lemmyvore

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

Getting the Skyrim itch again... Any mod recommendations to freshen it up?

Previously I've been pretty gentle with modding that game - things like SkyUI to make it a bit more PC friendly, utility mods like the one limits soul gems to ONLY being filled with their highest tier (no more wasting a grand by filling it with a mudcrab). Also LockPick Pro to effectively skip lockpicking, cuz I hate Skyrim's...

lemmyvore ,

I can't give specifics because it will depend on the version you play and also it's been a while and I don't remember all mods by heart. So it's just gonna be suggestions; in no particular order:

  • First of all you'll need the fundamental bug fixes. There's (still) lots of bugs in vanilla Skyrim.
  • You will need the new improved menus, most mods rely on them.
  • Personally I can't play without improving the aspect of PC and NPCs, so improvements to bodies, faces and hair are a must for me. If you get down the rabbit hole there's things like mustaches, beards, tattoos, eyes etc.
  • Armor and weapons is a close second for good looking stuff.
  • You will want a mod that improves polygons as well as something that enhances vegetation, skyboxes, water and weather.
  • There are mods that fill the cities and villages with a lot more... stuff. Things like decorative vegetation, benches etc. You will not be able to play without it once you've tried it.
  • The skill trees and the professions all need specific mods that apply balances and fixes. You can also go one step further and apply mods that actually make them interesting.
  • If you can find one for your version of Skyrim, I strongly recommend a mod that improves dragon AI and makes the fights actually challenging. It always seemed ridiculous to me how easy they are by default.
  • Better horses is a good idea, lots of convenience there.
  • Smithing improvements. Nuff said.
  • Personally I can't stand the default fighting in all aspects of it. I must have didn't roll and some extra brains for the enemies. Some mods the spruce up the dungeons aren't bad either.
  • You can get lots of extra quests and NPCs with Interesting NPCs.
  • I typically avoid shaders and ENBs in favor of simpler mods that let you adjust the game colors (contrast, saturation etc.) They have very low impact on performance and give you that color jolt that's 90% of why people use ENBs anyway.

On an even more personal note, I like to play like a classic RPG. I get mods that allow multiple companions and interesting NPCs and when I met somebody interesting I take them into my party. There are also mods that let you order them better, you can adjust their flags to set what armor and weapons they prefer, how they level up, and whether they have "plot armor" so they can die for reals. I usually end the game with a party of 4-6 people and it's a blast. But you may want to adjust the difficulty accordingly as you go out you will start rolling everything.

Another very interesting approach I've tried a couple of times is mods that remove all identification clues (no town names, no directions, maximum map fog of war) and start you in some random point of the map. Add some difficulty mods so you have to be really careful who you meet, perhaps some survival mods, and it's a real blast. You can also use rogue rules and restart when you die (and not save scum).

lemmyvore ,

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/

A good overview of the circumstances of the recent Chevron decision.

Please note the final paragraph. Koch's goal is exactly this: bringing cases in front of the Supreme Court that, if won, would cause grave disturbances.

lemmyvore ,

I really don't see the issue. If the work account uses Google or Microsoft I use their respective web apps and export an ICS link to see the blocked slots in my own personal calendar.

For my own personal calendar I use CalDAV, which is widely supported, and an app that can import ICS links. (Self-hosted Radicale server and the Calengoo app for mobile and desktop, for the curious.)

lemmyvore ,

They're a very common form of personal backup. A few discs and an USB writer and you get a very long lasting medium for passwords, personal files, family photos etc.

Can also archive multimedia of course, the smallest discs are 25 GB and can pack a few films, a season of a series, or a lot of music.

lemmyvore ,

optical media doesn't last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged

I beg to differ. I've been backing things up to optical for 25 years now with minimal issues. CDs could be easily scratched but it hasn't been the case for DVD and BR.

M-DISK uses in-organic substances that make the discs mostly immune to exposure but it's a more recent invention. Proper storage and handling still goes a long way towards protecting discs even if they're not in-organic.

lemmyvore ,

Generally speaking, a subdomain like jellyfin.myhome.com will work out much better than a subpath like myhome.com/jellyfin.

