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loganjameshowlett · 1 month ago

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SWALLOWTAIL

01: PRAHA

pairing: joaquín torres/ex-widow!reader summary: sam, bucky, and joaquín find you with a proposal word count: 7.4k+ series masterlist | next installment

The man is unremarkable.

Slate hair on an expedition away from his forehead, though combed into a respectable style. Grey-blue eyes as murky and opaque as the waters of the Vltava. A long face, sharp chin angled into the upturned collar of his dark jacket. The café is crowded, and he does not strike you as particularly observant, sitting as he is with his eyes on his latte and a yellowed paperback whose cover has been half torn off. Foolish. New to the game, perhaps, though that is hard to picture, given his age. Maybe just new to the field. A desk jockey on his first field assignment. Could be a midlife crisis situation, you muse. Easy money, whatever the case. Laughable.

But then again, you’d take laughable gratefully after the ringer the last few had put you through.

He had made his way into the café two hours ago, and was still nursing the same cup of coffee he ordered when he came in. He rarely changed positions, skinny left leg thrown crossed over the right at the knee, elbows decorously kept off the table even as he held his book up in front of his face. He bored you within five minutes of watching him. Within three, you had realized he wouldn’t need very close watching at all, and you allowed yourself the luxury of letting your mind wander away from your mark. The couple at the table to your left was arguing in Czech– he had promised to accompany her on a trip to Sofia to visit her family and was now trying to beg off due to work– and the old man with cute tortoiseshell glasses a few tables in front of you was talking warmly to his grandchildren in gravelly-voiced Italian. The couple argued for the better part of an hour, which, at least, helped you pass the time.

When the unremarkable man stands from his unremarkable table inside of this unremarkable café beneath the watchful shadow of Prague Castle, you drain the rest of your mug. The door doesn’t have time to close before you’ve slipped out behind him. The man tracks down the road with his hands in his pocket, and boards a tram headed down the hill and across the river into the heart of Old Town. He sits in the front– you can’t believe your eyes when he hardly glances at the other passengers before sitting down– and you sit in the back, head catty cornered in the curve of the wall in order to watch him and everyone else.

The Red Room hasn’t caught onto the fact that you’ve made base in Prague, as far as you know. Most of your work you did outside of the city, and largely outside of Czechia altogether. Frankly, it annoyed you that one of theirs was toddling around your city, and such an obvious dunce at that. Though it did make the job easier. Less travel, if nothing else.

He gets off the tram in Old Town and starts ambling his way toward the Astronomical Clock. Heading towards the most touristy piazza in the city. Obvious, but not a bad move. Would be easier for him to lose a tail there than in most other parts of the city. It also, fortunately for you, made your job a lot easier.

The Red Room hadn’t entrusted him with any crucial information, obviously. They did this kind of thing sometimes, letting a desk jockey get the taste of the field when they had something menial that needed to get done and didn’t care if the operative got themselves killed. Usually low level information trade offs between Widow handlers, which is exactly what Unremarkable Man is doing in your city. It boiled down to glorified elementary school note passing, essentially. But the coded message he was carrying on a usb hung like dog tags around his neck would tell you where Solenne Rousseau would be carrying out her next mission. And with any luck, you’d be there to intercept and break her conditioning.

Seven ex-Widows were free to move about the world as they liked, armed with new identities and new lives, because of the work you’d been doing since you became a free agent two years ago. Your extensive knowledge of how the Red Room operated, even if said knowledge is a little dated these days, made your attempts to break Widow brainwashing more successful than other’s; your brief time working with SHIELD before they imploded gave you the skills and connections you needed to spirit the newly freed women away to lives where they can make their own choices and live in relative safety. The work was never done– The Red Room stole and trained up little girls faster than you could blink– but it’s the only worthwhile thing you could think to do with your life. Especially now, free from the Red Room as you are but severed from the only people you had come to trust since your Widow days.

In the thick of the crowd beneath the astronomical clock, it is easy for you to sidle right up to Unremarkable Man’s back. Your fingers are swift as they unclip the chain around his neck, and you nudge him into the path of a large group of French tourists. Their disgruntled jostling and sidestepping allows you to pull the usb and chain out from beneath his sweater without his noticing. Within seconds, the crowd has swelled between the two of you, taking you out of the range of his sight. In another few seconds, you’re out of the square entirely, taking a meandering route home. It’s a beautiful day after all, unseasonably warm for early spring, and with the day’s one task being such a cinch, you had a stretch of languid time to actually enjoy it.

You rent a two-room flat in Prague 2, close enough to your favorite part of the city, Old Town, without having to deal with the worst of the thronging tourists. The street is cobbled and tree-lined, and the building a pleasantly bright, white-painted limestone. Kids fill it with laughter and shouting on their way home from school every day, and your windows get full sun. You’ve spent the last six months trying to convince your mind to see the place as home after more than fifteen years without one, but you’re starting to think that home might be a concept too alien for you to comprehend.

You are six blocks away from your building when things start to feel wrong.

A prickle on the back of your neck, the unmistakable feeling of someone watching you. The street was just busy enough to mask anyone obviously following you at a quick glance, and looking about any more thoroughly than that would tip off any pursuers that you were onto them, so no can do. Maintaining a leisurely pace, you take a left, moving away from your building and towards a shopping street that you know is always crowded.

You’ve considered this scenario before, of course. Being who you are, it was only a matter of time before someone came after you. You try to keep on the move, lay low, continuously update your cache of false documents. The mistake you made was deciding that you could stay in Prague just because you like it. Just because it felt like a place you could one day think of as your own. Even rookies know that staying put might as well be a death sentence. Is it the Red Room closing in on you now? Somebody you went after in your SHIELD days?

The possibilities twist through your mind in a tumult as you use the crowd for cover from your pursuer. You slip into a deli that you know has a back exit, emptying into a wide alley inhabited by dumpsters and questionable puddles. You meld into the shadows at the back of the alley just in time for the door you just came out of to bang open once again. Three men pour out onto the cobblestones, taking a few steps before realizing that the freedom of direction once leaving the alley would make their mark impossible to follow now.

It takes a second for you to place the taller two, but once you do, you sigh, hand dropping from the gun holstered beneath your jacket.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?” you ask, stepping forward and crossing your arms over your chest. All three men whip around to face you. The dark-haired one all the way to the left hisses out a shit, hand coming up to his heart.

“Good to see you, too,” Sam Wilson says, your name warm and bright from his mouth. You scowl.

“Wilson. Barnes. Did you come all the way to Europe just to stalk me through my neighborhood?” You ask, leveling a decidedly unimpressed stare at the pair of them, and the wide-eyed kid they seemed to have acquired since the last time you saw them.

“We need to talk,” Bucky says, face and voice serious. You’ve always appreciated his ability to cut right to the chase. “And not in this alley.”

You have known Sam and Bucky to historically get into some bullshit, but you also know they wouldn’t have come all the way to Czechia if it wasn’t dire. It’s probably something you don’t want to hear. Something that will distract you from your own work, almost assuredly. Unfortunately, they are also two of the only people you still currently trust on Earth, and for that they deserve an audience, if nothing else.

“Fine,” you decide. “Come on.”

—

Your flat is the most airtight place you could take them to talk, but that’s not saying much. You sweep it regularly, of course: no bugs, no cameras. You looked into all of your neighbors when you moved in, and you do as extensive a dive as you can into each person that moves in after you. Still, it’s an old Central European apartment building. The walls are thin, and anyway, you’re only one person. Thorough as you are, there’s always the chance that you missed something.

But there isn’t a better alternative, so you herd the three men up four flights of stairs and into your tiny apartment. The tall ceilings help to accommodate them, but even so, you feel kind of squished. You’ve never had so many people in here before. You’ve never had anyone in here before.

“This the kid wearing your old wings?” you ask Sam, gesturing at Brown Eyes, who had immediately begun pacing the limited floor space upon entering your apartment, clearly brimming with unshed energy. His steps falter with your question, and he casts a startled kind of glance over at Sam.

“You keeping tabs on me?” Sam asks, voice sly.

“You’re Captain fucking America, Sam. I’d have to work harder to not know what you’re up to.”

“That’s Joaquín Torres, and yes, he does wear the wings now,” Sam says.

“Nice to meet you,” Joaquín says brightly, extending a hand. You glance down at it and then back up to his face, before relenting to one curt shake. “I don’t just wear the wings, I’m the new Falcon.”

“No, you’re not,” Sam interjects.

You tell Joaquín your name, trying out the whole polite, small talk thing he seems pretty eager to partake in. “They call me Swallowtail in the field.”

It was a name Maria Hill had given you, after breaking your Red Room conditioning and taking you under her wing at SHIELD, however briefly. You wear it with a pride not reserved for many other things.

“Oh, shit, you’re Swallowtail?” Joaquín asks, eyes widening. “The ops you did with Agent Hill are legendary, dude. It’s an honor.”

Your eyes narrow at him as you try to assess, for about the half-dozenth time since he busted into the alley, what his deal is. Giving up the ghost, you set your sights on Bucky instead. “What are you doing here?”

“We need your help,” he says, and the gravity of his tone stops the first response that comes to your head from actually leaving your mouth. They deserved to at least have you hear them out, you had decided. You’ll follow through on that, even if you are already bursting to just say no and be done with it.

“A piece of modified Stark technology resurfaced a few days ago,” Sam starts in. “The Aetos Device. Heard of it?”

When you shake your head in the negative, he carries on. “Stark thought it up during the very early Iron Man days. It’s a power nullifier– disrupts essentially any kind of power, from Hulk’s gamma radiation situation, to newly-awakened Inhuman genes, to every kind of mutation a mutant could be born with. In the end, Tony never built it– too much like playing God even for him, I guess– but the schematics were recently discovered to be among several dozen stolen by HYDRA during their infiltration of SHIELD.”

“Two nights ago, a teenage mutant was killed with the device as part of a demonstration for prospective buyers,” Bucky cuts in. “His mutation was too essential to the basic workings of his biology, so it didn’t just depower him– it murdered him. Slowly and painfully. They watched as he suffered a deadly heart attack in front of them.”

Your chest constricts at the thought. The ability to depower any superhero at any time is enough to bring the world to a halt, or give Hydra the upper hand they would need to take over the world, or whatever it is they want to do these days. But the effect the device had on this mutant? Hydra could deploy a mutant genocide at any time.

“The three of you are hunting it down?” you ask, surfacing from your thoughts.

“Hoping it’ll be the four of us,” Sam answers. “None of us have powers, which gives us an advantage. They can’t take our skill sets away– it has to be us. You have the most active connections and up-to-date intel on the happenings in Europe, too, which we’ll need. My source tracked someone useful to us right here, in Prague.”

“You know I don’t do teams, Sam.”

“Seems like a waste,” Joaquín says pointedly. His body language– arms crossed over his chest, chin dipped so he’s looking down his nose at you– makes you want to squirm. You know what he’s thinking, and he’d be right: no hero like the ones he’s used to would do anything in this situation except climb aboard right away. To do anything else would be selfish.

“We know how you feel about teams,” Sam cedes.

