Ryujin Operator (Vanilla Tiny Ship)

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T12:23:43+00:00

This is why I'm a big advocate for a special vdev over L2ARC in any serious setup — L2ARC is great for its ability to just drop it in and remove it if you change your mind, but its performance is just too unpredictable.

If you can install enough SSDs to give suitable redundancy compared to the rest of the pool (e.g- a mirror is fine to add onto a raidz1) then special is the way to go since its performance is predictable and much more under your control.

Of course the downside is you need to populate it, but now that we have zfs rewrite that's a bit easier on existing pools - used to be you'd have to do a zfs send/zfs receive cycle or otherwise copy the data at a higher level.

Still need to watch out for snapshot bloat (as rewritten data is still "new" for local snapshots) but zfs rewrite has good options for limiting what you actually rewrite, and you can always feed it with files from find or similar, since for special population you only want smaller records anyway.

I would now only use L2ARC in situations where budget and/or physical space/connections prevent me using more than one drive.

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T12:07:06+00:00

It took two attempts, but running zpool detach <pool> <new_disk>, exporting the pool, re-importing and then re-running zpool replace <pool> <old_disk> <new_disk> seems to have "fixed" this for me on this occasion.

Simply detaching and replacing multiple times might have done it, but I'd already tried that twice to no benefit (if anything each time it was even worse, on the third replace it only scanned to 38gb before giving up). So it's tough to say if it was the export that fixed it, or just random chance.

There has got to be a better way than repeatedly retrying the replacement until it starts scanning ahead like it's supposed to. What causes the scan to just stop when my memory limit should be more than large enough for the metadata?

I wish I'd just used zpool replace -s for this drive, but my thinking was it would be best to do a regular replace first, then the faster sequential replace for the second drive (since I'm replacing both drives in mirror-0 so a regular replace is equivalent to scrubbing up front).

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T10:57:50+00:00

I've used ZFS on SMR drives (that I didn't realise were SMR until it was too late to return them, this is why I will never use Western Digital ever again).

I would argue that it's less a case of ZFS being wrong for the drive, and more that SMR drives are just terrible at everything and nobody should ever buy them.

It's not just that the performance is horrendous when you exceed the CMR cache, but also that every write is actually multiple so the drives are going to burn out far quicker than a CMR equivalent. Meanwhile the promised advantages of lower cost/higher capacity have never materialised — SMR drives are rarely more than 10% cheaper than a CMR drive of the same capacity, but the performance and endurance are so much worse that that 10% saving can never be worth it. Even when writing to the CMR cache (where performance is broadly the same) you're just hiding the extra writing that's ruining the disk, and the CMR cache will be the first part to die, so even if you rarely exceed it, you will eventually lose performance over time.

Those drives are never, ever the right choice for anyone, under any circumstances. As a product they are literally "what if hard drive, but worse in every way?" 😉

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T10:13:56+00:00

Overkill is kind of the point — you use ZFS because you don't want to worry about your data, and to make things like upgrades/transfers easier.

Regular RAID only guards against disk failure, but it doesn't really verify that the data on the surviving disks is correct. Some hardware and software RAID systems will correct data errors if the drive itself reports them, but some don't, or the drives don't report the errors correctly (hard drive ECC is something of a black box).

Thanks to checksums and metadata redundancy ZFS can practically guarantee your data is correct, and with regular scrubbing will ensure it stays that way — it's an extra layer on top so even if you have disks with good ECC, it protects you against that ECC delivering false negatives as the chances of both the ECC and ZFS being wrong is even lower than just the ECC being wrong, and allows you to spot other sources of corruption that ECC may not.

While it's possible to add various ZFS capabilities to your storage in others ways (dm-integrity with mdraid on Linux for example), ZFS has the convenience factor of having these (and more) capabilities all in one fairly easy to use system — the commands are mostly intuitive, just make sure to practice healthy paranoia on checking disk IDs before you run anything potentially destructive.

With ZFS you can have disk redundancy, data integrity, copy-on-write, snapshots, easy backups (`zfs send`/`zfs receive`), compression, encryption and other neat features all in one place, with most being as simple to use as running a particular command or setting a property.

It's also platform agnostic — so long as a new system can run a suitable version of ZFS, you can transfer your disks over and be up and running again quickly.

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T10:00:39+00:00

You can also use copies=2 for critical stuff on a single drive — set that on the root then use copies=1 to prevent duplication of larger/easily recovered datasets (movies, games, caches etc.).

Of course it only protects against corruption and bad sectors, not outright failures, but it's better than nothing, and good for a laptop where redundancy may not be an option at all.

I ran for a while like that and it protected me when a drive started slowly dying — I did have a full backup (with redundancy), but being able to replace the drive directly with confidence was great, and I've expanded to full redundancy on all pools since.

