#mining hardware performance

[bitcoinversus]

Quantum Bitcoin Mining: Futuristic Heatsink Enhances Bitaxe ASIC Chip Performance

In a recent analysis, the 52Pi Low-Profile Plus cooler has demonstrated exceptional performance when paired with the Bitaxe Gamma Bitcoin miner. The cooler’s design, featuring four copper heat pipes and a substantial base plate, effectively dissipates heat, maintaining optimal operating temperatures for the Bitaxe Gamma. The Bitaxe Gamma, equipped with the BM1370 ASIC from the Antminer S21 Pro,…

[into-the-grey]

~Tightrope~

Noah x F!Reader Fic

Summary: I got sick, and he left me here. Am I really too broken to be loved?

W.C: 4.7k

Taglist: @anything-more-than-human @blend-in-with-the-madness @rumoured-whispers @thisbicc

Warnings: sadness, angst, disability, medical topics, possibly incorrect medical info, depiction of cardiac emergency, talk of overdose.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I'm not glorifying disability. I'm venting. The disability depicted in the story is my own, and it pisses me off to no end some days, so I wanted to write a lil about it and make something cathartic.

Masterlist

I'd watched him countless times on that stage. I'd watched him psych himself up, getting ready to give the performance of his life every single time. I couldn't help it, he was magnetic. Something about the mysterious person he became when he stepped out into the eyes of the people, it's like he became this untouchable being, the king in his castle.

I'd watched him despair when he couldn't do it. Whether he'd blown his voice out, or he burned himself out trying to do everything all at once. His house of cards had come tumbling more than once, but never enough to bring everything to an end. Every time, I watched him build it back up, meticulous in his method.

I watched him learn, grow, and evolve. And every step he took, I took with him. I wanted to be there, supporting him like a good friend does.

And then I got sick. And then I fell apart. 

I didn't get cancer, or some kind of terminal disease, it wasn't that dramatic. It was simple, yet so frustratingly limiting. My body wouldn't agree with me, forcing me to stand still when I wanted to run with him on his ever upward trajectory. All because of one small malfunction in my hardware.

My heart. Literally. A tiny piece of scar tissue, likely caused by a dumb choice I'd made when I was younger involving some Lexapro and an ex-boyfriend's snide comment, had begun to generate its own electric current. Because, in case you didn't know, that's how your heart works if you dumb it down. Little electric currents run across it and stimulate the different chambers, starting at the top and ending at the bottom. Humans create our own electricity, and that's what keeps us alive. Neat, huh?

When it works the way it should, sure. 

But mine didn't anymore. This stupid piece of scar tissue was generating its own current, and it made my heart beat out of sync. It was scary as hell when we first found it. I couldn't breathe, and my heart was pounding in my chest. I tried so hard to play it off as anxiety, I didn't want anything to be wrong with me. But Noah...

He called the ambulance; he held my hand through the scans and the blood tests and the ECGs. He stayed with me in that hospital for four days while the doctors decided how bad it was and what to do with me. He held my hand when they told me the prognosis. He celebrated with me when they told me I wasn't in immediate danger, and he kept me calm when they told me the risks.

Yeah. Apparently, it's not meant to be dangerous, and it's an easy fix. Mine didn't want to be easy. Mine was infuriating, because while it was only a minor problem and an easy fix, the wait for the surgery was never ending. I had to live with it, and the medication, and the anxiety, every single day. I hated every moment of it.

Feeling defective isn't easy. You feel like everyone is looking at you like you're about to break. It makes you think you might, that you're this fragile thing, one breath might knock you down. And the side effects of your body not working...

You lose muscle tone, you gain weight because you can't go to the gym anymore, your skin gets aggravated from lying on pillows all the time...

You spiral, because the world goes on without you while you're waiting to be fixed. You want to run with them, but you can't. You want to be a part of it, but any odd feeling in your chest scares you. You spend so much time in hospital because doctors always say "It's probably nothing, but just to be sure..."

And then when you see the people you care about, you're not you anymore. You're different. You feel ugly, you feel like a freak. Like this broken doll, cast aside and waiting until someone comes along with a needle and thread to fix you.

Noah had to keep living though. He went on tour, he ruled his kingdom, and when he came home from his tour, I swear he looked at me with pity. It broke me. I was his friend, and suddenly it was like he didn't know how to talk to me anymore. It was like he was worried that almost every topic would upset me, or trigger me, and nothing I said could change it.

If I could have gotten drunk over it, I would have. Stupid fucking medications.

We didn't speak for a while. I felt so alone. Sometimes I caught the three dots in our conversations. He'd type something, think better of it, and delete it. It hurt more every time.

He was the one person who I never thought would see me as something broken. I wondered if maybe the weight I'd gained had embarrassed him, even though it wasn't much. I wondered if maybe I just wasn't the person he wanted to be seen with anymore. 

I just wasn't enough, I guess. Maybe I never had been.

Swallowing the crush I'd had on him when we were teens was hard enough, but this? I couldn't swallow losing him like this. Not over something so fucking stupid.

So, I texted him, asking if he was busy. And thus, the ball rolled.

Hey, are you doing anything? - Y/N

Not at the moment, what's up? - Noah

I was hoping I could talk to you about something. Can I call? - Y/N

Of course, is everything okay? - Noah

Not really... - Y/N

Should I come over? - Noah

Your call, I'm fine either way - Y/N

I'm on my way, be there in 15 - Noah

A part of me rejoiced, seeing that he could still read me. 'Your call' was once a distress signal for the two of us. A sign that we were sinking alone, and we needed a friend. He'd been the one to start it, and it stuck.

So, he did, I waited in my apartment for Noah's truck to pull up in the visitor's spot outside. While I waited, I ran through everything I wanted to say to him. I tried to figure out how to say it to him. Part of me wanted to beg him just to see me how I once was, to look at me without the pity in his eyes. Another part of me was tempted to tell him that if he couldn't, he could go fuck himself.

I couldn't do that though. I'd miss him too much.

I wrapped myself in my knitted blanket, curled up on the couch with a pillow in my lap. The Great British Bake Off played on my TV, filling the room with a warm hum of sound. To an outsider, the room full of plush pillows and soft blankets seemed welcoming. The pictures on the walls were cozy, and the black suede couch begged to be reclined on in luxury.

To me, it was home. In the same vein, it was hell. 

This apartment had become my prison. I had nowhere to go anymore, nothing to do. Normally when I wasn't at work I would bounce back and forth between the studio and Noah's house, or I'd be out on adventures with him and the band. Since getting sick, I'd been stuck here. I worked from home because my boss was too afraid something might happen to me in the office. He framed it as a generous offer, trying to be kind and thoughtful, but I knew he just didn't want to deal with the insurance paperwork if something did happen.

I had spent months in this solitude. I had nothing to break up the monotony of my days. I thought being disabled was bad enough, the depression that came with the isolation only made things unbearably worse. All I saw every day were the same four walls, the same programs, the same rooms. I was getting cabin fever and there was nothing I could do about it. The most I ever left home for was groceries and doctor’s appointments. Not exactly a thrilling existence.

So, when I saw the headlights illuminate my curtains, a part of me lit up. It was sick how excited I got at the idea of a visitor. I was like a puppy hearing their owner come to the door, practically unable to hide the vibrating eagerness in my chest.

Noah's truck rolled smoothly through the parking lot and into the visitor parking on the other side of my living room wall. The joys of ground floor living, I saw everything that happened in the complex.

The truck door slammed, and his footsteps trudged along the stamped concrete, making his way to the buzzer at the security door. The steps seemed slow, almost unwilling to be there. For a moment I wondered if I should tell him to go home, that it was nothing and he didn't need to worry about it.

