#and waste hardware power

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

need to shell out for a new laptop before the end of the year - for a lot of reasons but mainly bc support ending for win8.1 makes fixing the current beast rather pointless :/ (and. admittedly. there is a lot to fix. she's old and she has suffered.)

but my current beastie is from the last gen of laptops with a disc drive and the thought of using an external/usb disc drive is enough to make me cry tears of blood

[saikira999]

headcanons for how Idia and Malleus play Minecraft?

~ Headcanons for twst characters playing Minecraft.

I was a little late, but here are the headcannons! :D

Also, a little friendly reminder that English is not My native language and if you find errors in the text, please write to me about it.

Another parts about :

Azul and Lilia!

Riddle and Leona!

Jade and Floyd!

[Idia]

1) Absolute pro.

2) During the entire game, big bro has already set up His own server with tens of hundreds of buildings, houses and cities, on which all of Ignihyde plays...

But for you, beginners, He will of course make a new one.

3) Lives not in an ordinary house, but in a secret underground complex with hundreds of traps, secrets and secret passages. The entire dungeon is arranged quite professionally and beautifully, in a black and blue palette, using wool, clay, stone and several types of thin blocks and half-blocks, steps and other things. Instead of ordinary torches, he uses blue torches with soul fire.

4) He doesn’t trust his account to anyone except Ortho, but he tries to make sure that his beloved younger brother doesn’t waste any important resources or do anything unnecessary.

5) His favorite and least favorite location is Nether.

6) His base is guarded by three dogs with blue collars.

7) The same walking guide that explains to everyone and everything how to play and answers all kinds of questions.

8) The bro on the server has absolute power... After all, he is the admin here and the main expert in cheat codes.

9) Despite the fact that he feels much more confident in the square world, he still does not like to interact with other players and prefers to play alone. If there are too many players on the server, He either rushes to retire, or barely uses the microphone and hangs around somewhere in the corners.

He is most comfortable playing with Lilia, Ortho, Azul and possibly Yuu.

10) Keeps a joke counter when someone compares His hair to the blue soul fire (137)...

11) Loves block art and other buildings like statues of favorite anime characters.

12) Usually, he plays with a ton of shaders, mods and other additions, but since not all dorms are equipped with powerful hardware, like in Ignihyde, bro have to play with a minimum amount of additional details.

13) Knows all the cool bugs, recipes, theories and locations of Minecraft.

14) In one of the secret rooms he built a cemetery for His pets.

15) Of all the players, he comes to the server most often, and could have reached the dragon in one day, if not for Ortho’s gentle reminder that on a joint server you need to play TOGETHER.

16) His main fear is if His mother somehow logs onto the server.

17) Always swears at updates.

18) Sometimes he seriously thinks about buying the rights to the game...

19) Minecraft is my life!

20) MINECRAAAAAAAAAFT

(Insert audio from that screaming russian schoolboy meme)

[Malleus]

1) He doesn’t know what Minecraft is and when Yuu and Idia invite him to play (Invitation???? He’ll definitely join!), he asks Lilia what “Minecraft” is and what spell can He use to get into this mysterious world?

2) When he sits down at the computer for the first time, he falls into a crisis and looks at the square icon for a long time (3 hours), in sincere bewilderment.

Then he decides to try to figure it out on his own... And accidentally blows up the computer.

(Poor Lilia.)

4) FINALLY having figured out the controls on the phone (Still poor Lilia), he came onto the server and falls into a new crisis and shock from the appearance of the game...

"This is definitely... It will be interesting..."

5) Absolute noob. Bro sometimes even forgets that his character is weak and mortal. Several times, He simply walks into lava, forgets to eat, or swims in the water for a long time and is genuinely perplexed as to why his character is dying.

6) Tsunotaro's house is a simple wooden box made of dark oak logs, vines and flowers. There is no floor - only fragrant green grass. The windows are also missing and replaced with fences. Right at the doorstep is a garden with flowers, and on the roof there will be creepy, crooked figures made of blocks and half-blocks of stone and basalt (Gargoyles were planned).

Perhaps He will try in the future to rebuild the house into something more gothic, but Tsunotaro like architect, is like a Grim like nutritionist... Yuu is His most frequent guest and Draconia, according to all the rules of etiquette, tries to feed the visitor and force him to stay as a guest with Him, like a decent owner.... Oh, Yuu invites Him to visit...?

...He will definitely come and build Yuu a crooked gargoyle as a sign of gratitude... And I hope that a human child will be smart enough not to destroy His building...

.......No, I'm serious. Don't.

7) He doesn’t understand anything and either follows other players 24/7 or gets lost and Idia eventually finds him a couple hundred chunks away from the spawn location, trying to make friends with the bat.

8) Griefers? Who is this? Is there such a crazy person who would try to break down His house...?

9) Oddly enough, his main occupation is taming everyone he can. Cats? Parrots? Dogs? A whole farm with a variety of livestock from small to large? Two little slimes? Strange guy with white eyes behind the tree? Yuu? He will take care of everyone.... Rest assured)

+ Animals in this game do not age and cannot die unless you put them in danger, or play it safe and give them name tags....

10) The same guy whose game constantly crashes for some reason or whose microphone crashes.

11) Belongs to the type of people who can simply take and give another player either a beautiful, freshly picked flower, or incredibly rare and expensive armor or weapons, with several layers of enchantment, which He obtained from an unknown place and in an unknown way.

12) For a reason unknown to anyone, all mobs such as monsters, villagers and pillagers, except animals and children, bypass him.

13) Loves to wander through abandoned villages and mines.

14) In PVP he is not particularly smart and sticks with more neutral and calm players and rarely gets into fights with anyone... If at all anyone wants to fight with Him.

15) He dreams of building a GIANT Gargoyle, but so far, all he gets is another crooked, creepy pile of stones, only of larger sizes.

16) When he learns that the goal of the game is to kill the dragon and take It's egg, his reaction is literally: ....Mother?🤨

17) He doesn’t want to fight with His relative, and when Idia kills the dragon, he bursts into His room with lightning and thunder in order to interrogate the corpse of Gloomurai, which did not survive several heart attacks.

18) Tsunotaro took the egg for Himself and built a kind of temple for It (Surrounded by gargoyles, of course), and sincerely waited for it to hatch, until Lilia, who came to the rescue, said that this was not possible in the game.

19) Conclusion: One was disappointed because He could not atone for the brutally murdered dragon mother and raise Her child, and the second, although He laughed amicably, still grabbed a couple of Vietnamese (Briar Valley) flashbacks.

(Poor Malleus and Lilia)

20) Later, scared to death, Idia will install a mod especially for Tsunotaro that allows him to hatch and tame a dragon from the egg he received in The End 😊

(Poor Idia)

That's it! I am waiting for your new requests :3

Reblog Me, please? <:]

[eggrens]

i think people should try a little Linux, just for something different yknow

doesn’t have to be any specific “beginner-friendly” distro or whatever, could just be WSL even . just gives you a different perspective on OSs :)

like if you’re sick of Windows/MacOS and are frustrated that you need to keep upgrading your hardware to run the newest versions, why not experience something else and download VirtualBox n try out a Linux distro for a bit, see if you like it,, I think you might be surprised by some of em :)

i still use Windows 10 for my desktop, mainly for gaming and art etc, but i switched over to Linux Mint on my laptop a while ago and have used it for school, and it’s been running better than when it had Windows on it. does what i need it to do, and using the terminal to do stuff feels fun and kinda powerful with how easy it is to install stuff with it :)

was there troubleshooting involved? yes, but it was often fixed by just looking up your problem and finding answers on stackexchange or linux forums, not too different from troubleshooting windows tbh lol

i’ve also recently got a mini pc to use as a little server for stuff, like discord bots. even tho the specs are a little on the lower side, it’s still able to run stuff pretty well since I installed Xubuntu on it, which is specifically designed to be quite light on system resources, and it’s been great too :)

anyways point is,, try out Linux in some form, why not :) if you have an old laptop/desktop sitting around, try reviving it by installing a lightweight linux distro on it! the less e-waste the better :3

[kopfkino-o]

another cracky actoar au. the setting is a hardware store in the early 2000s. Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian all work there.