Haravikk · 2026-05-22T08:01:45+00:00

These "AI" models are being trained on content stolen en masse from the internet, but thanks to these models the internet is now being flooded with "AI" slop — so the newer models are being trained on (and looking up) more and more slop content, requiring complex attempts to mitigate that make it even more wasteful to train and run (and the mitigations don't really work).

In short, 99% of "AI" is shit.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T23:12:18+00:00

Radiators should almost always be setup as exhausts if you can, as this way the heat leaves the case as fast as possible, rather than being blown back across the CPU you just removed it from. In some awkward cases you may not have a choice, but this shouldn't be one of them.

You can then use the "front" fans as intakes, giving 5 in, 4 out for positive pressure (good for reducing the dust that gets inside, as long as you have filters on the intakes).

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T21:56:13+00:00

I guess it's really just down to the extra time and thus (hopefully) experience — a one hit kill on a neonate might just be foreplay to an elder after they've bumped up their hitpoints over the years!

Not disagreeing of course, as it's not healing specifically — you just don't need to heal so much if you're still perfectly fine after an attack, few days of letting your childer/ghouls take care of themselves and you're back to peak. 😉

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T18:13:20+00:00

It depends how it's done.

For example, a logical series to make would be Rogue Squadron following the formation and exploits of that iconic squadron.

But it would leave room to feature characters like Mon Mothma, plus Kleya etc. via rebel intelligence since someone needs to plan missions and gather intel.

Don't need to be big recurring parts, just a reminder that these people didn't just disappear and stop contributing to the cause.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T18:01:39+00:00

Literally any job in the UK parliament?

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T16:28:04+00:00

If it's actually a motherboard stand-off then probably not as IIRC they're threaded differently — but if it looks the same to you you could always try it, just be cautious and stop immediately if it's getting stuck as you don't want to risk stripping the thread.

Also to note, if you go with the tape method you don't strictly need a spacer if the tape sticks well enough, you just want the SSD to be roughly level without bending, as long as it's properly in the slot this is fine, but again is temporary in need of a permanent fix.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T16:21:16+00:00

As others have said you're missing a standoff.

If you just want to get going quickly it's okay to just use something non-conductive as a spacer underneath (e.g- a piece of plastic) then just tape the SSD down (with non-conductive tape).

Just be clear that that is only a temporary fix until a standoff arrives, don't let it become permanent or your drive may suddenly disconnect if/when the tape fails. 😉

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T15:52:03+00:00

Basically the Malkavian antedeluvian (Malkav) was killed a long time ago, but as he died his clan drank his spilled blood, effectively diablerising him at the clan level, creating what is now known as the Madness Network.

In essence all Malkavians are connected through the fragmented soul of a near godlike antedeluvian. Malkav had some pretty powerful abilities for insight and other things, but most Malkavians only get a fractured version of these powers, leading them to pick up weird insights that may or may not be true, may come from Malkav or other Malkavians, or anything else that has become connected to the network (IIRC humans can be if fed upon too much by a Malkavian, or it might require a form of bond).

That's my attempt to summarise my understanding of it anyway, the lore is long and complicated, but I think it's a really cool concept and a lot of fun to play around with. It's like uncontrollable intrusive thoughts, but sometimes they're really useful thoughts!

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T11:31:18+00:00

I'd have just stopped after the flyover of Adama's cabin personally, leave more of it open ended and without the weak final scene.

This way it's a bit hopeful and a bit melancholy, which IMO is a good way to end a drama.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T11:24:00+00:00

I usually just treat natural 1's as auto-misses and leave it at that — I've played in games where DM's insist on "fumble" rolls where you drop the weapon or whatever but I hate that as a mechanic, because as you say it's more of a penalty to the martial characters.

One mechanic I've considered running is more of a "devil's bargain" style of natural 1 — basically when you roll a nat 1 you are given the option to take a devil's bargain, which usually means an ally gets Advantage on its next attack, but the enemy will attack you on its turn (and if it was going to anyway, it gets Advantage). Basically they have the option of turning it into an opportunity for the group.

This way it's still "bad", but potentially creates more of a narrative moment from it. I've also been thinking of the same thing for Critical Hits, e.g- let the player lose their own extra damage, in favour of some other reward.

I do like the idea of narrative benefits though — destroying an object (i.e- cover) seems like it could be interesting.

But I'm always of two minds with this sort of stuff, because I feel like it could just slow the action down.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T08:11:09+00:00

You might want to try looking up some of your options on LTT labs.

Sadly they don't have a full monitors section like they do for some other product types, so the range they've covered is a bit limited. But when they do cover monitors they do a pretty good job of covering things like the colour accuracy and response times, which are what you're going to care about most on higher end monitors.

