'll have to take my word that the typing experience is pure ass, but if you look at this fucker for more than two seconds your blood pressure will start to raise. and i'm not just talking about the euro return key. where is the super key? and what is going on left of 'a'? did they decide to solve the age-old "caps lock vs ctrl" debate by putting both of them there (??) what the fuck is going on north of the arrow keys?!?! and even further north, 'help' is funny enough on its own, the fact its next to DO, a truly existentially puzzling key, makes it that much better. why is DO so wide?? why are there so many F keys? and apparantly 20 F keys wasn't enough, they had to go on and invent "PF" keys above the numpad. and it doesn't stop there..

the pre-USB world was pretty nuts, but most keyboards still had sane connectors like DE-9's, PS/2, DINs, etc, but not this one

it uses, a, uh, looks like an ethernet cable. weird. but look closer. six pins. AND, big honking square to key it specifically and make it incompatible with the very-similar already-existing 6P6C specification (why?) anyways, that's enough of this crap, moving on

this is the keyboard for my lisp machine, the famous "space cadet keyboard", i get so many fucking emails about this keyboard, christ almighty. people trying to buy it from me, it's a shame, the machines don't boot without them so seperating them to satisfy reddit guy wish fulfillment breaks my heart. it's a lot better. it's from an era where a good computer would set you back half a million and the hardware reflects it. honeywell made it, it's "solid state" insofar as that makes sense for a keyboard, uses the hall effect. there weren't any rats at my office but just in case i seem to have taped something to the underside:

lol. now for accouterments to cover those hideous eggshell white walls:

in order, openbsd, you know it baby, middle is a weird polish promo for the holy mountain, the last thing was a joke whose meaning has been lost to time. chicken and turkey!

i seemed to have been working on some very bizarre electronics projects, personal, during my workday:

god, what the fuck was this?

oh, duh, it's bort's hat. (??)

some reading materials. K&R C is a first edition, somewhat rare. the 9front manuals:

classic, natch. and a huge gear that's clapped

that's it. that's my office apparently.

[adafruit]

mini Sparkle Motion prototype - a tiny, fully-featured WLED board ✨🔌📏💡🌈

We're doing a lot of serious testing with our WLED mega-board, code-name Sparkle Motion .

While doing some holiday lighting projects, we also wanted something slim enough to slip into any design. It still uses an ESP32 for the best support, with USB-serial programming, 5A fuse, 5V level shifting + 100 ohm series resistors for pixel drivers, user/reset buttons, a user LED and onboard neopixel, JST SH analog/digital connector, QT I2C connector, 4 GPIO plus power/ground breakouts, and USB type C power/data input.

However, this version is made simpler and less expensive by dropping the DC jack and USB PD support: it's only for 5V strips if you want to power them directly (you could still drive 12V or 24V pixels, but you'll need separate power for them). Instead of a full set of terminal blocks for 3 signals, we only have two outputs, and they have to share the power and ground pins. It could also be used for a single two-pin dotstar LED setup. We kept the built-in I2S mic but dropped the on-board IR sensor - if you want an IR sensor, you'll be able to plug it into the JST SH port with a simple cable or solder it into the breakout pads.

The trade-off is that it's much smaller and slimmer, especially when no terminal blocks are soldered in by default: only 1.2" long x 0.785" wide (~1 sq in) x 0.3" thick vs. the original's 2" x 1.3" (2.6 sq in) x 0.55". To get it that small, we went 4-layer to give us a nice big ground and 5V plane in the middle and double-sided assembly. Coming soon.

[kde-plasma-official]

whats the status of like. using linux on a phone. it feels like there are two parallel universes, one that kde lives in where people use linux on phones, and one where if you google linux phones you discover theyre almost usable but they can barely make phone calls or send texts and they only run on like 4 models of phone

don't have much experience with linux on phone so anyone please correct me if i'm wrong but

one of the problems with phones is that every vendor and manufacturer adds their own proprietary driver blob to it and these have to be extracted and integrated into the kernel in order for the hardware to function.

as companies don't like to share their magic of "how does plastic slab make light", reverse engineering all your hardware is quite a difficult task. Sometimes there just isn't a driver for the camera of a phone model yet because no one was able to make it work.