Very few web apps can deal well (or at all) with being used under a subpath.

lemmyvore ,

If you mean to do that in the public DNS records please note that public records that point at private IPs are often filtered by ISP's DNS servers because they can be used in web attacks.

If you don't use your ISP's DNS as upstream, and the servers you use don't do this filtering, and you don't care about the attacks, carry on. But if you use multiple devices or have multiple users (with multiple devices each) eventually that domain will be blocked for some of them.

lemmyvore ,

Alright, have fun with that. 🙂

lemmyvore ,
  • What does "authentication" mean if there's no server?
  • How do browsers behind NAT connect to each other?
  • How does it verify that the other chat partner is who they say they are?
  • Why use this and not Simplex?
lemmyvore ,

I wonder if it works with a joystick...

lemmyvore ,

SO gives you very specific, small examples. GenAI will happily generate entire projects, test suites etc. It's much easier to get caught into the fantasy that the latter creates.

lemmyvore ,

Oh, God, he's trying to use pointers again. He can never get them right. And they say I'm supposed to chase my tail...

lemmyvore ,

If you were 100% specific you would be effectively writing the code yourself. But you don't want that, so you're not 100% specific, so it makes up the difference. The result will include an unspecified percentage of code that does not fit what you wanted.

It's like code Yahtzee, you keep re-rolling this dice and that dice but never quite manage to get the exact combination you need.

There's an old saying about computers, they don't do what you want them to do, they do what you tell them to do. They can't do what you don't tell them to do.

lemmyvore ,

It's not the only free DNS service.

It's only a good registrar if you don't care about privacy and you're ok with their selection of TLDs (selected only from registries without privacy).

The free accounts do not benefit from DDoS protection. Re-read their terms of service, they're vague on purpose. If you were ever DDoS'ed (I don't know who would bother btw but that's another discussion) they'd just drop you.

You can establish the tunneling thing on your own with any VPS.

The problem with cloudflare is that we’re missing three other cloudflares to move to if they decide to pull evil shit.

You can and should diversify your services and spread them to different providers that are easy to switch. I've been with "all in one" providers before, they inevitably end up leveraging their convenience into all sorts of crap. But until you get burned a couple of times they look really good.

lemmyvore ,

Both your ISP and CF will drop you like a hot potato if you're ever under that kind of attack.

CF has other features that are nice like, like WAF, bot detection, geo blocking, caching etc. But it's only a taste.

All their real services are paid and the whole reason they offer a free tier is to upsell you to their paid services.

lemmyvore ,

There are tons of CDNs out there.

lemmyvore ,

https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dns-providers-who-easily-integrate-with-lets-encrypt-dns-validation/86438

I'm not seeing bunny.net on that list, it has a DNS service with API. They have a minimum account maintenance fee of $1/mo and when you load up your account you have to load a minimum of $10. So basically it's $1/mo for which you get a lot of DNS and CDN service included (20M DNS queries and 100GB transfer).

lemmyvore ,

Contact support and tell them how many you need and they'll try to accommodate you. There were a lot of people abusing the service and hosting hundreds of domains so now they're making everybody request them explicitly unfortunately. They've also had to suspend their .dedyn.io DDNS service indefinitely because of the abuse.

That's why we can't have nice things.

Please read up on DNSSEC because you will be required to turn it on for every domain you host with them.

lemmyvore ,

That's how Amazon works.

If you think all the stores in the internet now are PWA's you are sadly mistaken. MVC web apps are pretty well suited for things like shops and they never went away. There are entire languages and frameworks like PHP, Python, Java that actively support that style of app. It also lends itself really well to caching.

I wouldn't say it's completely JavaScript free though. Client side JS is still extremely useful and attempting to make a store with zero JS might be a bit tough.

Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets ( www.righto.com )

To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called NFC, but what's happening internally? How does the ticket work without a battery? How does it communicate with the turnstile? And how can it be so cheap that you can throw the ticket away...

lemmyvore ,

I think it's more accurately to call it RFID rather than NFC. It operates on the range of frequencies that NFC also uses but this particular application (access ticket) doesn't require any NFC features. So I doubt they went and made the readers NFC and took the penalties (such as the greatly reduced reading distance) for no practical reason.

As a simple rule of thumb, if the ticket works from more than 5cm away it's most likely not NFC.

If you can use your smartphone instead of a ticket then it's NFC.

lemmyvore ,

I've yet to understand how the hell they get away with "I don't know how it works". Either figure out how it works or stop using it, shithead. It's software not magic beans.

There's lots of complicated fields out there, none of them get a pass for "I don't know how my drugs work" or "I don't know how my rockets work". That's absolutely ridiculous.

lemmyvore ,

It's true robots is not regulation but if it's proven they ignore it on purpose it will be a major point in future lawsuits. And those are the next step.

lemmyvore ,

If the models are random then we shouldn't be trusting them to do anything, let alone serious applications. If any other type of software told us that it's based on partially random results we'd say "get that shit out of here, I want my software to work first time, every time".

"Statistically good enough" works for some applications but not for others. If a LLM finds a formula that has an 80% chance to be the cure for cancer or a new magical fuel or some amazing new material that's cool, we're not going to look the gift horse in the mouth.

But using LLM to polute the web with advertising texts that are barely inteligible, and using it as a pretext to break copyright in the process, who does that help? So far the only readily available commercial application for LLMs has been to spit out semi-nonsense so that a bunch of bottom-crawling parasitic industries can be enabled to keep on pinching pennies and shitting up everything they touch.

Which, ironically, it will help them to hit bottom all the faster, so in a strange way it's a positive return, but the problem is they're going to take down a lot of useful things with them.

lemmyvore ,

LLMs don't generate information, they generate information shaped sentences

That is besides the point. A random number generator is more or less random but it still has applications.

The problem is not them being random, it's hiding that they are being random so they can be used for applications where randomness is not a feature.

lemmyvore ,

Get a certification?

lemmyvore ,

Yeah.

Next step, modify your resume to say you did networking at previous positions. Don't lie, just focus on the network stuff. I'm assuming you did that too.

lemmyvore ,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

lemmyvore ,

What do the Unbound logs say?

What upstream servers are you using?

not depend on Google/Adblock/Whatever upstream DNS server

I mean, you're gonna have to get your DNS information somewhere. You can choose and pick your upstream but you still need one. You can cache the DNS info but you will still need to refresh it eventually. You can use a DoT or DoH upstream server so your ISP cannot spy on your DNS traffic but, again, you still need an upstream.

lemmyvore , (edited )

polito.it may not be the best example because its A records point at private IPs (192.168.x.x). Such records are often filtered by ISP DNS servers because they are used in certain kinds of attacks.

Double check your results using DNSChecker.

Edit: also, using just dig will not resolve all possible records related to a domain. I use a script that asks dig explicitly for a variety of record types:

#!/bin/bash
echo "SOA NS A AAAA MX CNAME TXT SRV DNSKEY"|\
xargs -n1 dig +noall +answer +nocrypto "$@"|\
sort -u -k4
lemmyvore ,

"Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" - or something like that. It's still a great defense when things go bust and they probably knew they would.

lemmyvore ,

Also ytdl-sub would work for your case.

lemmyvore ,

It's s great fit for people with goldfish memory span.

lemmyvore ,

If Discord would add wikis and improve its search it would freaking destroy everything else. It would be the place for everything a modern gaming community could want.

lemmyvore ,

People who use discord don't want to use it like a forum. They want instant interaction.

If you think about it a lot of forum banter is just that, just because it's slower and persistent doesn't guarantee a higher signal to noise ratio.

If Discord were to add wikis so people can add persistent FAQs and guides it would cover 99% of its user needs.

lemmyvore ,

Skyrim came with a built-in mod editor?

