Trials of Cord Cutting

As you can see from my previous post, I’m fed up with Dish Network raising prices without providing any better features. For an account with local channels and a DVR, the base price is apparently over $100. Sure, you might get a “Starter Discount” but I’ve had my service for more than a Decade. $1200 per year is too much. Time to be a Cord Cutter.

So, let’s naively try to Cut the Cord and see what happens. But first, as all good engineers know, we develop a list of requirements:

Requirements

In no particular order:

News – Keep up with this crazy world, and find out, within an hour or two whether POTUS has been tossed out, or an earthquake or volcanic eruption has started nearby.

Entertainment – I get most of my entertainment from Netflix and DVD.com [Yeah I know it used to be called Netflix too, but they really want you to forget that they ever shipped you a DVD or BluRay.] for the movies that I can’t stream. But if I’m going to cut the cord I’ll need to get at least one more entertainment streaming service.

Use my new fancy Sony TV. A couple of years ago I got a Vizio P65, and it failed and then after they fixed the power supply, it decided to reboot itself a couple of times a day for no reason. Anyway, I now have a new Sony XBR-65X950H Bravia TV, and I love it. It works just fine and it supports “Android Apps” of course.

So how do we “Cut the Cord” and satisfy these requirements?

Continue reading “Trials of Cord Cutting”

DishNetwork – When do I stop?

When do I cry Uncle and stop this creeping greed?

What has Dish done for me lately? No new channels. More and more channels are leaving the base package.

So I only have the baseline HD service with DVR. Just keeps going up and up with fewer channels and no additional features. They even want to charge for a “Gallery” of still pictures as a TV Screensaver.

I’m close to just turning this off and signing up for Hulu or some other streaming service in addition to Netflix. At least when Netflix charges more money, I get more Netflix Originals. No such thing as Dish Originals. I think satellites are just too expensive a way to deliver content. Too little choice and too costly.

:ww

Final Fantasy XIV Announcement Showcase

FFXIV had a streamed showcase on 5 February, 2021. It was over 2 hours long and can be found here on Youtube. For those of you who may not have 2 hours to spend right now, but want the highlights I’ve put up some slides from the show here. I’m not going to comment very much. There are plenty of folks on Youtube that will do that. But you can get the gist of what’s been announced in short form here from the slides: Enjoy.

A second DPS job will be announced later.

Continue reading “Final Fantasy XIV Announcement Showcase”

Face Cloaking IRL – Next Steps

Recently I found this on Youtube:

And I got to thinking about the implications of this kind of technology. It seems to me that the next step is to make this available:

  • On our phones so that every Selfie or picture of our friends are cloaked before we upload them.
  • IRL -we need to learn to use makeup – both men and women – to change our faces to cloak them against face recognition, but in such a way that our friends may only notice we are wearing subtle makeup.
  • Clothing manufacturers can make an effort to provide quick-change clothing options for coats, shirts, pants, etc. to allow subtle cloaking for those of us who want options for privacy, on our way to work or other travels.

Recently we saw what happened when Facebook changed their privacy polices, causing a meltdown at Signal due to folks migrating. I suggest that this technology at Fawkes should cause a similar groundswell of new technology and migration to face cloaking.

Once these technologies are widely available and ubiquitous, then perhaps the face recognition feeds will contain so much noise that we can effectively take our privacy back.

Continue reading “Face Cloaking IRL – Next Steps”

Roller Beetle Achieved

Wheew. Not as bad as either Griffon or certainly Skyscale, the Roller Beetle is still a full two day process. Assuming you have all the maps required.

There are a few events that you have to wait on. Notably:

  • Kourna meta event to storm the Gandara Fortress. But this is on a schedule. You’ll need this for the Plague Scarab Egg for the feed.
  • Anomaly Spark requires the Ley-Line Anomaly, which I caught in Iron Marches on the schedule.
  • The Inquest Golem Mark II is on a schedule too in Mount Maelstrom.
  • The longest wait was in Far Silverwastes to get the Hearty Beetle Slime dropped by the Alpha Beetle event.
  • I lucked out in Bjora Marches by doing a couple of meta events there that gave me enough Eternal Ice to purchase the rest of the Inscribed Shards needed for the Desert Luciferin.

