#Manual Coding Machine

[eastofoktober]

i got a renewal notice for a book i returned to the library weeks ago.

did a double check around my place to make sure i didn’t just accidentally leave it somewhere and just think it was in the pile of returns i handed in.

thought man, its going to suck to have to go all the way to that library to check/ retrace my steps in case i lost it (its an hour on the subway for me)

then saw they had a specific ‘i returned a book but it’s still showing up on my account. what to do’ on the website faqs.

and sent in my confused ‘please help i thought i returned this book’ ask on the online form.

one hour later got an ‘😅 our apologies we found it shelved and have checked it back in’

bless you librarians for having a smooth, organized process for things like this.

[luetta]

idk if people on tumblr know about this but a cybersecurity software called crowdstrike just did what is probably the single biggest fuck up in any sector in the past 10 years. it's monumentally bad. literally the most horror-inducing nightmare scenario for a tech company.

some info, crowdstrike is essentially an antivirus software for enterprises. which means normal laypeople cant really get it, they're for businesses and organisations and important stuff.

so, on a friday evening (it of course wasnt friday everywhere but it was friday evening in oceania which is where it first started causing damage due to europe and na being asleep), crowdstrike pushed out an update to their windows users that caused a bug.

before i get into what the bug is, know that friday evening is the worst possible time to do this because people are going home. the weekend is starting. offices dont have people in them. this is just one of many perfectly placed failures in the rube goldburg machine of crowdstrike. there's a reason friday is called 'dont push to live friday' or more to the point 'dont fuck it up friday'

so, at 3pm at friday, an update comes rolling into crowdstrike users which is automatically implemented. this update immediately causes the computer to blue screen of death. very very bad. but it's not simply a 'you need to restart' crash, because the computer then gets stuck into a boot loop.

this is the worst possible thing because, in a boot loop state, a computer is never really able to get to a point where it can do anything. like download a fix. so there is nothing crowdstrike can do to remedy this death update anymore. it is now left to the end users.

it was pretty quickly identified what the problem was. you had to boot it in safe mode, and a very small file needed to be deleted. or you could just rename crowdstrike to something else so windows never attempts to use it.

it's a fairly easy fix in the grand scheme of things, but the issue is that it is effecting enterprises. which can have a looooot of computers. in many different locations. so an IT person would need to manually fix hundreds of computers, sometimes in whole other cities and perhaps even other countries if theyre big enough.

another fuck up crowdstrike did was they did not stagger the update, so they could catch any mistakes before they wrecked havoc. (and also how how HOW do you not catch this before deploying it. this isn't a code oopsie this is a complete failure of quality ensurance that probably permeates the whole company to not realise their update was an instant kill). they rolled it out to everyone of their clients in the world at the same time.

and this seems pretty hilarious on the surface. i was havin a good chuckle as eftpos went down in the store i was working at, chaos was definitely ensuring lmao. im in aus, and banking was literally down nationwide.

but then you start hearing about the entire country's planes being grounded because the airport's computers are bricked. and hospitals having no computers anymore. emergency call centres crashing. and you realised that, wow. crowdstrike just killed people probably. this is literally the worst thing possible for a company like this to do.

crowdstrike was kinda on the come up too, they were starting to become a big name in the tech world as a new face. but that has definitely vanished now. to fuck up at this many places, is almost extremely impressive. its hard to even think of a comparable fuckup.

a friday evening simultaneous rollout boot loop is a phrase that haunts IT people in their darkest hours. it's the monster that drags people down into the swamp. it's the big bag in the horror movie. it's the end of the road. and for crowdstrike, that reaper of souls just knocked on their doorstep.

[quillreplies]

real talk tho, the number one skill you should learn is to try.

yes there are fail states for things like cooking, laundry, and a myriad other things but like, not everything is changing a tire, not everything has a fail state of ‘you die’ so the best skill you can ever teach yourself is to not be afraid of trying to do something

After seeing the dad how do I channel, I really wanted this one. I searched for it and, tada! Mom how do I? Seems rather new, but I love it anyway.

[laxmienterprises]

Paper Plate Machine | Automatic Paper Plate Making Machine

[machinemodel-v1]

modern!au stuff that is mostly about messy relationships between characters and becoming better people in. a very . very slow pace. (also giving v1 trauma/depression bc its not talked about much)

feel free to ask me or them and I'll draw them 🫶

more lore/in depth explanation under the cut

This is a modern AU!, humans stopped wars just in time and is slowly rehabilitating Earth. Machines were created to have the coding to be conscious beings. Older machines have this feature locked until certain conditions are met, or it is unlocked manually. When machines gained their 'freedom' and... some rights, this lock has been purged. Most machines naturally took the code with ease. Others, like V1, took time encrypting the code and applying it to their systems due to some machines being strictly created for war and violence. V1's systems took a really long time to accept this coding, but when it did, it affected it rather negatively. It now understood the fact that it has lost it's purpose and is now rendered useless with deeper and more emotional sense, and it was overwhelmed with foreign and unwelcome emotions of sadness, longing for something unknown even to itself, and the frustration of not fulfilling its purpose, because wars were a thing of the past. TL;DR, it kinda fell into depression after having an existential crisis, especially when it didn't have any support systems or know how to cope at all.