So naturally, this takes a lot of time and tech is evolving fast so by the time a phone is completely compatible, next generations are already out and your new model obsolete.

Also important to note: most of this work is made by volunteers, people with a love for programming who put a lot of their own time into these things, most of them after their daytime jobs as a hobby.

Of course, there are companies and associations out there who build linux phones for a living. But the consumer hardware providers, like Pinephone, Fairphone and others out there aren't as big and don't have this much of a lobby behind them so they can't get their prices cheap. Also the manufacturers are actively working against our right to repair so we need more activism.

To make the phones still affordable (and because of said above driver issues) they have to use older hardware, sometimes even used phones from other manufacturers that they have to fix up, so you can't really expect a modern experience. At least you can revive some older phones. As everything Linux.

Then there's the software providers who many of are non-profits. KDE has Plasma Mobile, Canonical works on Ubuntu Touch, Debian has the Mobian Project and among some others there's also the Arch Linux ARM Project.

That's right baby, ARM. We're not talking about your fancy PC or ThinkPad with their sometimes even up to 64-bit processors. No no no, this is the future, fucking chrome jellyfishes and everything.

This is the stuff Apple just started building their fancy line of over-priced and over-engineered Fisher-Price laptop-desktops on and Microsoft started (Windows 10X), discontinued and beat into the smush of ChatGPT Nano Bing Open AI chips in all your new surface hp dell asus laptops.

What I was trying to say is, that program support even for the market dominating monopoles out there is still limited and.... (from my own experience from the workplace) buggy. Which, in these times of enshittification is a bad news. And the good projects you gotta emulate afterwards anyways so yay extra steps!

Speaking of extra steps: In order to turn their phone into a true freedom phone, users need to free themselves off their phones warranty, lose their shackles of not gaining root access, installing a custom recovery onto their phone (like TWRP for example), and also have more technical know-how as the typical user, which doesn't quite sounds commercial-ready to me.

So is there no hope at all?

Fret not, my friend!

If we can't put the Linux into the phone, why don't we put the phone around the Linux? You know... Like a container?

Thanks to EU regulations-

(US consumers, please buy the European versions of your phones! They are sometimes a bit more expensive, but used models of the same generation or one below usually still have warranty, are around the same price as over there in Freedom Valley, and (another side tangent incoming - because of better European consumer protection laws) sometimes have other advantages, such as faster charging and data transfer (USB-C vs lightning ports) or less bloated systems)

- it is made easier now to virtualize Linux on your phone.

You can download a terminal emulator, create a headless Linux VM and get A VNC client running. This comes with a performance limit though, as a app with standard user permissions is containerized inside of Android itself so it can't use the whole hardware.

If you have root access on your phone, you can assign more RAM and CPU to your VM.

Also things like SDL just released a new version so emulation is getting better.

And didn't you hear the news? You can run other things inside a VM on an iPhone now! Yup, and I got Debian with Xfce running on my Xiaomi phone. Didn't do much with it tho. Also Windows XP and playing Sims 1 on mobile. Was fun, but battery draining. Maybe something more for tablets for now.

Things will get interesting now that Google officially is a monopoly. It funds a lot of that stuff.

I really want a Steam Deck.

Steam phones would be cool.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 4, Wave 2, Poll 7

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and round here.

Elim Garak-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Qualifications:

He has PTSD due to child abuse, as well as a painkiller addiction due to a brain implant. He is also extremely gay. Like literally everybody who watches DS9 immediately understands this about him. He was explicitly played by his actor, Andy Robinson, as attracted to Julian Bashir, and his only heterosexual romance is truly painful to witness. Andrew Robinson has also said that he has had a one-night stand with Dukat, one of the main villains of DS9 and noted lizard nazi. Do with that what you will. His closest relationship onscreen by far is with Julian.

