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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Agreed on the former. As for the latter, that’s hard to tell from the outside. No you can’t go back, but if the suffering reliable outweighs the joy, a dignified exit should be supported, and the only one who can really judge that is the one going through it.

    If there’s maybe enough to hold on for, try holding on. If there’s a chance for improvement, please try holding on. If there isn’t, then there isn’t.

    Either way, I hope for improvement in the future, be it personal or medical. No one deserves this kind of suffering.


  • Which (pr nightmare aside) I wouldn’t be against. It’s not gonna fly, people are accustomed to ‘free’ browsers to the point they’d balk at the idea. Even if they weren’t most would take a free chromium based browser or Firefox fork over a paid alternative that doesn’t give them anything extra. But browsers are massive pieces of tech, they need a lot of dev time, and the money needs to come from somewhere, just relying on volunteers won’t cut it.

    Mozilla has been looking for sources of funding for years, sometimes in ways that are their own type of pr nightmare and sometimes in ways I’m not thrilled by, but I get their predicament. I wish there would be (more) state funding. EU, US. Whatever. Much like governments should invest in public transit we should invest in critical software infra.

    I also wish Google’s other branches were divorced from their browser dev branch. The stranglehold on the web given to Google by chrome is a huge part of the problem.


  • On the one hand that’s supposedly to do with competitive advantage. It makes sense to try to even the playing field, which should have nothing to do with objection on ‘moral’grounds. I’d argue this is mostly a good thing given the iffiness of many groups’ morals.

    Case in point, your exact examples, which brings me to the other hand. Banning trans athletes on ‘fairness’ grounds is bullshit. In most sports there’s no known competitive advantage. Where there’s an imbalance they tend to show disadvantage. The rare cases with an advantage for trans athletes tend to disappear the moment you correct for size/weight, which is not something we’d exclude cis athletes for. None of your examples should have happened. They do not hold water on fairness grounds, and any moralistic reasons behind it are reprehensible.





  • Moddb was mentioned. Another good one is thunderstore. It all depends on the game though. Valheim (and several other units based games) is very active on both Nexus and thunderstore, stalker games tend to be moddb, &c. Nexus tends to be the main one for most games though.

    I mostly like Nexus (paid member), but I share the concern about it being the only game in town for most games. Nexus is heaps better as a site than both moddb and thunderstore ime, but the lack of real alternatives is putting way too many eggs in the same basket.



  • You seem to be a great partner. As someone that’s lucky to have one as well I know how much that can matter. Doesn’t mean it’ll all end up roses, but you seem to be doing everything you can to support her (including, critically, getting support/intel for yourself). No guarantee, but a critical element in it all.

    It might not be just the pain making her behave like that, for what it’s worth. As someone that’s been on a half dozen different opioids (though admittedly never heroin, but from codeine up to fentanyl and many between/beside), I know I got… irritable. Easily and instantly aggravated. Not that I chose to behave like a bastard, but every little thing needled me, rose my hackles in way even the most intense stuff didn’t do before I got on opioids every minor annoyance, pain, distraction, interruption hits ten times harder. I tried to contain my response, and often failed. Realizing that was one of the things that pushed me to quit, despite the pain (not a pain survivor, just trying to stay pain surviving). None of that excuses the behaviour. I was not reasonable, I was sharp, and with a deep internal aggression and at times meanness. Nor does your wife’s state excuse hers. But it might partially explain her altered behaviour. She’s not just dealing with the pain, she’s dealing with a soup of junk messing with her brain. They reinforce the other, too. Methadone was one of the ones that brought it out more in me, but ymmv.

    Are there friends (hers or yours) that understand and can offer support? Either in helping to guide her to a better path, helping you stay upright, or helping the both of you stay sane together. People with experience with addiction, chronic pain (or, ideally, both) especially, but aside from that anyone close to you (& trusted by your wife) with a good head on their shoulders.