The AU mostly focuses on V1's slow and miserable path on healing, learning how to cope and understand its emotions. It showcases its horrible relationship with its sibling, V2, with their shitty communication skills on one another and refusal to be honest with how they feel.

As well as the shitty start of V1's and Gabriel's relationship, where V1 put Gabriel on a pedastol of expectations with its intense and uncontrollable infatuation, and Gabriel treating V1 as an object to 'feel better' from straying from God, by trying to 'fix' V1.

They are all on the path of being better of their previous selves, especially GabV1el, but its an extreme slowburn when it comes to it. Relationships are intentionally toxic, which will gradually grow into something healthier through self discovery, learning how to emphathize and honesty.

COMIC EXPLANATION:

V1 believes that V2 is better than it, considering it had no purpose while V2 was still needed by humans and, sometimes, other machines (she sometimes gets bodyguard gigs). With this in mind, V1 thinks its not worth enough to be his sibling, plus it knows V2 hates it, so it avoids any close relationship association with V2 and just calls them its roommate.

V2, on the other hand, despite her frustration, deep down she sees V1 as a sibling, because she too believes that the other is better than him. V2 is more expressive, and more free with her emotions, but due to her pride, this is usually expressed aggressively. With that in mind, whenever she experiences intense emotions, she sometimes loses control on what he says or do, so while she rejects the idea that V1 is his sibling whenever asked by other, if provoked, she slips and call V1 his sibling.

[hedgiwithapen]

Leverage timetravel, pre pilot/child ot3 meet their redemption era selves

(I took some liberties re: /meeting/) In hindsight, visiting the US Patent office was probably not their smartest move.  Never return to the scene of the crime, and all, at least not if the job was finished. 

But they'd put a pin in going back for the time machine, and not even a really bad idea could deter Hardison from an actual time machine. Well. Portal, like Eliot had said. 

It hadn't come with an instruction manual, but the three of them, Hardison, Parker, Eliot were professionals at figuring things out on the fly . Even lost in the past. Even scattered. 

Hardison knew he just had to wait, though. They'd find each other. They'd lived through the past once, they could deal with it again, especially knowing everything they did. And it wasn't like they had to live through the whole span of years, either. They just had to find each other, put the pieces back together, scattered with them, and go home. Easier said than done--he was starting to think they might have ended up in different times--but still, the Estimated range was fifteen to twenty years, so that was only five max before they met up, right?

Hardison had gotten right to work. Ads in every major newspaper in the heartland cost plenty, but he had years of criminal practice on top of knowing what tech to invest in, so he really wasn't that worried. He guessed Eliot would be betting on sports games, like in Back to the Future. Parker... well, it was hard to guess where she was. Once he and Eliot met up, they'd have to wait for her to get to them. He did have a few things to do, first.

He knocked on Nana's door, feeling like maybe he ought to be wearing a bow tie. 

"What is it? You from the county?" she asked, when she opened the door. He could see behind her a few curious faces, including his own. Damn, he'd been so tiny. 

"Yes, Ma'am," he said brightly. He could remember this day, vaguely. The box he held was more familiar than his adult face. "I'm here to install your new computer."

"I didn't order any computer," Nana said. "Run your scam someplace else."

"It's not a scam!" he heard his own voice say. "I entered a contest at school."

He had. And he'd lost. Stupid Jake Puckett had won, a kid who could have easily afforded a computer. Alec hadn't known that though, until Hardison'd checked idly. And he wasn't about to just let all of history change. Well, all his own history. 

"You got some proof of that?" Nana asked, and Alec went  scampering off to his room to find his copy of the essay.

Satisfied with the expertly forged documents (wow! it was much easier to forge past documents when you were in the time they were from!) Nana let him in and pointed to a corner desk near an outlet. 

"You ever use your own one of these?" Hardison asked Alec, who shook his head. " just the one at school. I really won?"

"Sure did. Now, let me show you what this thing can do."

~

Eliot stood at the edge of the field, a newspaper crumpled in his hand. Hardison was in Boston, if the ad was right, and of course the ad was. No one else put that much effort into a coded message. 