Propaganda:

This man. There is a reason so many people are obsessed with him. Former spy, current tailor, forever an incurable bitch. Guilty of many war crimes, including onscreen attempted genocide. Once intentionally blew up his own tailor shop (with him in it) because he didn't want to ask for help with something. In his very first scene on the show, he wears an shirt that strongly resembles a watermelon, propositions Julian Bashir, and leaves while canonically high on painkillers. He has PTSD due to child abuse at the hands of the head of the space lizard KGB, who is also his dad, and a painkiller addiction due to a brain implant he has to help him withstand torture. He tortures a main character in one episode, and then a few episodes later they start having regular breakfasts together. Once got high on Space Weed and started systematically murdering people while making ominous announcements about chess over the PA system. The Most Character Ever.

Anything Else?:

He once told Julian to eat his rod. It was about a futuristic USB stick (datarod) but he still very much said it.

Submitted by @convenient-plot-device

Ballister Boldheart-Nimona (Film)

Qualifications:

He has a boyfriend (and then they have a sort-of-breakup but they're back together by the end) and he has a prosthetic arm.

He’s gay and missing an arm.

He’s explicitly gay, in love with a man. He loses his arm then builds himself a prosthetic while on the run like a badass.

His boyfriend cut his arm off :( he uses a prosthetic now.

His arm got chopped off after being falsely accused of killing the queen, he spends the rest of the movie with a prosthetic metal arm. His arm was also chopped off by his lover, Ambrosius Goldenloin, during said false assassination.

His boyfriend cut off his arm

Canonically has a boyfriend and built his own prosthetic

Qualifies by both being canonically disabled (amputee) + canonically gay

Propaganda:

Please plz plz vote for him

His boyfriend cut off his arm. He made himself a prosthetic. He used his arm to block someone’s sword. He kissed his boyfriend. He has sad wet cat eyes, which isn’t relevant but still. He has them.

He’s so GOOD even though he’s having like the worst day ever (specifically talking about movie but webcomic also applies). He has the biggest wettest eyes how can you not root for him????

People love him! He kinda looks like a sad, poor little cat. A real soggy wet kitten man.Let's see. He and Ambrosius are lovers, or at least boyfriends, from the moment they're introduced. Ballister gets his arm chopped off by Ambrosius during the false assassination. Ballister spends the rest of the movie trying to convince Ambrosius and the kingdom of his innocence, with a metal arm replacing his missing one. It originated the phrase "Arm Chopping is not a love language!" Did I mention he's a main character too?

Is a science nerd, built his own prosthetic arm with his non-dominant hand, accidentally adopted a trans chaos demon of a 1000yo being

A knight, Nimona's best friend and father figure of sorts, but the plot mostly revolves around him- Ballister is framed for murder and has to hide while trying to figure out who framed him and how to prove he's innocent. Nimona becomes his sidekick (he didn't want one, she just showed up at his place one day like a very chaotic stray cat) and together they form a great duo against the corrupt government. This is complicated by Ballister's ex Ambrosius, who accidentally cut off Ballister's arm and is a bit brainwashed by government propaganda. Oops. You should watch Nimona it's great 💞🦈

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @foulfirerebel is the fifth submitter, and there were at least 7 others.

[capriciouscayenne]

An Okay-ish guide on How to find a good laptop for creating digital art on -2025

This is my first time making a post like this, but as someone who went from having very sparse technical knowledge to working helpdesk, I wanted to give my advice on drawing tablets/drawing workflows for comfort.

Something I ran into when trying to figure out a comfortable way for me to draw was the sea of like confusion when it came to drawing tablets. Initially, I was advised by a friend that a tablet like the Surface would be good for drawing and I really stuck to that closely- as it seemed like the alternative was to be stuck at a desk with a drawing tablet. This is not very comfy and also not very practical or easy for me to casually draw digitally. After becoming more technically literate, I realized that a 2in1 laptop serves practically the same function as a surface, is about half the price, and has a lot more power as a drawing "tablet" to also multitask things like music applications/ youtube in the background/ having a ton of tabs / ect...

So- here's a little guide on how to figure out what to look for in a laptop as of 2025!