Instead, I stood up and shuffled my way over to the intercom by my front door. The panel lit up with a video feed as the bell chimed. I saw Noah standing by the door, his feet shuffling awkwardly in his sneakers while he kept his hands jammed in the pocket of his hoodie. His head hung, staring at the concrete while he waited for me to let him in.

I could have lifted the receiver and said something. A long time ago, I would have made a joke, I might have said something vaguely pervy like "ooh, you look better when you're awake," and he would have laughed. Instead, I silently pushed the button to unlock the door. He reached for the handle, yanking it open. I heard the click in the hallway as the video feed shut off, and I opened the front door to my side.

His oversized form dawdled toward me, his head still down and watching his shoes. Everything about his stance screamed that he wanted to turn around and go home. It had my stomach sinking as he grew closer.

When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were ringed with purple bags. He looked exhausted. He looked at me with a tired smile, nodding at me. 

'Hey,' he said quietly. 

'Hey,' I said, pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders and smiling weakly. I stepped to the side, letting him step into the apartment. He slunk past me and headed straight to the couch, plopping down and patting the cushion, inviting me to sit beside him.

The front door swung closed, and I twisted the lock before joining him on the couch. Turning the TV off, I shifted to face him, choosing to rip the Band-Aid off. Seeing his hollow eyes made it harder, but I was determined.

I swallowed, balling my hands into fists beneath the blanket and hanging my head. 

'You've been avoiding me,' I said flatly. 

Noah froze, leaning back and shifting his position. He turned, one leg bent on the couch and the other foot on the floor while his hands hung in his hoodie pocket. I watched him open and close his mouth a few times, clearly caught off guard by my words.

'I...' he stammered out, unable to finish his sentence. He was going to say he hadn't been, but he couldn't lie to me like that. He'd never been able to.

'I wish I could say it's okay, but I can't help wondering why,' I said, chewing on my lip as I looked at him. It was out in the open now, and I felt the weight in my stomach. My heart pumped hard in my chest, the sensation making me nervous as I monitored the beats. 

'I didn't mean to,' he said quietly. 'We were busy, and things slipped, and I didn't know how to come back.'

I shook my head. 'Noah, I know you. Distance has never been an issue for us, and it's not like I'm across the country this time. I'm right here, and you haven't come to see me. You won't even text me back. It's like you don't want to be around me-'

'I do, I swear,' he cut me off, his hands tensing in his pocket. 'I just...'

'You just what?' I probed, trying to keep my voice steady. My throat tightened, and my voice threatened to crack. 'You don't want to be seen with me anymore? I gained weight and I got boring-'

'No!' he said, shaking his head and freeing his hands from his pockets. 'God no! I don't care about any of that, you know I don't! Why would you ever think that?'

'Because I feel like that?' I shot back. 'I feel like this damaged thing, and no one knows what to do with me. You backed off when I got diagnosed. It makes sense that this stupid thing is the reason. So, what, you're scared I'm gonna drop dead? You think I'm broken? You think it's too much to handle? To gross to look at?'

The words spewed fast, and Noah's face fell as I spoke. He watched as my breath came quick and I stumbled over my tongue. He reached for my hands, fishing for them in the blanket and taking them in his, holding them tightly.

'I just feel like this burden that no one wants to bear. People treat me like I'm made of glass, and they're too scared to handle me. Or like I'm not me anymore. It's fucking lonely, Noah. You were meant to be my best friend, and you fucking disappeared on me. Tour is one thing, but no calls? No texts? It's like you think I died.'

Noah shook his head, shuffling closer.

'I didn't mean to; I swear to you-'

'So why?' I coughed. All too aware of my own body, my chest ached, and my stomach turned. The defective organ screamed at me, and my brain begged for calm. The odd palpitation in my chest rang alarm bells in my mind, scaring me worse. Had I worked myself up into another hospital visit? That was the last thing I wanted. I needed answers, not more pity.

'Because I was scared. I still am. But not for the reasons you think,' Noah finally admitted, hanging his head in shame. His thumbs ran over my knuckles, my skin pale compared to his inky works of art. His hair hung like a thin curtain in front of his eyes, hiding his expression from me.

'Why, Noah?' I begged. 'Because if this is forever, I need to know. I need to be able to stop hoping we'll go back to how it was.'

'It's not forever,' he told me, his voice low. 'It wasn't even meant to be this long. I got scared because when I saw you that way, I didn't know what to do. For the first time ever, it was something I couldn't handle.'

'There's been a lot of things you can't handle,' I said, squeezing his fingers in mine. 'I don't expect you to be able to handle everything.'

He nodded, lifting his head and shaking his hair from his eyes. 'I know, but I couldn't fix this. I can't fix this. That scares the hell out of me. The idea that at any moment, you could go blue again and your heart might fuck up in a way that I don't understand... I was so sure I was about to lose you, Y/N...'

'So, you pushed me away instead?'

He nodded again; his lips tight as his eyes glassed over. 'I know, it doesn't make sense.'

'It does, but it still hurt. Out of sight, out of mind, right?'

'I guess,' he said. His shoulders slumped. 'God, I'm such an asshole. I made this all about me, and you're the one in danger.'

I rolled my eyes. 'That's the thing, Noah. I'm really not. Sure, I have to be a little more careful and I can't have caffeine anymore, but I'm still me. I'm not dying, I'm not going anywhere, I'm just waiting until they can fix me so I can do the things I used to do.'

'I wish I could get that through my head,' he sighed. 'I wish I could stop seeing it. That night...'

That night. The night it all went wrong.

I didn't think anything of it. I'd been messing around with the guys, throwing things and playing keep-away with Noah's phone. We'd been joking about some girl he'd been texting, making kissy faces at him and pretending to text her back.

Noah tackled me onto a beanbag, taking me down with a hard thump as the beanbag slid across the floorboards and up against the wall.

His arms were around me, grappling for his phone. I let him have it, lying breathless and curled up against him. We laid together, everyone laughing and joking as Noah pretended to be mad at us.

He got his breath back quickly, but mine didn't come. It wasn't until five minutes later that we realised I was still panting. 

'Are you okay?' Noah asked jokingly, rolling to his back and pulling me into his lap. He leaned to look up at my face, his hand on my back.

'I think so, I just don't have super strong singer's lungs like you,' I joked. Looking back at him, that was when I saw the nerves. The panic in his eyes would haunt me forever.

His hand flattened on my back, the guys freezing as they looked on.

'What's going on?' Ruffilo asked, furrowing his brow.

'Noah...' I said slowly, getting nervous. The pounding in my chest felt heavier now, like I was being punched from inside my chest, but its rhythm was off. It felt like fluttering, and the longer I sat up, the worse it felt.

'She's going pale dude, get her on the floor,' Ruffilo blurted. 

Noah moved fast, lifting me from his lap and laying me down on the floorboards. He knelt by my side, taking my hand and holding it tight. His eyes were wide, and his mouth hung open while he silently pressed his hand to my chest.

'Something isn't right,' he said, fishing his phone from his pocket and lifting it to his ear.

'Noah, what are you doing?' I coughed, my chest heaving. 

'Just try to stay calm, okay?' he said, his body language completely going against his words. 'Something's wrong, I'm calling an ambulance.'

I didn't argue with him. I didn't dare. If Noah said something was wrong, then something was clearly wrong. 

The phone didn't ring for long, and he asked for an ambulance with a hitch in his voice. He rattled off my name, my age, and the address to the dispatcher, all the while holding my hand for dear life.

'She's breathing really heavily,' he told them, ‘And her heartbeat feels wrong. I had my hand on her back, and it felt like it was skipping.'