He watched the football fly. In two weeks, the kid throwing it would be on a bus to boot camp. He closed his eyes. There were options.  Kid wouldn't believe him, of course. There were no secrets yet, to spill as proof. And he was too stubborn to buy the warning.  A good solid tackle, though. Break his arm bad enough...

He'd thought about it. And then about the what ifs. The blood would still be spilled, he knew that. Someone else would end up on Moreau's chain. Someone else would end up with a half dug grave for Flores, and maybe keep digging it.  Everything he'd done for money, the money'd go to someone else. Job might not get done, or it might. 

He'd be there for his mother's funeral. He'd miss Katherine Clive's. Rebecca Ibanez.  the way the drinking might have gone... he'd miss Nate Ford's.  He'd go to school, like his dad wanted, never play college ball. Study something-- art history, maybe -- but no, that was him now. Not him then. Him then would be angry and broken. Him then wouldn't have... his people.

He crumped the paper further. "Dammit, Hardison," he said quietly, and walked away. 

~

Parker had a code. Some things, you just didn't do. Some were big and flashy and obvious. Some were smaller, quieter. 

Hardison would say she shouldn't do this, she knew, and she usually listened to Hardison. He knew what he was talking about, most of the time. You can't change the past. That'd been part of the lecture before they'd gone to steal the time machine.  You can do things, sure, but you always did them. 

Well, Parker hadn't done this. No one had, back the first time she'd lived through this day. But she was doing it anyways, breaking his rule and her own. You don't steal from kids who don't have anything. 

Carefully, she picked the lock on the child's bicycle chain. 

[myconetted]

working in tech

have you tried turning it off and then back on again?

it was dns

it was user error

it was dns

the manual is outdated

there is no manual

it fixed itself right when you asked someone else for help

load-bearing piece of code maintained by one guy

...and he just decided to do something really funny.

oops! us-east-1 outage. internet machine broke

extremely complicated distributed systems error that only One Person actually understands

... and the solution is to turn it off and then back on

yaml moment (NO)

the exact tool for the job last received updates in 2015

the prod env is called "test-foo2" for Historical Reasons

"that's weird... it's not supposed to do that"

upgrade crashed prod

rollback also crashed prod

no-op change ""fixed"" it

the vendor who should absolutely know what's going on has no idea what's going on

the One Person who knows everything and who you really don't want to hear it from saying "that's weird... it's not supposed to do that"

it was dns

have you tried turning it off and not turning it back on?

[kremlin]

I do computer work but it's not very hard and kind of boring. How do I get to do hard computer work? Do I have to go to grad school?

hi i tend to miss these because of slipshod ublock custom filters im too birdbrained to fix.

i worked for a large american technology company which sold business machines internationally for close to a decade until laid off in successful accounting fraud scheme a few years ago. started as developer, erm, pardon me, i started as

junior developer

which is a role similar to routinely-executed court jester and human meatwave conscript meant to soak up enemy bullets to cause exhaustion of enemy bullet supply and finally guy that comes in big gross truck with a pump and a tank and a big hose used to suck the shit+piss out of portable toilet/malfunctioning sewer etc. this is for when you are 20 years old or so and they hit you with this work to calm your ass down a bit. my case was cloud bullshit on ancient rickety php stack. 5% keystrokes/clicks are php, 95% remainder is jira and other members of the axis of evil. LOT of dick sucking and butt fucking. Going into men's bathroom and making eye contact with cubicle neighbor before entering stall and fearlessly making disgusting noises. microwaving fish lunch thrice daily. you get the idea. meager paycheck but six figures takehome technically

next is staff dev, wait, god damn fucking tumblr, you can't adjust fonts mid-paragraph, and Big Text is just another type of font, in case you wanted Big Specific font. fucking fuck hold on. next step is

staff developer

no effective change besides greatly increased workload (click those motherfucking jira buttons!! suffer coworker's asinine bad-faith code review comments that HE AND HE ALONE must manually accept your responses to, on HIS time, before you are allowed to click the jira buttons that start the human meat sausage factory to get your 20 line maximum change into an RC and then release and then push candidate and then prod push!! pay raise one thousand dollars annually (lol). Emails. Now you deal with project manager too. speculate as to what sorts of grievous head injuries that man must suffer daily to describe his logic. his job is like the guy from office space that brings documents from one desk to another but he randomly reorders the words on the page in-flight. make plausibly-deniable wife fucking jokes about his wife in earshot. you're almost at the top of the suffering function. next is, no fucking cute font this time, senior developer, sounds cool right, lol, lmao, "senior" "developer" is like "tallest" "midgit".

