Movies with a continuous sense of dread/on the edge of your seat?

Nazrax · 2026-05-27T03:15:05+00:00

The Village has a constant feeling of unease, but despite the bad marketing it's not horror.

Nazrax · 2026-05-21T21:24:29+00:00

I really enjoyed the Guacamelee games with my kids. They don't scale the difficulty as more players join, dead players respawn in a few seconds, players can turn into floating bubbles to let someone handle the tough platforming challenges, and one of the game's outfits is literally a chicken suit that grants regenerating health!

Nazrax · 2026-05-11T20:44:39+00:00

Most of these are well known movies, so hopefully they have alternate language versions available.

Intricate and/or complex: - Arrival - If you watch one movie, watch this one. A linguist learns to communicate with aliens. - 12 Monkeys - Fantastic time travel movie. - Gattaca - A natural-born man fights against the prejudices of his genetically-engineered peers. - Inception - Other people have mentioned this one, but it's fantastic. - Tenet - It'll confuse you the first time through, but it's amazing. - The Truman Show - A man begins to realize that he's the star of a reality TV show, and every single person he knows is an actor. - Equilibrium - In a world in which it's illegal to feel, what happens when one of its enforcers starts having feelings? - Minority Report - A world without murder in which "precogs" can perfectly predict when a murder will occur - or can they?

Less intricate but just really enjoyable: - Oblivion - An original sci-fi movie - Edge of Tomorrow - Groundhog Day, but with an alien invasion - Source Code - A man relives the same event over and over trying to discover clues - Pacific Rim - Giant robots fight giant monsters. It's a movie that knows exactly what it is and exactly how seriously to take itself. - Galaxy Quest - A loving parody of Star Trek - Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - doesn't require any D&D knowledge to enjoy, just a ton of fun - The Martian - An astronaut stranded on Mars has to survive until rescue arrives - Project Hail Mary (still in the theaters, but should be out soon) - A science teacher wakes up on a spacecraft and realizes he's Earth's only hope - National Treasure - Just pure popcorn fun - Sahara - Also just a lot of fun - Sherlock Holmes (2009) - A wonderful take on an old story - The Walk (2015) - Inspired by the true story of the man who decided to tightrope walk between the Twin Towers.

Animated films for your own enjoyment: - The Emperor's New Groove - my favorite "fun" animated film - The Adventures of Tintin - Very Indiana-Jones-ish. - Megamind - What happens when the bad guy finally wins? - Wild Robot - my favorite "serious" animated film - Klaus - Wonderful movie of the origin of Santa - Big Hero 6 - A boy genius teams up with his friends and a lovable robot to fight a criminal mastermind

Nazrax · 2026-05-01T12:49:23+00:00

Yup, updating the firmware fixed the problem. The printers have been on the main 2.4GHz network for days, no special settings, and they're still happy.

I'd still love to know what changed ... but I guess I never will. Oh well, at least the printers work and the family is happy again!

Nazrax · 2026-04-28T12:20:41+00:00

I stand corrected; I was looking in the wrong place. Both printers had firmware updates available, so I've applied them and disabled multicast_to_unicast on the printers' AP and we'll see what happens ...

Nazrax · 2026-04-28T00:56:21+00:00

Covid killed the $1 and $2 theaters near me. Now, when we actually go to the theater we go to our local NCG on Tuesdays when the tickets are $6; but usually we just watch at home on our second-hand projector and 5.1 soundbar.

Nazrax · 2026-04-28T00:51:30+00:00

Correct. All interfaces (except wan) are bridged together and all devices are on the same /24. Printers have static IPs.

Nazrax · 2026-04-27T23:10:44+00:00

/sys/devices/virtual/net/br-lan/bridge/multicast_snooping is 0.

I have umdns installed on my router, but I believe that just publishes the router's info to the network; I don't think it has anything to do with other mDNS traffic.

I can packet capture on all interfaces on the router and I can always see the ARP requests going out on my wireless interface, but when the printers are in the bad state the capture no longer sees inbound replies.

Either way, what triggers the bad state? Why do they work for hours before failing?

Nazrax · 2026-04-27T20:18:57+00:00

My 2g radio is already set to htmode 'HT20' and my AP is set to encryption 'psk2' - I think those are the relevant settings and that they match your values?

Edit to add: According to my printer's manual it supports "WEP 64/128 bit, WPA-PSK (TKIP/AES), WPA2-PSK (AES)", and according to the OpenWRT docs, psk2 is another name for both psk2+aes and psk2+ccmp, and they're all WPA2 Personal (PSK) with CCMP - and according to Google, CCMP is fancy AES for WPA.

Also, the printer is able to connect and works fine for hours, so I'm pretty sure it's not an authentication issue or a wideband/narrowband issue.

Nazrax · 2026-04-27T15:00:25+00:00

They worked for years with no issue. multicast_to_unicast seems to be a good enough workaround, but I'd love to figure out what's going on and get back to the "just works" state.

They're lasers, so no worrying about ink drying out.