Rhys obvi runs the front cash register and calls himself the shift manager (he isn't, Az is) but he actually doesn't know that much about at home projects and mostly just likes to flirt with Feyre who works at the craft store across the street. but the customers love him, and he’s charming as hell, so management lets it slide.

Cassian loves working in the powertools department. he likes them all. power saws, chain saws, drills, sanders, polishers, etc. his favorite is the nailgun though. once he almost got fired for accidently nailing Tarquin's coat to a piece of plywood but it all turned out okay in the end. sort of. most days during his shift, Cas likes to post not so subtle body shots to his MySpace in the hopes of catching Nesta's eye. It literally never works.

Azriel likes to mix different paints together to see what colors they make whenever he's on edge. it's like a damn drug. does the shop owner (Eris) appreciate all the wasted paint? probably not. but what's he going to do? fire him? laughable. Az is the only one who can actually work the cashier and Eris sort of has a thing for him so it’s basically a win win. He skateboards to work because he can’t afford a bus pass and sometimes he smokes cigs in the tile isle because, well, how many customers actually care about luxury vinyl planking

[periprose]

Ps5 Peter Parker x reader inspired by this?

It's one of my favorite MerDer moments on Grey's anatomy 🙈😭

Peter explains something about physics or an idea for a gagdet...

🤣 this image really cracked me up lol thanks for the ask!! I've set the fic to take place in the first game, Peter and Reader are Otto's assistants at Octavius Industries. Please ignore the science mumbo jumbo in this fic.

/

Otto's lab was really cold this time of year. He barely had the funds to make rent in Manhattan, let alone provide optimal heating and other luxuries.

Still, you shiver, searching through your locker for your comfy, oversized jumper. You're just pulling it on when Peter pops up from behind you.

"Hey."

"Jesus!" You flinch and then rub your eyes. "Hey, Peter. How do you get behind me so fast? That's the third time this month I didn't even see you come in."

"Uh... I just have good reflexes, I think." Peter's mouth twists a little, as he tries not to laugh at your jumper. "Are you sure that's up to lab standards? Where's your lab coat?"

"Ah, Otto doesn't mind. He knows I'm cold." You explain, and Peter sighs.

"Well, he never gives me special treatment."

"Probably because you're not as cute as I am." You joke, but Peter nods and you feel a callous level of attraction towards him for being so nonchalant in terms of flirting.

You never really know where you stand with the guy. He's a naturally witty person and you refuse to read into anything any deeper, just for self preservation.

"Hey, I can't disagree with that." Peter laughs that quiet, soft laugh that makes you smile on your own. "Here, I got you a cup of coffee. That should help warm you up."

You look down and see, sure enough, Peter's holding a coffee cup tray, loaded with three cups, surely your usual orders- for you, extra black espresso to stay awake, for Peter, usually some kind of healthy tea hybrid, and for Otto, a large, creamy Italian coffee blend that's particularly expensive (Peter always jokes that Otto wastes funding on things like this).

"Oh, I'll pay you back." You reach back into your locker for your wallet, but Peter stops you with a raise of his hand.

"It's free of charge. No worries." He hands you the cup gently, and your hand skirts across his. You think for a moment.

"Nothing is ever really 'free of charge', Peter." You give him a side glance. In the last couple of months you've known this guy, you've figured out when he has an ulterior motive.

"... Alright, alright. You got me." Peter starts pulling you along by the hand, towards one of Otto's offices filled with white-boards and desks and equipment. You take a sip of your coffee and notice that it's still quite hot- Peter must've been really fast to make it so.

Not that you're complaining, and now that you're warmer you do feel more inclined to listen to him.

"Okay. You know how Otto's neural interface for the experimental arms have been glitching out?" Peter's got a firm look on his face, as you sit and listen.

"Yeah. It's a poor prototype, I think he asked us to leave it alone? He said he'd deal with it." You shrug. "I've moved on to his requests for a tighter, stronger arm. You know I deal with hardware."

"Yes, but even so, the neural interface problem still persists. Otto's lying." Peter looks at the whiteboard, and sees that half of it is covered all over with erratically drawn diagrams and equations. It's fine, he knows he can write what he needs in that space.

"Okay, look." Peter begins drawing a diagram of the neural interface's circuitry. "See how the voltage is really high?"

"Yeah- but isn't that what Doc wanted?" You grimace. "Last time I brought up the voltage issue, he told me to mind my business and continue with soldering. He wants so much power for some reason."

"Right, that's what I'm talking about. Notice how Otto keeps having those outbursts?" Peter sighs, a deeply upsetting look overtaking him. "He's getting a bit aggressive as of late, and I think it's because he can't figure this out."

"You're telling me. Just yesterday he chewed me out for clocking in a bit late." You sniff. "Okay, I was fifteen minutes late, but still."

"I've been there, you don't even have to justify it." Peter laughs, and begins drawing squiggly lines. You can't help but notice how his strangely muscular arms are tense and visible through his lab coat as he scrawls, and you take a sip of your coffee, savoring the view. Looking isn't illegal, you try to rationalize, but you quickly banish these thoughts as Peter looks back with a sly glance, to make sure you're paying attention.

"This is the electricity flow... and it should be heading this way, but the neural interface is made incorrectly and the flow of energy is heading back this way... towards the-"

"The battery of the arms, not the interface." You suddenly realize, and take a scrap piece of paper off the desk, scribbling down notes. "Hmm... maybe the wiring used for the arms is absorbing too much energy? Or the batteries are too big?"

"Maybe, but neural interfaces are tricky business." Peter winces as Otto yells at something in the background of the lab. "I told Otto not to get too involved with it- it's far too easy to accidentally mess with your brain, and then suddenly you've got anger issues or worse-"

"Dementia." You finish his sentence with an equally grim expression. "Okay. I hear you, but how are we supposed to fix it, exactly? I can only think of using different, smaller wires, or a less cost heavy battery- but then it won't move at the speed Otto wants it to."

"Yeah." Peter's shoulders slump a little, and you feel bad. He's always just one dude trying to take on the entire world's problems.

"Peter, it's not your problem, really. You can only do so much- the man has made up his mind, he's going to have to take the brunt of the problem." You try to console him, but Peter has that determined Parker Pride you've seen far too often, and you know he's not going to let it go.

"Wait, wait. Okay..." Peter starts frantically drawing on the board, and seeing that he's running out of space, without missing a beat, begins to draw on the wall.

"Peter! You're drawing on the wall!" You admonish him, and to your shock and utter horror, but not to your surprise, he keeps going. "Now you've completely lost it- it'll take two seconds to erase the board-"

But Peter isn't listening, in that overly stubborn, inventor way that you know you've done before. He's too lost in his own thoughts, and you know that spark will disappear if he takes a moment to stop drawing.

"I'll clean it. It's fine. We got to get a move on." Peter points to the new diagram on the wall. "Look at this."

Peter's drawn a rudimentary depiction of the robotic arm prototypes you've built for Otto, but the battery pack has been split up into several, smaller batteries that extend over the course of the arms. Something about the way the arms move in Peter's drawings look a lot more... smooth, silky, like a cephalopod.