Are you perhaps thinking of the manager they added on Xbox?

lemmyvore ,

What do you do for 1k hours in Starfield?

lemmyvore ,

Some ISP don't rotate IPs so it can end up pinpointing your house very precisely.

lemmyvore ,

Fell off this passing truck that was carrying shows and movies!

lemmyvore ,

Lol. There are tons of security experts out there they could've hired. As Snowden said there's only one reason you hire from the NSA, to work with the NSA.

lemmyvore ,

there are a ton of security experts. But none of them are the former head of the NSA.

That doesn't make the point you think it makes. 🙂

Look at it this way. You can get the same expertise, in any branch you'd care to name, elsewhere. Hiring, security etc.

What this guy is uniquely positioned to do, what you can't get from anybody else, is oversight of integration with NSA surveillance. And that's where the smell comes from.

lemmyvore ,

I've always kinda assumed that government, surveillance and analytics would be OpenAI's main goals, and that consumer stuff is just for marketing and a good image. There's no money and no point in enabling Jimmy Random to use GPT to find out if Africa exists, and the commercial applications of the models they produce can be better leveraged differently (black boxed TPU hardware for example).

That's also what I assume Goggle's been doing with all the data they collect. The location data alone they collect from billions of phones is an analyst's wet dream.

If it turns out they are NOT selling all that data to be mined by evil overlords I'm gonna be disappointed.

lemmyvore ,

That's what the chip on the card does too. It's an embedded computer that generates one time codes just like the phone.

The main difference is that the phone typically has an extra security measure, like requiring the screen to be on to pay (but you can get a mesh wallet which prevents tap from working); or the phone needs to be unlocked, which is actually useful.

lemmyvore ,

Anything up to a certain amount. All the banks here have configurable limits for contactless payments (both in number of payments per day and in total amount). If you go over the limit they ask you to confirm in a way that requires the phone anyway. You can also block the cards remotely.

I'd say it's a decent mix of convenience and security, even if you use cards.

And sometimes you have to resort to using cards because some banks have been migrating from using the NFC directly to using Google Pay and I for one don't relish giving Google insight into my shopping.

lemmyvore ,

They ask for PIN too but that's a different limit ($20 by default but also configurable). The limits I mentioned block payments for the day if not confirmed.

never heard of banks using the NFC directly

Really? I've never heard of Garmin Pay. 😄 But that's the whole point of the NFC chip being open on Android, so apps can use it directly. On iPhone it's an artificial limitation imposed by Apple so they can take their cut from payments and have a processor monopoly. On Android any app can just do it — not only banking apps and not only payments, the NFC can be used for lots of things like opening doors etc. There are apps like meal tickets that can issue payments, gym apps and so on. Giving that up and going with Google is extremely narrow sighted.

lemmyvore ,

Threads is only federated in name. It's simply Meta's taking advantage of Twitter's downfall. It's as centralized and under Meta's thumb as they come.

lemmyvore ,

That was a solved problem 20 years ago lol. We made working systems for this in our lab at Uni, it was one of our course group projects. It used combinations of sensors and microcontrollers.

It's not really the kind of problem that requires AI. You can do it with AI and image recognition or live traffic data but that's more fitting for complex tasks like adjusting the entire grid live based on traffic conditions. It's massively overkill for dead time switches.

Even for grid optimization you shouldn't jump into AI head first. It's much better long term to analyze the underlying causes of grid congestion and come up with holistic solutions that address those problems, which often translate into low-tech or zero-tech solutions. I've seen intersections massively improved by a couple of signs, some markings and a handful of plastic poles.

Throwing AI at problems is sort of a "spray and pray" approach that often goes about as badly as you can expect.

lemmyvore ,

They're nowhere close to something like Anna. They have nice collections but it's mostly English mainstream stuff.

lemmyvore ,

FWIW I don't recall ever finding anything obscure on there so I think it's mostly mainstream stuff.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • kbinchat
  • All magazines
    •