no pay increase no workload increase but now manager emails you about extremely, extremely personal issues he's facing and also makes his most difficult problems from his boss your problems. one week will pass and then they will hit you with the "we're considering you for a team lead position". answer:

NO

answer no as this is the prescribed path, you take that role, you are maxxed out in workload, you are dealing with forty employee's worth of bullshit, another one thousand dollarinos a year raise, employer has solved efficiency problem with your sanity and burnout as variables. you're supposed to quit or kill yourself within seconds of hitting 30 y/o. don't fall for tricks. say "NO" in a creative way such as "i have tabulated some data and made it into excel pie chart quantifying diff. departments work output and am considering sending it to whoever Dave is, the guy that is one or two or three report levels over your boss' head, you know, his boss' boss' boss or whatever. or say "you are harassing me sexually, racistly" that kind of shit. make threat clearly.

was worth mentioning before, throughout all of this make as many friends and as much of a splash for yourself as possible as its time to trade on that goodwill, tell your boss you want an open relationship and you're going to fuck and suck other managers, and then find the good one with the good team of old fucking geriatric guys who could never be fooled into working more than a reasonable amount daily and also can kill people with their minds since they have been sitting on the bleeding edge of computing since 1969. their boss will usually be, suspiciously, one report rank higher than everyone else. e.g. their boss has a whole other boss + his reports under him. usually small team. go to their boss, say, hi, look at me, look at my beautiful plumage and captivating mating dance, please hire me, pleassseee. his team will say no, they will say things like "I don't know about that kiddo", "That guy seems like a candy-ass", they will read your papers and look at you in the eyes and say it is not compelling, the boss will kind of hire you anyway. if he doesn't you're fucked. if he does you're now a

STAFF ENGINEER

for fifteen minutes and then

ADVISORY/SENIOR/SPECIAL ENGINEER

and the suffering is over. no code minimal jira + squad of gremlin zerglings under your boss whom you can rank-pull and delegate bullshit to, they will be mostly suckers, take advantage of this. 80% of keystrokes/clicks will be in production of beautiful wonderful lovely .docx and .xlsx's, what a godsend, only in an emergency are you allowed to fuck with your zergling's code, usually in a cool way with bullshit procedure removed.

i worked on high performance computing shit. "what the fuck do you mean 2PB or so in and out a day on flash memory", "what the fuck do you mean special infiniband intel MPI library on CD-R stored in Craig's filing cabinet???". Meetings with company people: webcams off, responses optional, snideness allowed. Meetings with client: you must have your dress shirt starched and white glove the shit out of those motherfuckers. timezones = skill issue. i don't care where germany is, i don't give a shit, wake up at 3am for a 20m meeting i take on the toilet or while eating a boiled lobster complete with cracker + lobster bib. customers countable on one hand, invoices to customers not countable with 32 bits. no fucking mistakes ever allowed except for like whitepaper drafts, you cannot fuck the pumpkin on this one, your actual job relies on your ability to hit a button and suck down a week's worth of compute and millions of dollars, boiling swimming pool's worth of TDP, one mistake that leads result data to being able to be characterized as flawed and your balls are getting ripped off. Quarterly IRL meetings = normiepilled normiemaxxing. Dress sharp. leave at 5pm on the dot, go to bar with Old Fucker coworkers, drink wrecklessly with them, have a blast, let them give you a tour of a lab you are absolutely 100% not allowed to be inside, buildings that have posted weight limits per sq. ft. exceeding 250lbs, such a blast. every paycheck a FORTUNE every dinner a banquet every meeting an email every keystroke life or death. you get to meet /lib/doug mofos too one of whom i wrote a very poor kind of poem thing about. thats about it. hope this helps

[handweavers]

at what point does something stop being made by a person and start being made by a machine? is someone creating a photoshop action so the computer will run code to edit a photo they found online all that different from someone inputting words into a human made algorithm trained on human made images to generate a photo? if i use a knitting machine to make something does it count as human made or machine made or both? if i design a program that knits the object without me having to manually operate the machine does it still hold emotional value? what if i allow others to use that program to do the same thing and they input a sentence into the program articulating what they want made and the machine creates it? is 3d printing art? is technology itself capable of being art? if we define 'what gets to be art' by the % of machine involvement at what % does it stop being art? does this entire argument not feel a bit futile and arbitrary to you?

everyone will have a different answer just like how everyone has a different answer on 'what is art' and that's an argument we've been having for ages and will continue to have for the foreseeable future. i'm a weaver and an artist and my tendency is to lean toward the romantic, but in my efforts to be a materialist i ultimately find these questions largely unhelpful on the topic of 'should generative ai art be forbidden' because if we're only talking about how things make us feel and how we want the world to be and not the actual material impacts of things from a practical perspective we'll never get anything done. it's why i said that arguments against generative ai that take this stance are unconvincing and if you try to critique ai from an angle that isn't materialist you will run yourself in circles.

