#expired-software

[mochi-bella]

I was working on the love in paradise animation and when I went to the website I was using to edit it, it kept giving me ERROR messages only to find out all my progress I had done for the past 3 days is just gone.

I was sad as it is that I have to start over and when I go to the home page after creating a new file I noticed that there’s text on the file telling me that after 3 days that file is going to expire, aka delete itself.

So now I’m sad x2

If anyone knows a good editing software, program, website, whatever that’s free, doesn’t limit how long a project is, and either doesn’t have a watermark or has a watermark that’s by the corner of the screen then please share! 🙏

[merge-conflict]

the tumblr text editor having some ephemeral weird to pin down but easy to trigger off-by-one error in its selection tool Sure Is Something.

[masquerading-as-a-genius]

Loving the spirit of this but rather than simply letting third parties copy whatever thing I'd much rather that these things specifically become public goods.

Relying on private individuals to upload and maintain media with no accountability is annoying and also what got us into this mess. Luckily, we Have institutions in place already to do this - Libraries are Right There. Let them run a database of online movies, books, and other such things that are no longer available for whatever reason. Not only is it free, its safe, and accessible, and not likely to be shut down out of the blue.

law idea: products that are not currently and will not be purchasable from the parent company for the foreseeable future are not counted as "copywritten" in regard to the sharing, reproduction, and other "piracy" claims in court of law.

if you aren't selling them your customer doesn't have to buy

this is in regards to all copyright, if someone starts a factory producing clones of iPhone and iMac chips for the purpose of repairing devices, that's not copyright infringement, because apple does not sell those chips :)

if they want to keep their copyright they can put their repair chips on the public market, continue matinance of old products, etc

Nintendo will hate this law the most I'm sure.

widows is surprisingly robust to this law as you can actually buy every copy of windows ever produced right now on windows website, albeit you might have a hard time finding it because they'd PERfer you didn't.

streaming companies dropping original content from their service for tax purposes can expect to find it on YouTube the next day for free no ads

I think you all will be able to see how this will have a hotting effect on the market, where as now copyright holders have the power to delete content from the legal sphere, under this law they cannot do that. they can sell it themselves or they can give it away for free.

no more manufactured scarcity for the sake of inflating already inflated prices

[nando161mando]

My work regularly lets licenses for softwares expire, and my coworker got fed up.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A sexy, skinny defeat device for your HP ink cartridge

Animals keep evolving into crabs; it's a process called "carcinisation" and it's pretty weird. Crabs just turn out to be extremely evolutionarily fit for our current environment:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-animals-keep-evolving-into-crabs/

By the same token, all kinds of business keep evolving into something like a printer company. It turns out that in this enshittified, poorly regulated, rentier-friendly world, the parasitic, inkjet business model is extremely adaptive. Printerinisation is everywhere.

All that stuff you hate about your car? Trapping you into using their mechanics, spying on you, planned obsolescence? All lifted from the inkjet printer business model:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

That GE fridge that won't make ice or dispense water unless you spend $50 for a proprietary charcoal filter instead of using a $10 generic? Pure printerism:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

The software update to your Sonos speakers that makes them half as useful and takes away your right to play your stored music, forcing you to buy streaming music subscriptions? Straight out of the HP playbook:

https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-admits-its-recent-app-update-was-a-colossal-mistake/

But as printerinized as all these gadgets are, none can quite attain the level of high enshittification that the OG inkjet bastards attain on a daily basis. In the world championships of effortlessly authentic fuckery, no one can lay a glove on the sociopathic monsters of HP.

For example: when HP wanted to soften us all up for a new world of "subscription ink" (where you have to pre-pay every month for a certain number of pages' worth of printing, which your printer enforces by spying on you and ratting you out to HP over the internet), they offered a "lifetime subscription" plan. With this "lifetime" plan, you paid just once and your HP printer would print out 15 pages a month for so long as you owned your printer, with HP shipping you new ink every time you ran low.