An octopus.

But you are amazed at Peter's capabilities, either way. "Using multiple different batteries, so the energy isn't drawn away from the neural interface in a great capacity?" You blink, a bit amused at Peter's eager expression. "It would work, I think, but only if Otto is willing for a slight decrease in power."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. We don't need to sacrifice power at all." Peter draws a set of gears, interlocking through the squiddy looking arm, and you clap your hands, clambering up out of your seat, finally enthused by his idea.

"Peter Parker, you genius!" You shake his arm excitedly, and he turns a bit pinker as he watches you, grinning. "Otto wanted the arm to be almost entirely synthetic material- but if it has rotating gears, the less it will jerk around. It'll be faster, smoother-"

"Thus requiring less power anyways, and less power will be redirected into his neural interface. And, hypothetically, no more angry Otto." Peter grins, and you smile up at him. "I mean, it'll still take some tinkering to figure out, but incremental improvements are still improvements, right?"

"Definitely. Plus we can always try to convince him about solar power again." You joke as Peter snickers.

Peter opens his mouth, about to say something to you, but he stares for a moment too long and hesitates, especially because in the nerdy excitement, he had gotten so close to you, and he was a liar if he said he had never checked out his cute co-worker. Any second now, you should be teasing as you usually do- but your eyes are wide and Peter gets the sense you've been swept up in this too.

He's never been so... close. He can make out individual eyelashes, tiny scars, imperceptible to normal people, but not to him.

And his phone buzzes with some kind of alert. He looks it over with bright, concerned eyes, while you take a moment to step back, much to Peter's mild irritation.

"Ah... must be MJ?" You ask, trying so very hard not to sound like a jealous girlfriend, just a curious colleague. You have nothing against MJ- you just feel that she and Peter are so meant for each other, and this is exactly why you've been trying to protect yourself.

Who are you kidding? You and Peter are both so busy- you'd never have time to be his doting, adoring girlfriend. You just have to remember him as a friend.

Already you feel the walls coming into place, your expression turning neutral, your heart becoming steely, when Peter looks at you again, surprised.

He can tell you're holding yourself back- and he doesn't like that. He wants you to come back to him, to be close with him again, and it drives him nuts that it has to be your choice, but he respects that.

"Not MJ. We broke up a while ago." Peter swallows, hoping he's saying the right things. "Uh... I don't think we're going to get back together. She's dating someone else now."

"Oh." You squeeze Peter's shoulder as comfortingly as you can. "Peter, I'm sorry. I would've been less of an ass if I'd known."

"No, don't be." Peter fixes a firm, kindhearted glance at you, taking your hands, the warmth of his own making you feel especially treasured. "You're great."

There's a teeny bit of hope working it's way into you, into your silly, girly heart despite all the steel around it, and Peter has a soft smile reserved just for you- you know that smile, you've seen it before when he comforts you when an experiment goes poorly, or when you've had a Eureka moment.

He rubs your hands. "Jeez, you're cold! I know women are usually freezing in the workplace- different body temperatures on average and all that- but I'm going to have to talk to Otto about making it warmer in here."

"Lest I die of hypothermia, right." You snort, and Peter snickers, but he still stays close, as if he's using this as an excuse. "Well, at least I have your hands."

Peter's phone buzzes again, another alert, which he apologetically takes a moment to read after letting go of you. Something about Fisk's thugs making their way through Grand Central Station- he shouldn't leave right now, but he can see your curiosity is piqued.

"Just a news alert. Nothing big." Peter lies, and you don't quite buy it, but you don't want to pry at this moment after he's complimented you and been so nice to warm up your hands.

Otto bursts through the entrance of the room, sighing.

"Will you two lovebirds stop canoodling with each other and test out the circuitry? You know, like I'm paying you to do so with very limited funds?" He barks, and then inhales. "Sorry. Just... try to stay on task. And I know you're young and all... but stop drawing on the walls!"

He leaves, grumbling about youth being too romantic and wishing they would understand sensibility.

You're about to refute whatever Otto said, so Peter doesn't feel uncomfortable, when he speaks first.

"I take it he isn't a romantic." Peter jokes as he grabs some paper towels, and you laugh, feeling that Peter's flirting was more genuine than you thought.

[jake-kiszkas-smirk]

Need

Jake Kiszka x fem reader

(This is part 3 of Dirty Little Secrets)

18+ only, minors dni

Warnings: graphic sexual content, digital penetration (m rec), oral (m rec), light choking, pegging, handjob, I think that’s it!

This is not edited so I apologize for any mistakes 🖤

"Tell me again why we are in this store and couldn't just order this online?"' Jake murmured as you dragged him down the isle of the adult novelty store.

"Because, I feel like those measurements are always a little...misleading... this way you can actually see it" You shrugged, "Plus we don't have to wait for shipping" He grinned, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as you finally found what you were searching for.

That was only partly the truth, this was your way of making sure he felt more secure in his choice, made sure he wanted this, made it real for him.

"Come on, I'll even let you pick the harness if you want" You wiggled your brows at him.

He glanced nervously around the store before even looking in the direction of what hung on the shelfs. Once he realized there was no one else in the store besides the clerk, he let his eyes begin to scan the options. You watched his expression intently as he browsed, taking into account where his eyes lingered.

You giggled when he reached for one and then stopped bringing his hand to his chin in consideration and tilting his head as if calculating logistics,

"What?!" He laughed, cheeks turning pink "I'm very out of my element here y/n"

"Would you like some guidance?" You asked, pulling him closer to you and wrapping your hands around his bicep, leaning against him.

"Please" He conceded through a sigh, almost melting into you

"Well, I saw you eyeing this one" you reached forward, taking a modestly sized, deep blue colored dildo into your hand, or rather the package that contained it. It had a little curve in it, which told you it would hit his prostate perfectly, you silently wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

"Will that work? I don't see the fabric parts" he whispered.

You did everything in your power to stifle your grin, he was so cute and being very serious.

"Its harness compatible babe, we can use it with or without"

He nodded, turning back to the shelf and looking at the rest of the options one last time,

"Thats the one I want" he said in a quiet confidence that reassured you in the way you'd hoped it would. You ventured further down the isle and stopped in front of the array of harnesses. In a move that shocked you he immediately stepped forward, "This one"

You quirked a brow as he turned around and help up his pick, a leather harness with silver hardware and a few silver studs for decoration. You loved it, but didn't want to waste a moment to tease him,

"Hmmm I don't know, I kinda like this one better" You reached in the general direction of the shelf, knowing he'd stop you before you got too close,

"Not so fast" He stepped between you and the shelf, "You said I could pick, plus you'll look amazing in this" He smirked,

You'd expected him to pout, not step in the way he had.

"Yeah?" You asked, now fishing for his praise,

"Absolutely" He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

-------

As soon as the front door shut behind you Jake had you pinned against the wall, one hand tangling in your hair as he covered your neck with sloppy kisses and the other grabbing a handful of your ass.

The moment was interrupted by Jakes ringtone, the one you knew was assigned to his twin. He fumbled to silence it and then tossed it on the entry way table. You giggled as he went back to kissing you, rutting his hips against you. His phone began to ring again,

"Jake" You huffed, "What if its important?"

"Ugh" He reluctantly reached over to grab the phone, not moving from you, "This better be really fucking important Josh."

He continued subtly rocking against you, giving you a devilish wink and holding a finger up to shush you when a small groan passed your lips,

"Me? Why can't you do it?" He said loudly into the phone. You heard Josh speaking on the other end just as loudly as Jake. "Fine, when do I have to leave?"

You felt your face fall, and Jake caught it, stopping his motions and pressing a quick kiss to your forehead.