“So, then–” you start, but Bucky cuts you off.

“You trusted us before. Helped us out of more than a few binds when we were on the run. It wasn’t that long ago that we had each other’s backs. Seems kind of like a team, doesn’t it?”

“I could’ve left you idiots to fend for yourselves,” you say, feeling defensive.

“But you didn’t,” Sam responds, like you’re making his point for him. “And being a member of a team didn’t kill you then, did it?”

A beat of silence as you glare at each of them in turn, thinking.

“I think you wanna help,” Sam declares.

“Oh yeah, seems like historically you do wanna help,” Joaquín tacks on.

“Fine,” you say, stepping towards Sam and jabbing your pointer finger at him. “One mission. Then I go back to what I’ve been doing here.”

“One mission,” Sam echoes, looking at you with that stupid smile on his face.

—

It only took about ten more minutes to decide that you wanted to punch Sam Wilson in the head.

Your simple question of what next? was met with the admission that the intel they were working with and the safehouse they were working out of were both courtesy of Contessa de Fontaine. Not exactly the most trustworthy fucking person to rely on for information or safety of any kind, no matter what excuses came out of Sam’s mouth.

“I am well aware of the Contessa’s past. I don’t even trust her as far as I can throw her, believe me, but her intel hasn’t led us astray once,” Sam defends. The angrier you look, the less able to stop talking he seems to be. Good, you’d like to sit here and see how he tries to talk himself out of this one.

“You’ve relied on her intel how many times?” you ask. Bucky shoots you a stern look in the rearview mirror of the car they had led you to once you agreed to join up, like he’s asking you to let up a little on Sam. Not a fucking chance.

“A few! It’s been accurate every time. There’s no reason to think this time would be different.”

“It’s fucking stupid is what it is,” you mutter. Outside the tinted window, the crowded streets of red-roofed buildings thin into newer, sadder looking apartment blocks. Prague holds more charm than it knows what to do with usually, but sometimes this sad, Soviet remnant peaks through in communist architecture, or a certain feeling tied to a sparse, gray-skied winter day. Despite the sun, you’re feeling grim.

Joaquín shifts from the other side of the back seat, scooting forward and reaching over the console to turn the radio on, twirling the volume knob until some obnoxious slavic pop song fills the taut silence. He offers a sheepish smile and a shrug in return to the look you shoot him as he settles back into his seat.

Guess we’re done talking about that, then.

The safehouse is in a largely derelict apartment building on the outskirts of the city, close, Bucky tells you, to the private airstrip where things will be going down later in the night. The plan seems pretty simple: Jan Novotny, a pretty well-known black market arms dealer, is meeting a mysterious buyer who the Contessa claims has information on the Aetos Device. Apparently Joaquín is some kind of tech genius, and all the four of you need to do is get into the hangar, incapacitate the mysterious buyer’s guards long enough to copy shit over from his drive, and get out. With any luck, the guy will have the Aetos Device’s location stored somewhere on his drive, and the rest of the mission will be as straightforward as going and getting it.

“Seems like a longshot,” you say, when they finish explaining the plan. Your voice echoes in the apartment, which is mostly empty except for a table strewn with various supplies and a makeshift tech center you assume is for Joaquín set up haphazardly in the corner.

“Maybe, but we don’t have anything better,” Bucky says. “The guy’s not gonna have the device on him. Getting the intel like this is our most pain-free option, and will hopefully let us continue flying under the radar for a little while longer.”

“Right,” you nod. “Then we better make sure to stay under the radar tonight. If they realize we’re on them it might spook them into changing their plans and moving the device faster.”

“Why do I feel like you’re saying that because you don’t think we can manage incognito?” Sam asks.

You raise an eyebrow, looking at him and Bucky in turn. “I remember Linz. And Basel. Do you?”

“Touché,” Sam cedes. “We have a few hours to kill until we can gear up and get going.”

“I want the–” Before you can finish your sentence, Bucky is already thrusting a manila folder, the edges dotted with silver paper clips, toward you. You take it with a thank you, flipping it open immediately. The intel is sparse, only a dozen papers inside at most. A few CCTV stills printed on glossy paper are paper clipped to the front of the folder, and a rundown on Novotny complete with a mugshot of his long, scar-pocked face waits for you at the top of the pile. Glancing up, you spot a dingy plastic chair shoved haphazardly against the wall near the tech set up, and you cross the room in a few quick strides, planting yourself on the seat. You’re hoping to commit most of this stuff to memory before you get out in the field.

A few minutes later, Joaquín settles down in front of the field laptop and turns it on. The screen’s glow is the brightest thing in the dank apartment, and washes the plains of his face in pale blue. Every couple of minutes or so, you feel his eyes shift from the screen to you, lingering a few moments before turning back to whatever he is tapping away at. The fifth time he does this, you look up and meet his eyes. He freezes for a moment before glancing back at his screen, that same sheepish smile from the car spreading across his face. In the screen glow, you can just barely see the heat in his cheeks.

A few minutes later, Joaquín seems to finish whatever he was doing on the computer. Across the room, Sam and Bucky are bickering about something while Bucky cleans a gun and Sam leisurely packs things from the table into a compact duffel bag. Joaquín’s hands go to his lap, his right foot tapping rhythmically on the floor. His fidgety energy has your hackles up for no good reason.

“What was it like, working with Maria Hill?” Joaquín asks suddenly. You glance up at his face– open and expectant– before glancing down at the page you are in the middle of reading, and then back up at him again. His brown eyes seem to literally be sparkling despite the lack of real light in the room.

You apparently sit silently for too long, because Joaquín presses onward. “I mean, she’s like, mythological. Is she really that much of a badass?”

“I doubt that the things you’ve heard even come close to the truth of Agent Hill,” you tell him, before pointedly returning your eyes to the intel in your hands.

“Cool,” Joaquín says, voice colored by genuine awe. You can feel him wanting to ask more questions, but your eyes stay studiously on the folder in front of you. Eventually he gives up, standing and joining Bucky and Sam over by the gear.

When you finish reading, you snap the folder shut and stand, joining the rest of them. You hand it back to Bucky, who, in turn, hands you a pistol with a silencer affixed to the muzzle. You nod to him, grabbing a thigh holster from the mess of things on the table.

The boys are loud as they gear up for the mission, banter coming easily and non-stop between them. You stand to the side, fastening the pistol holster over your clothes and checking that your throwing knives are all present and accounted for. You observe them as you do this: the way Joaquín manages to pull a small smile out of Bucky, the casual, affectionate touches Bucky and Sam share. Sam ruffles Joaquín’s hair, and Joaquín elbows him toothlessly in the stomach in return. It all feels… well, kind of foreign to you. Maria was the best mentor you could have asked for and you wouldn’t change a thing about your time with her, but, like her mentor before her, she was always rather distant. Eyes on the mission, always. It’s the reason she was so good at her job, but it didn’t make much room for bonding moments between the two of you. Not that you were ever trying to bridge that gap. The only social skills the Red Room ever taught you were the fraudulent kind, meant to snare marks and do little else. The trio seem to catch onto your uneasiness, because they don’t try to touch you or tease you or fold you into their easy rapport. Fastening the pistol into its holster, you steadfastly ignore the part of you that wishes they would.

—

The airstrip is small, just a hangar with a couple small planes parked on the tarmac and a singular runway. It’s nestled within a group of fields still halfway dry and winter-yellow. The city lights wink along the horizon, all the warmth Prague has to offer out of reach. The group of you had walked two miles in the dark from the safehouse to get here, a feat that was much easier for Bucky and yourself than it was for Sam and Joaquín, burdened by the Captain and Falcon suits as they are. Joaquín had spent the entire walk complaining about how heavy the wing pack got after five minutes of wearing it, and Sam had begun threatening to relieve him of his duties before the apartment building was even out of sight.

“Okay, you two need to shut up now,” you say, voice low as you turn to face them in the dark. “Sam, you’re hanging back in the treeline, ready to provide aerial support if we need it. Buck, you’re scouting ahead so we know what to expect. The buyer’s plane is the only black one on the tarmac, and lucky for us, it looks to be parked farther away from the mouth of the hangar. Joaquín and I should be able to get in with minimal fuss and get in and out with the intel. We clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Joaquín says, and you roll your eyes.

“Don’t get yourselves killed,” Sam says, already walking backwards toward the seam where field meets forest.

“Bucky’ll make sure we don’t,” you assure Sam. “I intend to put that metal arm to good use.” Sam laughs, and turns his back on the three of you, moving to assume position. Bucky heads toward the hangar next, while you and Joaquín hang back, waiting to hear what to expect.

Next to you, Joaquín rocks steadily from heels to toes, orange visor alternating between catching his face in the moonlight and hiding it in the shadows. When he catches you staring he cocks his head to the side, observing you right back.

“Jus’ a little nervous. Aren’t you?” he asks.

“I am not,” you reply, sweeping your gaze back toward the airstrip.

“Come on, everyone gets nervous,” Joaquín insists.

“The last time I was nervous before a mission, Mother locked me in solitary confinement for three days as punishment for my hesitation. I don’t get nervous anymore,” you tell him. Before he can reply, Bucky’s voice crackles to life in your earpiece, alerting the two of you that there are two guards stationed within and directly outside of the buyer’s plane. You nod and immediately start heading for the airstrip, but you can feel Joaquín’s eyes on you all the while.

Only about half of the lights seem to be on in the hangar and on the tarmac, casting the whole business half in shadow. A smallish group of people cluster within the hanger– you assume it’s where the deal is going down. Large, imposing men with larger guns loosely clutched in their hands mill about between the planes. It is immediately clear to you that the present company does not expect any surprises, and the guns and guards are more about showing off might than anything else.

You move forward, quick and silent in the dark, trusting that Joaquín will be behind you. He makes more noise than you, what with the wing pack, but not enough to get you into trouble. You dodge through the shadows until you are within a few dozen feet of the black plane. At this point you stop and pull Joaquín down with you behind a stack of crates. You need to observe the buyer’s guards for a few moments, get your bearings with who they are and what to expect before you jump in.

Beside you, Joaquín is watching you again. You kind of respect that he doesn’t try to hide his curious observations, and strangely, having his eyes on you is already starting to feel run of the mill.

“You always look at people like you’re trying to decide whether to disappear or stick a knife in their ribs,” he voices, though the words are pitched low enough you know that nobody else will hear him.

Because I am. “Guess which one I’m thinking when I look at you,” you mutter, but the words lack any real bite.

He grins. “You’ll warm up to me.”

“Maybe if you don’t kill us first with the yapping on the job,” you respond, turning around to shoot a glare in his direction. Really, all the talking is bad form. You assume Joaquín is more used to being up in the air with Sam these days than pulling any kind of stealth on the ground.

The two men stationed at the bottom of the plane’s stairs are more fat than muscle– all you and Joaquín will need to do is come up behind them and administer a handy little nerve pinch. They’ll be down for the count long enough for you to get in and get out, and quietly, too. You hope. You can’t get a good look at the pair inside the plane, but you should be able to use surprise and the close quarters to your advantage. You share as much with Joaquín.

