I like to play devil’s advocate and am interested in sharing knowledge about my hobbies! I like gaming and VR, AI, herbal vaporizers, media analysis and philosophy!

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  • 368 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Power, Domain Name (if using a standard paid one instead of the cheaper route), VPN are the 3 that I pay for that I feel are the bare minimum.

    I pay for a domain that’s $12, but you could easily get the $1 ones for the same purposes. I pay for a static and service VPN with Windscribe, which comes out to be like $35+$89 respectively. So that’s already $136 a year excluding the cost of power. I could cut that cost easily, but I use them for more than just my selfhosting so I feel like it’s a fair price for what I get out of it.


  • I’m not sure if iGPU’s are typically used for transcoding, which may be part of why you’re having difficulty finding solutions.

    As for re-encoding H264 into H265, increased file size is common. Encoding from source for the first time into H265 will lower file sizes, but if you’re re-encoding something you’re almost always going to lose data while increasing file size, especially on hardware encoders due to the methods and time it takes.

    Basically, try your hand at Very Slow software encoding. Wait a day. This H265 file will likely be smaller than the Hardware Encodes of the same thing.











  • I use lib-redirect for everything if I really need to get to a reddit link. It’s rare, but there are certain types of communities where I’d like to get a “average laymans” perspective and unfortunately just due to the size here on the fediverse there is rarely wide-spread availability. As you mentioned, specific games. Lots of hobbies. Even the opportunity for consumer tech talk, if I’m interested in replacing something that’s 8+ years old there’s just not a lot of existing content to search through here and that leaves blog posts and… Reddit.

    I’ve had plenty of time recognizing what astroturfing looks like, so I rarely feel like I’m left out of options to search. All that said, I’ve been doing this a lot less since the whole shift happened. Maybe an endeavor every few months, rather than few days/weeks.





  • I think there’s a wide spread. I’d say that there’s westerns like Brokeback Mountain and Dances With Wolves, where the suspense is more from the dire circumstances and grit that they have to work through in order to survive – few times are their lives gravely endangered. Similarly, there’s the Clint Eastwood westerns where you don’t really expect anything to be happening to that main character, yet they’re still well received. The “True Grit” style Western – someone to protect while you rough it through the hard life.

    And then there’s the westerns you’re talking about, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, nearly Magnificent Seven style western where the characters present an archetype and have a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall.

    The Mandalorian is more like a Western of the Week TV show where you have the drama of the grit, an undercurrent of hope that’s played off the main characters hardships.

    Idk. Din being invincible in the show is seemingly irrelevant to me, and not even supported in the content of the show. The first two seasons definitely have space Western episodes though, even if they might not be the more typical main character on the verge of death style ones.


  • Eh. I think characters dying as the only stakes is weak writing anyway. If I were using that as a judgement, all of Star Wars is terrible, especially the Clone Wars. Obviously, that’s not the case. Besides, clearly the armor rating is meaningless given the events of the S2 finale – clearly the armor isn’t protecting him from impacts what with his head injury.

    We if look to Ming Na Wen’s character I’d even argue that being hit by blasters in New Star Wars is just an opportunity to visit the medic anyway, so Din wearing beskar doesn’t really remove any of the suspense for me.