Why 2in1? 2in1 laptops have a touch screen, can fold all the way back to a 'tablet mode' in case you like that sort of set up & come with a keyboard attached that's easy to use. Otherwise, a laptop with a touch screen should work just fine- but most likely might not be as physically flexible. What should I look for in a drawing laptop? There's some basic things I can advise as well as more nuanced things, I've also included links to some laptops that seem good: OS or Operating System: -ARM processor vs not (Windows 11 VS Windows11 ARM): I would personally avoid any sort of ARM processors, as it acts like a weaker version of+ lacks a lot of the functionality of windows 11. I had a surface laptop that I exchanged back because it did not have touch gestures. A way to see if the laptop you want has an ARM processor vs not is to check the OS or Operating System, if it has a arm processor it will likely say something like "Windows 11 ARM" or you can CTRL + F to find the word ARM in the description in your web browser.

-Linux VS MACOS VS Windows: Unfortunately I have less EXP with MAC devices, but as the price point is very high and they are not built to last AS LONG (No devices last unfortunately) I can't recommend them. -If you have an older device with touch screen capabilities that you would like to use, and would like to try to dive into Linux- I'd say go for it! Be aware that changing your OS will wipe your entire drive, so please back up your files first! If you end up not (Depending on how you go about installing it) I've been enjoying a new-er version of Kubuntu as our home media set-up! Generally, a lot of Linux distributions aren't as 'hard' on your hardware. When choosing what version of Linux to go with- as there are a lot of different types or distributions of Linux, it has been advised to choose a more stable download release version rather then the new-est version- to be able to know this, it may say if the download version is supported long term or not. I'm not a Linux expert and have generally followed guides on how to use this OS, to install a OS you will need some sort of flash media- like a flash drive/usb drive! If you end up not liking Linux, Windows has ISO files you can put on your flash drive to put it back, again this will wipe your data! It's a good idea to try and check to see if your software of choice works on the version of Linux you would like to install, there seems to generally be workarounds however, it's up to your comfort level when seeking these out.

-Windows is familiar! However, Windows 11 has this thing where it wants to back up all your files/data to OneDrive. I, Personally have been enjoying this service, as it makes backing up my files easy-cheesy. However, with the current political climate, this opens you/us up to having our privacy stripped/or our files erased without our consent as Microsoft sees fit. To combat this, I back up my files to a physical hard drive(S) as it is safer to have multiple back-ups rather then just 1.

-AVOID ChromeOS or chromebooks- is my advice GPU or Graphics Card: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ -Using this link, you can compare how the GPU of your device compares to the standard/other devices/ect... -Honestly, if you are not doing heavy-duty gaming or 3D sculpting, or video editing, you're probably just fine with a mid-tier GPU!

Where the files are stored / the Disk Drive: -As long as you avoid a HDD you're probably good to go! HDD drives use a physical disk that spins to save your data- this is more prone to failing and this is a lot of the reason why older laptops seem "slow"

-One of the ways to to check this- or a weird way I check this, is I click the Windows button/Windows search and type "Defrag" & You should see something that says something "Defragment and Optimize Drives" In this window, under 'Media Type' it should say something like Solid State Drive, and not 'Hard Disk Drive' or HDD -How much storage is important depending on if you store your all data on your device or not- I'd recommend at LEAST 500+GB to be safe, any more does not hurt!

RAM: For doing just art, you're probably good to go at just 8-16GB of RAM! Any more does not hurt.

Processors: I have less knowledge in this domain, however, if you are going for a intel processor, something like i5, 1255u is communicating that: i(NUMBER), the higher number = more processing power. I would recommend anything i5 and above, and the 1255u- a number I am using in this example, the 12 = 12th generation. 12 gen and up Is what I would personally recommend.

Do I need a separate stylus pen? Yes, however, there's a lot of good knock off brand pens that are cheaper if not better then official brand pens. I'd take into account how they charge, I like rechargeable pens that use Type C ports- like new-er phones!

Link Examples of 2in1 laptops that should be good for digital art- again, if the price has changed for the worse, you can use these as a guide: This is the laptop I have, I got it on sale (I exchanged my surface for this) for around 500$: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-2-in-1-16-2k-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-ultra-7-16gb-memory-1tb-ssd-glacier-silver/6571084.p?skuId=6571084 Upon a glance this looks good due to the processor being i7 & the 12th generation- a new-ish one: https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-16iau7-82r80000us-16-0-intel-core-i7-1255u-1-tb-pcie-ssd-16gb-memory/p/N82E16834840489

Finishing notes: This is not a like solid template, more of a loose advising guide- I hope this is helpful to some folx! Feel free to ask questions!