“Dibs on the baldy,” Joaquín says, and that’s that. You glance back at him once more to make sure he’s ready, before melting backwards into the shadows at the edges of the tarmac. You take the long way around the plane, ducking beneath the smooth cylinder of its body until you are directly behind the pair of guards. Quick as a cat, you reach around him and pinch his ulnar nerve, hard. As he goes down, you grab his gun before it can clatter to the asphalt. Joaquín’s bald man drops to the ground a moment later, Joaquín nearly tripping on the man’s legs as he struggles to yank up the gun before it can make any noise. When he catches your unimpressed face, he sends you a wordless thumbs-up.

You mount the short flight of stairs up into the private jet first, pausing a few steps up until Joaquín is right behind you. You can see a shadow moving in the light of the cabin, indicating a guard on your left hand side, but you can’t see where the other one is. You pause for a moment, waiting to see if the other guard telegraphs their location, but you’re not lucky enough for that.

“Go left. I got your six,”Joaquín says, voice a low murmur over your shoulder. You nod once and resume your ascent. It’s nice, you suppose– you might be going in half blind, but you’re not alone this time. Not like you usually are. And goofy as he is, your gut has been telling you that you can trust him basically since you met him. No better time than the present to test out if the feeling’s right or not.

You move quickly once you get to the doorway: the first guard is seemingly on his way to the seats further down the cabin when he comes face-to-face with you. Shock flits across his features, but before he can do anything more, you grab the long body of his gun and ram the butt into the underside of his jaw, hard. Stunned, he takes a faltering step back, and you take the opportunity of his janky equilibrium to grab the gun and use it to spin him around. Once he’s facing away from you, disoriented, it’s easy to pull the gun up against his throat with both hands and choke him out. He drops like a sack of potatoes.

You didn’t see the second guard standing at the bar behind him until he dropped, and by the time you have eyes on him, he has his gun trained on you. There’s no time to think, and muscle memory moves your dominant hand to your shoulder sheath. A second later, your throwing knife finds its mark in the hollow of the guy’s throat, and he goes down. You sigh and move further into the cabin, stepping over the incapacitated one to dislodge your knife from the dying man’s throat. You wipe his blood off the blade on the fabric of his pants and resheath it.

When you turn around, Joaquín is looking at you, mouth slightly agape behind that stupid orange visor. And there you go again, hackles back up like you have something to prove. When he trains his gaze on you like this, you find that it feels like he’s looking inside of you, at all the blood-soaked bits hidden away in the dark.

“He would have shot me,” you say sharply, feeling bizarrely desperate to explain and pissed that you’re explaining anything all at once.

Joaquín holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “That was so badass,” he says, and there’s something like awe in his voice.

“Can you go do what you need to do so we can get out of here before I have to kill anyone else?” you ask, gesturing behind him. There’s an expensive looking laptop on one of the plush seats that you’re sure must be the buyers.

“Oh! Right, yeah,” Joaquín nods. He turns from you and heads down the aisle, dropping into one of the seats and opening the laptop, before producing a small drive from somewhere in his suit and jabbing it into one of the laptop’s side ports. You glance out one of the small windows: from what you can see, things still seem business as usual over by the hangar. For the moment, at least. But you can feel the clock ticking.

“How long is this going to take?” you ask, turning back to the cabin’s interior and taking a couple steps toward Joaquín.

“Not too long, if– yes, there we go,” he mutters, more to himself than you as his fingers clatter across the keyboard. He pauses to turn his face up and shoot you a teasing smirk that is far too reminiscent of Sam’s. “Would go faster if you don’t ask questions, though.”

You roll your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest and turning away from him to keep an eye on the door.

Half a minute later, your comm unit crackles to life in your ear, and Sam’s voice comes ringing through. “Shit, guys, you got company. Coming in from the west.”

“I have eyes on ‘em– they’re comin’ in hot, we gotta get out of here now,” Bucky responds, voice grim and urgent. You turn around in time to see Joaquín pulling the usb from the laptop and secreting it back into his suit.

“I got what we came for,” he says into his comm. “Swallowtail and I are out. Heading for the rendezvous point.”

With confirmation that the job is done, you pick your way back to the door. Before you can even glance outside, you hear rapid gunfire far too close for comfort. You veer to the side of the door and opt for looking out windows on either side of the plane first, trying to get your bearings.

“I see at least ten or twelve of them moving toward the hangar. Machine guns, all of ‘em,” you report to Joaquín.

His face is grimmer than you’ve ever seen it. “We’re gonna have to make a run for it. Once we’re far enough, I can fly us out without getting us both shot down and killed.”

“Hang on–” you start, but Joaquín is already in the doorway and counting down from five. You get behind him, ready for the two of you to stay close and move fast.

Down on the tarmac, gunfire lights up the night. All of the guards who had previously been milling around the planes are gone, running to the chaos near the hangar. Good for the two of you– should make slipping away a little easier. You’re a little more reckless this time around, Joaquín foregoing the shadows you had traveled through previously for a more straightforward path. All you need to do is get to the treeline at the edge of the tarmac; the rendezvous point is a little further into the woods, but it will be a lot harder for any of these goons to follow you or shoot you through the darkness of the nighttime forest.

But to get there, you first have to pass by the heart of the fighting.

If you have any luck, everything going on will be too much for anyone to notice the two of you fleeing. But there’s a lot of guys on the field, and Joaquín isn’t exactly dressed in an incognito way.

You’re almost there when a man shouts something in Czech. You only half catch it through the other noise, but you’re sure he’s talking about the two of you, calling attention to your escape. You turn to look behind you even as you keep running: there’s a black-suited man with a machine gun bounding down the steps of a private jet far closer to the two of you than the rest of the fighting. Within shooting range.

Time slows as you watch the man turn the machine gun on the pair of you. You’ve done a lot of death-defying things in the past, a lot of turning up broken but breathing when you should be six feet under, but you’re out in the wide open with a machine gun pointed at you fifty feet away. In the stretched out fraction of a second, you think you should start trying to accept death before you meet it.

The machine gun starts shooting. You scrunch your eyes closed, not even able to find it within yourself to hate the cowardice of not meeting your death in the eye. But no bullets find your flesh. Dazed from the adrenaline and confused by the fact that you’re still alive, you crack your eyes open and are met with a slate of gray in front of you instead of the tarmac. It takes a second for you to realize that it’s one of Joaquín’s wings, slammed down and embedded in the asphalt, the only thing standing between yourself and gruesome death.

Joaquín’s face is inches away from your own when you turn around, pale and drawn, his brown eyes wide. You’re both breathing heavily, and one of Joaquín’s arms is curled protectively around you, making sure to keep you behind the shield of his wing.

“Hold onto me and do not let go,” he instructs, his voice clearer and more commanding than it’s been all day. You comply wordlessly, locking your arms around his neck and ducking your head to his shoulder. You can feel the quick but steady thread of his pulse where your temple is pressed against the hot skin of his neck. As soon as both of his arms are fastened securely around your waist, he turns away from the gunfight and launches you into the air.

The feeling of sudden weightlessness sends your stomach into your throat and you cling tighter to Joaquín, eyes shut tightly against the frigid rush of the wind. Considering you haven’t been shot out of the air already, you have to assume Joaquín has taken you way high, way fast. You don’t actually want to know how true that is, so you opt to keep your eyes shut.

“We’re good, okay?” Joaquín’s voice comes in crisply through your earpiece despite the strength of the wind. “I got you.”

You nod against his neck, feeling a little frantic. The flying thing right after the almost being shot to death thing was doing a lot for your complete discombobulation.

“Sam, we’re coming into the rendezvous site aerially. Thirty seconds out,” Joaquín says into the comms. You hear Sam’s voice come through, but you don’t catch what he sees with how intensely you’re focusing on not throwing up on the Falcon suit. Despite all your training, sudden, violent movements have never exactly agreed with your composition.

As promised, roughly thirty seconds later you feel a dip that must indicate Joaquín is descending. The actual landing is much gentler than you expect; Joaquín takes the brunt of it before setting you on your own feet. You take a reflective step back from once your feet touch the ground, but being not entirely oriented, you stumble a half step. Joaquín’s hands tighten on your waist for a moment, making sure you can remain steady on your own before he withdraws.

“You good?” he asks.

“Yeah. Thank you for that,” you nod, finally starting to feel normal again now that you’re out of the air.

“You two alright?” Bucky asks, emerging through the trees to the right of you. You can see the brighter colors of Sam’s suit a few paces behind him.

You nod again. “Joaquín saved both our asses. We’re okay.”

“Attaboy,” Sam says, clearly trying to lighten the mood after such a near-miss, but the relief on his face is palpable.

“Just all in a day’s work for the Falcon, am I right?” he asks Sam, who rolls his eyes.

“Don’t push your luck, Torres.”

You’re all in for quite the walk back to the safehouse, the roundabout, forested route about twice as long as the one you took to get to the airstrip. It’s worth it to make sure none of the machine gun-toting goons are able to track you back, but the adrenaline crash after almost dying makes it tough. Sam leads the way and Bucky brings up the rear, with you and Joaquín trudging along in the middle of the formation. The silence between all of you is taut but not tense, as you listen for any signs of pursuit amidst the bucolic noises of the spring night. After a mile or so, you’re pretty sure the four of you are in the clear.

“So, the throwing knives,” Joaquín says, the first words spoken for over twenty minutes. “They’re your ‘thing’?”

“I’m trained expertly in over two dozen forms of weapons,” you inform him.

“Yeah, but you had the knives on you today before we even found you. They’re totally your favorite.”

You shrug. “They’re easy to conceal and cheap to replace.”

“Good reasons for favoritism,” Joaquín nods sagely. He has taken his helmet off, and the damp waves of his dark hair catch and reflect the bright moonlight. Surprisingly, Joaquín’s idle chatter seems to immediately work on subduing your post-near-death experience anxiety. Usually, you’d sooner knock someone out cold and drag them back to the safehouse than endure all this conversation. The response raises all kinds of red flags in your brain.

—

It’s well into the night by the time you finally reach the safehouse. Joaquín looks like he could drop where he stands, which doesn’t stop Sam from putting him to work straight away.

“Start running that information through our filters now. We need the device’s location,” Sam commands him. Joaquín lets out a tired sigh, but nods nonetheless. He frees himself from the wing pack, dropping it and his helmet on the table in the center of the room before settling down in front of his tech station. As he begins to work, Sam and Bucky start shedding gear on the table and methodically packing it into duffel bags. You opt to keep your throwing knives, of course– they essentially never leave your person– and the pistol Bucky had given you earlier in the day.

“Got it!” Joaquín says, then cows himself as if shocked by his own volume. “Vienna. The device and its schematics were last tracked to Vienna, but it’s not there anymore. There’s details of a deal that went down less than forty-eight hours ago. A man by the name of Anton Babjak is identified as the buyer.”

“Babjak,” you mutter, gathering the name in your thoughts. “He’s known as the Bobcat in darker circles. He was an assassin back in the day, but he’s been operating solely as an arms dealer since I joined with SHIELD, as far as I know.”

“We need to figure out his next move,” Sam says, face serious as you’ve ever seen it.

