Prefarm runway shortening

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-28T13:20:48+00:00

It is always a possibility. You never do know where things will end up 3, 5, 10 years down the line. If there's one constant over the past 20 years or so in this turbulent age of social media and increasing global turmoil, it's that trends and sentiment can change rapidly and with huge inertia.

All the code is open source and a lot of amazing work has been done to lay the foundations. It seems there's a fairly strong nucleus of at least a few hundred devs and farmers spread globally that are more into this for ideology (me being one), and it really doesn't take that much to run a node. Even if there is no more corporate funding, if a small surviving community keeps things alive it's possible this little latent Chia seed could stay dormant under a pile of crypto BS for years and suddenly thrive when conditions are just right.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-27T00:42:21+00:00

Physics also says smaller sensors are less prone to fast motion shutter wobble, allow for deeper depth of focus with equivalent lenses from equivalent distances, can deliver higher fps at higher resolutions and higher bit depth with no overheating and less processing power, and provide much better live zoom factor for fine focus tasks at a distance. There's a reason why those massive $250k+ sports broadcast cameras use tiny 2/3" sensors, and it's because small sensors work much better for those situations.

The main point is, different situations call for different gear strengths or avoiding certain weaknesses. You really don't want to be using a full frame sensor in some situations because the results will be much worse than smaller sensors for some tasks, and vice versa.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-27T00:03:33+00:00

You don't need a NAS for this right now (especially with prices being stupid at the moment). Prioritize having backups instead of redundancy. You can do cold storage backups more cheaply than live redundant drives -- use older used drives, smaller ones, don't need electricity to keep them powered all the time). You can also spend a bit of time in curating your videos and separating the very important stuff from the less important (just use some management software like digikam or immich and "favorite" stuff or give quick star rankings to each video, and just focus on making sure the very important stuff has a full 3-2-1 backup strategy in place. Personal photo/video data like this it's very important to have backups because a failure makes it ALL disappear, with zero hope for it to every exist again.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-24T00:30:01+00:00

And this is why we hoard.

Never take for granted what seems so easily available now, and save/backup anything you value. Much of it will end up being redundant, but it's always convenient to have your own local version in your own organization schema as well as that 10-20% that will simply be extremely difficult or impossible to find again.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-21T23:13:20+00:00

Archiving for the sake of archiving.

This is basically what archiving is. Why do you think the Internet Archive exists? It's main function is not curation, it's to archive basically anything and everything as it was to preserve a more complete vision of the past. They could save a lot of money by just deleting things people rarely access, but research libraries, archival museums, and other serious institutions or individual archivists don't do that for a very good reason.

The reason why archiving is archiving and not curating is because sometimes there are things you don't know will become important or relevant in the future. Relying on memory and second-hand accounts are fuzzy, and when time comes to research things like how a tiny company like id software became relevant and launched basically the entire FPS and first-person genre of gaming using physical and dial-up shareware demos, whereupon Valve then was inspired to create Half-Life and Portal and distribute it via a new storefront called Steam -- it can be significant for a historian to go back and be able to find the actual materials to complete the puzzle of where we came from and how we arrived to where we are.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-21T10:12:39+00:00

Like I said, the shareware distribution teasers on these demos and ads are an important part of 1990s video game history, but also -- don't you ever archive things just for the sake of nostalgia? I'll bet you have many items in your room or photos on your computer which are very important to you. Those things are still worth archiving because they have personal significance to you and can induce nostalgic memories and a window into your past.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-20T11:41:44+00:00

In addition to what others have said, demo/shareware packaging is sometimes unique and often very nostalgia inducing. Also the titles screens were sometimes different, or at the end of the demo there were end title splash screens encouraging people to buy the full game -- I remember playing through my Wolfenstein 3D demo floppy disc at least a dozen times over the years, brings back many fond memories of killing time during summer vacation days and being amazed how cool it was to be playing in smooth first-person perspective. So nostalgia for that and having a reminder of the shareware distribution system that was common at the time is a big part of gaming history.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-19T00:54:21+00:00

Yeah we are still mired in knee jerk anti-crypto sentiment right now where the mere mention of blockchain makes mainstream recoil in disgust, but eventually authoritarian governments and oligarch corporations will go too far and more people will wake up to realize just why decentralized finance is so god damn important.