[inkspottie]

CHAPTER 21 LETTSS GOOO YIPPEEEE!

I saw the name of the chapter and I was instantly like "oh dam, shits boutta go DOWN"

T h e a p a r t m e n t s e n c e

I WAS KICKING MY FEET AND GIGGLING BRUH

When Sebastian was like 'hell nah this a trap' and I imagined Sadao looked at him like one of those analog horror kinda mfs.

Mr Lopee was really like " I know what you are " to Sebastian.

AND SEBASTIAN GETTING HIT LIKE A BRICK WHEN HE REALISES WHAT MR LOPEE MEANT BY HIS "Deepest desire",

Sebastian's like: Shit I think I love this guy. Let me tell you when I LOST IT WITH LAUGHTER.

I need them to cuddle and hug some more, please. Infact EVERYONE DESERVES HUGS.

I actually hope they get to have their old lives back, so they CAN BE HAPPY

AND EVERYONE JUST STARING AT GABE AFTER HE MENTIONS HES A CEO TO THE RIVAL COMPANY, SEBASTIAN WAS LIKE "BITCH WHY DIDNT YOU TELL US SOONER"

Sadao is now sad dad, I dont make the rules.

Knew that Sadao was gonna sense the searchlights straight up. Hes like 'NOPE, SOMETHING AINT RIGHT'

Painter needs to be told that hes a great help more often, HES THEIR NAVIGATOR AND HE GOT THEM THAT USB.

NEW BOSS BATTLE

Anzu vs Generator

Sadao saving Anzu with the speed of a tactical missile only to get knocked out, R.I.P

GABERIEL NOOOOOOO! WHAT DID THE GANG SAY ABOUT SELF SACRIFICES

And imposter Sebastian 👀

But if Gabriel gets possessed I'm going to screech.

Yummy Chapter, Thank you!

I’m glad you enjoyed it! This one was really fun to write~

[mousequteers]

**Chapter 5: *"Silk, Secrets, and Sabotage"***

**Mission Codename:** *#MMCXXII-CHANEL//BLUE_ORCHID*

The MouseQuteers infiltrate Paris Fashion Week, where Division C plans to auction stolen Chanel "Blue Orchid" blueprints—a neural-weave fabric that bends light *and* memories—to Dior’s shadow board. Disguised as models, the team navigates a runway rigged with laser-grid security and rival spies.

- **Charity (Kilala)** struts in a hacked Coco Chanel revival gown, her scepter disguised as a feather boa. She syncs with **Greñada**, whose gravitational whispers unravel Dior agents’ earpieces.

- **DL** flirts with a double-agent valet (Felicia Hardy in disguise) to access the vault, but his time-warp glitches—*“Why’s every mission a time loop with exes?”*

- **Estrella’s** Sanrio drones swarm the afterparty, swiping encrypted USB drives from champagne trays… until CHANEL THEE BLACK CAT GLITCH corrupts them into *Hello Kitty x Venom* hybrids.

**Personal Stakes:**

- **Charity** discovers her mother Britney once modeled the prototype Blue Orchid in 2003—a memory erased from public record. *“They turned her into a living mannequin.”*

- **DL** confronts Felicia: *“You sold the Spotlight to save yourself. What’s left to sell?”* She smirks: *“You’ll see.”*

---

**Chapter 6: *"Overboard on the S.S. Nostalgia"***

**Mission Codename:** *#MMCXXII-DISNEY//DROWNED_QUEEN*

A distress signal lures the team to a Division C-controlled Disney cruise liner hosting K-pop star **Jisoo** (Blackpink) for a "retro" concert. The catch: The ship’s AI, **Captain Hook 2.0**, is programmed to “retire” rebellious idols via staged accidents.