“I know someone who can help. We need to go to Madripoor,” you announce.

#joaquin torres x reader #joaquin torres #marvel #marvel x reader #the falcon x reader #sam wilson #captain america #bucky barnes #the winter soldier #TFATWS

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malk1ns · 3 months ago

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march 15 v devils, 7-3 win

nice.

i really enjoyed geno's bizarro over-the-top penalty fugue state he went into for this one. almost like he was glitching out...

we can call this a homage to @sevenfists' wonderful tragic hockeybot geno, but not as good because like...duh.

this does contain a homophobic slur just fyi.

Evgeni has followed a fairly strict game-day protocol ever since he woke up in Pittsburgh almost 20 years ago. The details have changed, refinements and efficiencies added in as his software was upgraded, but the basics, the stuff that keeps him running at optimal performance and giving his all on the ice, have remained the same.

Most of his start-up process is automated now, thankfully. Those first couple of years he needed to be manually disconnected from his charging station and powered on every morning, and since the station was bulky and he had to charge upright all night he’d spend the first half-hour trying to loosen up his joints and walk without a hitch in his step. It also meant he had to stay at the rink—the unit was permanently installed in his maintenance room, and they only had one more extraordinarily bulky one that got lugged around for road trips. Evgeni spent a lot of mornings after Dana woke him up wandering the hallways until the rest of the guys started to trickle in.

He came back from the Olympics in Sochi with a new charging port, discreetly installed under his left armpit and USB-C compatible provided it’s connected to one of his new, portable power packs. The automated start-up patch came through shortly after, and all he had to do was program in a power-down and power-up time and he boots up all on his own.

Powering down in a comfortable position had been a revelation. Being able to do it wherever he wanted was another.

Evgeni considered buying his own house—the idea of his own space is appealing, even if he’s not quite sure what people do at home by themselves at night. He’d run a pro/con analysis, though, and asked someone to look over the results to verify the conclusion he came to: however unlikely it may be, the scenario of something going wrong when nobody is there to find Evgeni and perform emergency maintenance is an unacceptable trade-off for home ownership.

Sidney’s suggestion that Evgeni just move in with him was much more logical.

Something else that came with Evgeni’s 2014 upgrade was an unexpected, but not unwelcome, libido add-on. All part of the goal to make Evgeni and others like him more human, integrate them more into society at large. It took a few months for Evgeni to calibrate to his new desires; he’d expected a standard program, especially with his lab of origin located in Russia, but after a while he figured out he was gay.

He spent the off-season experimenting and arrived in Pittsburgh for the season with a list of likes and dislikes, and a type. Sidney almost exactly matched the latter, and based on Evgeni’s new experience he was confident that the first two items could be adjusted to suit.

He’d been right.

Sidney has said he’s in love with Evgeni. Evgeni’s emotional response center has been upgraded on a regular basis over the years, but most of the time it seems like he’s a little…slow, maybe, or removed from how he should be feeling, such as it is.

Not about Sidney. He’s pretty sure he loves Sidney too.

Sidney also understands the value of a routine. He has his own, more rigidly engrained than anything Evgeni does on gameday, and he’s more than happy to leave Evgeni alone to boot up and run his diagnostics in peace. It’s unsettling to watch, Evgeni’s been told—his eyes go disconcertingly blank, and for a solid five minutes he’s utterly unresponsive. People get weird about it, even if they’ve seen it before. He prefers to be alone.

Mid-March in a season like this one is a grind. Evgeni’s been in for repairs more this season than the last two combined, and they might not be officially eliminated from playoff contention yet but it’s just a matter of time; motivation is hard to come by, even for Evgeni. It’s reassuring to fall into his programming and run through each system one by one, making sure he’s primed for optimal performance.

There’s a spark in the corner of his vision.

Evgeni pauses, scrolls back through lines of code, reviews. Nothing. He must have imagined it.

When he pulls himself out, he’s running a few minutes late; Sidney will be almost done with his breakfast.

Evgeni heaves himself to his feet and heads downstairs. Sidney drives on game days, so Evgeni downloads the Devils’ five most recent games to review in the car.

—

He shouldn’t need to, but Evgeni likes to top-up his charge while Sidney takes his pre-game nap. Sidney likes it too, says it feels like they’re falling asleep together; it also helps that once Evgeni’s powered down he doesn’t move, so once they’re arranged to maximize Sidney’s comfort there’s no mid-sleep jostling.

When Evgeni boots back up, he feels…weird. Wrong, lying in bed with Sidney wrapped around him like normal.

He unplugs his charger and extracts himself as carefully as he can, putting on his suit and making his way downstairs to wait until Sidney is awake and ready to drive them to the rink for the game.

Sidney frowns at him when he finally comes down, but Evgeni turns his head, and Sidney lets him be.

They make small talk in the car like usual, but Evgeni’s distracted, and eventually Sidney goes quiet. To distract himself Evgeni runs back to his source code, a well-worn self-soothing mechanism when he’s feeling jumpy or off.

The code itself is simple but effective, wrapped inside a descriptor of the reason Evgeni was made in the first place.

The modern sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada…

By the time the game starts Evgeni’s restless, shifting from foot to foot during the anthem and eyeing the opposing team with more hostility than he’s used to experiencing.

Evgeni’s never pretended to be the cleanest player in the league. He’s sneaky with his stick, takes risky penalties because when guys hit back he doesn’t feel pain like humans do, and sometimes it works. Even for him, though, this game is tough sledding.

When his reckless double minor results in a goal against and lets the Devils draw within one, Evgeni shatters his stick in the box, then glides back to the bench with his mouth twisted in a frown. He feels—he wants to hit something, or maybe someone.

His higher processing is on alert at this aberration in behavior, but all Evgeni can do is sit on the bench, accept his new stick, and wait.

“G,” comes Sidney’s voice in his ear, and Evgeni flinches away violently—what is Sidney doing, sitting so close? Why is he pressing their legs together like that? Why is he reaching for Evgeni’s hand where it’s resting on his thigh? “Hey, you okay? You seem a little rattled; do you need a breather, maybe someone to check you out?”

“Fuck off, what you do,” Evgeni hisses, snatching his hand away. “Don’t touch me, like, what are you, a faggot? Back off.”

Crosby freezes, and Letang peers around from his other side, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck did you just say to him?”

“You fuck off too,” Evgeni snaps, half-rising with his fists clenching in his gloves, and suddenly the bot maintenance guy has an iron grip on his arm.

“Cool it, or I’m taking you back and decommissioning you here and now instead of letting you get through this game and get examined,” Freddy snaps in his ear.

Evgeni shakes his head. There’s an odd echo in his ears, metallic and hollow, and snippets from his source code keep floating into his brain—Hockey Canada announced a plan to address "systemic issues" in the culture of hockey; the early history of hockey encouraged physical intimidation and control; oh, the good old hockey game....

The rest of the game is a blur. Evgeni doesn’t cause any more goals against, even manages to put up a primary assist on the power play, but he spends his time on the bench spacing out, shrinking away from anyone who tries to talk to him as he scrolls through his coding.

The diagnostics are all still fine. Something’s wrong, though.

Evgeni spent a year in stasis while his system was flooded with hockey history and hockey culture. He doesn’t remember it very well, but those first few years had aligned pretty well with what he’d learned—hockey was rough, hockey was physical, hockey was insular and conservative and macho.

Times change. So did Evgeni, through programming and his own conclusions drawn from observing the world around him.

He seesaws between past and present, software upgrades and personality patches warring in his motherboard until he thinks he might short out. He doesn’t, obviously; there are enough redundancies built into him to keep the ISS in orbit, let alone one android on an ice rink, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling overheated and dazed by the time they troop off the ice.

Instead of walking to the locker room he turns left, toward the bot maintenance room.

He half-hears a whispered argument behind him, and shortly after it cuts off someone hurries to catch up.

“Hey,” Sidney says, and Evgeni cringes, his words from earlier rattling in his skull like they were said by someone else.

“Sorry,” he grits out. He wants to reach out and take Sidney’s hand, but the thought of someone seeing him holding hands with a man fills him with nausea. “Not sure…”

“Yeah,” Sidney says. His voice is even, flat and unsettling, but Evgeni doesn’t have room to work through that and find a fix.

Freddy’s waiting outside the room with his arms crossed. He relaxes when Evgeni rounds into view, raising his eyebrows but not commenting when Sidney follows them into the room.

“Alright, let’s get you opened up and see what’s going on,” Freddy says, gesturing to the maintenance station.

It looks like a torture chamber, a metal chair surrounded by needles and machinery and a large, ominous machine with a screen and dozens of blinking lights. Evgeni gingerly lowers himself into the seat and closes his eyes, flinching a little when the chair lifts and tilts him forward, giving Freddy access to his control panel.

It doesn’t hurt to have his panel opened, but it feels wrong, invasive and intrusive. Evgeni used to need to get strapped into the chair to stop from fighting, but now he squeezes his eyes closed and bites on his tongue and takes some of the big, soothing breaths that do nothing for the functioning of his shell but seem to settle his mind anyway.

“Fuck,” Freddy murmurs, and Evgeni’s eyes fly open. Before he can say a word, Sidney’s at his side.

“What is it?” Sidney demands, resting a hand on Evgeni’s shoulder and rubbing his thumb soothingly as he leans over to peer into the panel. “Oh, shit.”

“What!” Evgeni demands, clenching his fists. He hates this, hates feeling helpless and paralyzed while people bend over his back and stare down into his innards.

“Not sure what happened in here, bud, but you’ve got some seriously fucked-up wires. Something in here burnt out, and a few of the metal casings are fried.” Freddy touches something inside Evgeni that sends his left knee straight out in a kick. “Yeah, damn, that’s no good. You were maybe a few days from catching on fire.”

Sidney’s hand spasms on Evgeni’s shoulder. “Can you fix him?” he asks, voice low and worried.

“Oh, sure,” Freddy says, and the easy confidence in his voice is reassuring. Freddy never sounds overwhelmed, never sounds like there’s something he can’t make work. “Might take a while, I think I’ll have to boot him into safety mode for a few hours to make sure everything’s connected okay, but he should be ready to go by Tuesday’s game.”

Sidney’s exhale is shaky with relief. Evgeni wants to reach up and touch his hand. “We start now?” he says instead, keeping his eyes on the ground.

“Sure thing. When was your last backup?” Freddy asks, rummaging through his toolkit. “Sid, when you head back can you let Sully know what’s going on, tell him I’ll get everyone a full rundown once I can pull the readout?”

“Sure. And he backed up last night, so you can probably just—”

Evgeni interrupts him. “No,” he says firmly, finally gathering the courage to crane his neck and look up at Sidney’s face. “Back up now, please. Want to remember what I say.”

“Good man,” Freddy says, clapping Evgeni on his other shoulder.