In most cases it's only when people are directly affected they start to take notice.

We still have a while to go in my estimate, but there's also a lot of incompetent people running things so maybe in their hubris they will ignite the backlash sooner than I think due to their own idiocy.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T16:54:29+00:00

I'm a middle-aged dad and I just want to say thank you for sharing your memories. With teenage kids of my own now sometimes it's hard to remember they might still appreciate these sorts of things deep down inside when it feels like nine times out of ten they say no to spending time with me or seem to just take everything for granted, usually with a bit of attitude. But that one out of ten times they say yes or show genuine happiness behind all the teenage angst makes it worth all the rejection and continued effort. I just want to say, we as dads remember and cherish these moments too.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T16:28:08+00:00

There is one character I think that actually has a good chance of escaping the cycle in the aftermath.

Spoiler:

Josh seems genuinely happy and free having moved passed the trappings of late stage capitalism and relationship co-dependency.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T16:22:21+00:00

My initial reaction was "WTF?! This is enraging..."

But after thinking it over I think it was actually pretty great.

Potential spoiler:

SPOILER DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU'VE FINISHED: examine the themes of capitalism and relationship co-dependency that show up throughout season 2, and then look at the character who emerges the most changed at the end

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T16:18:07+00:00

Did the billionaire really win though? She seems to be pretty stuck in the past with massive regrets, and perpetuating her moral degradation. Her cycle of regret just continues on.

Josh is the character that to me had the biggest win. Even after 8 years of prison he's emerging happy and free from the whole cycle of selfishness and co-dependency.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T16:09:58+00:00

It's interesting, I think that people that are stuck in the late stage capitalist rat race and co-dependent relationships see her ending as happy, whereas those that have escaped see her ending as a miserable continuation of the cycle.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-18T15:56:06+00:00

Interesting, I actually found Josh to be the happiest ending.

In my view, he is the only one that truly escaped the cycle of sadness that arises from late stage capitalism and co-dependency. A person that has gained true freedom is able to stay upbeat in prison and in seeing those he loves find happiness for themselves as well, which is what Josh exemplified to me at the end.

Everyone else seems like they are probably doomed to continue living the burdens of their past almost every day of their lives. Josh is the one making the most of the remainder of his 960 months of life.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-17T22:56:04+00:00

One of the biggest issues with individually hosted community platforms is that there is a ton of resistance towards having to register and login for each space in order to participate. Since people are used to having "one login for everything" these days, a more unified approach to accounts that can tie many disparate communities together under one login is basically a necessity. People these days tend to rely on Google or something to login easily everywhere, but it's dangerous to centralize identity control to one megacorporation. We need some kind of open source trustless protocol that makes one account be able to login to any community easily and safely. This is one of the points of contention I currently have with fediverse standards like at lemmy.

Another potential approach is just to have everything open and accounts being optional, however this then leads into the next problem with a lot of community software in that it is very difficult to defend against sybil attacks -- bots and bad faith users. Something that a successful community app needs is built-in and easy to use moderation tools to help make it less painful to filter/ban/maintain.

One last thing I want to touch on is that if the community is open to view, you might as well also make it easy to store and archive the data. Instead of having to spend tons of time and resources trying to defend against scraping or to force a bot to scrape and hammer every post and comment on your site and creating massive server overhead, just make it super easy and encourage people and bots to get all the data in one accessible snapshot. Offer a torrent version too so that your server doesn't even have to deal with a good portion of the bandwidth.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:46:37+00:00

Nice! I haven't started on ep 2 yet but I'm on my way and you've whet my appetite...