"Tonight?!" He gave your hand a squeeze, and his eyes met yours in an apologetic look as he parted from you and headed off to assumedly pack. "You have no idea how much you fucking owe me for this." Was the last thing you heard before he hung up the phone.

--

That was 3 days ago that Josh had called needing him to cover for a sick Sam for some interview in New York. He was supposed to get back today.

As you turned the corner of your street you saw his car parked in the driveway, making your heart flutter. You always missed him like crazy when he was away, even if it was just a few days. It had been a less than ideal day at work and you were just so happy he was home.

Walking in the door you smiled at the sight of his favorite takeout sitting on the kitchen counter, but no sign of Jake. You slipped off your shoes by the door and made your way to the bedroom. The bathroom door was shut and you could faintly smell his bodywash in the air. Stripping out of your blazer you turned to toss it on the bed, freezing when you saw what rested there. The harness you had yet to wear, and the blue toy that went with it. You knew you hadn't left it on the bed, which meant Jake had. It occurred to you that this was his way of telling you what he wanted.

You heard the sink turn on and the familiar sound of Jakes electric toothbrush. Quietly you opened the door and stepped inside. Jakes eyes met yours in the mirror, a soft smile playing on his lips as his eyes raked over you. Since removing your blazer you were now in a lacy camisole and pencil skirt. You took this moment to take in Jake, the towel hung low on his hips and the damp waves of hair that surrounded his face. He looked tired, eyes half lidded and adorned with the slightest of dark circles.

You made your way forward, wrapping your arms around his waist, kissing his shoulder and neck as he continued to brush his teeth. His free hand reached down and lovingly rubbed your thigh. Once he was done with his teeth he turned the sink off and his head fell back against your shoulder, his other hand reaching up to caress the side of your face as you continued to kiss and nip at his neck,

"Baby" He sighed, "I missed you"

"I missed you more" you mumbled against his warm skin, fingers sprawling as your hands began to travel down his torso.

"I don't think so," He tried to turn in your arms but quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Relaxing again into your hold as your fingertips slipped under the towel, he turned his head towards you as best he could, "Come on, give me a kiss, love." you ignored his request as the towel fell to the ground and you raked your nails down the front of his thighs. Oh so close to where he wanted your hands most.

"Any ideas how to make up for lost time?" You asked, his fingers tightened in your hair as you loosely wrapped your hand around his half hard cock, stroking it slowly,

"Mmm I have a few," He groaned,

"Do tell, Kiszka. I'm holding my breath" you teased as your eyes met his in the mirror,

"I- you know what I want" He replied, eyes fluttering shut as you gripped his cock a little tighter, speeding up your strokes,

"Maybe I just want to hear you say it" you nipped at his earlobe and he shuttered against you. Oh, he was feeling soft tonight, the way he'd conceded when you wouldn't let him turn, the way he hadn't made any commands, his coy responses to your prodding questions. You decided now that you'd try to cut it out with the teasing, and just focus on spoiling him.

You began peppering your kisses over his shoulders as you continued working him,

"I need you to-" He paused, licking over his bottom lip as his eyes opened once more, locking with yours intensely, "I need you to fuck me,"

You felt your heart skip a beat in your chest,

"Need it huh?" you crooned, gently taking his hand from your neck and placing it out in front of him on the sink, following suit with the other to where he was just slightly bent forward.

"Yes, god yes," he swallowed hard as your kisses made their way down his spine, "It was all I could think about the whole time I was gone baby"

"Oh, you poor thing" you said as you dug your fingertips into the plush skin off his ass, squeezing it as you knelt behind him, heart set on devouring him for the first time, "Tell me to stop if you don't like anything ok? Or if its too much,"

"Mhmm" He nodded "Are you about to.."

"Spoil you with my mouth and tongue? Yes Jakey, is that ok?" you sucked a hickey onto the round of his asscheek as you waited for his answer,

"I- only if you want to" He murmured nervously,

"Oh, I want it" And without a second thought you delved in.

The glorious sound of Jake's shocked gasp filled the room, echoing off the walls. He tensed only for a moment before relaxing in your hold. The smell of his bodywash and the taste of him filled your senses as you lapped over him, moving down to show attention to his taint before moving back up.

"You're too good at this, why are you so good at this" He groaned. You internally patted yourself on the back for the praise, "More, please give me more"

"I'm going to, love" you rose back to your feet, "You wanna move to the bed?" you moved to step out of the bathroom,

"Yeah, but first I want this" He grabbed your wrist, taking you by surprise as he tugged you back to him, pulling you into a searing kiss. He held you against him tightly, slotting his lips with yours and pressing his tongue into your mouth. The movements were slow but full of intention, causing you to get lost in the kiss.

When Jake finally pulled away he pulled your shirt over your head, "You're wearing entirely too much right now"

"Alright," You laughed softly, "I got the rest"

You shooed him into the bedroom as you went to remove the rest of your clothing, you wondered if the harness might be a little uncomfortable directly on your skin but decided it was a risk you were willing to take.

When you finally made it into the bedroom Jake was standing at the end of the bed holding the strap in his hands.

"May I?" He said, nodding his head in your direction. It took you a second to register what he was asking

"Oh, sure, it can be a little tricky" you made your way over to him and he knelt in front of you. You felt yourself melt as you watched him figure out the contraption and start to fasten the straps. Reaching down you caressed his face, prompting him to look up and realized you'd been watching.

He scrunched his nose, suppressing his shy smile as he placed a chaste kiss to the spot just above your clit, tightening the final strap. His hand found yours and you pulled him to his feet, not failing to notice the way his eyes studied you in your new look.

"You like it?" You asked, biting your lower lip as you waited for his answer,

"More than I thought, yeah. It's sexier than I imagined.." his words trailed off as he started kissing you again, much more desperately this time around.

"How do you want it babe?" You whispered against his lips. He stepped away, looking at the bed in a moment of consideration before climbing on it and reaching his hand to you, coaxing you to follow him,

"Can we, like this?" He laid on his side and guided you behind him, like the two of you were spooning, his pretty brown eyes looked to you expectantly,

"We can try" You said through a small breathy laugh, reaching for the lube in the nightstand drawer. Once you got it within reach you and Jake got comfortable. You knew from the times he'd fucked you in this position that you needed to be a bit lower on the bed than him. Finally you got situated behind him, right arm under his torso and softly rubbing his chest, his back against your front, his legs lazily tangled with yours. You blindly searched for the lube, putting some on your fingers and then dropping it back to the mattress. "Touch yourself for me? Please?"

He obeyed, slowly stroking himself as you carefully reached between his legs, spreading some of the lube onto him before slowly pressing into him with one finger,

"Y/n" He whined, "More, give me more"

"Are you sure?" You asked as you carefully pumped and curled your finger,

"Yes, yes, please-just-"

"And you say I'm the depraved one," You pressed another finger into him, savoring the moan you elicited, "but listen to you, begging me to stretch you out so you can take my cock,"

"Shit, say that again" His gravely voice wavered,

"The part about you taking my cock?" You curled your fingers into the spot you'd learned completely unraveled him, his free hand had a death grip on the sheets as he nodded quickly, "Is that what you need Jake? You need me to-"

"Yes, fuck baby please, just do it already, I need it" he was a rambling mess, wet hair stuck to his face and his cheeks flushed.

You glanced down between the two of you, looking at the modest size of the strap he'd chosen and you felt confident that he was probably ready, especially if you went slow. You removed your fingers, once again searching for the lube as you pressed some quick kisses to Jake's back. Out of the corner of your eye you saw him glance over his shoulder at your actions before relaxing back against the bed, and taking a deep breath.