Sidney crouches down so he can look Evgeni in the eye. “You didn’t mean it,” he says quietly. His eyebrows are furrowed, and there’s a frown tugging at his mouth. He’s sad, Evgeni concludes, and hurt, and he’s trying to hide it. “I mean, it’s like…you’re hurt, you pulled something out from your coding, it’s not—”

“Sid,” Evgeni interrupts, and Sidney startles. A quirk in Evgeni’s programming is that he doesn’t use nicknames unless he really makes an effort. “Doesn’t matter why, I still say. Can’t forget I do, it’s not…” He thinks, running through the relationships course he downloaded back in 2015 when the team was struggling and Sidney seemed like he was on the verge of ending things. “It’s reason, not excuse. I still need, like, accountability.”

He mangles the word, but Sidney’s small smile is worth it.

—

Evgeni doesn’t dream, exactly. When he’s powered down there’s still a flicker of awareness as long as he has battery, enough to pull himself to wakefulness if there’s a threat, but extended downtime for repairs is like floating in a thick black cloud. There’s a very distance perception of voices, of movement and hands on his shell and wires being replaced, but nothing that Evgeni can actually truly call a memory as opposed to a superimposed expectation of what happened.

The grogginess when he’s powered back on is very real, though, as is the stiffness in his knees. He hopes he’ll have enough time to loosen up before he has to play.

“Welcome back,” Freddy’s cheerful voice booms, and Evgeni winces. “You should be set. Had you walk and sit and do a few jumping jacks yesterday in safety mode, nothing else loosened up or shorted. Okay—hands?”

He walks Evgeni through the post-repairs protocol, checking his reactivity, his senses, the last things he remembers to check his backup loaded correctly. Check, check, check.

When Evgeni stumbles out of the room, blinking against the harsh overhead lights in the hall, Sidney’s waiting for him.

“Hey,” Sidney says, eyes flickering over Evgeni’s face.

“I’m so sorry,” Evgeni says immediately. The shame that rolls through him is new and unexpectedly powerful—he rarely feels embarrassed, his programming doesn’t allow for him to make choices that lead to that. When it’s working correctly, of course. “God, Sidney, you know I don’t mean.”

“I know,” Sidney says, and the caution in his voice makes Evgeni’s chest ache. “I told Kris what happened, he said he won’t kick your ass unless it happens again.”

“I let him,” Evgeni says earnestly, which makes Sidney laugh. “Promise, I stand there, he kick and scratch and do whatever, I just let.”

He reaches forward tentatively, touching his fingers to the back of Sidney’s hand. The flood of relief when Sidney turns his hand up and laces their fingers together is nearly enough to make him lose his balance.

Emotions are tricky things, Evgeni thinks, but he wouldn’t wipe them for the world.

#sidgeno #hockey rpf #my writing #my fic #24-25 series

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transingthebourgeoisie · 8 months ago

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I will never understand why people keep recommending linux mint to people. people keep saying oh it's like windows and like. they are literally just wrong; every time you tell someone Mint is like Windows you are setting them up to spend 20 minutes on Mint and then run into an obstacle and pay for a windows license. no matter what kind of mediocre UI they dress it up with, despite everything, it is a linux distribution and thus, crucially: not windows. It's popular I guess so it's better than hyperspecific micro-distro of the week or, arch, because people keep recommending arch for some unknowable reason.

I'm going to be real here: if you are new to this just use ubuntu. ignore everyone else. if looking at the gnome GUI makes you want to start killing hostages like it does for me, you can just get it packaged with KDE by default and that's a very familiar and intuitive UI to a windows user. it's called Kubuntu they put out their own little thing and everything it's easy. and unlike mint, it's vastly more likely to just, actually work, and be compatible with software. it will be a learning experience; you are switching to a fundamentally different OS, one that still has deep roots in enthusiast preferences and a whole different crop of bizarre decisions that made sense to some guy who thought the GUI would be a passing fad. and that's fine. you had to learn all this for windows too, you just did it when you were like 7. stick with it and it'll make sense quickly even, as unlike windows, Linux is highly transparent in most cases; it will usually tell you what the problem actually is, even if you don't understand how to fix it.

speaking of which: don't be afraid of the terminal. It's daunting, it's initially opaque, and yes, it is entirely possible to horrifically mangle your install with it. You cannot be afraid of it. you don't have to learn every facet of it; frankly I hate the thing and I refuse to accept any distro where it is expected that the user crack open the console to do basic tasks. Ubuntu - or yeah mint I guess - do not require this. 9 times out of 10, you will use the terminal to enter one command that you stole off a tech support forum where the kind of people who use Arch have magically fixed the incredibly specific problem you're having 13 years ago and it still works. I have been using linux semi-regularly (yeah yeah I still have a windows 10 install sue me) for a year now, and barring one particular incident attempting to install GZDoom where it was manifestly my fault, that has been the extent of my interaction with the terminal. I have opened it like 3 times total.

I highly recommend learning what the basic structure of a command is - get a general idea of what it is doing. you don't have to be able to write these things from scratch, but getting just that basic understanding will make your life so much easier. here's a first step for you: if you see 'sudo' in a command, that means the command makes use of admin authority, and will bypass any protections or restrictions on what it is trying to do. scary! it is the effectively same thing as when you click on a program on windows and it throws that shitty little popup window asking if you're *really* sure you want to run the program as admin. not scary; you do that all the time.

linux is more consistently and straightforwardly usable than it has basically ever been; if you are willing to spend a week or so getting used to it, you'll do fine. if you have a spare drive - hell even a USB stick, you can literally boot into Linux straight off USB, it's that easy, - you can dual-boot and still have a windows install to fall back on in case you absolutely positively just need something to work or just cannot get it to run on linux.

#it is 2 AM so if this is incoherent. that's why #this post made by I fucking hate Mint stop using Mint right now

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vivaciouscynner · 6 months ago

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Just hear me out...

So, Edge, CoPilot, and worst of all, Recall are just terrible for a large number of reasons - namely privacy and security. We're in a time period where this is just going to get worse and worse that any number of precautions just aren't going to cut it because the people who are doing this to you aren't some random bad actor trying to hack your system. It's a specific bad actor that made the system FOR YOU. And that just about sucks any way you try to cut it.

There are some things you can do - but you might not like it:

Believe it or not, the absolute easiest solution is switching to Linux.

BUT WAIT! DON'T STOP READING JUST YET!

Hear me out. I get it, we grew up on MS Windows and a lot of us are on Apple systems too (which are also riddled with AI garbage), but Linux isn't what it used to be, even a decade ago. And yes, there's like a billion different distributions out there, how do you even choose, right? Let me tell you, even linux users are annoyed by it too. But, linux CAN give you a lot of the same things windows and mac can without the AI and spyware bullshit and the different distributions aren't really that different - it's really just a lot of engineers going, "well this is good, but this is how I WOULD DO IT," and still be able to use the same packages.

Here's how I'd recommend approaching linux without having to throw your os in a garbage fire:

grab a popular distribution of Linux - I recommend Linux Mint (it's pretty user friendly) - read through this: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/choose.html#

get an empty USB stick (preferably around 64 gigs just to have the space, but you can get away with something much smaller) and create a bootable image with it

Restart your pc with the usb stick in - You can now run linux - for free (always free) - off the usb stick without affecting anything else. You can install stuff, mess around, play with it, yadda yadda.

So yes, there will also be a learning curve with it too. It's linux, it's new, it's different. But once you get your feet wet, you'll start seeing windows as super clunky and bloated.

If you don't want to do THAT, you can also try linux through your browser: Read through this article:

Basically it's a virtual machine that you can play with, but it's a little restricted sooo probably not the most accurate experience, but something to still play with. You can also learn a lot from this site as well:

BUT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DO ANY OF THAT AND RATHER STAY ON WINDOWS (sorry not a mac user so I can't really think of solutions for mac users)

The alternative is really messing with registry keys and blocking ports that Copilot and Recall use through the firewall which can greatly mess up your PC if you don't know what you're doing.

Did i mention linux is free and it has a MASSIVE community for support?

Anyway - EITHER WAY YOU CHOOSE - we ALL need to start being a little more tech savvy. Things are going to get worse and if we're blind to it, we're walking to our doom willingly.

Just a side note: This doesn't mean linux is like the most secure thing in the world - you still need an antivirus and set up firewalls and be diligent about malware and privacy and such. Like, that's still a 'you' responsibility no matter what operating system you use. So keep that in mind

#tech #trying to beat the system as an average user

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hyikal · 5 months ago

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Prelude - 3

The floodlights began to brighten as minutes ticked by. The lone occupant of the small balcony-turned-workstation looked up, watching the artificial light stream through the metal mesh above her head, and sighed.

Layan Rizk had stayed up all night again… thankfully tomorrow was a weekend.

She stretched her arms, leaning back in her seat before leaning back towards the desk. The PCB she was working on had no eyes to stare back, but the soldered pins glimmered in the dim light nonetheless. She picked it up gingerly, trying to avoid stirring the connections too much. Thankfully she remembered to put on her gloves this time— she couldn't have this board short out and fry the processing chip again. Nujum needed this whip-blade for her breaker training on Sunday, lest she get scolded by the teachers again. Last time that happened, she had come back to the little apartment they shared, crying— and was inconsolable for days.

Layan shook her head, dismissing the image out of her head. She hated seeing her younger sister crying like that. Busying herself with her work again, she took a glance towards her computer, busy flashing something onto a USB drive. The terminal log breezed past, text flying across the screen far too quick for her eyes to comprehend anything past "units" and "gtx_ctrldrive"—

The racing terminal freezes in its tracks. The cursor apologetically blinks at the end of a red line of text.

[USB_MSU61527] Could not install loader – you have held broken packages_

The girl stared at the screen, blue eyes narrowed in confusion. "Wha… broken what now?!"

Layan scrolled up in the log. It had been writing just fine to the drive earlier when she had used it to flash a new bios to the main board, just what was wrong with it? Had the drive finally given out after years of use?

Her phone pings with a message, and she fishes it out of her pocket. With the electrical gloves still on, it doesn't respond to her touch, but she can see she's got a message. Her friend — someone she's met on the Axia xenocryst modding forums — had sent her a picture of a Buuma gauntlet in atrocious shape. The gauntlet in the image looked completely busted, finger compartments bulging, capacitors drenching the boards with now caked-on fluid, wires blackened with electrical overflow. Even without the electrical damage, the gauntlet had holes in it; square edges with the aluminium bursting outward like the blooming petals of a flower. Her friend had captioned the image, too;

fluxnux: look @ what i found in my dads bodydock wastebin

blown axia serie 16 buuma, who wants it

think it belonged to a lcient or smth

cliwnt*

yk what i mean --

Layan quickly typed a response, intrigued enough to forget her own mechanical woes for a second. She exited the installation process and let her PC idle as she looked over the latest offering from Fluxnux, seasoned anonymous xenocryst modder. Most of what Nux gave her tended to be already dead implants, but they were possible to use for parts or, in one bionic arm's case, repairable into test benches. This one was quite a sight however. Layan found herself more intrigued by the story behind this than its capabilities.

rzk81: Holy shit. That's frightening

Is it salvageable?

fluxnux: r u kidding?? total ewaste

wanted a regulator chip off it but no luck. shield headers are still functional somehow and i think u can MAYBE get cords + heatsink + ports off it

but thats it

everything else is either blown or busted.

rzk81: What happened to it?

fluxnux: overcharging

The girl tensely swallowed, that one word sending a shudder through her that definitely wasn't the fault of the cold. She's never seen anyone actually experience an overcharging incident in-person, but she's heard enough horror stories through her older sister, Dani, to know they were caused by overuse of xenocryst equipment.