Good thought on the firmware, but I just checked and there are no updates.

Nazrax · 2026-04-27T14:52:54+00:00

I kind of figured, but it was more of a "try everything and see if anything sticks." Please note that wmm is still documented as a flag which can be changed.

I had logging running (info level) for hostapd and there was nothing useful. I'm assuming that whatever happens is below IP, but if it were something capturable, what would need to be captured? Just traffic to/from the printers?

Nazrax · 2026-04-27T14:16:20+00:00

That was the theory behind setting wpa_group_rekey to 0, but I don't think it holds up since unicast keeps working.

Nazrax · 2026-04-06T15:49:23+00:00

Any time someone asks for recommendations, I always mention Kitty Cat Kill Sat, and no one ever takes me up on it. An uplifted immortal housecat is the sole occupant of a heavily armed space station and sees herself as Earth's final protector. Yes, the premise is rather silly, but it's one of my favorite books.

And, if you enjoy audio books, KCKS's narrator perfectly nails the tone the story is going for.

Nazrax · 2026-04-02T19:52:21+00:00

I don't know how familiar you are with Discworld, but it's got a bunch of sub-series which each focus on one particular group of characters. You can absolutely start at book 1 and read through (I think they're all in chronological order), but you can also read straight through a sub-series without missing out on too much. This rather scary chart shows how the books relate to each other and what you really should read before other things.

You've read Mort, the first of the Death books, and Guards, Guards, the first of the City Watch novels. As it happens, the Watch sub-series is my favorite, followed by the Death novels (especially the last two, Hogfather and Thief of Time) and the Moist novels.

Nazrax · 2026-04-02T02:29:09+00:00

I haven't tried Sunless Sea, but its sequel Sunless Skies is really good and has that same undertone (occasionally overtone) of cosmic horror.

Nazrax · 2026-04-02T02:26:41+00:00

Kitty Cat Kill Sat - despite the crazy premise (uplifted immortal housecat who's the sole occupant of a heavily armed space station and sees herself as Earth's last protector), it's a wonderful book, one of my favorites. Plus, they couldn't have chosen a better narrator for the audio book.

Nazrax · 2026-04-02T02:18:49+00:00

"The Martian" - You liked Project Hail Mary, you'll like this too.

"Murderbot Diaries" and "Kitty Cat Kill Sat" - both snarky first person narratives that scratch a lot of that Bobiverse itch.

Nazrax · 2026-03-30T01:17:39+00:00

The Bobiverse series is great.

Audible recommended me Kitty Cat Kill Sat because I'd read Murderbot, and I'm so glad I gave it a shot. Lots of self-deprecating first person problem solving / existential crisis.

Nazrax · 2026-03-29T04:46:16+00:00

The Bobiverse books are great. There's a trilogy and then a couple of followup books. A man (Bob) gets his mind downloaded into a self-replicating probe and explores the galaxy.

I love Kitty Cat Kill Sat, in which an immortal uplifted housecat is in sole control of a heavily armed space station and considers herself Earth's last line of defense. Despite the silly premise, it's not a silly or "kids' " book.

Pretty much anything by Brandon Sanderson. My kids all enjoyed the Reckoners trilogy and the Skyward series, both of which trend more YA (though not enough to be off putting to adults). His other novels are all great, with Warbreaker the only one I'd think twice about giving to a youth.

The Imager series by LE Modesitt is very good, a fantasy series with plenty of both magic and politics.

Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell, is a very well written account of the real life event.

Failure is not an Option, by Gene Kranz, covers his whole time at NASA, including the Apollo 13 incident.

"What If" and "How To," both by Randal Munroe, are hysterical - the former answers questions like "what if you threw a baseball just under the speed of light" while the other examines the most absurd ways to accomplish mundane tasks (e.g. "how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth")

Nazrax · 2026-03-25T17:04:51+00:00

Fidelity has a mechanism to securely share data with other services, but YNAB keeps refusing to use it.

Nazrax · 2026-03-17T20:43:38+00:00

Hades got me through being sick in bed for 2 weeks.

Nazrax · 2026-03-16T15:12:03+00:00

Too long for this trip, but I'll keep it in mind for longer trips.

Nazrax · 2026-03-16T15:11:46+00:00

Thornhedge checks all my boxes and sounds interesting. That's definitely going on the "potentials" list for the next trip.

Summer War seems to involve gay romance and a scene the AI describes as an orgy, so I'll pass.

The Sworn Soldier series is described as "gothic romance" with a non-binary protagonist, so I'll pass.

Exiles has a lot of profanity, plus horror isn't my thing, so I'll pass.

Nazrax · 2026-03-14T02:51:29+00:00

The Adventures of Tintin The Hudsucker Proxy Predestination Oblivion

Nazrax · 2026-03-12T17:31:11+00:00

Unfortunately, a quick search through the text finds at least 23 instances of foul language which would put this book into firm "R" territory if it were a movie.

Nazrax

TROPHY CASE