[piratesexmachine420]

If you told me this was how TI-83 binaries were structured, I would have straight up thought you were lying. JIT assembled from plaintext hex opcodes?--that can't be true. Maybe TI put that in the manual as a practical joke and nobody noticed.

...

...

...

Look at this stupid-ass hexdump. Every fucking byte of this file from 0x004B to 0x13C0 is either '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', or 'F'.

This program is anti-compressed. Every byte of machine code is encoded as two bytes of plaintext characters.

Why would you ever do that. Why would you want your executable to stored as plaintext hex digits. It's certainly not for ease-of-editing--the file-initial "AsmPrgm" token (BBh 6Ch) prevents you from opening the file in the onboard editor--and it's definitely not for program integrity checking either. So why on Earth did TI think this was the move to make?

Baffling and upsetting. Thank god the execution model permits self-modifying and self-extracting compressed programs.

[that-starry-freak]

Okay, wow, uhm-

This is my rant about Eclipse x Solar x Nexus i keep saying ill do. Sooo- yeah. If you don't like it, just scroll. Or block me i don't give a shit- im just ranting about what I like *shrug* (btw this is 95% for/about my tol au, so-)

Cw i do mention abuse a few times, because of Solar's Moon, dark sun, etc.

God i love these three so much. There's just so much potential, both angst and fluff (and a bit of smut but that stays in my head that is NOT going on my blog)

Like Solar and Nexus are both such needs and idiots. They both stay up late working, and insist the other one goes to bed (Eclipse ends up having to drag them both to bed).

They love working on projects together. People arnt usually allowed int he workshop when their working together, because if they have each other they don't need anyone else to help or anything- but they let Eclipse in once, and he got to see how they danced around each other and worked together perfectly.

They're all nerds who love science and mechanics tbh, but they all like it in different ways. Solar likes the hard work, the mindlessly fixing things. He liked the manual labour, the more mechanics of it. Nexus loved the science. He loves asking questions and learning knew things. He loves questioning things and people. He likes building and creating and testing out code. Eclipse likes the results. He doesn't particularly enjoy coding and building, it makes him frustrated, but he loves the results. He likes having a job well done. And getting to enjoy whatever the product is, whether its a computer or a basic machine.

Eclipse and Nexus can also understand each other. They can understand the expectation of who you're supposed to be. To be a remake of someone dead, but not really being them. Yet everyone expects you too. They've spent long nights sharing a smoke and ranting about how unfair it is. About how they weren't v1 Eclipse, or Moon. That they were themselves, and it wasn't fair people pressured them into being their predecessors.

Solar and Eclipse can understand what its like to be an eclipse. To come into this world with Moons hating you. To be called vile, to have a Moon laugh in your face. They may not have always liked each other, but they understand each other, its one of the reasons they became close.

Nexus can also help them both heal from their trauma of Moons. Plus, he isn't really Moon. Sure, he is a moon, coming from he dame basic code. But he isn't an old Moon. He's kinder, he doesn't blow up as easily. Its reassuring to them both, being treated so kindly to someone who pretty much abused them both (Eclipse didn't deserve how Old moon treated him when he came into this world.)

Eclipse and Nexus also know what its like to be left behind. Eclispe knows what its like to be left behind by Moon, to be a piece of code that he doesn't care about. Nexus knows what its like to hurt people and lose them. Yes, its different, but that doesn't mean they can't empathize with each others pain, because it is similar in a way.

solar and Nexus can understand each other's pain of losing someone you care about deeply. Of blaming yourself for their death. Of course. They dealt with it much differently, but still-

Eclipse and Solar both knowing what its like to die, comforting each other, reassuring them that they're still here. That they're alive. That they're them.

Enough about what they have in common tho-

like oh my goddd. I have so many thoughts bro-

Eclipse smells like cigarettes and leather and faintly of the vanilla candles Puppet lights in their apartment. Solar smells like grease and oil and sometimes chemicals when he cleans himself off (and then is forced to take an actual shower by Eclipse because cleaning yourself with harsh chemicals every time cant be good for your casing). Nexus smells like lavender (because thats the scent of the detegerant Sun always washes their clothes with) and faintly of bleach (consequences of living in the same house as Sun) and grease a lot after he's been working. The other twos smells are comforting to all three of them, reminding them that they're safe and content. Nexus eccpecially loves wearing Solar's clothes, and loves being in his arms, reminding him that he's alive. Thats he's right here. That everything is going to be okay.