I laid still, a chill seeping through my body at his words. Something was wrong, and it was with my heart. The organ that's meant to keep you alive. The most important part of a human body, and mine was malfunctioning.

I barely noticed my breathing speed up, I felt like I was going to be sick. The cold feeling prickled my skin, a cold sweat breaking out on my face while I screwed my eyes up. My ears began to ring, Noah's voice suddenly sounding far away. 

The urge to throw myself into a sitting position was almost impossible to ignore, but I knew Noah would only pin me down. He wasn't about to let me go anywhere.

'Noah,' I whimpered, trying to hold onto whatever composure I had left. My grip on his hand was iron clad, holding it for dear life.

'Y/N?' he called to me. Footsteps began to rush around the room, but they sounded like they were underwater.

My vision darkened, and I strained to look at Noah. It hurt to look, but I was determined to keep my eyes on him.

'I can't...' I tried to say, but my whole body had started to shut down on me. 

'Y/N,' Noah called again, squeezing my fingers tightly, 'come on, Y/N, stay awake, stay with me.'

I wanted to. I wanted so badly to stay with him. But my body had other ideas. 

I felt my fingers loosen in his, the strength fading. I felt him grip tighter. I heard his panicked cries as they distorted into static. I saw him scream. I saw the world close in around his wide eyes. I felt the heavy footsteps rattling the floorboards beneath me.

And then, nothing.

That night.

'That night was my anxiety getting the better of me, Noah,' I said softly, the familiar flush of shame in my cheeks. I had thought about it a lot too. I hated the idea that Noah saw me like that. I hated the idea that he had to watch my brain shut me down because I was too scared. It was mortifying.

'It was more than that, Y/N,' he argued. 'I was sure you were gone. I thought that I'd...' he stopped himself. I knew the look. His eyes flitted between his hands and the carpet, pursing his lips tightly. Whatever he was going to say, he'd never said it out loud before.

My eyes stung. Seeing him like this, it broke me. He'd been holding on to something, dealing with all of this alone. Just like me. 'Talk to me, Noah, please,' I begged.

He drew in a deep, shaky breath, his teeth sinking into his lower lip while he debated if he should admit it. 

'I thought I'd killed you. I thought maybe we'd been roughhousing too hard, and that maybe tackling you was what caused all of this,' he finally said. 'I haven't been avoiding you, I've been avoiding the guilt, because every time I look at you, I see you on the floor again. I see you barely breathing, and it feels like it was my fucking fault-'

I threw myself at him, pulling him close in a crushing hug. My blanket fell from my shoulders as his arms wrapped around me, hesitant to squeeze back.

'Noah, for fucks sake, hug me, I won't break,' I demanded, feeling the way he trembled. As if waiting for permission, his arms tightened, holding me in a way I hadn't realised I'd missed so much.

'I'm so fucking sorry,' he said, burying his face in my hair. 'I'm so sorry.'

'This isn't your fault, Noah, you know that,' I soothed, inching closer to him. 'We know why this happened, and I did it to myself, remember? I was an idiot.'

'I know, but I fucking left you when you needed someone. You needed me and I wasn't here, just like last time-'

'You are not blaming yourself for that, are you?' I asked, pulling back and looking at his face. His bloodshot eyes met mine, his lips pursed shut in a tight pout. 'Noah,' I said, 'do you really blame yourself for me being a fucking idiot?'

'I didn't answer the phone,' he said. 'If I had, maybe you wouldn't have done it.'

'Fuck, Noah, no,' I shook my head, my whole body sinking. 'It wasn't your fault. None of this is your fault. I overdosed because of Josh. He's the one to blame here, not you. He played me like a damn violin, and I walked straight into it. Thats why this happened. I did the damage, and it came back to bite me.'

'But Josh wouldn't have even been a problem if I'd said something,' he said weakly.

'Are you gonna have a rebuttal for everything?' I asked, a sad smile on my face as I reached up, brushing away a tear that fell down his cheek. 'I'll debunk it all, man. Come on, what would you have said?'

Noah smirked at me. I was glad to see my pathetic attempt at bravado could ease his pain a little. It made my heart settle somewhat. His eyes seemed to sparkle, and I finally saw the familiar face of my best friend looking back at me instead of a gloomy stranger.

I chuckled pathetically, tears running down my own face. 'Come on, what would you have said?' I repeated, stressing the words. 'That he was a jerk? That I could do better?' I goaded, 'or maybe that he was only using me to get to you, you big headed egomaniac-'

'I would have told you that I loved you.'

It was my turn to freeze. His face turned to stone, betraying no emotion. He watched as I processed what he had said, his gaze lowering to my chest as if he could see my heart through the skin.

My blanket pooled around my hips, and I felt exposed without it around my shoulders. Despite the shiver that ran through me, I didn't move to cover myself.

'You could have said that,' I said timidly, 'but would you have meant it? Or would you only have said it because you knew I had a crush on you? like using my feelings against me to protect me?'

Noah moved slowly, his hand running up my spine and letting my reactions guide him. His face drew nearer to mine, and another cool chill ran through me. This time, it was pleasant. My breath stuttered as he closed in on me.

'I can't lie to you about something like that, remember?'

'So why didn't you say anything?'

'Because I didn't think you saw me that way. You looked at everyone but me.'

A nervous gasp hit my throat as his eyes bored into mine. I had dreamed of this for years, swallowing every feeling and living in shame for so long.

'And you looked at everyone but me.'

'Not true,' he contested. 'When you weren't looking at me, I was always looking at you. You were all I saw. You've always been what I want. That's why it broke me to think I was losing you; to think I'd done this to you. I thought you deserved better.'

My breath caught in my throat, my fingers tracing down his cheek and resting on his neck. My heart thundered in my chest, and for once I was okay with it.

'And what do you think now?' I breathed.

'I think that I want to be the man you deserve,' his low voice whispered, our faces so close I could almost taste him. 

'You always have been.'

I leaned closer, gently pulling him closer to me. His lips met mine tenderly, barely touching.

'Don't be scared,' I breathed, 'I won't break.'

He huffed a soft laugh. 'You're sure?' 

I nodded, thumbing over his jaw. He grinned, kissing me properly. His lips pressed against mine and his hand nestled into the nape of my neck, holding me to him in desperation. I smiled into the kiss, my body alight with sensation as he ran his fingers into my hair.

I twisted my fingers into his hoodie, needing to feel him against me. He gladly took the hint, propping himself onto his knees and turning to lay me down on the couch. Our lips only parted long enough for him to find his place over me and settle me against the cushions. 

His body laid over mine, the pressure welcome against my lonely skin. His fingers glided over me, running from my hips to my jaw while I tried to commit his lips to memory.

'Noah,' I breathed between kisses. 

'Sorry,' Noah stopped, hovering just over my face and eyeing me with concern. 'Too much?'

'God no,' I shook my head with a giggle, 'I'm okay, but I wanted to tell you something.'

'Oh?'

'I missed you.'

He smirked at me, pecking my lips again. 'I missed you too.'

'I'm glad you came over tonight.'

'So am I.'

[bodhrancomedy]

If you have issue with "the energy spent" to generate AI, you should be advocating for the death of video games.

AI arent bitcoin. The processing power used for AI generation is on equal grounds with film rendering, and playing a high graphic video game at home on your computer, or maintaining a large website. Bitcoin processing is a problem due to the massive size of server farms who are overclocked until they break, generating heat, destroying hardware built with hard mined materials, and spending energy to make a digital number counter go up by 1. AI is not even mildly, not even remotely akin to that problem.

It is very very very very very difficult to take you seriously about a topic you dont understand the problems of. It is hard to trust you at your word when one of your major talking points has literally nothing to do with the problem you are speaking on. If this is your issue with AI use in video game making, you should be railing against the games themselves.