Seeing the way this buuma was all but torn to pieces, though… it made the fear a lot more present, the danger a lot more tangible. She examined the image a lot more closely as her friend continued typing away. Zooming in, she could see the muted brown of the capacitors, realizing those were made for a Yellow serotype. The blackened parts of the aluminium seemed to spread out from the wrists, like the user had been engulfed in flames… or worse.

She glanced at her own hand, blue ripples of marble shining from underneath her sleeve, running up her palm, and swallowed thickly.

Can't think about that right now.

fluxnux: i think dad got it off a invil

explains y its so fuckin wrecked

probably got into a huge fight lol

An invigilator overcharging? Now that wasn't good. Layan found herself thinking of Dani again, of the invigilators' cadet academy submission forms on her eldest sister's desk, papers of relocation and medical records stapled to them. The worry came to the surface again, and she couldn't help but type out a tense reply to Nux, the sound of idling fans now deafening in her ears.

rzk81: Invigilators have overcharging training though, don't they?

fluxnux: guess yhis one was just stupid ┐⁠(⁠´⁠ー⁠｀⁠)⁠┌

She couldn't help but snort, despite her mounting anxiety.

rzk81: Very classy, Nux.

fluxnux: you want it or not?? dads taking it to the processing center today

rzk81: I do need replacement USB-X ports. Send it over

fluxnux: 👍

btw

hows ur project going

Layan pursed her lips, glancing towards her computer, still idling. The computer continued to hum as she set it to hibernation mode, and Layan rotated the USB stick between her fingers as she read the messages. She let out a tired exhale, leaving her desk as the floodlights came into full power. She'll work on it… tomorrow, but advice in the meantime won't hurt.

rzk81: horrible.

Ever heard of a "you have held broken packages" error?

fluxnux: reinstall dependencies + system updates

should fix it

rzk81: Thanks

fluxnux: whats this hanash for anyway?

never saw anyone attempt shaving a board like this before

challenging urself with a small form factor?

Now on her bed, the girl's blue eyes drifted shut as she thought. Nux knew she was working on something— she had been enjoying their attention to her work and the free tech support that came with it. Guess she should've known it wasn't entirely free.

Still, Nux has been trustworthy so far. Would it truly hurt to actually say what she was working on this whip-blade for? That she was just helping out her younger sister when they didn't have the means for proper equipment, and Dani wouldn't touch any xenocryst tech with a ten foot pole?

She tensely hovered a finger over the message, before steeling her resolve and holding down to reply. They didn't need to know.

If there was anything her parents had taught her, it was that she couldn't trust anyone in Amon.

rzk81: You can call it a commission I guess.

fluxnux: damn get that bread

Despite her better judgement, Layan found herself smiling, if just a little.

…she would be lying if she said Nux wasn't growing on her.

#geotozo #my writing #hyikal oc

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dalishthunder · 2 years ago

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WIP Wednesday Thursday

Tagged by the wonderful @totally-not-deacon

I tag... um... hmmm fuck.... I genuinely cannot think of anyone who would really want to do this, the only one I can think of is currently on a sabbatical

I have finally gotten off my ass and begun writing again! What a wonderful thing! Have some All Around the Mulberry Bush teasers

__________________________________________

The lock clicked ominously as you dead-bolted it; Shades already shut, router turned off, unplugged and covered in foil for good measure, phone powered down in the other room. The wireless card removed from your test laptop. You were not taking any chances tonight.

You put the tupperware lid down on the table, pulling your gloves over your wrists with a snap.

“Safety first,” You muttered as you adjusted the straps of your goggles so they were snug against your face.

You’d already gone ahead and installed SystemRescue as your OS on your test laptop just for the occasion. Sure, you may not have been as familiar with Arch Linux systems as you were with Debian or Ubuntu based distros, but nothing else came with such a robust lineup of repair tools preinstalled. And the likelihood that something would infect this PC with malware was incredibly small.

You could do this.

There was nothing to be afraid of.

In fact, Fazbear should be afraid of you.

You adjusted your mask so that it wasn’t fogging up your goggles, and turned your test computer on. You’d already learned your lesson when you’d extracted the drive from the crusty old laptop… there was no way in hell you were letting that thing touch your crappy little coffee table again. Gingerly you placed it on the tupperware lid, plugging it into the cable.

Of course your computer didn’t detect it….

You sighed, pulling up the command terminal.

Well, it was showing up in lsusb….

That was something at least.

Nothing in fdisk or lsblk….

Diligently you tapped away at your keyboard, trying out a few commands.

You reseated the cable a few times, leaving it unplugged as you typed in the command to load the usb storage before you plugged it back in.

“C’mon babygirl….”

You licked your lips as you heard the hard drive whir to life.

You were a goddamn wizard.

It still wasn’t loading, but there was no doubt that the disk was corrupted. So you pulled up TestDisk and began the slow process of recovery.

You created a log, documenting everything you were doing.

Someone had to.

You opened up the drive. Multiple partitions…. More things to go wrong.

No.

More things to go right.

#odt #all around the mulberry bush #fnaf sb #sun #moon #x reader #thunderous applesauce

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midnightcarp · 5 months ago

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genuinely think installing and playing skyrim fucked my hard drive & laptop up so bad. like sure, it could have been something else but as far as i remember, the only new thing i did the last time i used it was install and play skyrim for like 40 minutes and then when I closed it my laptop was running weird so i went to restart it and it just couldn't load windows. so yeah fuck you skyrim

and even if I take that non-essential hard drive out, my laptop STILL won't load so it seems like it fucked with the KERNEL and ruined my shit. But I don't care if I need to reinstall windows on the SSD (the main hard drive) because there really isn't much important information on that one. Yet when I try to use my recovery usb to install it, it just doesn't work? Hello??? So now I wanna see if I can boot up my older laptop into the SSD, but I don't wanna ruin that laptop too if there's something corrupting the files :/ So now I have them both plugged into my old laptop and am running a scan through command prompt and am hoping that at the very least I can access the hard drive to get my more important files off of it

#by all accounts I should have done this months ago but since I had a usable computer it was like ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ eh #but I want my nice fast gaming laptop back so i can play my more hardware-demanding games on it #and i want my writing files back 😭 i had some long-ass documents in there that I put a lot of time into #now i know i should also save them on a usb or sd card or something #ty talks

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dragonaur · 6 months ago

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Windows 11 - Huge Disappointment

So like a capitalist slave, I went out and bought a new machine because of Windoz 11 requirements.

One Drive sux. The minute you load the new OS it tries to sync any other Win 11 (my laptop) and it immediately rearranges everything on your desktops. Thanks, no thanks.

My Photoshop CS 6 is now acting wonky. On every 4th' stroke or so, it loses pressure sensitivity on the pen.

Windows Ink TOTALLY MESSES UP EVERYTHING!! Turn it off in Windoz and in your Tablet settings. If you see weird behavior when you drag a window, it's because you have Windoz ink on.

Epson Perfection V550 is now obsolete. The scanning software has no preview or scan button.

Windows Scan is garbage. Surely MS and Epson where in cahoots on this and suddenly there's a Free scan app in the Windoz store. I can use my V550 with that. But only if I unplug/replug the USB every time I try to scan. Else, it just spin's its wheels and then tells you that you don't have a scanner. (Make sure you have your obsolete drivers installed or it won't work at all)

If you are used to Win10, you'll find your desktop directory gets mapped to \OneDrive\Desktop instead of \Desktop. If you have any old links with other tools lying around. You'll have to reset them all. (I'm removing the OneDrive application from my install and that might make that go away. We'll see)

Wacom Intous Pro application acting weird too. When you open any sub window, it comes up BEHIND the parent window!!

Ads for M$ products EVERYWHERE! Whenever you try to set something up or use something in Windoz there's an Ad.

They have this setup prompt when you log in that gives you two choices: Set up MS Browser and OneDrive or be reminded to setup MS Browser and OneDrive 3 days later. There's your options!

Seriously, I think it's time to try to dump Photoshop and rid myself of my Visual Studio habit. I think it's time to lean into my Linux Mint machine! O.o

#bitching #session #windows11 #is #an #awful #upgrade

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lizclipse · 1 year ago

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if it was just a choice between which machine i'd prefer to play the game on and nothing else, i'd genuinely pick my xbox over my pc nearly all the time. it's made for games and it's quiet and it turns on/off quickly. there's just the itty bitty issue of a shit load of reasons why i just cant

library - my steam lib is actually fairly heafty now, so i simply have so many more games that i can just play on it compared to my xbox. this includes expanding my lib as well! no one seems to try to compete with steam's sales, and idk why! it's not like these games cost anything to sell per unit, just do more sales and maybe people would buy more man. oh yea, and there no game i can play on xbox but not on pc, but many the other way around, so i need a pc to play everything anyway

online - why in fucks name does xbox still charge for online stuff. like if i want to see other's people's messages in elden ring i either need to pay £7 a month or i could just buy the game again on sale once and have other benefits (eg steam deck play) on top of the online just fucking working. it's genuinely kinda a big blocker for getting into the platform, especially when so many games rely on multiplayer features now

friend(s) - i have very few people i play with, but the ones i do are all pc-based. i've tried doing cross-play with no man's sky, but that was fairly unique in that very few games support it like that (with friends and not just matchmaking). generally, if i want to play with someone i'll need to play on pc anyway. oh, and get fucked it you actually want to talk. i think discord works now but i dont remember if i ever got it working or not

headphones - despite playing on my tv, i really like wearing headphones when playing something. it just brings me into the game that bit more and removes enough distractions to make me actually play properly (nd is a bitch). have you tried using headphones on an xbox before? dont it wont work because it doesnt support any kind of usb and i dont want to have to re-pair bluetooth constantly, so it just generally sucks

steam deck - this is actually the main reason i dont want to get new games on my xbox. if i get a game thru steam, i can just install it on my steam deck and play that shit without having to be tied down physically to my sofa. yea, maybe i wouldnt often, but being able to have that choice means a lot to me, and if i dont now it feels like shits worse

there isn't a point here im just complaining that the smaller, quieter, more convenient gaming device is less good

#lizabeth talkabeth #xbox #pc #video games #tbf i build my current pc myself very recently so #but that's mostly because i wanted to play act 3 of baldur's gate without lag

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starrystar · 2 years ago

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Transcription:

Green and kind of mossy background

It would be a month before they could fit me in.

MD: It’s probably benign. Try not to worry about it.

SB: I’m not…you know what, no. I’m just gonna go ahead and worry about this one.

But at least insurance had approved everything and I was ready to start chemo.

SB: Meh, what’s another cancer on the pile more or less?

Since my hair was gonna fall out anyway, I got my stylist to give me a mohawk.

SB: Heh heh heh. I always wanted one of these and never had the nerve.