- **Alice** materializes in the engine room, her void-eyes short-circuiting Hook’s pirate-droid crew. *“This ship’s a ghost. It’s been sunk before.”*

- **Dollar Bill** battles glitched animatronics of NSYNC and *Little Mermaid* hybrids in the ballroom, her guitar shattering Ursula’s enchanted contract: *“Sorry, fish—this ain’t your sea.”*

- **Greñada** duets with Jisoo on *"Kill This Love (Titanic Remix)"* to distract Hook, while **DL** rewinds time to stop Jisoo from being thrown overboard—revealing the ship’s coordinates: *Antarctica.*

**Personal Stakes:**

- **Jisoo** hands Greñada a USB labeled *“Bambi’s Lullabies”*—voice memos of Bambi Prescott negotiating with BLACKPINK’s AI avatars. *“Your ‘Alice’… she’s in the files.”*

- **Dollar Bill** finds a NSYNC tour jacket in Hook’s locker with Risk’s name embroidered—*“Sync or Swim”*—hinting at her half-brother’s fate.

---

**Chapter 7: *"Hashtag Warfare"***

**Mission Codename:** *#MMCXXII-ZEGLER//GLITCH_PRINCESS*

Division C launches a digital smear campaign against **Rachel Zegler**, flooding her socials with deepfakes and troll bots to derail her *Snow White* press tour. The MouseQuteers wage a cyberwar from a neon-lit Seoul server farm.

- **Estrella** deploys her Sanrio creatures as firewalls, their pastel hues clashing with CHANEL’s glitch-static. *“Kawaii vs. corruption—let’s go.”*

- **Alice** hacks into Rachel’s livestream, her voice overlaying as a subliminal truth serum: *“They’re scared of your voice. *Sing*.”* Rachel belts *"Someday My Prince Will Come"*—a frequency that crashes Division C’s servers.

- **Charity** discovers the troll bots are powered by recycled Britney Spears fan forums. *“They’re weaponizing her pain. *Again*.”*

**Personal Stakes:**

- **Rachel** confides in Charity about Division C’s offer: *“They said they’d ‘fix’ my image… for my mom’s medical bills.”*

- **Estrella** uncovers a fan-art thread linking her Sanrio creatures to Bambi Prescott’s childhood sketches. *“She *made* us?”*

---

**Chapter 8: *"Shorty’s Requiem"***

**Mission Codename:** *#MMCXXII-MILIAN//HOLLYWOOD_GHOST*

Christina Milian recruits the team to investigate her “cameo” in John Travolta’s film *Shorty*. The set is a front for laundering Division C’s funds—and Travolta’s co-star is a cryogenically preserved 90s icon.

- **DL** and **Greñada** pose as extras, discovering Travolta’s dance sequences are coded messages to Division C investors. *“The ‘Pulp Fiction’ twist? It’s all stock trades.”*

- **Alice** wanders the studio’s underground vaults, finding cryo-pods labeled *“Subject MJ”* and *“Subject Xtina Aguilera.”* *“They’re not making movies. They’re *mining* stars.”*

- **Christina** reveals her role was a cover to expose Travolta: *“He’s not John. He’s a clone. The real one’s been missing since *Grease*.”*

**Personal Stakes:**

- **Christina** shares a flickering hologram of her daughter (a MouseQuteer fan) begging her to *“stop the bad men.”*

- **Charity** confronts a cryo-pod labeled *“Subject Britney 2007”*—empty, but blaring *“…Baby One More Time”* in reverse.

---

**Chapter 9: *"The Spotlight’s Shadow"***

**Twist:**

The missions converge at a derelict Disneyland, where Bambi Prescott reveals her endgame: **The Spotlight** isn’t a relic—it’s a living entity, and Alice is its *anchor*. *“You thought you were saving stars? You’ve been feeding them to it.”*

**Cliffhangers:**

- **Felicia Hardy** ambushes Travolta’s clone, stealing his identity to infiltrate Division C’s board. *“Time to reboot the system.”*

- **Jisoo’s** USB decrypts, showing Alice’s face in a 1986 Mouse Club photo. *“She’s not a subject. She’s the *founder*.”*

- **CHANEL THEE BLACK CAT GLITCH** hijacks Rachel Zegler’s Snow White premiere, broadcasting Bambi’s manifesto: *“The fairest of them all? *Me*. Always.”*

---

**Next Chapter Teaser:**

*The Factory Boys return with a vengeance, their new single *"Hologram Heartbreak"* brainwashing fans into attacking Area06. Meanwhile, Estrella’s Sanrio creatures rebel, and Charity must choose: Save her mother’s legacy… or erase it?*

---

**Thematic Threads:**

- **Fame as Fuel:** Division C’s exploitation of nostalgia and celebrity DNA.