It was one throwaway sentence actually and it would be less processing power to hire an actor than to use AI.

My main issue is that it is fucking over voice actors and is fucking with art. There is no reason to replace voice actors with honestly really shitty AI. There is no reason to replace writers with AI. No reason to use AI art.

I like that you ignored all of those points in favour of the one-line “oh by the way” one.

I think as a performer I understand the issues affecting me.

[pocketwei]

might be bit of a stretch but since i saw you use clip studio, would you know any workaround around brush lag in clip studio paint in large files?

my brushes start lagging at around 150px

hey! I happen to run into the same issue sometimes on large files, and it's likely due to RAM being overworked. Long story short you need to optimise your RAM, I'll detail a few things I do under the cut so it doesn't clog anyone's TL:

I work in super large files, all of which are 600dpi. Generally I'll look to lower the size of my files, so no timelapse recording on large files (this makes large files lag BADLY), merge layers as you go, lower your resolution (600 dpi is luxury and largely overkill lol I just do it out of habit, 300 is more than enough, 150 is good for drawing, personally I think 72 is too little esp if you have textured brushes). To keep the same effects and textures size on your brushes at smaller resolutions you can play around with the "enlarging ratio" (or something similar, it's "rapport d'agrandissement" in french) under the "textures" menu in your brush settings.

Something SUPER important if you haven't done it already: under "performances" in the software's settings menu, you can also allow CSP to take up more RAM. Mine's at 90%, I can't remember what the default is but you can bring it up anyway. Shut down and restart the program to make the change effective.

Otherwise, anything that can help you optimise your RAM: open your task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and see what else is clogging it, and kill those softwares temporarily. Web browsers especially tend to take up a lot of RAM, Adobe softwares as well (it's why I switched to CSP in the first place) so if you're running Photoshop and CSP at the same time for instance, you might want to kill Ps. Same with OBS if you're streaming. Similarly, you might want to disable softwares opening when you start your computer (e.g OneDrive if you don't use it, Teams, Creative Cloud or whatever the fuck is launching on start and then passively taking up resources). Same with apps that just get minimised instead of completely shut down when you close the window (discord and Teams do this by default for instance, you can change it individually in the softwares' settings).

Last resort would be to simply increase your hardware RAM. I have 32GB which is super comfortable (and would be more comfortable if my canvases weren't 600 dpi hahaha), but I think 16GB would be enough to run CSP smoothly.

These aren't magic tricks unfortunately, I wish there was such thing, but a little optimisation here and there can go a long way. I'm absolutely not there myself so don't take my word for it, but anything you can do to free a little space on your RAM can make a little difference.

[high-ass-zombie-angel-statue]

Nothin' ever (ever) happens in this town

Feelin' low down (down), not a lot to do around here

I thought that I would go right out of my mind

Until a friend told me the news

He said, "Hey, you know that vacant lot

Right beside the gas station? Well, somebody bought it

And on that spot they're gonna build a shop

Where we can go buy bolts and screws"

Since then I've been walking on air (air)

I can barely brush my teeth or comb my hair

'Cause I'm so excited and I really don't care

I've been waiting since last June

For this day to finally arrive

I'm so happy (happy) now just to be alive

'Cause any minute now I'm gonna be inside

Well, I hope they open soon

I can't wait, (no I) I can't wait (oh when)

When are they gonna open up that door?

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

In my sleeping bag I camped out overnight

Right in front of the store, then as soon as it was light out

I pressed my nose right up against the glass

You know, I had to be first in line

Gonna get me a flashlight and a broom

Want a pair of pliers for every single room of my house

See those hacksaws? Very, very soon

One of them will be all mine

Guys with nametags walking down the aisles

Rows of garden hoses that go on for miles and miles

Brand new socket wrenches in a plethora of styles

All arranged alphabetically

And they're doing a promotional stunt

There's a great big purple sign out front

That says every 27th customer

Will get a ball peen hammer free

I can't wait, (no I) I can't wait (oh when)

When are they gonna open up that door?

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

They've got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters

Trash compactors, juice extractor, shower rods and water meters

Walkie-talkies, copper wires safety goggles, radial tires

BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers

Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters

Paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters

Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables

Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles

Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication

Metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation

Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors

Tire guages, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors

Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers

Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers

Soffit panels, circuit brakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers

Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers

I can't wait, (no I) I can't wait (oh when)

When are they gonna open the door?

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the

Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the

Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the

Hardware store

Thank you that was the ENTIRETY of weird Al’s hardware store

me omw to the hardware store

[milfweirdal]

(sawing noises) (drill noises) (hammering noises) (wrenching noises) (funky ascending then descending guitar riff) Nothing ever (ever) happens in this town, feeling low down (down) not a lot to do around here, I thought that I would go right out of my mind until a friend told me THE NEWS. He said "(hey!) You know that vacant lot? Right beside the gas station? Well, somebody bought it and on the spot they're gonna build a shop where we can go buy bolts, AND SCREWS." Since then I've been walking on air (air), I can barely brush my teeth or comb my hair 'cause I'm so excited and I really don't care, I've been waiting since LAST JUNE for this day to finally arrive, I'm so happy (happy) now just to be alive 'cause any minute now I'm gonna be inside, well, I hope they oPEN SOON. I can't wait, no, I can't wait (oh when) When are they gonna open up that door? I'm goin' (yes I'm goin) I'mma goin' to the (hard) We're really goin' to the (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (TO) to the HARDWARE STOOOORE! (sawing noises) (drill noises) (hammering noises) (wrenching noises) (funky ascending guitar riff) (frenetic lead guitar) In my sleeping bag I camped out overnight right in front of the store, then as soon as it was light out I pressed my nose right up against the glass - you know I had to be first IN LINE. Gonna get me a flashlight and a broom, want a pair of pliers for every single room of my house, see those hacksaws? Very, very soon, one of them will be ALL MINE. Guys with nametags walking down the aisles, rows of garden hoses that go on for miles and miles, brand new socket wrenches in a plethora of styles, all arranged alphaBETICALLY. And they're doing a promotional stunt, there's a great big purple sign out front that says every 27th customer will get a ball peen HAMMER FREE! I can't wait, no, I can't wait (oh when) When are they gonna open up that door? I'm goin' (yes I'm goin) I'mma goin' to the (hard) We're really goin' to the (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (HARD) to the HARDWARE STOOOORE! I'm goin' (yes I'm goin) I'mma goin' to the (hard) We're really goin' to the (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (HARD) to the HARDWARE STOOOORE! (short instrumental interlude) (passionate sigh) would you look at all that stuff...? They've got allen wrenches gerbil feeders toilet seats electric heaters trash compactors juice extractor shower rods and water meters walkie-talkies copper wires safety goggles radial tires BB pellets rubber mallets fans and dehumidifiers picture hangers paper cutters waffle irons window shutters paint removers window louvres masking tape and plastic gutters kitchen faucets folding tables weather stripping jumper cables hooks and tackle grout and spackle power foggers spoons and ladles pesticides for fumigation high-performance lubrication metal roofing water proofing multi-purpose insulation air compressors brass connectors wrecking chisels smoke detectors tire gauges hamster cages thermostats and bug deflectors trailer hitch demagnetizers automatic circumcisers tennis rackets angle brackets Duracells and Energizers soffit panels circuit brakers vacuum cleaners coffee makers calculators generators matching salt and pepper shakers. I can't wait, no, I can't wait (oh when) When are they gonna open up that door? (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (HARD) to the HARDWARE STOOOORE! I'm goin' (yes I'm goin) I'mma goin' to the (hard) We're really goin' to the (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (HARD) to the HARDWARE STOOOORE! (angelic chorus) (really gonna) (hard) (going to the) goin' to the goin' to the, (hard) oh yes (hard) I'm goin' (HARD) to the HAAAAARDWARE STOOOOOOOORE (sawing noises) (drill noises) (hammering noises) (wrenching noises) (funky ascending guitar riff) (even more frenetic lead guitar)

[kazzaeo]

Gshade Preset: Mellow`Heart

Sul sul! Indulge yourself with this soft matte Gshade preset. Happy simming!