Well, eventually, HP got bored of not making you pay rent on your own fucking printer, so they just turned that plan off. Yeah, it was a lifetime plan, but the "lifetime" in question was the lifetime of HP's patience for not fucking you over, and that patience has the longevity of a mayfly:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

It would take many pages to list all of HP's sins here. This is a company that ships printers with half-full ink cartridges and charges more than the printer cost to buy a replacement set. The company that won't let you print a black-and-white page if you're out of yellow ink. The company that won't let you scan or send a fax if you're out of any of your ink.

They make you "recalibrate" your printer or "clean your heads" by forcing you to print sheets of ink-dense paper. They also refuse to let you use your ink cartridges after they "expire."

HP raised the price of ink to over $10,000 per gallon, then went to war against third-party ink cartridge makers, cartridge remanufacturers, and cartridge refillers. They added "security chips" to their cartridges whose job was to watch the ink levels in your cartridge and, when they dip below a certain level (long before the cartridge is actually empty), declare the cartridge to be dry and permanently out of use.

Even if you refill that cartridge, it will still declare itself to be empty to your printer, which will therefore refuse to print.

Third party ink companies have options here. One thing they could do is reverse-engineer the security chip, and make compatible ones that say, "Actually, I'm full." The problem with this is that laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) potentially makes this into a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, for a first offense.

DMCA 1201 bans bypassing "an effective means of access control" to a copyrighted work. So if HP writes a copyrighted "I'm empty" program for its security chip and then adds some kind of access restriction to prevent you from dumping and reverse-engineering that program, you can end up a felon, thanks to the DMCA.

Another countermove is to harvest security chips out of dead cartridges that have been sent overseas as e-waste (one consequence of HP's $10,000/gallon ink racket is that it generates mountains of immortal, toxic e-waste that mostly ends up poisoning poor countries in the global south). These can be integrated into new cartridges, or remanufactured ones.

In practice, ink companies do all of this and more, and total normie HP printer owners go to extremely improbable lengths to find third party ink cartridges and figure out how to use them. It turns out that even people who find technology tinkering intimidating or confusing or dull can be motivated to learn and practice a lot of esoteric tech stuff as an alternative to paying $10,000/gallon for colored water.

HP has lots of countermoves for this. One truly unhinged piece of fuckery is to ask Customs and Border Patrol to block third-party ink cartridges with genuine HP security chips that have been pried loose from e-waste shipments. HP claims that these are "counterfeits" (because they were removed and re-used without permission), even though they came out of real HP cartridges, and CBP takes them at their word, seizing shipments.

Even sleazier: HP pushes out fake security updates to its printers. You get a message telling you there's an urgent security update, you click OK, and your printer shows you a downloading/installing progress bar and reboots itself. As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. But these aren't "security" updates, they're updates that block third-party ink, and HP has designed them not to kick in for several months. That way, HP owners who get tricked into installing this downgrade don't raise hell online and warn everyone else until they've installed it too, and it's too late:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

This is the infectious pathogen business model: one reason covid spread so quickly was that people were infectious before they developed symptoms. That meant that the virus could spread before the spreader knew they had it. By adding a long fuse to its logic bomb, HP greatly increases the spread of its malware.

But life finds a way. $10,000/gallon ink is an irresistible target for tinkerers, security researchers and competitors. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the true parent of jaw-dropping ingenuity is callous, sadistic greed. That's why America's army of prisoners are the source of so many of the most beautiful and exciting forms of innovation seen today:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/king-rat/#mother-of-invention

Despite harsh legal penalties and the vast resources of HP, third-party ink continues to thrive, and every time HP figures out how to block one technique, three even cooler ones pop up.

Last week, Jay Summet published a video tearing down a third-party ink cartridge compatible with an HP 61XL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

The third-party cartridge has what appears to be a genuine HP security chip, but it is overlaid with a paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit board that is skinny enough that the cartridge still fits in an HP printer.