SB: Bitchin’

Red and black alcohol ink background

I was smug as hell about the mohawk

Textbox: I told my dad—70, career navy, never had hair that touched his collar—that I was getting one before it all fell out on its own. He fumbled his be supportive roll in the face of this, but my stepmom swooped in with the save.

Dad: But a mohawk…really?

Stepmom’s speech bubble over top of dad’s: Ooh! What color?

SB: Oh, just red and black. I don’t want to be ostentatious.

Textbox: This actually made it better. If you don’t freak out at least one parent, is it really punk? My stylist rose to the occasion, though we have to take off a couple inches before I could fit in the car. I still drove home hunched over the wheel like Quasimodo at a Dead Kennedys show.

Photo insert in the style of a Polaroid snapshot: a headshot of Ursula in nature, wearing a black leather jacket with studs on the shoulder. Her hair is a truly impressive mohawk that is bright red at the front and goes to maroon along the back. The mohawk is as tall as her whole face. Her expression is what you’d see when you look up “smug” in the dictionary.

Note: My stylist is a treasure and I told her I’d see her next year.

Purple and black background

I had a power port installed just under my collarbone

Speech bubble: Tell them you want USB-C!

SB: Oh, aren’t we clever…

Textbox: For some reason, the port really scared me. I think it was because my previous experience with internal hardware was with IUDs, which felt like a mule was kicking me in the cervix with spiked shoes. And everything online said there might be “some discomfort” for a few days, which is medical speak for “this is gonna hurt like a stone bitch.”

Also they were really paranoid about infection.

RN: If it gets red or swollen or hot, do not try to sleep it off. It will not get better.

Blue alcohol inks like dark water background

RN: This tube is running directly into your lower jugular. If it gets infected, that goes straight into the heart. Don’t pick at it.

SB: Yes’m.

Suddenly the tech’s story about bacteria strings whipping around like snakes seemed very personal.

Textbox: I confessed that I was afraid of the pain because of the IUD and the nurse told me that the state of reproductive pain care was barbaric and not to get her started. She promised the surgery wouldn’t hurt at all. She was telling the truth.

RN: Meet Mer. Fentanyl!

SB: Hello, Mr. Fen…hhhh…zzz

Yellow and orange spotty background

I came to with an inch-long incision on my chest and a vague memory of telling the nurses interesting animal facts.

RN: It was like National Geographic!

MR: Did she tell you about hyena genitals?

RN: She sure did!

There was indeed some discomfort then it just ached like hell

SB: I’m gonna find the guy who writes “some discomfort” and cause him some discomfort. With a baseball bat.

Note: The port is both A) a miracle of moder technology that is sparing my veins from untold horrors and B) more soreness and ache and trouble than anything else so far.

Bright, almost Pepto Bismol pink spotty background

Chemo class with the pharmacist went well

Rx: You’ll need to use a barrier method during intercourse for the first two days

Speech bubble overlapping previous: Tell me what will happen! Rash, radiation burn, death, what?!

Rx: Uh… We don’t know? There haven’t been any clinical studies.

SB: Ok, so if I write sex with a chemo patient into a book as an ingenious murder weapon—

Rx: Please don’t.

Something something “so outside the realm of possibility” something.

Note: This pharmacist was incredibly fabulous, in all senses of the word. We later bonded over a mutual love of Primus.

Full red watery background

And then it was time to face…the Red Devil

Insert ominous music here

Textbox: Actually, I sat in a recliner for about four hours, playing on my Switch and having to pee every twenty minutes. Finally they brought out two bigass syringes full of what looked like red Kool Aid, and injected them into the IV drip.

RN: Chew ice while we do this, it cuts down on mouth sores.

SB: Crunch crunch crunch

Ten minutes later

SB: Wow that urine sure is pink!

Textbox: Really, that was it. I was so pumped full of anti-nausea meds and steroids that I felt fine. This type of chemo didn’t even cause neuropathy so I didn’t need cold gloves or anything. I ate a Whopper on the way home.

Note: I have never been on steroids before and they are scarily amazing.

Light bluish gray watery background

I had so many nausea pills that I half-expected to be vomiting like a toddler on Space Mountain.

SB: Ok, I take this one twice a day on days 1, 2, and 3, this one once a day on days 2, 3 and 4, then as needed, this one as needed every six hours, this one as needed every eight hours…

Textbox: But I didn’t actually feel that bad. Don’t get me wrong—

I felt like ass on a stick for a few days

Textbox: But it was just like having the flu or something. I was tired and a little queasy and more vague than usual.

Purple and light yellow splotchy background, like early dawn

Textbox: It wasn’t like some special new level of sick. It wasn’t nearly as bad as food poisoning or that time I got swine flu.

I didn’t enjoy it but it wasn’t apocalyptic

SB: Eh, I’ve had worse.

Except for the constipation that was was apocalyptic

SB: Peristalsis, why as thou forsaken me?

Textbox: Pro Tip: If things are badly blocked up, taking laxatives only increases the pressure. It does not unblock things. But once they do unblock, you will have an experience.

Note: There is a moment in the dark hours of pre-dawn when you are alone in the bathroom with a nitrile glove, whatever lube you have on hand, and your God. This was not the fun version of that moment.

Yellow and orange spotty background like a vibrant sunrise

The second week I felt normal. My grandmother had chemo thirty years ago and it was horrific. It almost field weird that this wasn’t.

I took a lot of naps. My sense of taste went a little haywire. Cheesy powder flavor simply ceased to exist. Nacho Doritos tasted as if they were dipped in flour.

Cousin: Noo! We’re white people! Cheese is all we have!

SB: Right? Right?!

Note: At the time of this writing, I am 3/4ths of the way through the Red Devil (I start Taxol next) and aged white cheddar is the only cheese that I can taste. I have borne up well, but if that is taken from me, I may lose the will to go on.

The Saga Of Bob, Part 5: Chemo Time

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

In which our heroine finally gets an infusion of the finest toxic cocktails modern medicine can provide.

My stylist is a treasure and I told her I’d see her next year.

The port is both A) a miracle of modern technology that is sparing my veins from untold horrors and B) more soreness and ache and trouble than anything else so far.

This pharmacist was incredibly fabulous, in all senses of the word. We later bonded over a mutual love of Primus.

I have never been on steroids before and they are scarily amazing.

There is a moment in the dark hours of pre-dawn when you are alone in the bathroom with a nitrile glove, whatever lube you have on hand, and your God. This was not the fun version of that moment.

At the time of this writing, I am 3/4ths of the way through the Red Devil (I start Taxol next) and aged white cheddar is the only cheese that I can taste. I have borne up well, but if that is taken from me, I may lose the will to go on.

Thank you again to people who have transcribed the earlier Saga of Bob—you are heroes!

#ursula vernon #Cancer #The saga of bob #alt text

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xodiumdotnet · 2 years ago

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Those $20 Onn TV boxes

I've been slowly working on building out a workspace/chill space in the garage, after finally reclaiming a lot of the space out there over the last few months by getting rid of a bunch of projects and retro stuff I was honestly never getting around to.

One of the things I ended up wanting in there was a TV, because while I was working on some projects, I had SGDQ 2023 up on my laptop and trying to keep track on such a small screen kinda far away was not the business. Thankfully due to being in a community with people who are just itching to give stuff to a good home rather than sending it to ewaste, I had a TV (a 47" Vizio from 2011 running some esoteric early smart TV platform made by Yahoo) thrown at me. Got it mounted up, and realized that because the garage is the way it is, controlling my laptop to get content up on the screen wasn't going to be the most intuitive.

I could have done the sane thing and bought another Logitech K400+ for like, $25, but then I was reminded of the existence of these cool little onn boxes that go for just a hair cheaper. Figuring it should be just fine even if it can't handle 4K all that well (TV it was going on is only 1080p), I took the plunge.

One quick curbside pickup later (like hell am I going into a Walmart these days) I had the thing unboxed and installing updates.

This brings me to the first thing I like about it: It sips power. The power adapter that comes with it is rated for 5v 1A, so most USB ports can drive this thing, and likely the ones on your TV can too (if it's modern enough to have them). I tried to connect it to one of the three USB ports on the Vizio (seriously, three? That's a LOT for a TV) and it was happy as a clam.

By comparison, my Chromecast Ultra would whine if you tried to do this. And that poor thing seems to struggle with pushing 4K video, anyway. It's just hard to keep in mind this is from a $20 box.

On the flip, there's a bad side here: the power is delivered via micro USB. The sooner that port dies off, the better. But I suppose I can't complain for all of twenty dollars. It does reportedly support USB OTG if you want to expand the lackluster storage, but that kinda gets outside the scope of this device for me. (And you'll need a Y-cable. Because micro USB. Yay.)

While we're on ports: there is no ethernet port. Wireless is your lot. For me that works well enough, also because I don't yet have hardwired ethernet to the garage. Didn't notice any stuttering or buffering. The onn box tops out at Wi-Fi 5, but again: $20.

Setup was typical of a Google TV device. You're likely going to be making a trip to settings to uninstall a load of apps if you're like me and only using this for a few services (for me, that's YouTube, Twitch, Plex, and maybe something else). You also get dumped onto the ad-filled home screen, which...some might be okay with it, and in the context of this device? I'm certainly okay with it: Again: twenty. dollars.

Where I absolutely, vehemently abhorred this was on significantly more pricey devices like my old Shield TV Pro. I paid out the arse for that thing, keep your damn ads out of my face. For $20 though? Sure, I'll stomach it. I'm sure I can swap the launcher but that's whatever for me at the moment.

Once I ran through and deleted everything I had zero intent on using and installed the apps I did plan on using (YouTube/Twitch/Plex), I was left with about 5.1GB of onboard storage to play with. For the light use this box is going to see that's good enough, but if you plan on really getting your money's worth from it, you may want to expand that. (Or get something a bit more fit for purpose.)

Updates run, apps deleted, the last thing to do was to give it a benchmark to see how well it performs, and I usually do that by way of tossing this gorgeous video of Costa Rica at it. It's very easy to spot any frame drops or stutters.

Pleased to report the onn box didn't drop a single frame or buffer at all. It played straight through, smooth as butter. Even my 4K Roku TV's inbuilt hardware struggles hard with this video, so seeing this little box of wonder absolutely spank it is awesome (and has me considering grabbing one to replace my power-hungry HTPC...)

Performance-wise, the only iffy thing I noticed is bouncing around the home screen can be a bit stuttery. Once I'm in an app though, this thing performs VERY well for what it is. No video issues as far as I can see. Twitch streams play perfectly, no buffering there either.

I suppose that would bring me to the conclusion: Do I recommend this thing? If you just need a basic, no frills streaming box that does that task VERY well? Yes. Absolutely yes.

The only way I'd not recommend this is if you want to do things that kinda start to go outside the scope of what the onn box is meant to do. Want to run, say, emulators for retro games? Or other things that are going to require more storage? Sure, you can slap a Y-cable and get USB OTG with the onn box, but past a certain point you have to wonder if you're spending so much that you might as well get the Chromecast w/ Google TV (since it has a USB-C port and is arguably more friendly to external devices because of it).