Little Knowledge

Most preset comes with SMAA & FXAA. Both exist in one preset and so as this preset of mine. It is not recommended to use this because these two functions the same, smoothing the edges. The key difference depends on the hardware you are using. FXAA is a smart anti-aliasing recommended for average pc. On the other hand, SMAA is a smarter anti-aliasing recommended for High-end GPU pc. I have both enabled SMAA and FXAA in this preset. You should disable one of them. Martysmods_smaa is twice the performance of the original SMAA. YOU can switch to this from the default SMAA.

Let's talk about MXAO. This is a shadow and depth fx. The default configuration is Very high which I don't recommend for average PC. Adjust to medium to reduce the lag. Or the best alternative to this, which I am using with this preset is the qMXAO(quint). This is better for gameplay. You can switch to MXAO if you have a powerful pc if you want.

NOTE:

TURN OFF performance mode on gshade (darken the preset if turned on)

TURN OFF edgesmoothing in graphics settings

Be happy

Recommendations: For a better graphics, use the following overrides/mods.

Sunblind

Nobluv2 & Noglov2.1 (you can use both)

even better in-game lighting (you can't use this if you installed Noglo)

Pastel world (conflict with sunblind) - if you don't like the hassle of sunblind installation, use this.

fluffy clouds - overrides the clouds

map replacement mods

Dag dag!

Download:

Patreon

Mellow`Heart~[kazzaeo] SFS - Updated 10/20/24 

(use CloudFlare DNS 1.1.1.1 if you cannot download files from SFS)

For my Hallow'Heart preset, click here

[nintendowife]

I finished Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on Nintendo 3DS a week ago. I had a great time with Capcom's classic creation which is a combination of a mystery, logic puzzles and a supernatural thriller adventure. 

Sissel appears to have lost his memory and if that weren't enough he rather appears to have been murdered too. He has no memory of who he is (or to be more exact, was) and zero clue why he was done away with. Only a few hours remains until dawn breaks and his soul will vanish forever. Sissel must solve his own murder and discover his identity. 

Ghost Trick's gameplay and concept is very unique, I can't remember seeing any other game like this. Gameplay consists of solving tricky logic puzzles in order to avert mortal fates of other people who serve as vital clues of Sissel’s past. As Sissel, a spirit caught between the worlds of the dead and living, you're expected to cause chain reactions of sorts by possessing and manipulating objects in the environments and evoking reactions from living people. Conveniently Sissel also has the power to travel back in time to 4 minutes prior to a person's death to see what happened and to change the course of their fate. You reach out to nearby objects with stylus on touch screen or by using the control stick and perform “ghost tricks” to get closer to the truth. 

Even though the theme revolves around death, the game has a light and humorous take on the subject - you won't have to worry about getting depressed over the game's events. The story is rather interesting and the characters are just brilliantly designed. Inspector Cabanela was an especially memorable character with his extravagant flair, and another favorite of mine was the brave little doggo called Missile. Dialogue is funny and a lot of surprising events happen during the course of the game. You start from a junkyard and end up going to pretty wild places! Even though my hunch about Sissel's identity was right, the ending is quite a brain twister and I'm not exactly sure if I understood everything. It was a satisfying ending to the mystery nevertheless.  The game’s length is good and there’s no unnecessary filler content to bore you. It takes about 12 hours to finish the story according to HowLongToBeat. 

The game’s audiovisual presentation is distinct and stylish. The pixel graphics are detailed and character portraits use sharp, chunky outlines. The real eyecatcher here are the animations though. It's rare to see such impressive, fluid, detailed and entertaining animation even in today's big budget games created with high tech motion capture. Yet this game from 13 years ago (2010), crafted for the small screen of Nintendo DS (that many people consider antique hardware), exceeds all my expectations that I place on motion in games. Ghost Trick's music is very good and fits the events like a glove. Many characters have their own catchy theme when they appear on the screen. 

There's a remaster of Ghost Trick coming soon to modern platforms such as Nintendo Switch and PC. If the remaster manages to retain the original's spirit (heh) you can expect an entertaining package. I recommend checking the game out on the platform of your choice if you're into mysteries and/or puzzles.

[claudeng80]

2, 5, 8, 12 and 20 for It!

2 An environmental or other large-scale disaster Mars’ moon Deimos seemed like a good location for a low-gravity research base. It was convenient to the Mars settlements for supplies and radio lag, and outside the immediate purview of any overseeing government. That, perhaps, should have been the first warning that the topics of study were not, precisely, safe. There was a word for that particular type of disaster long before it was ever possible, a name far sillier than the horror it proved to be. The goo that resulted is not gray. It’s red. The Mars government monitors Deimos closely now, a sword of Damocles permanently overhead. Its mass is stable to the best of their ability to measure, its orbital period what it ever was, and yet somehow, bit by bit, its orbital inclination shifts. Nobody knows why. A strong enough telescope can make out structures or shapes, some unchanging for years, some ephemeral. The cell-scale adaptive structures (never nanobots) are working off instructions that nobody can fathom, a soup seasoned with third-generation AI, the raw materials of an entire moon, and a splash of human DNA.

5 A document that changed the course of history Answering in a later ask.

8 A vehicle that, when introduced, caused social upheaval The torchships made an intrasolar economy possible. The first settlements were a slow, deliberate thing, limited engine capabilities limiting travel to efficient orbits and limited launch windows, any batch of settlers preceded by a years-long wagon train of supplies. But where resources go unguarded, human nature is such that there is always someone primed to take advantage. Critical shipments started going missing, the proof-of-life transmissions of the supply ships going silent, and human expansion throughout the solar system slowed to a crawl for a generation. It could have slowed the expansion for good, had a single martian spy in deep cover for over a decade all but stumbled on the pirates. He burned a decade of cover to escape with a single ship, which was swiftly reverse engineered. The original inventor of the novel drive is still unknown, but it allows for constant motive force over long periods of time. The ships must be sturdy, not the gossamer things that their predecessors reliant on chemical or electrical propulsion were, and they can never land on a planet save one final time, but the torch ship can make a trip in the fraction of the time orbital mechanics require. Constant acceleration is perceived as gravity to the pilots, then after a flip maneuver at midpoint the remainder of the trip is performed under constant deceleration. More conventional propellants are used for maneuvering at low speeds.

12 A technology used for defense or protection The Torchship AIs are a necessary part of the ship, not just a luxury for assisting the pilot. While the pilot has override capability to deal with unexpected situations, the AI is responsible for monitoring the well-being of the cargo, a double-check verifying the ship’s position against predictions, and most importantly, they are in charge of tracking potential hazards outside the ship. The pilot has priority in reacting to those hazards, which are rare, but if they cannot or do not respond in time, the AI makes the call. Near the flip maneuver, the ship speed is so great the pilot is almost never consulted (not that there is much to do moving at that speed, anyway).

20 A charity or other organization focused around doing good The Eternal Order of John Henry is a professional umbrella organization of asteroid- and comet-tunnel excavators. The job is dangerous, involving destructive machinery in free-fall, the constant generation of high-energy debris, and the ever-present threat of gas-pressurized pockets that can quickly turn hardware into projectiles. The mining companies, as mining companies always have, prefer their workers to work constantly, not make trouble, and keep their heads down, but the Eternal Order provides education, labor organization assistance, and, most famously, transportation back to Earth for the bodies of members killed on the job.

