My notes get set to private after a few months, so I have to repost my introduction periodically. Boosts welcome.
Hello, I go by Null! I am a programmer, avid reader, long-time Tabletop RPG (TTRPG) GM, anticapitalist, weird horror fan, aspiring (if shy) writer, and a long suffering fan of anime. I identify as agender even though I don't talk about it much. I also enjoy cooking, brewing, mushrooms, gardening, ravens, typewriters, and well... a little of everything. I just like to answer questions.

I generally post random observations, tabletop RPG experiences, political thoughts (CWed), news commentary, short anime reviews, and the like. Please feel free to drop in for a message or reply - I'm open to conversation. Also, do feel free to let me know if I commit any faux pas. I'm pretty open to good-faith commentary and it's important to me that people feel safe.

Things I am reading right now (I can't focus on one book for long so I rotate):

* Audition by Ryu Murakami
* No Gods No Masters by various
* Vagabonds: Life on the streets of 19th London by Oskar Jensen

It always makes me laugh when an iPhone app that basically does one thing throws a dialogue asking "Hey! Are you enjoying the app?"

I got that this morning.

From Duo.

And I'm just looking at the question thinking, yeah. Yeah, you know what, I am enjoying Duo authenticator. It sure is a... multifactor authentication app. It absolutely is.

I'm uploading a bunch of stuff (about 7TB of it) to a Servarica Mammoth Storage VPS, which I'm basically using as a personal backup box.
Seens about the best I can do is around half my upstream, pretty close to 500 Mb/sec. In a little over twelve hours, I have so far uploaded 2.2 TB. Weird to think that I now consider that sort of slow.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Borris

LOL. Yes, kitty in sink is most definitely cute. I had a room mate with a rather large cat who loved to do that. He'd leave the tap on just the tiniest drip, and kitty would scrunch his fat bulbous form into that bathroom sink, twist his head more than half way around to point his face up, and just hang his mouth open under the tap and catch the water drops, LOL. Silly cute kitty.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

как же сука меня бесит эта пизданина с завершением поддержки win10 и спасением своих компьютеров установкой линукса.

а) я недавно поставил win7 которая снята с поддержки хуй знает когда и под котрой уже почти ни что не работает.

секьюрити патчи до сих пор залетают.

б) у меня виндовому компу лет чтоли 7. и на нем вин 11 со дня релиза. и заебись все. если вашему компу 10 лет и он не тащит win11 - вы что блядь на нем делаете? в fallout 3 играете? в ворде объявы печатаете? нахуя вам поддержка?

in reply to Galactic Jew 🇮🇱

Вот жопой чую левоту. Не могу объяснить внятно, но жопой чую, что это какое-то грёбаное лобби опять, как и с поддержкой хамасни. Особенно в свете кричащих заголовков: «Мэрия города такого-то перешла на Линукс, урррра, уррраа, улюлюлю!». Когда им говоришь, что не надо тогда пиздеть про дивёрсити, потому что как только вы отказались от майкрософтовского стека, accessibility идёт строем на хуй, во всяком случае, стабильная и всегда работающая, — они, естественно, отводят глаза.

For hundreds of thousand of years over the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary, through climate change and hominid evolution itself, a technology/method for making stone tools remained the same.

The new research reported here shows 300,000 years of continuous - and stable - tool production at a single site in Kenya, but the record of this technique over multiple sites spans more than a million years.

A level of technological stability almost too alien for us to understand, given the age we live in.

arstechnica.com/science/2025/1…

I’m ready to get into the hook up scene with the possibility of dating if that arises. The problem is that I have zero idea of what I’m doing when it comes to finding partners who are open to ethical non-monogamy and kink. All of my relationships up to this point have been relatively vanilla and hetero. i’m not much of a going out to bars girlie and quite frankly I have valid safety concerns about going out to a bar solo in my neighborhood. I have no experience with the apps. In other words, I really need some advice. how in the hell do I get myself out there? #ENM #Dating #Poly #Polyamory #Relationships

"Billionaires spent just as much trying to defeat #Mamdani than if they just paid their taxes"

Yeah because it's not just about the money. It's about the misery. Misery makes for obedient workers. Can't have people walking around with pocket change because the bus is free, and a clear head because their kids are well taken care of. Who's working an extra twenty hours a week in those conditions?

#Capitalism is built on capital but it thrives on misery.

It’s incredible how often sighted people offering completely unsolicited help lead me astray. Took my daughter to a ballet lesson this morning and looked up a coffee shop to wait for her in. I’m walking up the block where I know the shop is, and smell coffee, so I turn to see if I can find the door. Right then, a sighted person stops me asking if I need help. I say I’m looking for the coffee shop on this block, and he says I’m close, but a couple doors away. So I think maybe the smell isn’t coming directly from the door and he must see what I’m talking about, right? Right??? He knows better because he can see, of course. He takes me to the door he thinks is what I’m looking for, and we say goodbye. I go inside, and immediately smell food, not coffee, and hear way too much silverware clinking on plates for a coffee shop. A woman greets me, and I say “I’m looking for the coffee shop on this block. I’m not there, am I?” “No, this is a diner,” she says. So I go back outside, walk back to where I was before, smell the coffee again, and walk right through the shop’s door no problem.