And oh my god don't get me started on the forbidden love. The fact that Eclipse and Solar can't be in the same dimension till Eclispe gets a new dimensional signal. Solar and Nexus both crushing on Eclipse, but Nexus is the only one that can actually see them both, having to pass messages between the two. Of course they do eventually get to see each other again, but for so long they won't be able to. Its just.. sad

And AUGH im always going to be insane over rmy true loves kiss idea. The idea of Solar kissing Nexus out of desperation, because nothing he says can get through to him and ohmygod he's panicking- and somehow the virus he has just disappearing. The kiss curing Nexus, and bringing him back to his senses. And oh my god, the chaos and angst that follows. Nexus sobbing becuase of what he's done, feeling so guilty. The family not wanting to accept him back, Moon being the worst one-

Solar and Eclipse being the first ones to accept him. Later being Sun, Earth, and then Lunar. Maybe one day Moon, but thats a day far in the future.

And auggh, Solar and Moon's friendship. Moon hating his boyfriends but midly tolerating them for Solar's sake. Solar aclimating him to Eclipses, and he starts tolerating him a bit more. Hearing him say so many good things about Nexus makes him hate him more, though, insecure about Nexus being back in the family. Afraid of being replace.

Sleaking of being replaced, Nexus feeling like he's replaceable. That he's disposable. That one wrong move and he'll be thrown out again. Solar reassuring him that even if he is hell go with him. That he refuses to let Nexus be completley abandoned and manipulated again.

And god, all three of them have such communication, trust, and attachment issues-

Solar feels like he has to be useful to be loved. That he has to prove himself. That he could also be thrown out of the family because he's not from this dimension. He's afraid of being a burden. He's afraid that if he complains he'll be seen as a nuisance. That he doesn't deserve help or to get anything, that he barely deserves the celestial family as it is even if he does so much for them.

Nexus also feels like he has to be useful. That if he isn't, what is he for? What was his purpose if he can't help? He compares himself to Moon a lot, feeling like he has to match up to his standards, even if they're impossible. Moon has years and years of experience on him- he also struggles to talk about his own feelings. He bottled them up so much because he felt like they were stupid that he just doesn't know how to talk about them. The only time he can is in the middle of the night, and is usually with Eclipse. Solar will try to comfort him and almost baby him when he tries to rant to him, Eclipse will just complain and rant right back though, and he prefers it.

Eclipse didn't really ever have any healthy relationships. He's used to pushing people away and bottling all his feelings up. To lashing out at people. Yes, this version is much calmer, but he still has the memories of the ones before him. Hes still used to that being what Eclipses in this dimension did. He doesn't know how to talk to people. Earth helped him open up though, and Solar and Nexus helped him more. He's a lot calmer now, and it helps that they both enjoy listening to him rant. Solar will listen to him and gives advice, while Nexus will just complain with him in the middle of the night. He loves both, though it depends on the situation for what he wants to do.

Their relationship isn't perfect, though. Nexus will still sometimes yell and freak Solar out, and he has to frantically apologize while Eclipse calms him down. Eclispe sometimes will push them away, and will sometimes use their insecurities and trauma against them when hes frustrated eith them. Solar refuses to talk about his own issues, and it worried the other two to no end. Nexus sometimes will hit himself or bite himself to the point of denting his casing when he's frustrated or having a breakdown, not wanting to lash out at anyone, and this worries the other two so much but there's nothing they can really do to stop it, just comforting Nexus the best they can and restraining him when they see him doing it. Eclipse will be rude to Nexus, treating him like Moon, and they'll get into fights about it that they both always regret later.

The hallucinations Nexus suffers from also doesn't end. He still sees Solar telling him he isn't proud of him. He sometimes gets vivid hallucinations that Solar is still dead.

They also all suffer from horrific nightmares

Solar dreaming that he's still in his original dimension. That he's still being abused by his Moon. That he still has no one to love him. He has nightmares that he's still dead, that Nexus never got better. He has nightmares that he ends up like Eclipse, that he hurts people. He has nightmares that the family shuns him and kicks him out. He has nightmares that old moon shows up at his dimension again and he can't stop him this time, and he hurts him and everyone he loves.

Nexus dreaming of Solar still dead. Nexus having nightmares that he actually killed his family. He has nightmares that he's still under Dark Sun's control. He has nightmares that he never was saved from space. He has nightmares of Eclipse betraying and killing him, never having truly gone good. He has nightmares that the family kicks him out for not living up to their expectation, for not being good as moon.