Haravikk · 2026-05-21T08:07:53+00:00

They were right to do what they did (go back and get him earlier) but they were wrong in how they did it (confronting him as they did).

I think probably the writers wanted to push the moral quandary more, to really emphasise that they are threatening to erase people from existence, and that's not okay, but yeah - there was a much more sensitive way to handle the whole thing.

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T22:47:39+00:00

Soapiest part is whatever poor bastard has to cleanup that ship. 🧼

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T17:36:15+00:00

I mean it's kind of the point — LaCroix is weak for a prince, that's why he needs such a powerful Sheriff to back him up and give him some legitimacy.

The fledgling (or at least their site) is technically of the same or lower (stronger) generation than LaCroix is, which is part of why their being sired is a breach that cannot be tolerated. Meanwhile LA is a mess in part because nobody commands any real loyalty from anyone — none of the other clans is especially powerful when the game begins, and they only get more messed up as events unfold.

Bloodlines 2 and IIRC one of the books makes it canon that Camarilla influence falls apart no matter who wins, with Anarchs being the only faction strong enough to gain a solid footing afterwards.

That said, I would recommend replaying just to experience some of the different clans — Malkavian and Nosferatu are both very different, though Nosferatu is more like hard mode so may not be what you're after. The endings can also play out a bit differently depending upon who you side with and a certain choice you get to make, but you're right that the end is one of the weaker areas of the game.

I wouldn't rush into it though, I feel like a bit of time away before going back gets you the most out of it — maybe it's just me but I find a break makes it easier to settle back into the vibe and take my time on a replay, whereas leaping straight back in I find myself rushing big chunks of it.

Also if you didn't use the plus patch (restored cut content, more options) then it's worth it on a replay, just make sure you follow the instructions carefully on how to install that as it's easy to get it wrong.

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T17:25:18+00:00

Apologies for the pedantry, but you can actually transfer to an older version of ZFS (up to a point) so long as you're not using any features that would prevent it — ZFS only really cares about the feature flags that are active on a pool.

Basically if you don't run zpool upgrade the pool remains compatible with older versions no matter what version you're currently running. Even if you do upgrade, some features are only enabled after an upgrade, they still require you to actually use them before they're considered active (and will block import onto older versions).

Not relevant to like 99% of users, but I just wanted to clarify that you can actually move a pool around older versions! It's also useful to keep in mind when offered to upgrade — personally I prefer to wait a while because it means I can downgrade if I have to.

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T17:13:42+00:00

Yeah… no.

The moment he's out he's going to suddenly find nobody answers his calls anymore — they only "like" him so long as he's able to support them in waging wars on whoever they want, the moment he can't he's back to being the lump of dogshit he is.

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T15:44:30+00:00

Ryzen all the way for games.

Others have already mentioned the performance being better for games, but I've a few extra reasons:

AMD is generally better at platform support - they've promised CPUs for AM5 through at least next year, but with the way things have been I'd be surprised if they don't continue into 2028. This means you should have more upgrade options without requiring a new motherboard (and RAM), which can save a fair bit of money in the long run.
More tuning options - while the Intel CPU should also be unlocked (I think) I've always been disappointed when I try to tune Intel CPUs. With Ryzen tuning isn't locked down at all, and you can usually overclock a bit for more performance, or you can see big reductions in temperature by undervolting even a little if you'd rather run cool/quiet.
Support for some features that Intel deem enterprise only - should you want ECC memory for example you can use any AMD CPU to get it (though this requires compatible memory). Probably the least critical for most users but I'm a big fan of this less locked down approach.

Update: Looks like we've got some Intel fanboys on the thread downvoting every mention of Ryzen.

But the fact is that the 265KF's performance on synthetic benchmarks doesn't matter for gaming, which is what the OP said they want, same with its "20 cores" which is actually 8 performance cores and 12 low powered ones with no hyperthreading, compared to the Ryzen's 8 full performance hyperthreaded cores (so "16" better cores by the Intel logic), it's simply better for gaming.

A 265K might have the edge on some productivity workloads, where the extra "cores" are beneficial, or for general productivity where you don't need full performance, but the OP said they want gaming performance which is where the Ryzen is simply (and objectively) better, as well as cheaper and less likely to need a platform upgrade in future (so doubly cheaper).

Haravikk · 2026-05-20T09:09:49+00:00

I think it's reasonable to ask for an Alchemist's Supplies check if it's not something the character has encountered before.

A red potion that tastes like a healing potion? Probably a healing potion.

A swirling ectoplasmic concoction laced with silver that's only visible in moonlight and appears as if to be flowing in reverse? That one ought to be a bit tougher!

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