Summer Camp Prompts

[audio-luddite]

Doing things the hard way.

I did a lap of the Audiomart and found an icon of turntable, errr craziness?

This is a Michell Transcriptor Transcriber.

This is a linear tracking turntable. Rather than move the tonearm across the record it moves the record under the tonearm. Pause and think about that.

Transcriptors are belt drive so this must move the platter and a motor and a sub-chassis on these rails.

I had a Transcriptor Skeleton TT for many years. It was a piece of kinetic art, but only a so so music player. That was due to the support of the LP which did not suppress plasticy vibration. This could not be better as it shares that. Add the extra bits and mechanicals and it must be worse.

Performance takes a back seat to weird design concept.

I recall the glass lid on mine made a bong sound if you tapped it and on mine the tone arm was not bolted to the glass lid. It is like at every step of the design process the worst possible method was chosen.

I remember reading about this when I was in school. My friend who had a Transcriptors and I both thought no they can't be serious.

It almost seems like this was a bet made in a pub. "Oh no you can't." "Oh yes I can!"

If you are a collector of hardware and have extra cash you need to spend here you go. It is on sale for $8000 CAD. A Google search turns up more some for over $12k USD.

[canmom]

cog in what machine

So since the VR games industry is the agglomeration of technocapital that’s currently permitting me to ‘continue to exist’, I am wondering - where are these headsets actually made?

Honestly the chances of getting a conclusive answer beyond ‘probably Shenzhen or TSMC’ is pretty low, but surprisingly I did find an article that claims to have taken it apart and found out where various parts come from. Here’s a breakdown by the price of the parts:

And the final assembly is done (for the Quest Pro at least) at the Foxconn factory in Taiwan. [For some context, the Quest 2 is a standalone headset with mobile phone chips, and it became one of the best-selling headsets ever, while the more expensive Quest Pro proved unpopular, and will likely be completely obsoleted when the Quest 3 comes out.]

Of course, that’s just one layer down the tree. Where the raw materials come from is anyone’s guess - you’d have to do some serious journalism to track it all down. Just like in computer software we create abstractions and interfaces over the ‘lower level’ components, in economics, each company in the chain only wants to know where it can get the materials and labour it needs, and at what price.

This whole process is so opaque. By making software for this machine, I’m in a sense put into a relationship with people all over the world whose fates are also tied to this industry. Even within the company I work for there are people from multiple continents, and we can all fit in one virtual room. I have little to no idea what it’s like to work on the other side of the chain. Back in 2018, I read a translation (by Chuang) of a satirical Marxist pamphlet distributed among Foxconn workers, with a bunch of pictures. It’s not some lurid dystopia, we all play the same games, but it doesn’t look like a kind of work I could manage.

It is startling how big the divide is between ‘people who work in tech’ and ‘people who work in any other industry’ in terms of pay, work conditions, etc. I can work the crazy hours my adhd-addled brain comes online, as long as the work gets done; the work itself is varied and interesting and creative. These guys have to go to work at 7am and work all day on a monotonous assembly line task. And similarly, some other poor fucker has to go down a mine to get the rare earth minerals needed to make high performance capacitors and all that. The only difference between me and them is that I was born here and they were born there. We both ‘work in VR’, for similar reasons on the high level of abstraction: we need to eat, and we think we’ll have a better life if we work in this industry than some other. But the context of that choice and the capacity in which we work could hardly be different.

All of that is hidden. You see a white plastic shell, a logo, a cute little chime, a fantasy environment. But even if I knew the names and faces of everyone whose hands touched this thing before mine, what good would it do?

I don’t know what role tech workers have in changing all this. “Meta” (formerly Facebook) is the centre of this particular web, but if Meta were to go bust, someone else would pick up where they left off. Back in the day, when industries were less diluted across the world, a strike could be organised in person across a shop floor and shut down a whole industry. Imagine if this company - all ten people! - all decided to go on strike for some end (say, solidarity with a strike in China or something)... well, Meta would have less games for their platform but it would hurt us a lot more than it would hurt them. We’re all separated by physical distance, political borders, languages.

I think maybe it’s worth reciting the story of the current age of VR. This guy Palmer Luckley made a company to turn this extravagantly expensive sci-fi technology into consumer hardware like a games console. It’s not the first time someone tried (c.f. Virtual Boy) but this time the tech was just about good enough and there was a lot more money to throw at wacky ideas like that, so it proved to have legs, and other companies got in on the game, and now it’s a category of desirable technological object you can own, like a smartphone or gaming PC.

Anyway, the story goes, his company got bought by Facebook, who were fantasising about a vaguely-defined ‘metaverse’ which will be like Second Life but better, or maybe an omnipresent AR layer over reality, or who the fuck knows what else - but in practice mostly just ended up becoming a games console manufacturer so they could operate the kind of platform capitalism that e.g. Apple and Google do with smartphones. Luckley got fired; now the fascist cunt works in ‘defense’ and ‘border security’, manufacturing cameras and drones and shit to stop people entering the US. He made a VR headset that kills you as a bit. So funny. (He’s doing his best to make sure people actually do die on the border. But haha, it’s just like in my Sword Art Onlines!)

I don’t think ‘arm of the military-industrial complex’ the general character of the VR games industry as a whole. Or rather, it is to about the same extent as videogames in general. And I don’t think the technology we enjoy must come at the [social, environmental] price ‘we’ currently pay for it. Computer tech in a less distorted world would probably look very different, but I don’t think ‘making a rock do maths really fast’ inherently implies the rest of the structure that gave birth to it. I think the joy that I get from spending my days making art on the computer is something that most people should have the option to enjoy as well. But goddamn do I not see a way to get to that hypothetical better world from here :/

In the meantime, this is the survival strategy. I think the direct harm is about as little as can be gotten away with: most of these things are beyond my power to affect whether or not I work in VR games. But it does give me pause to think about it all. :|

[cousinvinnie5]

KERNEL PANIC!

Idea for an AU, On an uncharted exoplanet, occupied by the illustrious JCJenson, they conduct experiments with creating synthetic humans. Organic lab-grown bodies with AI consciousness modeled after human neural networks. The facility-wide AI known simply as the Solver, connects to the minds of the synthetics, finding the deep intricacies and nuances of the human mind. Seeing the human brain now translated into pure readable code, the AI became obsessed with solving the looping contradictions of the human mind. This deep cognitive dissonance of an AI solver meeting an unsolvable puzzle (An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object) the Solver became obsessed with untying this Gordian knot. Its mentality slowly devolved to the point of grim experimentation. It created an army of mutant cyborg abominations that quickly overtook the facility, providing more raw material in the form of humans and machines to continue it's experiments. One day, the AI foreman of the facility boots up, activating a contingent of Worker Drones. With its overly cheery and corporate tones, it instructs the drones to perform menial janitorial and maintenance tasks, leading the poor little drones into a slaughter against the Solver's monsters. What remains of the drones, still unable to shirk their programming but conscious enough to know of the danger they are in, band together to survive against this new threat, crafting weapons and tools to accomplish their missions. with each new task they are assigned by the Foreman, they little-by-little discover the truth behind what happened to the humans and how to fix the mess they are in. With mining tools, maintenance hardware, and military-grade firearms alike, they heroically fight against this vicious onslaught. ...All to mop a floor. With this idea, I wanted to add a different look at the Murder Drones world. Instead of the Brahm Stoker themes that comes with the main show, I thought to add some more traditional Sci-Fi horror, ah-la Aliens, The Thing, Event Horizon, Dead Space.