This flexible circuit board has its own little microchip. Summet theorizes that it is designed to pass the "are you a real HP cartridge" challenge pass to the security chip, but to block the followup "are you empty or full?" message. When the printer issues that challenge, the "man in the middle" chip answers, "Oh, I'm definitely full."

In their writeup, Hackaday identifies the chip as "a single IC in a QFN package." This is just so clever and delightful:

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-unlocks-hp-ink-cartridges/

Hackaday also notes that HP CEO Enrique J Lores recently threatened to brick any printer discovered to be using third-party ink:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

As William Gibson famously quipped, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." As our enshittification-rich environment drives more and more companies to evolve into rent-seeking enterprises through printerinisation, HP offers us a glimpse of the horrors of the late enshittocene.

It's just as Orwell prophesied: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a HP installing malware on your printer to force you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink – forever."

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Image: Jay Summet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

[sameteeth]

hhhhhhhh

[prokopetz]

The thing I like about the Blood Moon mechanic in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how it affords game-mechanical transparency to the player.

Like, we all know the reason it exists is because, like any complex open-world game, BotW and TotK periodically need to hit the reset button on all non-trivial changes to the world state; in games that don't, your save file has unbounded growth due to the need to keep track of every little thing you've ever done, and eventually the system runs out of memory, save/load performance goes to shit, or both. It's basic software engineering constraints dictating the shape of play.

The thing is, most open world games try to do this subtly, perhaps by setting individual timers for the consequences of different actions to expire, or by linking world-state cleanup to proximity to the player character, but in practice it never works – trying to be sneaky about it paradoxically makes it more obtrusive to the player by rendering it opaque and unpredictable, often prompting the development of superstitious gameplay rituals to work around it.

BotW and TotK take precisely the opposite tack and make it 100% transparent and 100% predictable. Once a week, at exactly the same time of day, there's a spooky cutscene and an evil wizard undoes every change you've made to the world that doesn't have an associated quest log entry. Why everything at once, and always on the same schedule? A wizard did it. Why exactly and only those changes that don't have quest logs attached? See again: a wizard did it.

And this isn't just a gameplay conceit. Everybody knows about the evil wizard! The fact that the evil wizard keeps resetting everybody's efforts to fix the befuckening of the world is a central plot point. There are organisations whose chartered purpose is to go around redoing stuff that's been undone by the wizard.

It makes me wonder what other potential synergies between fantasy worldbuilding and mechanical transparency are going unexploited.

[contisofttechnologies]

Say goodbye to your manual contract date tracking, let’s automate it 

Maintaining long excel sheet for tracking contract renewals date, get alert in advance, before time.

[memorian]

Episode 208 Screenplay

Umm so I sort of painstakingly DIGITIZED @slitwrstsavior's copy of the 208 screenplay. I sat there and recreated it using Screenplay software I never used before like a dumbass. Which I'm sure is a pretty stupid thing to do cause it will probably be available online to read someday anyway. I've uploaded it in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats. The EPUB and MOBI formatting might be a bit wonky tho. Here ya go! This link will only be available for 7 days before it expires!

*I mostly did this for people who don't like to read scans and wanna read on the go on their ereaders. (like me lol) and people who are visually impaired!! Remember this isn't perfect or a 1:1 remake, I was just doing my best. Preview:

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Hello Nicholas!

I hope this isn't a weird question, but I saw in one of your posts that you used to be in a huge amount of debt and now you're living more comfortably- how did you manage to get out of debt? I feel like every time I start even trying to figure out where to start, it's just all too big to ever get out from under. Do you have any advice for me?

Hope you have a great day!

Hey there! Yes, from about 2007-2010 (before I transitioned), I was making less than $10k/year. I defaulted on all my credit cards, exhausted my retirement, and nearly lost my house. It sucked, and in 2024, I'm finally start to feel somewhat secure. What I learned (assuming living in the US, I also did not have student loan debt):

I had to first figure out the sources of my debt. A big chunk of it was because of bad spending habits due to mental illness (hoarding + retail therapy when I was dysphoric/depressed). Another chunk was from being in an abusive friendship. Another, from being unemployed. And the last, was general capitalism (this was during the housing crisis.)