What good are eyes if you don’t know how to use them? #Blind #Blindness #disability

This thread is worth reading if you are a Google docs user.

Short version: When you export a document from Google Docs, Google replaces all your hyperlinks with links that allows Google to monitor the interactions of everyone you share your document with.

This hidden link replacement can potentially be used to build a model of your professional relations, where people who interact more with your content are considered a stronger relation.

Think about the implications.
fosstodon.org/@Joe_0237/111145…

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reshared this

Hello from Frankfurt airport.
This post has been typed on a Logitech MX Keys Mini, connected to my Android phone which runs Tailscale to connect to my PC at home, specifically Virtual Here for input and Sound Remote to let me listen to my system audio, including screenreader.
It's so portable and the latency is really acceptable. I love it.
Big thanks to @techsinger for helping me figure all that out.
in reply to Tech Singer

I need to try this, but just had a thought. If you get an USB Hub or even Bluetooth dongle which you plug into your phone, you could probably eliminate the need for Sound Remote or anything like that, as virtual here should also cover the audio transmission no?
Another thing that has driven me crazy in the week I've used this solution now is the simple fact that if you experience connection drop outs, it might spam a letter, and I wonder why this happens, or why it would be so difficult to avoid? Like, couldn't it at least have some sort of detection to stop after, idk, 5 letters or st. Well, but that's the only thing really, otherwise it's been awesome. Now I know next vacation my Laptop will stay home. Just need to find a proper USB Hub to connect headphones and other stuff better.
in reply to Jonathan

I'm very glad things have gone reasonably on your end with this. First, as to the sound, do you mean you could have a soundcard, whether USB or Bluetooth through a dongle, used on the USB server by virtualhere? That is, do you want Windows to output to a USB soundcard on a VH server just as it receives input from the keyboard? I have tried this and it's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, it didn't work because the sound would break up significantly. This was over an intranet, running at 11AC speed. I wrote to Michael, who developed VH, and discussed it with him. He suggested the use of VoiceMeter Banana which was at the time, and I think still is, inaccessible. There is an NVDA add-on for it, but my understanding is that it still doesn't let you use the low latency network connectivity. Michael was suggesting the use of Voicemeter as a kind of buffer, and that, of course, would increase latency. Even if it was accessible, though, I think it wouldn't work over a normal wireless network, let alone a mobile network. The sound latency would exist regardless, and that's even if you could get the breaking up to stop. Keep in mind that you would be trying to run uncompressed audio over the network. It would be lovely, but I don't see much hope for it. I have never tried Bluetooth sound, again, for latency reasons, Bluetooth is bad enough as it is. If you have any thoughts on this, I would be interested to hear them. As for key repeating, if I may ask, are you using Bolt or are you using a bluetooth dongle? This has happened to me with a BT dongle, but not with either Bolt or unifying. Is it happening to you with these, or do you have your unit set to connect via BT to a dongle on your Android phone?
in reply to Tech Singer

I use the Bolt connected directly to my Android phone. Mainly on a mobile network. It worked quite all right over the mobile network, but it was only some random roaming connection so not peak connection for sure. Now I have moved my Wi-Fi repeater closer (in the 1st days it was placed in another room and the Sound Remote connection wouldn't accept it at all) and with Wi-Fi it seems to be a bit more stable regarding speed, on mobile it eventually got more messy over time. But still ok. Yeah bluetooth lag is sadly a nightmare, kinda sad but well, maybe something changes about that one day.
in reply to Jonathan

I'm very sorry, I wish I knew what to tell you. Not, I may say, about the audio, audio is very dependent on your network and keep in mind that you can always increase the buffer size (not sure how or whether it's possible in Sound Remote but it's certainly possible in Sonobus, Teamtalk and Soundwire, I would be stunned if SR didn't allow it). Increasing the buffer size makes the connection more stable, but also make the latency higher. There's a sweet spot for every network, I find, it's difficult to tell without using it, though. What I'm sorry about and lost on is the repeated keys. All I can suggest, because I was never able to join the VirtualHere forums, is to email
mail@virtualhere.com
Tell him you can't access the join process (it's quite possible you can, I just can't), and ask about whether any solution might work. It's odd because you're encapsulating the packets in Tailscale/a VPN, right? As I said, I'm lost on this one. My apologies for not being able to help. And another thing, some people will want to reduce key repeat for whatever reason. If you don't use the same key many times in normal use, it might be an idea to see if you can do that from the windows side. If it gets more than 5 or 10 presses of the same thing in less than a second, it throttles it for a while. I'm not sure if that's available, but if it is, it may be a workaround.

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