Eclipse dreaming of Moon. Nightmares of Bloodmoon torturing him, of Moon hurting him, of Lunar killing him again. Nightmares of him betraying everyone, even though that's the last thing he wants to do. Nightmare of Earth hating him, of Solar an Nexus hating him.

They often have to comfort each other from these night terrors, holding them close as cooing to the and rocking them.

Solar panics and sobs when he wakes up from one, but refuses to talk about it. He shuts down once when calms down, and often gets up in the middle of the night after to mindlessly do work to get his mind off of it.

Nexus wakes up screaming and crying and often hallucinating. He ususally has to be restrained so he doesn't accidentally hurthimself. He always feels bad about it after, and just wants to cuddle and feel loved, reminding himself that his partners are here and they're real.

Eclipse wakes up in a cold sweat, quiet. Hell just sit there for awhile, before getting up to take a cold shower to clear his mind.

they all overwork themselves, Solar and Nexus eccpecially-

solar because he needs to feel useful. Also because working helps him not think, it helps him "relax", even if it stresses him out more.

Nexus because he'll get so caught up in what he's doing. He'll start working at like noon and he'll zone out and suddenly its midnight and Eclipse and Solar are coming down to drag him away from his lab. Or Sun, sometimes sun has to come after him.

They're just so sad and gay and such a polycule i love them <3

Im so normal about them, clearly (im sorry this is too long im not going to go through this and edit rn- there probaly really a lot of grammar errors and typing errors and spelling errors but im tired soo-)

[txttletale]

bundletober #14: apollo 47 technical handbook

there it is, two bundletobers in a day. women can do anything. apollo 47 technical handbook is a delightfully silly game by tim hutchings that's basically one level up from a playground game. and it fucking rules

there's basically nothing to this game, mechanically. it goes like this: one player is playing an astronaut (this role rotates every scene). everyone else is a voice on their radio. the astronaut describes where they are, then someone describes a problem, then the astronaut and the voices on the radio have back-and-forths of technobabble about whether their spectrometer has a code-blue FTU and whether the astronaut can loosen the type-5 2cm boring tube.

you say goofy space words at each other. that's it. this might sound like i think the game is bad but to be clear i think it is awesome. it is at its core just pure play, an improv prompt that is just fun and joyful. the book comes with a helpful long list of verbs nouns and adjectives to help you come up with Space Problems and the solutions to them, as well as a few oither promtps. they all share the same features: they're banal, technical, and if you have the type of autism i have where saying one funny sentence over and over again lights your brain up like a pinball machine, perfect.

i love this. i want to play this. as the game observes, you can play this over any communication channel for any length of time with anyone who's in on the game. and that rules. it's play! it's just pure and simple play, it's erin hunter's game. delightful

apollo 47 technical handbook can be purchased as a digital download through itch.io or as a 1200-page (!) book that contains 20 pages of game and 1180 pages of real life nasa technical manuals through drivethrurpg. god damn that whips ass

[kompaktcat]

Sasha here!

CW here for references to hypnosis;

With the recent vibe of robot girls being The Thing on here lately I thought it might be fun to share a related thing of mine that's been an ongoing project for a while. While I have not had the drive or capacity to really work on new updates for it for a long while (I just kinda came out of a bit of a dormancy which does not help), this project was the collision between my enjoyment of machine/robot/pet play, hypno stuff, and a l o v e for prop making that we don't get to indulge nearly enough.

The goal with this was to make something that looked like it was plucked straight out of its universe and plopped into ours, and while not perfect, I'm proud of the work that went into it. It's intended to carry the vibe of an old software manual binder, but in a retro future sorta way.

The other goal was "Imagine if a robot girl had a manual to mess with her firmware" because let's not dance around that.

Please note that within the context of this project, where "System" appears, is meant to convey "operating system," as this project was conceived prior to RealisationsTM

Presenting the Firmware Operator's Manual

Neofelis Integrated Systems is imagined to be a prominent industry leader in the electronics integration and cybernetics field, that is rumored to dabble in biosynthetics and synthetic intelligence development, but these rumors are unsubstantiated outside of the company. In reality they're a Bit Fucked beneath the surface.

Opening the cover, numerous post-its are scattered on the interior, to help sell the idea that this manual existed in a real working environment. An extra LOTO tag is included in the manual, Just In CaseTM

The interior title page mirrors the outer cover, but with some additional information. Numerous pages within this project are also dotted with UV reactive EUrion constellations to depict anti-duplication measures.

Contents 1/2. The second half won't be shown here because Reasons. EPM here refers to Elevated Permissions Mode -wiggle eyebrows-

You can't just design and construct synth prototypes without proper regulation. That just won't do. Everything is definitely above board here.

These pages are just such a vibe. I can't help but add them between sections.