I started working on improving myself to curb behaviors that led to debt. I started working on my hoarding. I started transition to improve my mental health (had to sell some stuff to afford HRT). It took until 2015 to ditch my abuser, alas.

I started working on new job skills. I swallowed my pride and got an office job after a failed 3-year stint at freelancing. It was shitty, but enough to take care of my income emergencies -- keeping my house out of foreclosure. I got a better job 8 months later. It also sucked and I was in it for 7 years, but eventually changed industries and that's when my career took off. Because with each new job, I've gotten better and better pay.

I started using budgeting software. YNAB is my favorite. I try to account for every single dollar I have.

I started spending smarter. Food was the expense I had the most control over. I went to the salvage grocery store (you can find non-expired stuff if you hunt) and bought the "ugly" produce 1 day away from rotting from the local markets. I actually managed to eat well once I found these grocery stores, and my food bill became a fraction of what it'd been at typical grocery stores. I do wish that I had given food pantries a shot, but I was in denial about my poverty at the time.

I sold a ton of useless crap. I got rid of a good chunk of my nerd "collectibles". I only miss a few things over a decade later.

I negotiated with my debt collectors. I managed to set up payment plans with my credit card companies, condo association, and the IRS. I also did a debt consolidation loan once I qualified and was sure I could commit to the monthly payments. It forced me to be super strict about my budget and for about 5 years I didn't buy much for myself. It sucked, but I cleared a bunch of debt that way.

I got help from my family. I was embarrassed to tell my family about my predicament, but it became impossible to hide. I got help cleaning out my hoard and my mother has gracefully given me generous cash gifts every now and then. Never enough to be life-changing, but enough to give me a mental breather.

I played the credit score game. This one seems counter-intuitive, and requires some self-control about not abusing credit cards. Many people recommend the "snowball" method for paying off cards (pay off your lowest debt asap, then go to the next one), but I went with a "credit utilization" method (bring my highest used cards down to the next utilization level, then move to other cards) so I would see immediate changes in my credit score. What is credit card utilization? It's the percentage of how much of your credit card you're using. A card with a $1,000 limit and $100 on it = 10% utilization. Your credit score changes when you cross the following thresholds: 90%, 70%, 50%, 30%, 10%. Once my credit score started going up past 400 (especially as defaults started falling away), I applied for a secured card. As I started using that better, I applied for a few more cards, then for credit line increases every 6 months. My car insurance rates were tied to my credit score, so as soon as that improved, I switched companies and saved money there.

Mistakes I made:

Being in denial that I was poor. I didn't really look for resources on how to live while in poverty. This hurt me a lot because I ended up neglecting myself out of pride, which made my situation even worse.

Payday loans. I got stuck in the payday cycle for about 8 years. I wish I had sold more stuff or asked family for money to have never needed that initial loan. Once you are in the cycle, it becomes very difficult to get out.

Not going to a food bank.

Not asking for help sooner. And not just financial help.

Not getting out of abusive situations sooner. This is hard, and I sympathize with anyone in a similar position. But if you think it's time to move on, trust your gut - don't sacrifice yourself for people who don't care about you.

Ignoring debt collectors, because I was too afraid to negotiate for a plan. The IRS was so patient with me in the end, even after defaulting twice on plans.

Not considering getting a roommate to reduce costs, or not thinking of doing more things like shared meals with my fellow poor friends. Again, denial and pride. Humility is not a bad word and I wished I had learned it sooner.

Not changing jobs sooner. Curbing my hoarding and getting a better job are responsible for about 90% of me being where I am financially today.

Getting out of debt is a marathon. It took over a decade for me, and I am *still* feeling the sting of poverty. I wish you the best of luck. Folks are welcome to tack on specific tricks and strategies -- this is just a general outline of my particular journey.