This is all much easier than even the Griffon or the Skyscale, so take heart and power through. And it’s all much easier if you have a flying mount. I saved lots of time by having the Skyscale before I did the Roller Beetle.

:ww

Skyscale Achieved

At long last I have a Skyscale Mount in GW2. It has been a long and punishing journey. The longest effort by far has been to get the various parts of the “Saddle”.

After the first few steps, there is the long grind for 250 of each of 6 different materials. This is a punishing grind for a couple of reasons:

(1) There is a throttle on each one of these materials so that only so many of them can be gathered each day. They are account bound when acquired so it’s not possible to purchase them on the market board. If they are gathered, then after so many are gathered, then then the nodes where they are gathered just dry up.

(2) Also, the areas where most of the materials are gathered are very dangerous for solo players. Thunderhead Peaks, and Kourna are so dangerous that solo farming is essentially impossible. I was able to farm Eternal Ice in Bjora Marches and with that material, you can purchase each of the other materials. But Eternal Ice gathering, or collecting from Events or Chests is throttled as well. I was only able to purchase 10 or 20 of the other materials per day since each 10 materials required 75 Eternal Ice. I was able to do chains of Meta Events in both zones of the BJora Marches map once or twice a day to get quite a few Eternal Ice to purchase other materials. It is reasonable to farm Diflourite in the Sandswept Isles as a Solo player and this is quite an interesting zone. I was able to get about 100 Mistborn Motes in a day with gathering and doing events in Dragonfall. I had another 150 or so of those from previous events and gathering from working Dragonfall during the Skyscale Achievements.

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Power Through Scarcity

I have recently come to the realization that Economics and Politics both wield power by controlling Scarcity.

  • Economics seeks power through the control of Scarcity of Resources.
  • Politics seeks power through the control of Scarcity of Choice.

It seems interesting to note that in the Universe at large, there are no scarcities of anything.

Post Scarcity

The Universe is full of Resources. Outside the restrictive gravity wells of planets, each Solar System and Each Galaxy is full of unclaimed Resources that are easy to exploit. Without conflict or competition. And the stars provide all the energy that any power hungry Economist might want to exploit those Resources.

The Universe is full of Choice. There are infinite many directions to take any endeavor. The Scarcity of Choice is artificial; often constrained in the pursuit of Economics. Beyond Politics there is Freedom.

I am hopeful that Humanity moves beyond the Artificial Scarcities of Economics and Politics someday and moves out to the wider unconstrained Universe of Post Scarcity of any kind.

The Scarcity of Time

The only Scarcity beyond Resources and Choice is the Scarcity of Time. We, as finite beings, strive toward the Infinite Lifespan. However, I fear that Biology, though miraculous, is destined to be forever finite. However, I see a future of Post Biology, where beings are freed from the Scarcity of Time to live infinite lifetimes in Virtual and Real space simultaneously. Fully redundant, fully plastic beings who change at will and who live forever. Continuously renewing their Silicon, or Post Silicon substrates to live on to pursue the goals of avoiding Species Extinction Events through redundancy and to explore the Galaxy. Only then can we explore the rest of the Galaxy and Beyond.

Choice of Action in Virtual and Physical Space.

Multitudes in Fleets of planetoid sized Starships, spreading through the Galaxy. Stopping at Solar Systems to Replicate in Kuiper and Asteroid Belts far from energy sapping gravity wells of planets and then to move on in many directions, along the Filaments of Matter that chain the stars together. Only with infinitely interesting and renewed lifetimes can this be accomplished.

Some stopovers might Bioform suitable planets and leave Ancestral Biology Colonies of life behind where this does not disturb already developing Biology.