- **Generational Trauma:** Daughters confronting their mothers’ stolen legacies.

- **Identity vs. Algorithm:** Who’s *real* in a world of clones, AIs, and cryo-stars?

**Style:** *Cinematic universe sprawl à la MCU meets *Black Mirror*, with a K-pop beat drop and haute couture sabotage.*

[beylinine]

Meet the ship- KirkUla 🌟🌹

First template by @ Silveefire on DeviantArt and second by @ oakwolves

Yes it's 2am by the time I post this, this is what I call a thrilling Saturday night activity

Playlist link:

Let me take you back to 2019,,,

Of course I fell face first down three flights of stairs when I got into Hetalia in 2019 and saw Arthur James Kirkland with my own two eyes. So naturally, the country I had created the year prior and then personified into a Hetalia character and him would have only the most respectful diplomatic relationship. Diplomationship? Diabolical.

When I graduate I will use my history degree to write about their long history that spans nearly a millennia, trust ‼️

These two are just...they would be that one couple who fell in love when they were in their 30s and stay together forever. "If it could be anyone, it would only and always be you" type of deal. Emotionally and spiritually married with kids in a rural farmland, physically 10,000 km/ 6200 miles apart with a life long duty.

Amor prohibido De contrabando final boss.

It's late and just thinking about them makes me so nsjsjs yall just don't understand, yall don't get itttt.

They're both island nations, have multiple siblings, seen as outsiders by those in their respective continents. Mehehru lives and breathes water, Arthur as we all know needs adult supervision by any pond. English -10°C winters vs. Otokian 48°C summers except it's January because Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Blue and green. She's his muse. He approached, fell first, and kept falling deeper into those double dimples with no way out. What a loser

Have a mentioned the yearning. Oh god. The yearning is disgusting in a they use a specific stamp and send physical letters to each other even in the twenty-first century Amarte a la Antigua type shit 😭

They've both been through a lot, only running into each other perhaps just a dozen times in a 800 year span. Hurt and Comfort, old people (in my head they're in their late 20s/early 30s) in love. Even in a mlp au they're so great yall arent ready for that though

Arthur is sacrificial in the way that he would spend years in Otokian climate if he could just be with her for longer than a couple of days.

Maybe informally get married at a Kirk (church) in Ula (nature).

Doomed poyas (word for land representation/responsible one/chosen one in Otokian yes im still building this nation, from the ashes (in world historical reference but also me losing my usb with 2019 info)) we rebuild‼️

Ok Bai 😭

[clickbliss]

Arkodd Padbox Review: a fightpad for the arcade afficionado

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Sporting a clicky dpad and an enclosure large enough to accommodate 24mm arcade buttons, the Arkodd Padbox is a controller/fightstick hybrid set to fill the niche left by a lack of good 6 button fightpads. 

The dpad is equipped with Omron mechanical switches, similar to the ones used in arcade sticks, and a left shoulder button and additional thumb button complement the standard 8 button layout, allowing access to extra functions and alternative button placements.

The Padbox comes as fully assembled units or DIY kits that include the case, dpad, wiring and function buttons. For this review I opted for the DIY kit, since I wanted to see what the build process was like, and customize the build with parts I had on hand. 

Full disclosure: I was sent this kit to review, but I wasn’t given any instructions or limitations on what I could say.

With that out of the way, what immediately impressed me was how easy the build process was. The Padbox comes apart with only a few screws, and the dpad, shoulder button and aux buttons are already pre-installed. The wiring harnesses provided are sized appropriately for the available space, and headers for the dpad and shoulder buttons, alongside pre-made dupont connectors made wiring them to the screw terminals simple.

If there’s one thing to note it’s that the Padbox uses a direct USB connection for its USB C jack, rather than the Neutrik Type-D passthrough ports that many custom fightstick builds use. The connector is designed with Brook Fighting Boards in mind, which have pre-populated headers for USB, but I opted to use a RP2040 Advanced Breakout Board I had on hand to get access to the advanced features of GP2040ce. If you do goes this way, make sure you get the latest version of the board with the screw terminals for the extra functions, as those have pre-populated USB headers, otherwise you’ll have to solder on your own like I did. 