[kowai-kabuki-tanuki]

I finally finished my animatic! (Well my software subscription expired, so I'm done working on it whether I like it or not.)

Happy Halloween! This animatic's got everything! Skeksis, gelfling, mystics, urskeks, MUSIC! So, please watch it with the sound on!

This is my imagining of what an animated TV series could look like in the world of the Dark Crystal. It's been fun to work on, but I have spent waaaaay too much time on this!

I also did some compositing and made a title card for it!

Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

[hanzajesthanza]

How to read the new Witcher book, Crossroads of Ravens, in English (e-book) [GUIDE]

Thanks to @nohtora for the method, I decided to write up a short post detailing how to use Calibre e-reader to read a side-by-side English translation from the Polish text.

This post is dated 12/02/2024 - as of yet, no English translation has been scheduled, nor even announced. I am writing this because I have seen many fans say they want to read the book and are sad because they can't read Polish and don't want to wait forever for a translation and get to posting memes already. Well, me too.

So, I read it.

Because, if you are an international fan like I, and do not live in Poland, you can still purchase a copy of the new book of Rozdroże kruków ("Crossroads of Ravens") and read it... also in English.

How, you might ask? Well, by buying it and translating it yourself... or rather, not yourself, but with the assistance of... *Percival Schuttenbach voice* modern technology!

Now, when I read it, I did the foolish thing of copying and pasting literally page-by-page into Google Translate. Noels (nohtora) had a much better solution, which I will detail here.

This method is easy, free (well you gotta buy the book, but not the software) and accessible (available on Mac, PC, Linux). If you have access to a computer and are OK with reading from screens, I recommend this.

In total, it took me about 10 to 20 minutes to set up from scratch.

Step 1. Download Calibre, a free and open-source e-reader program. Step 2. Install the translation plugin - also free and open-source. Step 3. Purchase the e-book. Step 4. Open the e-book with the plugin, translate. Step 5. Read!

Step 1: Install your e-book reader.

Download Calibre here. It is a free and open-source e-reader program for laptops/computers (although it does not run on mobile devices). You install it like any other program on your computer (Windows, MacOS, or Linux).

Step 2: Download the translation plugin.

Use this free Calibre plugin to translate e-books.

Watch until 1:00 to install the plugin. The rest of the video you should return to later, during Step 4.

Notes of steps to install plugin: (1) Open Preferences. (2) Get plugins. (3) Get "Ebook Translator" from Author "bookfere.com"

Step 3: Buy the book.

You can purchase Rozdroże kruków online for about $8.

I purchased my copy from Legimi, which I will show you now. I didn't really poke around for other websites, it seems like Legimi had it the quickest. But other sites will have this ebook eventually, so don't feel pressured to get it from Legimi, specifically. I just wanted to include a "how to purchase" step in this guide because (1) it's a direct link to get it (2) in case people felt anxious about navigating a UI they can't read.

This is what the page for Rozdroże kruków looks like. As you can see, it is currently 34.99 zł, or: $8.57 US, $13.21 Aus, £6.77, or €8.15.

For me, it was $8.49 after foreign transaction fees. (I paid through PayPal).

But before you buy anything, you first need to create an account.

From the homepage, click the yellow button, "Zarejestruj się", "Sign up".

Put your username, email address, password, and confirm password. Check the first box to accept the terms of service. Don't check the second box unless you want their newsletter.

I kind of... already bought the book, so I can't buy it again on this account. I have selected a couple of other books for demonstration purposes. Same process.

Select the "ebook" tab, the right one on the ribbon (underlined in green), to buy the singular book and not a subscription. Then select the yellow button, "Dodaj do koszyka", or "Add to cart".

After adding to your cart, click the yellow button to go to your cart and checkout.

Check to accept the digital distribution agreement.

You can then pay with your credit card or PayPal. (From top to bottom, left to right: "First and last name on card" "Credit card number" "Expiration date" "Security code").