First Steps

Of course our first steps must be to become Post Economic and Post Political. And the first steps to that end are to Forgive All Student Debt and provide Universal Health Care.

Small Steps toward a larger future.
:ww

A Tale of Four Mounts

Griffon is Reasonable

Back in October I started working on getting the Griffon Mount in GW2. After some frustration I have that mount now. Mounts in GW2 are account wide, so all my 18 or so characters have access to the Griffon.

It turns out that you don’t have to do all the story quests of “Path of Fire”, but only the last section. At least there’s that. There are some good guides for getting the Griffon. Mostly this is a matter of jumping puzzles to get Eggs and then the cost of about 250 Gold to buy the items required. In each of the Five maps there are eggs to collect and Events to participate in. You purchase various items from heart vendors and others. All in all, a reasonable effort.

Obtaining Skyscale is Punishing

The Skyscale is a whole other matter entirely.

I’ve pushed my way through most of the effort, and after grinding for a few days on getting Eternal Ice to get Kralkatite Ore, and a few more days farming Diflourite Crystals, I now need Inscribed Shards. Fighting my way around the map and doing some events got me about 20, and I made another round today for only 6. What a waste of time.

The reason I want Griffon and Skyscale is to have them for the upcoming End of Dragons expansion where we go back to Cantha.

Continue reading “A Tale of Four Mounts”

Tera is now Gacha?

So as of about a week ago, Gameforge has taken over Tera from Enmasse. And apparently Enmasse has shut down and when you go there, Firefox says the certificate is Expired. Not even a good bye.

Enmasse Certificate Expired?

So I fired up Gameforge Tera this morning and made a new character in one of my “Saved” slots. I saved slots we got over the years by putting dummy characters in them with names like “Place.Holder.A” and so forth.

The startup screens have changed and there is some choice that I didn’t look into. The left choice is the game I’ve played before.

Gameforge Startup Screens
Continue reading “Tera is now Gacha?”

AMD 5800x System Details

This post has been back-dated to keep it off the front page of my blog.

Performance and Cooler Testing

I ran a performance benchmark on the system just to test what’s going on and to make sure the cooler was working properly:

Passmark Performance and Temps

Hard Drive Storage Connection

In addition to the 2 M.2 NVME 1TB SSDs on the motherboard, the system now has three additional drives, mostly from the point of view of cabling. One of the drives will go with the system, but the other two are place holders. The drives are:

  • 60GB SanDisk SSD – 2.5″ SATA form factor. Placeholder for a larger SSD in this form factor.
  • 300GB Seagate 3.5″ 7200 rpm drive. Placeholder for a larger modern drive.
  • 2TB Western Digital 3.5″ Green drive.

On the left, the Seagate drive is at the top and the WD Green drive is at bottom. I’ve ordered black plastic sheets that I’ll cut and over the circuits on these boards.

Storage Expansion Options

The Motherboard has 8 SATA connections and there are places in the case for two 2.5″ and two 3.5″ drives. The power connections are in place for all the drives. If 2 2.5″ drives are desired, then one more SATA cable needs to be run to the drive holder. The drive holders are “Tool-less” to insert the drive, but a screw driver is required to clamp the plastic holder in place on the case frame.

Hard Drive Performance

CrystalDiskMark was used to test the drive performance.

Seagate 300GB 7200rpm
WD 2TB Green

The read performance of the WD Green drive seems very low. Even the many years old Seagate drive is over twice as fast in read as the Green drive.

For comparison, here are performance numbers for a couple of WD “Black” drives from a couple of years ago – contemporary with the WD “Green” drive.

WD 4TB Black
WD 6TB Black

Here are the specs for the Black and Green drives.

I can’t explain why the WD Green Drive is so slow, but it does have 2TB of storage and so it should be useful for a while until replaced at some point with a faster drive. As you can see it’s not that much cheaper per GB than much larger and faster drives.

The system is working fine.
:ww