There are a few graphics that were made and sprinkled into this project to really fuel the software manual vibe. The chassis diagram in the print copy is now out of date, slightly. Also, never miss an opportunity to hide memes in a creative kink project. We like easter eggs.

Beyond this there's complete sections regarding ethics and safety (some of which is genuinely important SSC/RACK info, because that's important), and the sections containing various hypno commands, which will not be shared openly for obvious reasons. There's also the Error Codes page at the back, full of error codes I really have not bothered to memorise admittedly.

Anyways, that's all to share. Questions are encouraged though!

[laxmienterprises]

Noodle Making Machine - International Traders Channel - Laxmi Enterprises

[tangibletechnomancy]

The AI Boom and the Mechanical Turk

A hidden, overworked man operating a painting, chess-playing robot, generated with the model Dreamlike Diffusion on Simple Stable, ~4 hours Created under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

In 1770, an inventor named Wolfgang von Kempelen created a machine that astounded the world, a device that prompted all new understanding of what human engineering could produce: the Automaton Chess Player, also known as the Mechanical Turk. Not only could it play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, playing against and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte, it could also complete a knight's tour, a puzzle where one must use a knight to visit each square on the board exactly once. It was a marvel of mechanical engineering, able to not only choose its moves, but move the pieces itself with its mechanical hands.

It was also a giant hoax.

What it was: genuinely a marvel of mechanical engineering, an impressively designed puppet that was able to manipulate pieces on a chessboard.

What it wasn't: an automaton of any kind, let alone one that could understand chess well enough to play at a human grandmaster's level. Instead, the puppet was manipulated by a human chess grandmaster hidden inside the stage setup.

So, here and now, in 2023, we have writers and actors on a drawn-out and much needed strike, in part because production companies are trying to "replace their labor with AI".

How is this relevant to the Mechanical Turk, you ask?

Because just like back then, what's being proposed is, at best, a massive exaggeration of how the proposed labor shift could feasibly work. Just as we had the technology then to create an elaborate puppet to move chess pieces, but not to make it choose its moves for itself or move autonomously, we have the technology now to help people flesh out their ideas faster than ever before, using different skill sets - but we DON'T have the ability to make the basic idea generation, the coherent outlining, nor the editing nearly as autonomous as the companies promising this future claim.

What AI models can do: Various things from expanding upon ideas given to them using various mathematical parameters and descriptions, keywords, and/or guide images of various kinds, to operating semi-autonomously as fictional characters, when properly directed and maintained (e.g., Neuro-sama).

What they can't do: Conceive an entire coherent movie or TV show and write a passable script - let alone scripts for an entire show - from start to finish without human involvement, generate images with a true complete lack of human involvement, act fully autonomously as characters, or...do MOST of the things such companies are trying to attribute to "AI (+unimportant nameless human we GUESS)", for that matter.

The distinction may sound small, but it is a critical one: the point behind this modern Mechanical Turk scam, after all, is that it allegedly eliminates human involvement, and thus the need to pay human employees, right...?

But it doesn't. It only enables companies to shift the labor to a hidden, even more underpaid sector, and even argue that they DESERVE to be paid so little once found out because "okay okay so it's not TOTALLY autonomous but the robot IS the one REALLY doing all the important work we swear!!"

It's all smoke and mirrors. A lie. A Mechanical Turk. Wrangling these algorithms into creating something truly professionally presentable - not just as a cash-grab gimmick that will be forgotten as soon as the novelty wears off - DOES require creativity and skill. It IS a time-consuming labor. It, like so many other uses of digital tools in creative spaces (e.g., VFX), needs to be recognized as such, for the protection of all parties involved, whether their role in the creative process is manual or tool-assisted.

So please, DO pay attention to the men behind the curtain.

[bleghablah]

friendship ended with VS Code. holy shit, friendship majorly ended with VS Code. I regret ever saying it was a decent text editor.

I was stuck on windows during a meeting I didn't have to be a part of and had a huge data migration looming over my head so I wrote a shell script in VS Code to transfer the files, SCP'd it over to my RedHat machine, and got it started. I don't know where things went wrong, but somewhere between saving it in VS Code and transferring it to my Linux box the formatting got fucked, and so twenty minutes after deploying my script I checked the progress and it appended spaces onto the end of alllllll of my copied directories.

My unscheduled downtime of my (luckily backup) production server was prolonged an extra half hour as I manually CP'd the files by hand, and tomorrow I'm going to have to do so much cleanup.

luckily my server is back up and my new environment doesn't have to go live until EOD tomorrow, but hooooly fuck, next time I'm just going to ssh into my Ubuntu box and use Nano (fuck vi and emacs)