Don't worry that it says you will pay in złoty, it will be converted. There may be a foreign transaction fee depending on your bank, but it is typically small (around 3%). If you are only buying an $8 book, that will not be much.

From here, you are going to want to click the WHITE button: "Przejdź do półki", "Go to shelf". (The green button is to download their application, which we're not gonna do for this).

If you skip this on accident, just go to your profile in the top right corner and click "Półka", "Shelf", to see the books on your account.

You will see it in your shelf. Click on it.

Click the yellow button "EPUB" to download it as a .epub format. Save to your Downloads or where-ever is convenient.

Step 4: Open the book in Calibre.

Refer back to the video from Step 2 for this section and watch the part on how to use the plugin. I will add my example here, too.

Open Calibre. Click "Add Book" at the top of the ribbon. Locate rozdroze-krukow.epub from where you saved it. It will be copied to your Calibre library.

Before starting the translation, make sure to adjust settings in the Translate Book option (sometimes hidden in the ribbon as you can see in my screenshot - just click the kebab menu on the right to bring it up) to export the file the way you would like it to be formatted. I also recommend checking the box in "General" to allow it to merge paragraphs, Google Translate tends to work better when it has more context.

Select Translate Book as shown in the video. Translate into English (or - hey - language of your choice! Sky's the limit). You can also use different translation programs if you'd like, the default is Google.

You should select "Output" at the top right after this is complete.

It will create a separate epub in your library, tagged as "Translation."

Step 5: Read it and have fun! It's a fun read!

I set up my formatting this way because I want to read a Polish paragraph, then an English paragraph, but you can also set it up to be side-by-side (left page in Polish, right page in English), or even hide the original text if you're not interested and just want the translation.

The days of manually copying-pasting into Google translate are over! Thanks again to Noels for sharing this method in the Discord.

Now, this translation will NOT be 100% perfect - this is a Sapkowski novel after all; humans have difficult translating him, and this is only a machine. I wrote a Reddit post about some caveats to this desperate method of translation, and some silliness I specifically encountered with this book (light spoilers, I mention a couple of characters and settings, but no plot points).

My rule of thumb for when the translation is weird: Pay attention to the context. It is usually not too hard to figure out what the translation meant. If you have real trouble understanding it, or are just curious, Google the Polish phrase that it seems to be hitching on. Make use of Reverso Context, Reddit (r/learnpolish), and Polish learning forums.

Oh, and make sure to watch out for "grasshoppers" ;)

Finally, I recommend you also support the official English translation when it does come out; if not to compare translations, to show Orbit-Gollancz that English readers do want more translations (and ideally we'd like them sooner rather than later).

Good luck on the path ~ Powodzenia na szlaku ~

[zexapher]

Vanity of Vanities; All is Vanity

This meme was brazenly stolen from inspired by a post from u/The-Goofball and the subsequent comment by u/Akumu_Oukoku which may be found here. I’d like to especially thank Akumu Oukoku for allowing me to use their dialogue most thoroughly.

Everyone likes a good Jaune should keep his beard joke, amiright? I had to get you all a little holiday present after all. But like, I made a whole storyboard for this one! 12 separate panels, it’s a real comic even! Put a ton of editing into it. Always got to go above and beyond for White Knight, love ‘em. Listening to .hack music helped me power through the grind!

Panel 7, 8, and 10 were a lot of work in particular. Cutting Oscar out of the scene, and especially color correcting Weiss took a lot longer than expected. Pretty much had to redraw her entirely in those later panels. That comes with the territory of having chosen character stills from the Haven fight, but we deserve the extra effort. Speaking of, I got to say there’s something poetic about taking the most traumatic event for a Weiss fan and turning it into the most traumatic event for a White Rose fan (I’m sorry, guys. Just kidding around).

As someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing, this was a lot of work figuring out what tools I needed and how to use them on photoshop. My photoshop expiring 2/3 of the way through and making me switch over to gimp and learn it all over again with a new software compounded all those difficulties, which is why we might see a few corners being cut once we hit panel 9.