"Hey, I love you." You said softly as you got back into position. His hand that he'd been touching himself with reached up and landed over your hand on his chest, giving it a loving squeeze

"I love you" his voice was calm, but you could sense his nervous energy,

"Are you ok?" You asked as you used your free hand to adequately lubricate the silicone between your legs,

"I-yeah, I just got a little nervous suddenly, but I don't want to stop" He said through a small nervous laugh. You pulled him a little closer to you, holding him tightly and adorning him with more kisses as you lined yourself up,

"I've got you babe," You felt him relax, "I'm going to go so slow, and you tell me if you want me to stop,"

He nodded, interlacing his fingers with yours. "Ok, I'm ready"

You cautiously proceeded, pausing every time his hold on your hand got tighter, freezing all together when a sudden moan passed his lips,

"It's-" His breathing had turned ragged, "Keep going, don't stop"

You pressed in further, reaching around with your free hand and pumping his throbbing cock. Another strangled moan came from him as he arched his back, effectively fucking himself back onto you,

"Look at you, taking it so well for me" You praised,

"Uh huh" He whimpered, "It's so-so good"

"Yeah? Are you going to cum for me?" You asked as he continued to roll his hips back onto the length, then forward to fuck himself into your slick hand,

"Please," He groaned, moving your hand from his chest up to his neck. You caught on and lightly wrapped your hand around his throat, squeezing it as a low growl rattled his chest,

"You don't have to ask Jake, I want it" god you fucking wanted it, you were dripping down your thighs and he'd barely touched you, it didn't even matter because you were sure you could get off on his pleasure alone. You went out on a limb and said something you'd never said before, "Be a good boy and cum for me"

"Oh god- oh fuck- oh" He trembled slightly as he groaned and cursed his way through his orgasm, placing his hand over yours tightly around his throat as he frantically rocked his hips until he'd ridden it out.

You felt him release the hold he had on your arm, reaching back to lovingly rub your hip as you gently removed yourself from him. He rolled to his back and looked to you,

"That was.....really intense" He admitted with a spent smile,

"Good intense?" You questioned as you tried to read his face,

"Perfect intense" He replied confidently, "Can I ask for one more thing?"

"Of course" You smiled sweetly

"Come here" He haphazardly tugged you so that you straddled his waist. You looked at him curiously as he started to work at the fasteners around your hips, "I'm feeling a little selfish tonight y/n" A tired smirk found its way onto his perfect mouth,

"Is that so?" you questioned with a tilt of your head and a quirked brow, massaging your hands into his chest as you listened

"Mhmm" he hummed, tossing the strap to the bed. "So I was thinking, I really wanna watch my pretty girl cum."

He grabbed your hips and moved you back to where you now straddled his thigh, a shocked squeal coming out of you causing him to grin,

"Can you do that? Use me to make yourself cum?" his fingers rubbed slow circles over your hip bones,

"And you're just gonna sit back and watch?" you quipped, looking down your nose at him,

"If you'd let me" He relaxed back, propping himself against a pillow,

"I guess you were really good for me" You tested the waters again as you began to grind down against his thigh, bracing yourself on his shoulders, his mischievous grin was back in its place,

"I was a good boy for you wasn't I?" his lips parted as you reacted to his words, speeding up your hips and whimpering a 'yes'. "Did you like fucking me, love?"

"Uh huh" your fingers were digging into his shoulders now as he watched you soaking his thigh,

"Good, because that was definitely not a one time thing" His eyes focused on your heat, "Next time...I want you to really give it to me"

"Jake-" You felt your orgasm building just listening to the filth coming from his lips, your legs started to shake and your movements staggered

"I can take it baby, I'll be so good" he suddenly leaned forward and placed his hands on your hips, guiding you a little faster as his mouth found your neck, kissing and sucking his way up your jaw, "You're so wet y/n, let me have it, I can tell how good it feels baby just let go"

"I- I'm gonna" You gasped out, not having time to finish the statement as your orgasm crashed into you,

"Yeah, thats it y/n, fucking stunning" He sounded just as out of breath as you, "So beautiful when you cum, I'll never get tired of it"

Even in with the pleasure fogging your brain you'd heard those last words and they gave you butterflies. As you drifted back down to earth you collapsed down onto Jake, savoring the way he held you and rubbed your back and kissed the crown of your head.

"I'd say that definitely made up for the lost time," you felt him smile against your hair,

"I think so" He replied as he held you a little tighter. “What do you say we have a sleepover in the living room tonight? Pull out the sofa bed and watch some movies? Deal with the sheets tomorrow?”

“I think that sounds fantastic, if we can both make it in there” you giggled together as you stood up on still shaky legs, giving each other playful kisses as you both tried to steady each other,

“I think we can manage” he pulled you in close for one last kiss, taking his time and gently brushing his nose against yours “it’s good to be back home.”

[subliminalbo]

The Pleasure Method

This is a continuation of Return to Office

It was simply dumb luck that Futurum had stumbled upon their newest tech. The Conditioning Initiative was a success, but its limitations were beginning to show. If the goal was to create the perfect workplace free from distractions or inefficiencies, they needed their employees to embrace the Initiative in every phase of their lives. This was how R&D shifted to The Pleasure Method.

The Pleasure Method was reversed engineered from hardware discovered in the basement of a sorority house near the campus of Carpenter State University. The program was a sophisticated set of stimulants delivered through a pair of noise canceling headphones and a VR headset. Futurum recovered a treasure trove of hypnotic audio and video files from a hard drive in the basement, but the files themselves weren't fundamentally different from what Futurum had achieved with The Conditioning Initiative. What really fascinated researchers were the testimonies culled from members of that sorority.

The power of sexual stimulation in subverting a subject's will had been documented in the past, but Futurum's interest was in testing its absolute limits. In their deprogramming, the sorority sisters who were rescued from the Alphas house recalled being hypnotized and fucked senselessly. Deprived of sight and sound from the headphones and visor, there was nothing left to focus on but the feeling of hands on flesh, teeth grazing nipples, tongues rolling along clits, and slick, thick silicone cocks penetrating as deep as they could go. The sorority sisters were programmed to desire only this feeling, and after several hours of unceasing stimulation they would do everything in their waking minds to feel that level of pleasure again. They would even obey.

Futurum built their own program from the Alphas' testimonies. The Pleasure Method was a more sophisticated apparatus than the crude setup recovered in the Alphas basement. R&D had long rooms filled with rows of examination chairs where subjects were strapped in and treated to days—not simply hours, but days—worth of sexual stimulation. Mechanical arms loomed above every chair in these R&D rooms. The whole area was called a Pleasure Station. The arms were bolted to the ceiling and were fitted with long, motorized silicone rods for vaginal or anal penetration. Regular electric shocks were delivered through a subject's nipples to maximize the body's capacity for pleasure.

All of this was conducted under deep hypnosis. Audio files droned reinforcing messages of submission in a subject's ears while a visor lowered over the eyes ensured that the subject remained entranced with synchronized light displays. Subjects were fed intravenously so that they could remain under The Pleasure Method for days.

The end results were a monumental step forward from the simple subliminal messaging of the first phase of The Conditioning Initiative. The Pleasure Method had been one hundred percent successful in shaping Futurum employees into re-writable worker drones.

The applications were endless. The efficiency crisis that had plagued workplaces since the pandemic wouldn't just be solved, Futurum could guarantee that no energy would ever be wasted in an office or a factory or a boardroom ever again. The future of work was mental conditioning, and the key was sexual pleasure.