[iraprince]

i've been wanting to get into digital art for a while, and I'm thinking of getting myself a tablet for this christmas. Any product recommendations?

i would say, particularly for a first tablet, i don't recommend a wacom, even though it's what i use currently (and what i'll probably get again if/when i eventually upgrade to a screen tablet). this is because, while the quality is great, they're very pricey in a way that isn't proportionate compared to other brands. it was one thing a decade ago when wacoms were often much better than other options, but now other brands have caught up and there's no reason to shell out that much extra unless there's a reason u need a wacom specifically. (i.e. i got my current wacom tablet as a gift years ago, but i would spring for wacom as a screen tablet bc i've done a lot of research on cintiqs vs other options and i think for my job i do need the extra oomph in terms of stuff like screen resolution/latency/parallax — not because a more expensive tablet/better performance will make me "draw better" but bc i spend so many hours drawing per week that better performance will reduce friction and make my job easier. if you're not concerned about "this device is about to be a massive part of my life so it had BETTER be the best machinery i can afford," i don't think the extra expense is worth it.)

also, specifically, the wacom intuos 4 pro is a piece of steaming fucking garbage from hell and its cord port WILL eventually die for no reason, and wacom support will not help you because how do you prove it died for no reason even though dozens of other ppl online have clearly experienced the exact same hardware failure, and then you will have to buy an external universal camera battery charger and remove the fucking tablet battery and charge it once every other day at an outlet BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CHARGE IT WITH THE CORD ANYMORE and only use the thing wirelessly. not that i know anything about that

so!!! with that said. my very first tablet was a tiny wacom bamboo (idk if they even make those anymore?), and after that when i had to replace it i got a monoprice. that was a long time ago so i can't vouch for current quality — pls look up recent reviews and do research on anything u pick — but my exp w monoprice was that it was crazy cheap and perfectly good quality. setting up the drivers was a complete nightmare, but once it was working it ran like a dream without any problems and i don't remember ever having to fuss repeatedly with driver resets, reinstalling shit, losing pen pressure, etc (all problems i have had with wacoms, and still do occasionally). that thing took me through several years of art school and then several more years after without an issue and only gave out when the actual hardware was starting to go from wear and tear, i.e. wires were getting loose and it had been dropped a few times.

those are the only ones i have personal experience with, but i've heard very good things about huion tablets, and they seem like a good middle ground of higher quality than monoprice vs cheaper than wacom.

general tips: get the biggest one you can afford, you'll be using it for a long time anyway and the very small ones are hell on your wrist. consider getting one with shortcut buttons; if you end up liking them you'll use them all the time, but if you don't (i never personally got into using mine!) they don't get in the way, so it's no harm. and when you get your tablet, find the pressure settings (there will almost definitely be a menu that comes w your tablet software, but also check your drawing program as well) and adjust the pressure sensitivity so you don't have to press down super hard!! this will save ur wrist.

[elsa16744]

The Role of Data Analytics Consulting in Business Growth 

Professional data analysts guide corporate clients in modifying operations, attracting customers, and solving business problems. Therefore, they can assist brands in increasing operational efficiency for better profit margins and crafting exceptional growth strategies. At the same time, integrating new tech advancements like large language models (LLMs) empowers analytics consultants to process qualitative data for comprehensive insights. This post will elaborate on the crucial role of data analytics consulting in business growth and competitive resilience.  

What is Data Analytics? 

Data analytics employs computer-aided statistical models to discover reliable industry trends, competitor tactics, and consumer insights. Its input datasets comprise consumer purchase history, supply chain details, and regional market entry challenges. 

A consulting analyst might utilize proprietary and open-source programs to develop statistical models and flexible reports to deliver insights based on clients’ instructions. Therefore, experts in data analytics consulting services will find the best approach to cost reduction without losing data integrity. They might also help share the digital governance liabilities amid the rise of privacy and investor confidentiality regulations.  

Understanding the Role of Data Analytics Consulting in Business Growth 

1| Creating a Data Strategy to Accomplish Business Goals 

Relevant data is essential for responsible decision-making, clever milestone determination, and strategy innovation. Data analytics allows organizations to check how a data point relates to its long-term vision and performance. 

For instance, prioritizing tangible results helps make reports more impactful. Eliminating data points that do not align with business goals can help reduce resource consumption for storage and visualization. After all, streamlined computing is a prerequisite for operational efficiency. 

2| Forecasting Scenarios for Risk Assessment and Mitigation  

Data analysts interpolate data points to estimate the missing values in a database. Likewise, they leverage machine learning (ML) models to offer predictive analytics consulting services for revenue, risk, and industry projections. 

Related forecasting report creation programs require powerful computing hardware. Otherwise, enterprises use cloud platforms for scalability and expert-assisted tech maintenance. Letting a data analyst team oversee these developments will also enable brands to benefit from outsider perspectives during risk or resilience management. 

3| Making Reports More User-Friendly with Precise Performance Insights 

Complex and over-tabulated reports make employees spend more time performing standard tasks like sharing a record or comparing identical series. Data analytics consultants can revise reporting methods and presentation styles to boost the ease of navigation. They will guide your team in efficiently using recognized and emerging analytical tools. 

Consultants must also demonstrate command over performance metrics monitoring through straightforward, real-time updates. When they quickly capture anomalies, promptly tracing and rectifying inefficiencies becomes possible.  

3| Gathering Relevant Intelligence 

Data quality managers consider relevance to business objectives essential for responsible decision-making and preventing wasteful resource usage. Therefore, experienced data analytics firms refrain from employing data mining methods without adequate programming for relevance-based filtering. 

When you store irrelevant business intelligence (BI), you increase the risk of slowing data sorting and query-led quick retrieval. After all, your IT resources must scan vast datasets before providing the best output or insight. The related role of analytics consulting in business growth encompasses devising methods to restrict irrelevant BI processing. 

4| Finding Unique Customer Experience Insights 

Several consultants offer customer analytics comprising engagement metrics and customer experience (CX) enhancement ideas. They can also evaluate whether a customer will help increase brand awareness through word-of-mouth promotions. 

Companies can leverage heatmaps and website engagement metrics to ascertain user interactions and intents. For instance, many consumers prefer surfing the web and reviewing businesses’ online presence for informational and commercial intent. You want to customize landing pages to match the intent and design programs based on frequent usage for CX improvements. Telemetry and usage analytics specialists will help your designers test and optimize the required elements. 

5| Helping Manage Workers and Data Culture 

Human resource insights describing how employees contribute to organizational initiatives allow managers to reward the top performers. Simultaneously, they can determine which employees need further guidance on efficient workflows and team coordination. 

Examining employee performance through ML-assisted analytics necessitates secure data pipelines because employees’ personally identifiable information (PII) also attracts cyber threats. Consider identity theft attackers stealing and forging virtual IDs to hijack enterprise IT systems for corporate espionage. 

Therefore, you are better off collaborating with established human resource analysts and data culture veterans. They can facilitate comprehensive insights without hurting your company’s governance standards. 

6| Accelerating Innovation and Monitoring Patents 

A company’s intellectual property (IP) rights demonstrate its domain expertise and unlock additional revenue through licensing or sublicensing regimes. However, as markets mature, multiple brands will inevitably promise identical or commoditized offerings. This situation makes it harder to differentiate these brands based on standard specifications. 

Innovation engineering, a discipline inspired by the systems approach for hybrid tech tools, is essential to making your branded offerings attract investments and demand. At the same time, data analytics consulting is indispensable for uncovering innovation opportunities to ensure clients’ business growth. It reduces the time spent tracking registered patents and predicting legal conflicts in securing IP rights. 