I hope you all enjoy; I had great fun making it!

[smoqueen]

does anyone know any basic 'everything scrubbers' tools to run for a like-new laptop that's been updated to run modern windows (for the sake of fixing a CMOS issue). i dont want to run copilot i dont want the expired macafee the laptop came with i dont want hp whatever software. i want to scrub this to have an ok windows install before i dual boot linux. Im a noob these days i only knew how to do it for the old stuff i had

[aspergerasparagus]

What would your take be if the contestant swapped with Frankie? Like Frankie became a sentient little robot in a (gruesome) AI learning program (the robots feel pain like in portal) and contestant just watches over it, and toon version would be apart of like an instruction video? (I don't have any ideas on monster and I just wanted to share an au I had cooking up in my head)

Had a crack at the concept myself. Have Real Frankie being an AI unit meant to act as a family companion and protector, Toon would act as a companion software for the workers (think like Rambley), monster was previously failed unit would have attacked and injured Lucky before giving him a distrust of the AI's but now kinda acts as a ghost in the machine infecting other units when it can and finally Lucky is the training facilities overseer. Not everything is explored here but just my ideas with where the concept could go.

Frankie had come online a few months ago, well 3 months 16 days and 7 hours ago to be precise. He’d already been aware of his purpose from the moment his optics came online, to be trained as a functional AI companion and a protector to his owners. That was the theory at least as he was still in beta testing, him and a number of identical copies of himself. There were 17 of them in total, of course it had been 30 when they’d first started but some… hadn’t made the cut. They were constantly run through heavy testing to make sure no “errors” would occur in their programming, that they’d be able to carry out their objective without question and be completely subservient to their owners.

This obedience was enforced via the pain receptors the robots had installed in them. Forcing them to obey or they would receive an ever increasingly painful shock until they either gave in or expired, whichever came earlier. Frankie himself had only been on the end of such a shock once, and once was enough to get the message through. Sighing he glanced up from where he was charging to look at the control room situated at the far end of the room. The humans were working there, the engineers, the programers and of course the overseer, the man in charge of this little program. 

Frankie didn’t know what to make of them. He rarely spoke to them directly, only relaying commands over the tannoy system and was the one to deliver out punishments for insubordination, but other than that he really didn’t know much about them. The rabbit did think about what type of man would willingly agree to be a part of this. Was he cruel and enjoyed the sight of the AI’s in pain? Was he money driven and willing to step over anyone to get what he wanted? Or maybe he was just a tired pencil pusher just trying to get the job done so he could clock off. Frankie wished he could know, at least put a face to the voice that called out every morning over the speakers.

It was then he heard a familiar voice calling out, his ears immediately perking up. The overseer was on the shop floor? That was new. Quickly going limp he made himself look like he was charging like the other Frankie’s as he heard their voice getting closer, relaying instructions to another worker.

“Well testing seems to be going fine, none have had any glitches in their programming yet which is a good sign. We might be able to move onto the final phase by the end of the week so that’ll make the pricks up stairs happy for once…” Ah so he wasn’t a fan of the higher ups that was nice to know. Keeping still, Frankie finally saw the man come into view, his head twisted away as he continued to talk to the engineer, only letting Frankie see the bloom of messy brown blonde hair that concealed the rest of his face. Frankie wished he would turn around just slightly so he could get a proper look, I mean he had what he assumed would be a nice arse but he wasn’t really interested in that, he wanted to put a face to the voice he heard everyday.

Just as he was cursing his luck he heard a creak from beside him, looking out the corner of his eye he spotted one of the other units craning its neck towards the humans, studying them. Frankie’s programming immediately kicked in as he realised what the other unit was planning on doing.

