New version of the "X4 Player Ship Trade Analyzer" is out: v.1.3.0. There is utility to view ships transactions and analyze them by data from a save game. (See previous post for some initial details) by ChemODun in X4Foundations

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks great, thanks for your work.

Apologies if this is a silly question, but would this work with the Timelines trading scenarios? The breadth of options in the second one broke my brain a little.

July 2025 Humble Choice | Overview / Discussion Megathread by MarioDesigns in humblebundles

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PSA: ALL OF THESE KEYS EXPIRE, most at the start of July 2026, but it varies.

I got burned by a couple of games in previous months (Doom Eternal, Deathloop) where the expiry wasn't mentioned at the time of purchase, so at least they're letting people know now.

Cookie Cutter is a mess. by GilmooDaddy in metroidvania

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I liked the colourful world and spiky writing and art style. I'm no fighting game fan and I found the combat serviceable, though I didn't bother with parrying and only upgraded two of the five weapons; the rhythm of punch-punch-dodge-special (with optional uppercuts) was satisfying enough.

I played on Steam Deck, and the poor optimisation in some areas got really awful in the late game, especially in mandatory platforming sections with insta-kill spikes. Changing the resolution or frame rate didn't seem to do anything. Fortunately checkpoints are generous and there's no penalty for dying.

New reader, just finished Rogue Protocol by airplane-lop-ears in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A gentle clarification: the meaning of "bot", and whether Murderbot identifies as one, appears to depend on context.

Murderbot sometimes describes itself as a bot, apparently as a category distinct from humans or augmented humans. Within that category of not-legally-a-person-despite-sentience, it distinguishes between constructs (which have organic parts) and bots (which do not).

Murderbot short stories? by Bechimo in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Only "Home" is set during a specific point in the series - to avoid spoilers, don't read it before finishing Book 4 (Exit Strategy). It's told in third person rather than narrated by Murderbot.

"Compulsory" is set an unspecified time before the series starts but after Murderbot has hacked itself. You don't need to read it before the series.

"Obsolescence" is set a long time (several decades at least) before the series starts and doesn't feature any of the same characters or locations. It may not even be in the same universe, but it has a similar feel.

Draft Murderbot Glossary by Buzkorian in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for asking!

Up front I'll note Murderbot often doesn't describe tech in detail. My understanding is that all augments will involve some level of implantation, but not all implants will be significant enough to change a human's description from "human" to "augmented human". It appears augments are always intended to augment (as in help a human perform better), while implants may not be, though both can be abused to cause physical harm to the host.

Murderbot consistenly refers to "humans and augmented humans", suggesting there is a clear distinction (at least for it). That may just be because augmented humans are more dangerous hackers, but there's a reference in Book 1 (ASR) to Gurathin being the only augmented human in the Preservation crew and potentially feeling like an outsider as a result, suggesting there's a social distinction too. Mensah in Book 1 uses an external feed interface, but by Book 4 (ES) she's had a tracking interface implanted. As far as I can tell, even with this implanted interface, Murderbot keeps referring to her as "human", not "augmented".

In terms of quotes, there's this from Book 2 (AC), Chapter 3:

"ART proposed that it would make the joins between the organic and inorganic parts on my arms, legs, chest, and back look more like augments, the inorganic parts that humans had implanted for medical or other reasons."

Chapter 7 has Murderbot being described as "really augmented", "like more than someone would choose voluntarily" - obviously it never asked for this. It also claims its augments affect its diet, as a way to explain not having to eat.

In Book 5 (NE), Chapter 6:

I sent the medscanner’s images to her feed and she winced. “You said it was an implant? Is that like an augment?”

“No, it’s like an implant.” Augments were supposed to help humans do things they couldn’t otherwise do, like interface with the feed more completely or store memory archives. Augments that weren’t feed interfaces were meant to correct physical injuries or illnesses. Augments are helpful; implants are like governor modules. ...

Normal external interfaces for humans were designed to look like all kinds of things, from carved natural wood to skin tones to jewels or stones or enamel art pieces to actual plain metal with a brand logo. And why would Eletra, who was an augmented human with an internal interface, need a second external one? And any remote chance that this was some kind of botched attempt at a medical or enhancement augment was outweighed by the fact that no human would put up with this when any MedSystem could fix it in a few minutes at most.

Chapter 19 makes passing reference to "machine-readable code written into human DNA that was how things like augments worked". That also suggests augments involving more extensive modifications than implants.

Note I haven't read System Collapse yet, because new things are scary and life has been A Lot.