    “enough to remove the pain and not be jonesing for another fix” is a trap. They get linked, even if you’re careful. If you’re desperate for another fix, you’ll experience it as pain (physical, or ‘just’ mental anguish). One way to try to keep stuff level would be to have a set ration per day that’s limited enough it takes budgeting but expansive enough she’s not in too terrible a state. Depending of the dose/opioid I had set a ration for myself (max X pills per day, max Y pills per week. Any exception I had to get my housemate’s ok on, and a no was final.) This will only work if she’s willing to cooperate, and only if she can make herself (with help) to actually follow through on it. But it dropped my dose a good 20%, which made a big emotional difference. It came with a secondary boost due to the added sense of control. I chose to give my meds to my housemate, so that I couldn’t break my own rules. She gave them only when I could convince her. If you can be that person for her, or if someone else can, it might help. A risk here is hoarding. “I don’t need the pills now, but I might in an hour, it’s my last dose for the day so i’ll take the pills and put them somewhere safe if I need them later”. I’ve fallen into that trap. If your wife isn’t fully willing to cooperate, this entire idea is on shakey ground. I chose to let my housemate search my room (in I “I trust you but should/will verify” kind of way). If stuff got caught, all of those were taken away, and i’d have a harder time convincing her to give me any for a while. I hadn’t hoarded much, but for your wife that also depends on how well she’s able to stay away from that.

    It sounds like your wife is struggling. It sounds like she’s probably trying her best, but not succeeding. She’ll need to accept that before she can change her path. You’re there for her though, so she has a shot. If she’s willing to work for it. It would also greatly help if she’s accepted that she’s taking the stuff for the pain, yes, but also the high. And that’s understandable; it’s important to understand that because if she doesn’t, she won’t be able to better her behaviour around it. It’s fine that she’s got the urge to take it to feel not-shit (because post-high you very much do feel shit), but it’s not fine to hide from that fact or not act on it.





  • This works with splitters (and you can combine cables and splitters to get there, it doesn’t need to be a single y cable with the right ends). I’d recommend against it however. Two outputs for one source is usually fine, but two sources to one output with just a y splitter can be detrimental. Depending on exact circumstances sound quality can be worse and/or it can (theoretically) damage your equipment.

    For two low level sources it’s probably fine in most cases, but definitely not recommended. There are positive summing circuits that prevent this, but usually the recommendation is to use a mixer instead.


  • It’s a thorny issue. In the position of an indie dev/studio i get using cheap (or free) art, be it voice, textures, whatever. In a way a properly licensed ai trained voice is no different from using assets from an asset store.

    On the other hand, the current crop of ai are less than fair about where they source the data, so good luck getting a morally neutral voice right now, leaving aside the legal aspect.

    A big issue beyond that is how it’ll completely wreck the industry. If Alice licensed her voice for cheap, and I can get it to say whatever I need with minimal hassle why wouldn’t I use that over paying more for a voice actor, where I have to wait on them to actually record and rerecord her lines? I’d be paying more for slower results and more work.

    Then you realize this is true not just for me but for most groups needing voice lines. This means that even if an individual voice seems ethically sound, considering the wider context and impact on other voice actors it becomes far less simple.


  • This is a genuine exception. Surprisingly low bullshit for anything gaming related (i suppose being industry oriented helps a little), and fairly interesting stuff covered. This article is a good one, imo.

    Despite the title it’s (as should be expected from being with one foot in the industry) not a how to guide to get the latest fitgirl repack or whatever, but an article about who gets targeted for piracy and who doesn’t even while massively profiting (Amazon, for one).



  • Probably. I’m voting for them (not Timmermans himself, but no. 17 on the party’s list as a way to signal I’m less than thrilled with how NL responded to Israel), but am doubtful we’ll finally get a government I’m mostly content with. It’s been since the pre Balkenende days (which goes back to the turn of the century).

    We’ve had a couple times CDA (Christian party) followed by a really long time under VVD (right wing, led by Rutte), with left being mostly of secondary importance.

    As of now there’s too many parties polling high, old and new, to really make a good educated guess. VVD, PVV (right-wing, anti islam) and NSC (a new party led by a former CDA member) are all big enough to keep a close eye on.

    For someone on the left none of these engender any sort of hope for the country. All would like to close off the borders, none really productively deal with the gap between rich and poor, none really deal with the climate catastrophe.

    The (also new) party after these guys is the BBB, which literally is a party of angry farmers that don’t want to get their livelihood impacted by climate reductions. Understandable from their perspective, but even worse climate wise. Their foreign policy isn’t that much better.


  • Both worked for me, though not in combination. In isolation haven’t had a major issue that wasn’t fairly quickly solved with an update with either of them. Explorer patcher has been slightly buggier between the two, but not by too much.

    Ymmv of course, as is the decision whether having the bar how/where you want us worth the trouble.