You would be hard pressed to find a better example of this than No. 14. Formerly known as Shelby Irving, No. 14 was a graduate student at Carpenter State University who had worked on the initial stages of The Conditioning Initiative as part of a summer job program. When No. 14 returned the following year, she dutifully submitted herself for processing at a Pleasure Station. Though technically still a student at CSU, No. 14 accepted a full time job as a researcher in Futurum R&D, assisting in the processing of new subjects. Despite balancing two full time jobs, the new perspective afforded to No. 14 by her conditioning made her exceedingly efficient and she felt no difficulty in transitioning between both worlds every day.

Sometimes No. 14's worlds would collide, like when she was tasked with processing a new recruit who studied in the same rhetoric program at the school. On Shelby's recommendation, Josie had applied for the summer work program. By the time she stood naked before a Pleasure Station, she had undergone hypnotic conditioning through Futurum's new on-boarding program. That conditioning began to slip when Josie was strapped into the chair and No. 14 inserted the IV into her arm.

"Shelby?" Josie squeaked. She awoke to the sound of a dozen subjects undergoing their own processing. The subjects' thoughtless moans filled her ears like a ghoulish chant.

It wasn't uncommon for a subject's conditioning to fail during preparation. This only proved the need for a more permanent solution to The Conditioning Initiative.

"Shelby, please!" Josie begged, but there was no recognition in No. 14's eyes. "Oh, god!" she cried as the mechanical arm dropped down from the ceiling. The longest dildo she had seen in her life was just inches from her pussy. "What is that?"

"It is advisable that you remain relaxed through the preparation process," No. 14 instructed. As her glassy eyes floated from the terrified expression on Josie's face to the mechanical arm in front of her, they lingered on Josie's soft, round tits jiggling with each sob. A subtle, nearly imperceptible twitch of No. 14's eye displayed a potential hiccup in The Pleasure Method: that subjects could be molded and trained, but an increased desire for sexual satisfaction could take them at any minute. This time, however, the desire passed, and No. 14 continued with her programmed duties.

"Subjects find the pleasure distributor to be extremely arousing," No. 14 explained. "It will be a pleasant experience for you."

"Fuck you, Shelby!" Josie cried. She pulled hard at her restraints, but she couldn't shake the straps free.

When Josie knew that she couldn't find her way out, she tried to appeal to the friend that she knew from school.

"Shelby, please," she pleaded again. "You have to fight this! Whatever they've done to you. I know you're in there. I know you're still you."

But No. 14 was unmoved by Josie's pleas. She slipped the noise cancelling headphones over her ears and lowered the visor plate over her eyes, a neon glow illuminating along the rim of the visor as the program took effect. Josie released a sharp, surprised gasp when the pleasure distributor entered her pussy. It started with slow thrusts and picked up speed as her pussy responded with more lubrication.

Josie's pleas quickly softened until there was nothing left but a hungry moan that was indistinguishable from the rest of the noise in the R&D room, Josie's voice becoming another part of the chant.

No. 14 was practically dripping as she watched Josie become No. 500. With that same little twitch of the eye, she came. It washed over her so silently that an observer would never know the level of pleasure firing off all over No. 14's body.

If No. 14 had a thought left in her head, it may have been that she fucking loved this job.

[cutecipher]

Garbage ai+cryptos+aaa gamings impact (via pushing for e-waste+mining by way of gpu obsession) on ecosystems and the lives of people living in them should not be brushed aside in the name of some nebulous progress, fight for optimization, use an os that runs on older/lower power hardware, play indie games, do anything to avoid creating more waste and encourage the people around you to do the same!

Sincerely: a computer scientist

[vroomian]

Thinking about vox oc and his powers. I think I’m gonna lean waaaay into the network aspect of them. All his contracts are essentially microchipped and he has a routine in the back of his mind constantly monitoring them for any changes. This is a vital part of being one of his contracts btw. No chip no deal. They break contract they lose the chip. He’s got zero interest in tracking people who don’t already belong to him lol. He doesn’t really do anything with this surveillance besides interfere when his contracts need protection. What people do outside work hours is their business.

But the main aspect of his powers are actually related to him being essentially a robot. He can literally have as many bodies as he wants. He’s absentminded because he’s running like four billion subroutines and piloting ten other “vox” bodies and hundreds of drones. His only limitation is hardware and that’s only going to get better and better as time goes on. He’s his own hive mind, his own network of selves.

His demon form is very plant based, with cables as roots and connections that span the entire pride ring. Probably beyond the pride ring tbh, and maybe even to heaven as time passes. So long as one of his bodies is safe and he’s got a connection he’s essentially immortal.

I think vox is so so afraid of waisting his death the same way he wasted his life. A person who was missed by no one and left nothing behind. He doesn’t want to die with all those stories inside him again.

(Drawbacks: it took him a long long time to use even two bodies, he can suffer overloads of information and crashes. He gets lost in his own information stream sometimes and he might not make it out. It’s a coin flip for every body he adds to the network. Also he has to actually make the bodies from scratch and it’s fucking expensive and painful. I’m thinking he has to literally carve bits of himself up to plant them likes seeds in the new bodies. Each body has a fully functional pain and sensory system system so he also has to deal with that lol. He never really rests because there’s always a few parts of him that are up and awake.)

[kassymalone]

A Little Rant about Fun

Remember fun?

Remember when you could do things just because they were fun?

It keeps coming to mind recently, and it's starting to drive me nuts.

I've always done things with my hands - I used to do art before uni destroyed my love and confidence, I write things, I cross stitch, I make models, and I do these things because I enjoy them. Unfortunately I've come to hate talking to people about my hobbies because the almost always have the same response - 'what do you do with that?'

Do I sell on Etsy? No I fucking don't, this pattern took me 15 hours to finish, do you know how much I would have to charge for it?

Do I do freelance writing? No I fucking don't, why would I want a second soul-crushing job on top of my first soul-crushing job?

Why don't I actually get published instead of wasting my time with fanfiction so I can actually make some money off it? WHY DON'T YOU DO IT IF ITS SO FUCKING EASY

I've been thinking of making a quilt recently, with patches of all my favourite things, but I don't want to talk to anyone about it because I can already hear them asking 'and what are you going to do with it? Is this your practice one before you sell them? No, don't do it that way, that's the wrong way, no-one will like it!'

(Don't get me started on the 'you're doing it wrong' crowd, gatekeepers are a different rant.)

JUST LET ME DO THINGS. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO MAKE MONEY. I know we're in a cost of living crisis right now, but I've been hearing this shit since I was a teenager, twenty fucking years ago! I still remember being talked out of singing lessons when I had a little extra money because 'what would I do with it?' Well fuck, my fat ass was never going to be the next Adele, but maybe I could have just had fun doing something I enjoy, but better?!

ON A RELATED NOTE!

You know what disproportionately annoys me? When people call the Nintendo Switch a 'toy' as if it's a bad thing. Like... yes? It's a toy? I play games on it?

'But the frame rate!', 'But the graphics!', 'But it can't run XX game!' WHO FUCKING CARES.

Yes, the xbox and playstation can connect to netflix and play blue rays and cook you dinner and raise your children, but they also cost a months rent and have all these bells and whistles to distract you from the fact that they JUST FUCKING TOYS. There's nothing either of them can do that I can't do on my PC, better and cheaper, and not have to turn on five different peripherals to make it work.

'But 4K!', 'But you can see the character follicles in this new game!', 'But the horses testicles react to the weather!'

Are you not having fun? Are you not enjoying playing your game? Never once have I been in the middle of a game and thought 'I'd be enjoying this more if it had more pixels.' I'm not even against other consoles, use whatever you prefer - if you like modern real-to life graphics then more power to you, but the amount of people who act like it actually matters somehow is concerning...