There's also the case to be made for the Shield TV Pro if you can find one used for a good price, but on the flip, that hardware isn't getting any younger and far as I know, Nvidia's got no plans to introduce a new one.

But if all you plan to do is consume video content? This box is great. $20 well spent.

#onn #4k streaming #tv #set top box #review

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munchlax-musings · 2 years ago

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About My Stenograph Machine

I thought I'd share some information on the equipment I use for stenography.

This is a very long post with several images (with image descriptions), technical explanations, and two videos attached. Thank you for reading, if you do!

I learned a lot about my machine after delving into the manual and trying to explain what I read, so I hope you do, too.

Note that while I am heavily biased towards stenograph machines, there are hobbyist keyboards made for steno that are much cheaper and readily accessible. If you would like to learn more, please click this link.

This is a Stentura 400SRT.

It's an older electric stenograph machine model, refurbished for student use.

[Image description: Photo of an electric Stenograph Stentura 400SRT Paperless Student Writer. The Stenoworks logo watermark is at the bottom left of the image. At the top of the machine are the black Platen Roller and the Paper Feed Roller. Below that is the cover/nameplate. An on/off switch and two indicator lights are at the top right of the nameplate. The first is green. Its label is to the left: a long line, with five dashes below it. Below the green indicator is a red indicator. Its label, to the left, reads: "DATA TRAN". Below the lights and switch are the words: Stentura 400SRT electric. Below that, the word Stenograph. Directly below the nameplate, on the left and right, are two horizontal Cover Release Levers. Even further below is the Stentura keyboard. At the top is a long bar called the number bar. Below that are 22 keys. At the lower left of this image is the Stenoworks watermark.]

It plugs into an outlet to keep power, has a removable battery, and uses a serial to USB adapter cable to connect to my computer. It's pretty old but sturdy and quite reliable.

The Front of the Machine

The cover of the machine, also called the nameplate, can be lifted up for further inspection and maintenance of the internal mechanisms. It also has a power switch and two indicator lights, one in green and one in red. Both flash or light up when set to different modes. If you wish to know more about the machine's various modes, please click this link to read the manual.

Below the cover are the keys of the machine.

Stenograph machines do not have the keys labeled in any way. This is to prevent writers from looking down at their hands when writing. Looking down at your hands while writing will ultimately slow you down, preventing you from reaching high speeds. This is sorta like how touch-typing is considered a faster way to type than looking down at your keyboard.

I will write a post summarizing the keys of the machine at some other point. Just know that each key doesn't represent individual letters but instead sounds, and that each stenograph machine has 22 keys plus a number bar. The keys at the far left and the middle of the machine are actually each one key, just with the appearance of being split in half.

The Bottom of the Machine

This part is not pictured, unfortunately. This is the area where you would install your external battery pack and your tripod.

[Image description: Photo of a stenograph machine tripod.]

Above is an example of a tripod. The underside of the machine has a hole for attachment. This lets you write with the machine between your legs rather than with it sitting on a desk.

My model also has a wire bar at the bottom used for writing at a desk or table while standing called the "Bench Conference Stand". This is typically used for bench conferences, wherein the plaintiff and defendants' team will speak with the judge but exclude the jury and anyone else besides the court reporter from overhearing.

The Paper Tape Mechanism

Pictured below, the top of the machine isn't something I personally use. According to the manual, the silver bar and attached lined roller are called the "Paper Feed Roller" and the black roller it's grazing is called the black "Platen Roller". You might have already guess it, but this mechanism is used to print ink on what is called "paper tape".

[Image description: Close-up of the top of the Stentura. Middle of the image is the black Platen Roller and the Paper Feed Roller.]

Paper tape is just a very long sheet of paper you would use, before the task was automated using computers, to record your stenography notes. Stenographers would typically read directly from the paper in order to prepare transcripts or when asked to repeat, in verbatim, something that had been said in court.

[Image description: Photo of the back of the Stentura. Top, centermost part of the machine are the Paper Feed Roller, Platen Roller, and the paper apron. Below that is where you would, presumably, attach the paper tray. Bottom left of the machine is the 9-pin Communications port. On the bottom right, a hole for plugging your machine into an outlet. The Stenoworks website watermark is at the bottom left of the image.]

The above is a photo of the back of the machine. Underneath the paper feed roller is a barely visible silver landing strip called a silver apron.

On the bottom left is a 9-pin Communications port. You use that to connect the writer to your computer.

Then to the far right is a hole for connecting your machine into a power outlet.

In case you're curious as to how add paper tape to a stenograph machine, below are the steps:

Attach a paper tray to the back of your machine

Add paper to the tray

Take the top-most fold

Thread the paper between the black roller and the silver apron

Roll the black roller to "feed" the paper tape into it

When the paper comes up through the top of the roller, lift up the silver paper feed roller

Place the end of the paper coming up through the top underneath the paper feed roller

Pull the paper out a few inches

Place the top of the paper tray beneath the paper

For a video representation of these steps, below is someone adding tape to their own machine:

youtube

[Video description: A stenographer giving instructions and demonstrating how to load paper tape into their stenograph machine.]

Each depression of the keys, called a stroke, would print a letter or group of letters onto the tape. Below is what the paper tape's printout would look like using Plover's paper tape plug-in. The chords here spell out "hello world".

[Image description: Screenshot of the Plover paper tape plug-in. Top of the window has the Plover icon, which is a white asterisk on a green key. The window name is "Plover: Paper Tape". To the far right of the window name are the help (?) and cancel/exit (X) buttons. Below the window name is a drop-down menu labeled "Mode:". "Paper" mode has been selected. Below that is a line of the keys from the machine. The keys are: # S T K P W H R A O * E U F R P B L G T S D Z. Below that, in a white text box, are the following chords: H E L, O E, and W O R L D, each set on separate lines. At the very bottom of the window are four icons: a push-pin for pinning the window above other windows; a button with a capital and lowercase T for editing the font appearance; a garbage can for deleting what is on the paper tape; and a floppy disk for saving what you've written to the tape as a text file.]

The Longest Section: Inside the Machine

Below is an image of the internals of the stenograph machine.

[Image description: A photo of the inside of a Stentura 400SRT. All the parts that I could identify are labeled with a number. The parts are numbered from 1 to 17 in black text on top a black circle with a white outline. The Stenoworks website watermark is in the bottom left of the image.]

All the parts that I could identify with the manual are labeled with a number. After trying to write the image description for it, I decided that I should provide the names for each part below, then separately explain what each part is or does.

Parts Labeled

Cover Release Levers

key levers

blue Ribbon Advance knob

an unpictured red knob called the Depth of Stroke knob

an empty space where the Ribbon Cartridge would be installed when using paper tape

white Keystroke Pressure knob

green strip overlay with key adjustment screws

number bar lever

black Paten Roller

orange Platen Drive Gear

Platen Bearings

Manual Platen Advance Linkage

silver Paper Feed Roller

red Electric/Manual mode lever

machine handles

Cover/nameplate

An Explanation of Each Part

The first two things labeled in the image are the Cover Release Levers. You lift those horizontal bars/levers to release the cover and lift it up to reveal what's underneath. Then there are what I presume are just called the key levers.

Following that is the blue Ribbon Advance knob.

From what I understand after fiddling with the machine, each key depression and release causes this blue knob to automatically advance number 5, the ribbon cartridge, which typically contains a self-inking, continuous loop ribbon. This ensures the machine will continue to apply ink to the paper tape with every rotation.

Not pictured is a red knob called the Depth of Stroke knob.

You turn the wheel upward or downward to adjust how far down the keys go when you press them. There are ten settings available. Adjustment also lets you decrease or increase spacing.

To the far right of the blue Ribbon Advance knob is number 6, the white Keystroke Pressure knob.

Turning it lets you adjust the amount of pressure needed to press the keys.

Above where the ribbon cartridge would be, I think, is number 7, the key contact assembly.

The green overlay strip has all the keys of the machine labeled with corresponding screws above each one, called contact adjustment screws.

The number bar's screw is to the top-right of the others. The two big screws on either side are for removing the overlay.

You would insert a 0.35 inch Allen wrench into a screw. Then you would turn it after determining that the corresponding key's switch is in need of adjustment.

Immediately above the green overlay is number 8, the machine's number bar's lever used for printing numbers into the paper tape.

Above that is number 9, the black Platen Roller.

To the left is number 10, an orange knob called the Platen Drive Gear.

On either side of the Platen Roller are number 11, the Platen Bearings. They are a single frame, identifiable by the holes located at the center of each side. Those holes are specifically for lube.

Number 12 is the Manual Platen Advance Linkage, which is to the bottom-right of the Platen Roller. Above the Platen Roller is number 13, the Paper Feed Roller. Below that, not pictured, is the silver paper apron.

All these parts work in tandem to smoothly apply ink to the paper tape when a key is depressed, and then to advance the paper to the next available line when a key is released.

If you were using the Stentura with paper tape and an ink cartridge, you would also have to apply StenoLube1 to the Platen Bearings and Platen Drive Gear, and StenoLube2 to the Paper Feed Roller.

To the right of the Platen Roller is number 14, the red Electric/Manual lever.

You would typically change from one mode to the next when either trying to make adjustments to the machine's keys or when your machine is running low on battery and you have to switch to writing on the paper tape.

Number 15 looks like it's labeling two empty areas, but those are the handles for the machine. And of course, above all of these parts is number 16, the lifted cover/nameplate.

Keystroke Emulation

As you can see, each stenograph machine is a lever-based machine, just like a typewriter. Each key on the machine connects to an electronic switch.

After completing a stroke, the machine will send that input through the real-time cable connected to your computer. Software -- Plover or CAT (Computer-Aided Transcription) -- will emulate that stroke and translate it from shorthand into something else, presumably English or a command, using a dictionary.

Above is a screenshot of the Plover Dictionary Editor. You can filter by strokes or by translations. You use this pop-up to edit, add, or delete strokes from the dictionary. All Plover users are given a pre-named dictionary called "user.json".

Rather than editing the "main.json" dictionary, which is a free user-created dictionary distributed through downloading the program, you would typically make changes to other dictionaries, especially user.json. This is to ensure that if Plover were to be updated even if your main.json were to be accidentally overwritten, you would not lose your dictionary changes.

Production of a Chord

Below is an attempt I made on December 25th, 2022, to write the top 100 English words using a metronome set to 140 bpm.

The bottom right corner of the video shows the digital paper tape emulated by Plover. Each stroke is then translated into English, as demonstrated by my completion of the drill at the center of the video.

youtube

[Video description: A video of my screen as I write to a Top 100 English Words drill on the website Stenojig. It begins with me setting a metronome to 140 bpm with stress on the 2nd of the 2 beats. In the top right is a WPM plug-in measuring my speed; on the lower right is a plug-in displaying emulated paper tape. Soon after setting the metronome, I switch tabs to Stenojig and begin the exercise. Green highlight indicates whether I've written a word correctly. And the end of the video are a set of stats indicating that I did not erase anything during the practice session, I averaged 2.15 strokes per second, and that it took me 0:47 seconds to finish the exercise, giving me an approximated WPM of 114. Then the video ends.]

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