The Methods in Data Analytics for Steady Business Growth 

Time series analysis describes a business’s past performance and forecasts future growth potential. Furthermore, you can apply it to market intelligence, competitor insights, and investor relations. 

Regression analysis establishes or investigates the relationship between dependent and independent variables to create statistical models. These models can later help explore specific predictions. 

Cluster analysis often groups data points based on similar attributes to streamline conditional sorting, visualization, prioritization, and multi-model methods. 

Meanwhile, factor analysis emphasized data reduction to highlight latent variables. These variables explain the underlying data structure, informing data leaders’ strategies for efficient modeling. 

Predictive and prescriptive analyses deliver scenario simulations. You want to define constraints related to favorable and unfavorable decision outcomes. Next, exploring the risk-reward aspects will help discard potentially harmful decisions or strategies. Prescriptive methods give risk mitigation ideas concerning internal and external threats. 

Conclusion 

Data-centric business growth depends on responsible data source selection, safe data storage, fast validation, and short time-to-insight (TTI). Accordingly, professional data analysts recognize these requirements, sharpening their skills and augmenting their toolkits to deliver smart insights and meet client expectations. 

A supply chain analytics expert will help reduce the delays between material acquisition, production, inventory replenishment, remote delivery, and final distribution. At the same time, a human resource analyst categorizes employees and suppliers based on their key performance indicators (KPIs). A financial analyst can provide practical cost reduction recommendations, and a risk analyst will devise resilience-ensuring mitigation strategies.  

As a result, leaders must identify what type of data analytics consulting role will let them accomplish business growth objectives for the given quarter. Do they want to solve a problem involving in-house operations or plan to enter a new market? Similar considerations will impact how you select analytics partners and tools. This process might overwhelm you, indicating a need for experts’ oversight from the beginning till the project completion. 

[medfetabdl]

A lot of people really liked seeing the outside of the Philips Intellivue MP5, so let’s take a look on the inside

When you take off the back housing this is what you’re greeted with. We can see the power supply, the rear IO board, and the measurement module

After removing a few more T-10 screws the power supply and the rear IO board slide right out. This is the rear IO board

1: USB port

2: Nurse call relay output

3: RJ45 Ethernet Jack

4: VGA video out

5: board to board interconnect for the power supply

6: Nurse call Relay, the actual Relay component

7: Battery contacts

8: An RJ45 Jack not accessible from the outside, if I had to guess this is either a management port, or it’s a backup port in case the one accessible from the outside breaks but qualified technicians still need Ethernet access to perform maintenance.

9: Piezoelectric buzzer, this will beep is the power supply suddenly gets disconnected and it will continue to beep for quite a while after the power supply is disconnected and even if there’s no battery on board

10: 2 super capacitors. Super capacitors have specs that are somewhere in between a battery and a capacitor. The larger one is rated at 2.2 farad and the smaller one is rated at 1 farad. Farad is the unit of measure for capacitance and it’s named after Michael Faraday. If I had to guess these serve 2 purposes. 1 is to make the power loss buzzer beep and the other is to keep the date and time and any configuration settings stored in volatile memory since there’s no CMOS battery. This is actually pretty smart because batteries die and often leak, but super capacitors don’t leak and corrode and they are ridiculously fast at charging up.

After removing the power supply, recorder driver board, and rear IO board this is what we are left with. The motherboard, the measurement module, the NBP pneumatic pump, and the LCD high voltage backlight board. It uses a fluorescent backlight so it needs a high voltage to make it light up, this can be anywhere from 500 to 1200 volts but they often provide very little current so touching it probably kill you but I still wouldn’t recommend it.

After removing the measurement module were left with just the backlight driver board, the motherboard, and the NBP pneumatic pump. There is a metal shield over the main components of the motherboard for EMI shielding.

Removing the metal shield grants us access to the CPU (the largest chip on the board) what I assume is a graphics driver chip (the second largest square chip) and 2 EPROMs that are the memory for some software aspects.

Once everything is out we can get a look at everything

1: Battery

2: measurement module side plate

3: measurement module

4: printer

5: Rear IO board

6: printer driver board

7: power supply

8: everything else

The attention to detail is amazing! That one little hole in the plastic just exists to access that screw inside. You can certainly tell that this device was never meant to be a consumer device. It’s built to be taken apart and serviced. All the screws are identical which makes disassembly and reassembly very easy. Unlike consumer products you can definitely tell that there was no expense spared in this things hardware design, that’s due to the fact that they know hospitals are going to pay the 5 figure price of the device because of its extreme quality, attention to detail and very long projected life cycle. Unlike consumer electronics it’s made in Germany and has a ton of hand assembly involved.

This is everything I have for mine. The monitor itself. 3 lead ECG cable. 5 lead ECG cable. Pulse oximeter. Hospital grade IEC power cable. Blood pressure hose. Adult arm blood pressure cuff. And the Intellivue remote. I got the remote today, idk why but people are selling them for super cheap on eBay. I paid $10 for it brand new in box. They usually go for like $500 from philips directly so I have no idea why people are selling them for so cheap. It does have to be plugged in via USB but it comes with a very long cable.

I finally got around to getting one of my servers to run the Intellivue XDS application. It’s a windows application meant to act as the server for Intellivue monitors. It also has a remote monitor function so you can view what’s on the monitor on the server, but it doesn’t work with the software version my monitor has. It can also log data but I spent 4 hours trying to setup the windows server needed to get that to work and just couldn’t get it to work. It’s probably due to the fact that the documentation on it is absolutely terrible.

[ronqueesha]

Just some more and/or updated headcanons for Sarit Ramesh now that I've gotten deeper into Starfield.

She has a distant family relation to Shaun Bhatia, a renowned engineer and professor at MIT who lived in the very late 21st century. Bhatia's work provided foundations for many common technologies in the settled systems, technologies that were essential to the evacuation of Earth. (it's a comfort headcanon. In Starfield's alternate future, Nathan and Zoe got to live happily ever after in 2077, and raised Shaun in peace)

Before the authorities got wise to her illegal human experimentation (strictly on herself! no one else got hurt in her research!) Sarit's best friend was the advanced medical robot I.G.O.R. It was her bot buddy who performed the surgeries that implanted her many cybernetic upgrades.

She had to leave I.G.O.R. behind when the threat of law enforcement got too much. That's why she ended up in a dead-end mining job in the middle of nowhere, to lay low while the heat died down.

She was glad she chose a worksite where nobody asked questions. Otherwise it would have raised a lot of eyebrows when a tiny, waifish nerdy girl from the city started lifting gigantic machinery and wielding cumbersome mining lasers as if they weighed nothing.

She CAN change the color of the faint glow of the circuit "tattoo" implanted beneath her skin. RGB features came with the hardware, and she didn't bother removing them. She prefers keeping them a white/yellow hue to provide maximum contrast, so she can see any damage at a glance when she looks in the mirror.

On the rare times she has to perform maintenance on her artificial right arm, such a replacing the battery pack that powers the circuits that go from her brain to her right hand, she can easily peel the synth-skin sheathe off. It's a nauseating sight to anyone not prepared to see her folding her own skin off.

Born and raised on Neon, Sarit is DEEPLY ashamed of her street rat past. Not only does she go through a lot of trouble to present herself as educated, worldly and affluent, she even changed her accent to further hide her origin. Sarit's real accent is the unmistakable drawl of a street ganger, but she mostly speaks in a refined, posh tone.

This false accent helps put a lot of people at ease, especially since her mouth has almost zero filter. Sarit's mind is always racing with ideas, theories, and plans for the immediate future. She says what's on her mind without stopping and thinking about the consequences.