You’ll also need to plug into the 5v VCC terminal for the power indicator LED, though if you are somehow doing an even more niche build of a niche product, and using a Brook Wireless board for it, you’ll need to connect to the player indicator LEDs instead, since the 5v terminal won’t output when running on battery. 

Aside from these incredibly niche considerations, the overall build process is fast and painless. I built it all on a weeknight after work, and I even had time to stickerbomb it and test out a few games with it. I’ve had a harder time modding some fully built fightsticks.

Now the most important question: how’s the dpad. In short: they nailed it. No matter what style of game I played it was easy to get my inputs out, with no accidental inputs. After using so many controllers and handhelds, I can tell you this is a hell of an accomplishment. Even mechanical dpads aren’t a silver bullet to this problem, as I’ve seen so many of them with the same kind of satisfying feedback that are miserable in practice. So I’m happy to report that this dpad is not one of them.

One of the first games I tried the Padbox with was Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3’s trial mode, my go to for testing new fighting game controllers. Here it performed better than basically any first party controller dpad, with the combo of the microswitch dpad and larger arcade buttons making it easy to get in rhythm. The same happened in Street Fighter 6, where the extra buttons allowed me to access Drive Functions easier than the standard 8 button layout, and the shoulder button provided comfortable access to the assist function for characters I play with Modern Controls. 

For anyone who plays primarily on pad, I could definitely see this as an upgrade to a regular gamepad or fightpad, especially for those who play claw grip and wouldn’t miss the extra shoulder buttons. With the swappable buttons, an all mechanical controller is even possible, given the growing options for buttons with keyboard style switches. 

Personally, the Padbox won’t likely stay in rotation for playing fighting games, despite how much I like it. The Padbox can’t solve the fundamental problem I have with playing fighting games on pad: it’s  too cramped. As someone particularly sensitive to this issue, I find that putting all the strain on my thumb wears me down faster when performing complex inputs, and the Padbox made it clear that for me, no pad can compete with the comfort of leverless for competitive games. 

But who says you can only use a fighting game controller for fighting games?

Arcade buttons are plenty of fun across multiple genres, and with its hybrid design, the Padbox enables a variety of approaches that both traditional fightsticks and pads can’t provide. I tested it with beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage 4 and Shredder’s Revenge, where the arcade layout made performing combos a joy.

Retro consoles and throwback games are another good candidate, with the tactile feedback a the Padbox’s dpad a definite upgrade to a lot of the membrane dpads and buttons of original controllers, with the bonus of arcade buttons being a lot more fun to mash in the many games that demanded it. 

Action games that make limited use of the right stick for camera control are totally playable with the Padbox, and with the use of GP2040ce, you can even use the extra buttons to create modifiers that give you on the fly access to the dpad or right stick for item hotkeys or camera control.

I even managed to make a playable control scheme for Smash Bros Ultimate, complete with c-stick buttons for tilt and aerial attacks. 

The Padbox might not be my personal choice for serious fighting game competition, but it’ll definitely stay in rotation as one of my alternative controllers for casual fighting, and playing plenty of other genres.  

If there's any additions I'd like to see, it's the addition of additional shoulder and thumb buttons. These would not only give access to an extra shortcut button in fighting games, but enable layouts with extra functions or modifiers, such as tilt modifiers or dual directional input in the style of the Hitbox Crossup.

The Padbox is also a bit lightweight. It comes in a little heavier than a standard controller, but it's spread out across a larger surface area, and alongside the slickness of the 3D printed material, it threatens to slip during those literally sweaty matches. An optional metal bottom plate or a removable weight for the grip might help give it heft for longer play sessions and lap play. 

My favorite part of the Padbox has to be how many possibilities it leaves open. With its form factor, it's easy to start thinking of new ways to mod the Padbox and make it your own. It brings the DIY spirit of arcade sticks to a pad, and I've already seen wild molds replacing the dpad with a split dpad, or building entire new bases for it and adding more buttons. 

If you're a controller enthusiast looking for a good fightpad, or just something with a real good dpad, consider giving the Padbox a look.