Yes, the switch hardware is behind what the xbox and playstation can do... but its a toy. Nintendo has never forgotten that it makes toys, and that's why I like it. It sits on my table, connects to my other monitor. I listen to long form youtube videos while I play TOTK. If I'm feeling sassy, I play it handheld.

My niece has one. We play Pokémon together and I let her win battles because the point is to be fun.

WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO MY POINT!

FUCK the grindset 'but how can I monetise every possible second?' bullshit, FUCK the 'taking this thing that should be fun way too seriously' bullshit.

LET PEOPLE DO THINGS JUST BECUASE THEY'RE FUN.

LET THINGS THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FUN BE FUN.

And now I've used the word 'fun' so much it's lost all meaning.

Much like fun itself.

[rjzimmerman]

The Carbon Footprint of Amazon, Google, and Facebook Is Growing. (Sierra Club)

Excerpt from this story from Sierra Club:

IN MARCH The Information reported that Microsoft was in talks with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, about spending an eye-popping $100 billion on a gargantuan data center in Wisconsin dedicated to running artificial intelligence software. Code-named “Stargate,” the data center would, at full operation, consume five gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 3.7 million homes. For comparison purposes, that’s roughly the same amount of power produced by Plant Vogtle, the big nuclear power station in Georgia that cost $30 billion to build.

Stargate is in the earliest of planning stages, but the sheer scale of the proposal reflects a truth about artificial intelligence: AI is an energy hog. That’s an embarrassing about-face for the technology industry. For at least 20 years, American electricity consumption has hardly grown at all—owing in part, say computer scientists, to steady advances in energy efficiency that have percolated out of the tech industry into the larger economy. In 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration, total electricity consumption fell slightly from 2022 levels.

But according to a report published last December by Grid Strategies, a consultancy that advises on energy policy, multiple electric utilities now predict that US energy demand will rise by up to 5 percent over the next five years. One of the chief culprits responsible for the surge, say the utilities, are new data centers designed to run AI. To meet the growing demand for power, those utilities want to build new fossil fuel power plants and to dismantle climate legislation that stands in their way.

For environmentalists, this represents a giant step backward. Artificial intelligence was supposed to help us solve problems. What good are ChatGPT and its ilk if using them worsens global warming?

This is a relatively new story—the AI gold rush is still in its infancy, ChatGPT only having debuted in fall 2022. But computing’s energy demands have been growing for decades, ever since the internet became an indispensable part of daily life. Every Zoom call, Netflix binge, Google search, YouTube video, and TikTok dance is processed in a windowless, warehouse-like building filled with thousands of pieces of computer hardware. These data centers are where the internet happens, the physical manifestation of the so-called cloud—perhaps as far away from ethereality as you can get.

In the popular mind, the cloud is often thought of in the simple sense of storage. This is where we back up our photos, our videos, our Google Docs. But that’s just a small slice of it: For the past 20 years, computation itself has increasingly been outsourced to data centers. Corporations, governments, research institutions, and others have discovered that it is cheaper and more efficient to rent computing services from Big Tech.

The crucial point, writes anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate in his case study The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage, is that “heat is the waste product of computation.” Data centers consume so much energy because computer chips produce large amounts of heat. Roughly 40 percent of a data center’s electricity bill is the result of just keeping things cool. And the new generation of AI software is far more processor intensive and power hungry than just about anything—with the notable exception of cryptocurrency—that has come before.

The energy cost of AI and its perverse, climate-unfriendly incentives for electric utilities are a gut check for a tech industry that likes to think of itself as changing the world for the better. Michelle Solomon, an analyst at the nonprofit think tank Energy Innovation, calls the AI power crunch “a litmus test” for a society threatened by climate change.

[gender-trash]

like the grand innovation of ros is that actually now 1) you don't have to rewrite your MESSAGING FRAMEWORK from scratch every time and you get a bunch of debug tools for free and 2) theres a bunch of prototype grade components you can probably plug together to get a demo if you know what you're doing

it's great but it's not like. whatever's going on in webservices world. and the webservices people and vcs who are used to it HATE this!!! i interned for a really crappy startup once whose entire concept was "hey, why is robotics not like webservices? clearly we need to reimplement ros but worse and dockerized lol what's hard realtime" and it so clearly had only survived as long as it had because it was The Baby of this VC guy who tried to sell me on javascript like it was an abusive boyfriend i should give ~another chance~, and right after i left they hired a new ceo and pivoted to having an actual product. theres ALLLL these guys coming from webservices land who want to pretend really hard that a malfunctioning robot is exactly as disposable as a malfunctioning docker container, and that gluing together preexisting robotics components (largely research-grade code developed on a completely different robot from whatever your product is) is exactly as easy as gluing together APIs, and it ends so badly for them every time. it's adorable.

relatedly my dad has this theory, which i think has a lot of predictive power, about how a company Makes It Big doing one thing (SAAS, or online ads, or B2B software, or like. making computer chips) and then that product cycle cadence/approach is baked into the company culture so hard that they completely flub it when they try to make something that necessitates a different approach. intel fucking sucks at making software because they inevitably drop support after 18 months because when you make a chip you design it and you send it to the fab and then it's out of your hands and there's no real way to "fix bugs" (you just maintain an errata sheet and add more tests so you can catch the bugs in the next chip you design). webservices companies who do continuous deployment or bust are often really really bad at coping with the sales and maintenance cycles of Big Businesses that a lot of b2b software is for. and software people in full generality have a ridiculously hard time with the concept that you can't exactly continuously deploy improved suspension for your robot chassis, because you have to actually crack the robot open on a workbench and swap it out.

in microservices world one of the baked-in cultural attitudes is "cattle not pets" -- your herd of docker containers is like a herd of cattle; when one of them malfunctions you take it out back and shoot it and spin up a new one, you don't waste energy on failure recovery. when you bring this approach to robotics land it inevitably fails! you have spent 4 or 5 figures minimum on a robot, that thing's a fucking pet! and also, when it malfunctions, it's flailing around potentially doing damage out here in the real world, which is... generally considered to be bad. there have to be layers and layers and layers of safety systems and fallbacks and failure recovery logic and everything needs to be designed to fail into a state that won't maim anyone, or it inevitably will fail, and maim someone. even just "if something goes wrong stop moving immediately" has some complexity to it.

webservices people are also big on "eventual consistency" and almost nothing in robotics is physically safe to do on an eventual consistency basis or else your robot will eventually (but consistently!) destroy itself and/or anything around it. the closer you get to low level control the more important it is to have hard timing guarantees and that's generally sort of antithetical to the philosophy that hardware should be as abstracted away as possible

[extrajigs]

so there are people in the abattoirs and post-human horror fauna outside. does the fauna have souls? they're kinda sentient, right? (if yes, was some of humanity saved and some turned into the horrors^tm? how was this decided?) really i just want to hear more about your nightmare fuel, thanks <3

Always willing to talk about the nightmare fuel! I have thought of your question and have created. THE CHART. But first ALL life has to have a soul to function in this setting, think of it as the electricity needed to power a toaster. You could have the perfect toaster, but without any juice its just a sad cold husk. Souls to not necessitate sentience though, that is more on the actual hardware. Now here's how the people of Abattoir land are split up.