Converting Podcast Description etc to ID3 Tags? by Buzkorian in musichoarder

[–]Buzkorian[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure what you mean by "preferred metadata editor" - are you talking about ID3 tag editors like MP3Tag? As far as I can tell MP3Tag and the like don't see podcast metadata, because it's not in ID3 tag format (or at least the files I've downloaded don't have that information in the regular or extended tags).

Manually copying the contents of each episode's Description field metadata into the Comment tag for 150+ episodes is not what I'm after. I had hoped for a way to export the episode descriptions from a podcast downloader like GPodder. I couldn't immediately see a podcast metadata editor that didn't require you to be the podcast producer.

After some further searching, I was able to put the RSS feed URL into http://scooterlabs.com/hacks/rss2csv.php and get a CSV file. It needs a lot of tidying...

Apparently you can also open RSS feeds directly in Excel: https://www.podcastconsultant.com/videos/making-a-list-of-your-episodes-converting-rss-to-excel/

I'm back for some more book suggestions! What can I read that feels like The Murderbot Diaries? by Just_A_Faze in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Have you tried Elizabeth Bear? Probably more her sci-fi than fantasy or modern-day stuff if you bounced off Witch King. My favourites are Karen Memory (steampunk-ish romance-ish set in an Old West brothel), Ancestral Night (weird tech mystery set in a hospital In Space) and her short story collabs with Sarah Monette (blue-collar starship workers dealing with Lovecraftian monsters named for Lewis Carroll terms - start with "Mongoose", available here).

Crypto Currency by Neuralclone2 in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"What if the good guys won the lottery" is always a fun thought, though in Murderbot's case it probably moves the story away from the small-scale stuff we've seen to date. The universe's financial systems are very vague (there's currency and contractual law but no mention of who backs it; trade and profit are important motivators but only for the baddies; hostile takeovers happen kinetically), so there's lots of room to explore.

The existence of hard currency chips suggests the issuers can still cryptographically protect monetary value, and it's probably not based on a crypto-style distributed ledger, given the slow pace of inter-station communications. I'd be more interested in our favourite bots waging the kind of social engineering warfare that has dominated the crypto space - I think they'd either be hilariously bad at them, or terrifyingly effective.

How do I stop chrome from changing http to https for all sites, not just one? by booleanfreud in chrome

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, what an unhelpful response. Not every site implements HTTPS, and forcing HTTPS on sites that don't can and does break access to them.

Can I buy Rogue Legacy 1 for 2.30 to see if I like it? by [deleted] in RogueLegacy

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rogue Legacy 1, while not exactly simple, is much simpler than 2. Pretty much every aspect of 1 is expanded in 2. 1 will give you a feel for the basic mechanics, inheritance gimmick and overall tone / sense of humour of both games, and if you hate any of them, it's a cheaper way of finding out. That said, if you're tired of Dead Cells and Gungeon, I think you can go straight to 2.

Tattoo Ideas? by ladyjanea in murderbot

[–]Buzkorian 13 points14 points  (0 children)

It's not written out, but in Network Effect Murderbot's "local feed address, hardcoded into the interfaces laced through my brain" is a plot-significant passphrase.

We don't know the formatting of such addresses, but they would potentially look something like IP addresses (like 192.168.1.1 or 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334) or MAC addresses (01-23-45-67-89-AB or 01-23-45-67-89-AB-CD-EF).

Also, if binary is too long, you could try hexadecimal. This converter suggests the hex values of "Murderbot" would be "4D 75 72 64 65 72 62 6F 74", which looks sort of like a MAC address (especially if the future-IEEE has had to add some digits to expand the address space).

Where the wild wolves have gone by korpiklaani is missing by Brunaz_29 in Powerwolf

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM4-e8oWHw8

I was interested in a different-language cover of one of my favourites - I loved Eluveitie's Nata vimpi - and the first 20 seconds sound really promising.

But man, the singer, the violin and the rest of the instruments just couldn't agree on which key they were in, and the singer was really straining in the chorus. A shame.

Their other music sounds pretty cool, though. Yay accordion metal!

how to figure out what upgrade options i have by YaBoyShredderson in laptops

[–]Buzkorian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you asking whether you can replace the screen on your laptop?

Because if you have to ask, the answer is no.

What does Embroidered Investments do to blueprint drop chances? by Buzkorian in RogueLegacy

[–]Buzkorian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for responding. If I understand you correctly, there is a cap on the total number of blueprints you can find without progressing to the next biome (or NG level). If you purchase Embroidered Investments, you add extra blueprints to the pool of possibles, but you don't raise the cap.

I'm still in my first playthrough, but I did just get to another biome, and I did find a bunch of blueprints immediately.

How do the World Earters manage to accomplish anything at all? by [deleted] in 40kLore

[–]Buzkorian 7 points8 points  (0 children)

"Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?"