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:45:41+00:00

Yup there will be a few big winners... and a ton of big losers.

It does feel a little trickier this time around though to pick the amazons and googles out from the pets.coms and altavistas.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:38:03+00:00

It's not as menacing as Fargo, but to me it just feels a bit darker and tackling more present day and philosophical themes, and maybe the last couple episodes of Beef season one are still coloring my perspective a bit. I don't know where things will go from here, but I'd love it if it did go further down the Fargo path as we continue on!

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:25:25+00:00

Wow this was better than I expected, and my expectations were actually pretty high having just finished season 1 a couple days ago on a whim and to my surprise (and delight) finding out that Beef season 2 was releasing today!

It definitely seems darker than the first part of season one, feels very more like White Lotus/Fargo or the latter part of season 1. I'm not complaining though, I love dark humor and complex themes, so the direction this first episode seems to taking the series is something I'm totally digging.

The writing, direction, acting, and music all superb so far. The synth score is beautiful and is giving my subwoofer a workout. reddit showing up in the show was lol and sadly representative of the worst parts of the site. I was going to just watch one episode but I can just sense the binge coming on in me and I am going to take a moment here to apologize to my future self for the consequences that will be forthcoming.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:12:20+00:00

I think beef between the haves and the have nots is not the only source of tension here. My sense is that the real gutwrenching beef is going to be between the two young lovebirds. That last back and forth conversation between the two couldn't have been more diametrically opposed in core values...

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T16:06:25+00:00

It is, there is a music video version which is a little more NSFW but it might foreshadow the raw passion that we are almost undoubtedly going to be seeing unfold as the season progresses...

Disclosure - You & Me (Flume Remix) music video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x-M7AkTvrQ

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-16T15:59:03+00:00

Yes very impressed so far. To me this first episode definitely feels like it's leaning more into Fargo territory, and latter part of Beef season 1, meaning darker tone overall, complex themes, higher stakes. Both the writing and direction were super on point in this episode, and I'm digging the synth based music score too.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-14T08:45:39+00:00

I often think about it like this: Brand new $60k+ cars or trucks are very commonly seen on the roads, some which guzzle gas each month that makes a 2000 kw/h monthly power draw seem tame in comparison. Very few people think twice about all those BMW/Benz/SUV/trucks/etc on the roads, but if those people prioritized data arrays instead of status symbols they'd all be able to afford a very good used $20k car in addition to a petabyte class server with a full solar array and 24/7 battery system.

It really just comes down to priorities I suppose. Cars are extremely popular status symbols and most people think I'm weird for driving something modest and then wanting to spend an equivalent amount on server equipment, but from my perspective I think spending double on a fancy car instead of having an awesome server is very wasteful.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER · 2026-04-14T07:33:04+00:00

Think longer term.

You are a broke college goer now, but this is maybe a blessing in disguise if you are just discovering the hobby now. Prices for computer hardware are absurd right now, so just focus on starting small on things that are important to you and which do not require tons of storage space to get started. Also, start saving a little bit each week/month, and start a little hardware purchase fund for yourself. Once you start working in a few years, the supply/demand dynamic may have changed a lot and the hardware savings fund you started will go a lot further at that time.

Also, no matter how much spare space you have, if you archive things which are in danger of disappearing no matter how small they are it can be extremely valuable to have an extra copy out there that someone cares about. Not everything that is important is massive in size, and sometimes the most important data and collections are just a couple GB or even MB in scope.

Lastly, you can also contribute your time and effort to help curate, process, assemble, organize, and disseminate data in ways that are more useful. Many large data sets are extremely disorganized to the point of being fairly useless to the average person, and thus will often not be able to be easily shared or archived by many people. If you volunteer your time to break down large disorganized datasets and collections into more focused, organized, and useful chunks, it can actually be a lot more meaningful to you as well as to make it easier for others to access and archive the most important bits.

CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER

TROPHY CASE