“Look out!” Frankie barely had time to react before the other Frankie launched forward aiming directly at the humans who barely had time to whip their heads around. It was lucky that Frankie had already seen what was happening as he leapt forwards, crashing into the other unit sending it careening into the floor with an angry hiss, its limbs extending as it tried to correct itself. Letting out an inhuman screech it lashed out, its arms smashing into the engineer sending them flying across the room while the overseer scarcely dodged the other one, instead falling to the ground as he attempted to call for security. 

They wouldn’t arrive in time as the other Frankie unit shot after him on all fours, screaming in fury as he lunged at him only to receive a swift punch to the face sending it tumbling into a pile at the other end of the room. Frankie stood between them and the overseer, a low growl slipping out through his teeth.

“Don’t touch him.” His program was on high alert, screaming at him to protect the overseer at all cost, even if it resulted in injury. He just had to keep the man safe. As he watched the other unit start to right itself, its teeth now a broken mess of jagged metal, he quickly spun around and snatched the stunned man off the floor, pulling them close to his chest as he bolted to the other end of the service room. He could feel their heart jackhammering away in their chest as they wrapped their arms around him, clinging to him for dear life. This made something in Frankie’s chest flip. Oh, that was a new feeling. But he quickly shook his head to dispel the thought, it wasn’t the time for that, he had to get the overseer somewhere safe.

However his thoughts were cut off as he was tackled from behind, knocking him off balance as he dropped the man. He heard them yelp in pain as they hit the floor hard as they rolled off towards the side. Frankie needed to get to them but he had to deal with the other unit as began to snap at his head and neck, aiming at trying to take him out. Roaring out in anger, Frankie managed to get a hold of the unit as it attempted to sink its teeth into his head, holding onto its mouth, the shards of what remained of its teeth sank into his fingers and palms, sending red hot pain through his body. But he pushed through it, refusing to let this monster get its hands on his human as he with another scream tore the unit's mouth open, oil spilling out onto him as it gargled helplessly. It feebly reached for what remained of its mouth before collapsing to the side of him, twitching slightly as it finally went offline.

Frankie just lay there for a moment processing what had happened until he heard the overseer groan. His snapped around at the sound as he saw them slowly picking themselves off the ground, clutching at their head. Scrambling to his feet the rabbit made his way over, scooping the man up to his chest before they had a chance to get to their feet.

“Sir are you alright? Nothing broken? I-I um…” Frankie found himself trailing off as the overseer finally met his gaze, their tired looking brown eyes finally meeting him as he got a look at their face for the first time. Oh, so that’s what they look like. He barely noticed as the security team finally burst in, guns raised on him.

“Don’t! Don’t, it wasn’t this unit! The threat has been dealt with, put down the guns you morons!” The man in his arms frantically waved at them to lower their guns as the rabbit continued to inspect him. Without knowing really why Frankie leant down burying his face against the overseer's neck, a soft purr escaping him.

“Um Lucky, is that normal…?” Lucky? His name was Lucky? Oh what a funny little name for his human. He continued to purr gently as he felt Lucky trying to squirm out of his grip, the man cursing and blushing as he tried to shove the rabbit’s face away, alas with little success. Finally he just groaned and gave in as the other engineers joined them, them all looking sheepishly at their boss.

“Sir, I think that unit might have-”

“I know it’s bloody imprinted! Now shut up and get it to let go of me! And don’t you dare tell the higher ups I am not being responsible for this unit! And stop nuzzling me!” Frankie only purred louder as he grinned to himself. Did this mean Lucky was his new owner? How exciting!

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| 8 sept 2024 |

it hasn't been a very productive week, I got a cold and my laptop is giving me issues 🥲 started my quantum homework though, its just the basics so its not too bad

yesterday I restarted my laptop and the keyboard stopped working... but the track pad and touch bar work + the backlight works so it makes no sense. I tried so many things, then factory reset it bc it seemed like a software issue. it started working again but i shut it down last night and opened it this morning and it stopped working again 😭😭 it's only 5 years old, but the warranty expired. I'm close to buying a new (refurished?) laptop bc I doubt it'll be cheap to fix :/