Once the beasts showed up to the continent post blood sea, the majority of the people did not make it to the net step. Those that did were either those who devoted themselves to the new overlords, these are the Dragons and Abattoirs of present day, gifted immortality in new twisted form. If you were more liked you became a Dragon, but hey Abattoir living is still a living. Next, those that opposed this leadership change but were not eaten right away were separated into two categories. Some were turned into monsters to populate the frozen wastes, their minds rotting away into eventually being no more than animals. But most people were instead condemned to the Abattoirs population storage with their faculties intact. From here is where the first few generations of Abattoir inhabitants were born, the earliest hand raised by their Gods and never knowing a life outside of what's going on right now. The vast majority of these people's destiny is to be eaten, BUT members of the Choir are gifted part of their God's monstrous power to allow them to keep order in the Abattoirs. This is because the Gods have become kinda lazy, so they spend most of their time eating, lounging, or canoodling with each other. Usually all three.

[witchofthesouls]

Challenges? Do tell what the nurse would be witnessing if Tarn was less isolated from the rest of the Deceptacons. Say Tarn and the DJD were transferred to the Nemisis or the Peaceful Tyranny crash on Earth trying to pick Megatron.

If mandatory meetings in the "office" were a thing, the DJD needed to haul ass to wherever Megatron planned it, then Nickel and the Camien wouldn't appreciate the finer points of 'con culture, especially with their dumpster-fire of a healthcare system that really needs fixing before they crash and explode.

Hook, a perfectionist he may be, has his own filing system that's a monstrosity that could give Tarn pointers.

As a Camien, you're no stranger to challenges, and you expected similar bouts, albeit more violent, especially with similar struggles over resources.

You didn't expect the gratuitous gore to come with sheer waste of everything and no common sense on preventative measures.

You and Nickel have been "spoiled" by the DJD's solid teamwork, which is a far different direction from the rest of the troops. It's "every mech for himself" taken to an extreme competitive sport level or something to bring corporate tears to the patron of billionares.

You thought Tarn's weirdness was just him. Apparently, Decepticons are a bunch of extreme weirdos on a pain and gore scale.

Funnily enough, more rumors would arise should this happen, you will become a legend, a cryptid, a powerful entity of unimaginable force, you're only trapped and impeded by a standard frame and back-to-back carriages. (Which is another another mindfuck for the faction since it's Tarn's.) Otherwise, what other miracles or monstrosities would happen, especially under the DJD...

You (and Nickel) managed to update Overlord's medical files, including his firewalls, hardware testing, oil change, rust checks, and all the finicky and little, yet important things that keep a mecha running smooth and healthy.

And with it, you get Overlord's attention, and Tarn isn't pleased at all.

[seat-safety-switch]

Once again, my enemies have done to me what they always do: get angry at me for getting impatient at Home Depot. And in a way, they’re right. It is both of our faults that I got upset. The workers are trying their best, and sometimes they have more pressing duties (customer pooped in the display toilet?) than coming to help me cut some plywood on the saw. That’s not their fault. What is their fault is that they once, years ago, showed me the key that they use to unlock the plywood-cutting saw’s safety interlock, and didn’t notice me taking several pictures of it with my phone before uploading it to a lock-breaking website operated by an unaccountable offshore artificial metamind.

They shouldn’t be too mad: sure, I did use their key-cutting machine to make a copy of that key, but I paid for it, just like any other sucker. That’s the right thing to do. If anything, they saved some money by my work of piracy, because I didn’t have to wait for an employee to come by and use the key-cutting machine, either. I’d love a business where customers walk in, serve themselves, and then give me some money. It would leave me with a lot of free time to waste at Home Depot waiting for someone to come by and slowly operate the power tool I already know how to use.

I do hear you saying now: if you’re so fucking handy, then how come you didn’t take it home and cut it yourself? The answer is that today’s modern plywood sheets are too big to fit into my delectable shitbox of a van, which was only made for three or four years in a suburb of Chengdu. Even now, getting any information about the model requires officially applying through the Chinese embassy, and often times all you’ll get back is “it is very suspicious that you keep asking so many questions about this.” I still keep trying, though, which probably means I won’t get to visit the factory in which it was made, or at least the Party representative who shows me around it won’t be very gracious when she spots me trying to shove mufflers into my pockets. So I have to hack the plywood in half and kind of jam it in there at an angle with the hatch propped open. And I can’t turn right very sharply or it will all fall out into traffic.

Home Depot says you should “do it yourself.” This is a noble pursuit, and, if anything, my core ethos. Of course, what they actually mean is “fuck it up, and buy materials to do it at least twice.” Their hypocrisy is laid bare in this exact situation, but worry not. I made sure to run off a few more orders from other customers before the orange-aproned Gestapo cottoned onto the sound of basic competence. With any luck, they too will become impatient with the doddering pace of hardware-store monopolists. I could use a second pair of eyes to watch my back while I’m working the key cutting machine next time.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-09-02

Do you rember. Wen day is dark, sember.

Listening: @cyelatm released a new album Habit Prism that I've been listening to in bits and pieces. Even, rhythmic folk, good music to have on when you have people around.

In that vein, Bandcamp Friday this coming Friday! Make your lists!

Watching: Watched The Raid which I've had kicking around for a bit. Do you want to watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour? No? Get better taste in movies and then watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour.

The Raid is so obviously made for like two dollars, there's one building, every single gun and piece of armour is airsoft gear, the camera is visibly some mid-tier hardware that suffers from severe rolling shutter, and it kicks so much ass.

There's some really interesting things happening with camera movement in this movie. Really really complicated multi-axis camera moves, the same shot will take like six different dutch angles in a single move, or will lock on to different objects and follow them, it's great for martial arts but it's also used to pretty good effect in some interstitial scenes.

The culminating fight with Mad Dog is so wild, literally just three guys in an empty concrete cube fighting for a solid ten or twelve minutes and it works! Does not seem possible. They actively remove almost every prop from the room so it's just guys hitting each other but they keep doing incredible stunts.

It's funny looking at the gifsets on here because they're unreadable, everything happens so fast and requires so much context that is only delivered in the full flow of the movie. My favourite part is when he said "It's Raiding Time" and raided all over those guys.

Reading: Finally sat down and got through the Phalanx's Twilight, Legion's Triumph series on acoup.

Sections IVa-c mostly slid off my brain because it's a bunch of wars I don't know enough about to contextualize but it's mostly justification for what's explained in parts I-III which were great, and it's an interesting look at how the political and military structures of Rome interwove to improve the effectiveness of the Legion.

Also reading Skin Horse, which I started ages ago but never got very far, I think because I started a job around that time and lost track of it. Sticking webcomic tabs on my little ARM tablet is really convenient, I've jammed Out Of Placers and Laika's Comet in there as well, it's been a while since I did a big archive dive on a comic.

Skin Horse is very much of its time, not really in sensibility but just in content. The nerds are characterized by liking Harry Potter.

Making: Resolved the power delivery issues that were causing me to have mysterious failures with the LED driver. That was annoying. Anyway remember to split your power supply when you could potentially pull like 10A@5V to drive LED's.

Playing: Tactical Breach Wizards campaign is ongoing, as you get deeper into the campaign your team expands which dramatically complicates operations, your possible actions explode, and I'm not even halfway through.

Dall was my newest operator at time of writing and she's probably the hardest to use, she can deal a lot of damage but relies more so than anyone else on good positioning, it's really easy to end up way out of place and waste her moves, and she's too heavy to shunt around with Jen's storm attacks the way you can with the others.

Speaking of those, I really like how the short turns and deterministic actions mean you can get really into the weeds. The first time I used a gale grenade to shunt Zan over one extra block to line him up I assumed this would be a sometimes food but you really find yourself doing stuff like that all the time.

I'm heading back and picking through some of the challenge missions concurrently with playing partially to stretch out overall gameplay and partially because I think having fewer abilities unlocked will make those more interesting.

Tools and Equipment: You know, I think we know each other pretty well, I can put this here. The Doxy USB-C Wand is a safe and legal thrill.