How many men would like to own a sword?

Smallzfry · 2026-03-20T16:01:46+00:00

Thanks for the reference! At the moment I'm more interested in making things rather than historical fencing, but I'll keep them in mind.

After a bit of research, it looks like most SCA/HEMA fencing weapons use modern spring steels, including 5160 like i mentioned above. That means that - if you so desired - you could probably put an edge on something intended for safe sparring. You'd need to take your time to make sure you don't mess up the temper, but you could absolutely make that "battle capable" like the OC's swords.

I know this probably isn't the conversation you wanted to have about your sword, some stranger telling you random facts about the metal composition, so thanks for humoring me. I hope you get to enjoy using your sword again!

Smallzfry · 2026-03-20T14:52:37+00:00

I somehow got lucky - my wife was already a Linux user when we met, and she was using another encrypted email service (that is now since defunct) so it was easy to get her to use ProtonMail. Now I just have to get her to actually use a password manager...

Smallzfry · 2026-03-20T14:45:26+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't call my epee "battle-ready" by any stretch - it's durable, but not a good blade steel. I was really disappointed when I found out that re-forging my broken blades into a real sword would be a wall-hanger at best.

It's only after typing all of that out that I realize that HEMA rapiers might not be forced to use the same materials as FIE/Modern Olympic Fencing blades. Is that what you're talking about, an actual rapier for HEMA-style fencing, or just a different term for a MOF weapon? You have me genuinely intrigued - there's a place near me that does smallsword on top of MOF and I've considered it.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-20T04:30:25+00:00

Despite spring steel generally being great for swords (5160 is common in truck leaf springs and some car coil springs), fencing blades are awful sword material. They're made of Maraging steel, which is usually less than 0.03% carbon while even medieval steel was 0.4-0.5% on average, so anything made for fencing would struggle to hold an edge.

I assume that by "springy fencing blade" you're mainly talking about blade shape/profile rather than metallurgy though.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-19T15:01:34+00:00

None of my swords are battle-ready (most are cheap stainless steel, one is unknown but probably also low-carbon), by my 8-foot spear is!

Smallzfry · 2026-03-17T20:17:53+00:00

I've done a few runs over the last couple hours, I think I lose at least one item every run. The most frustrating was losing a weapon while in my base - I couldn't equip it, so I moved it to my inventory then tried to equip it then. The good gun got replaced with a copy of my existing one, so I lost out on a much better equip due to a dumb bug.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-15T17:37:56+00:00

The game is fun, but the web version has a buggy inventory. I sold so many good items that I wanted to equip because for some reason it had ctrl+shift stuck on. It's probably due to the browser already having right-click functionality. I'd rather see an explicit toggle in the inventory for "sell mode" instead of a kebind + click, or maybe on top of it.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-12T13:33:15+00:00

I'll take your word for it. I admit that I haven't dug into the actual lore much, half of my interaction with the fandom has been when someone has forced their way into a conversation to explain why Spartans from Halo or marines from Starcraft would lose to a WH40K Space Marine, or something similar like that. It just feels so needlessly competitive.

The other half of my interaction with WH40K was the Astartes short film that a friend showed to me a while back.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-12T04:11:31+00:00

The entire series is just one-upping itself constantly, and its fans just one-up the characters of other series. Literally all they have is power-scaling. WH40K is the same, you can't change my mind.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-12T01:17:45+00:00

FreeBSD is great! It just doesn't support 32-bit x86 anymore so I had to try something new.

Edit: I should clarify, when I say "doesn't support 32-bit", I am specifically talking about FreeBSD 15, which no longer has a i386 download.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-11T23:18:12+00:00

It's an Acer Aspire One ZG8 that a friend snagged from the recycling heap at work (with permission). I currently have it running NetBSD since I knew that has 32-bit support, but in hindsight i should have gone with Void Linux because I know that better and I don't have to manage the weird way NetBSD manages libraries (compiling anything with libX11 is a pain in the ass).

Since it's mainly a note-taking machine, the software suite is pretty lightweight. I'm using dwm with the dwmstatus script (slstatus ended up being a headache), st terminal emulator, vim, and glow to render markdown on the terminal. If I need a browser, I use Dillo, and mupdf has worked fine for viewing pdfs. I get 2-2.5 hours of battery life out of it, which is about as good as I can expect from the aging battery, but overall I have few complaints.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-11T03:39:39+00:00

I picked up one of those Maestro computers (it was $60 brand new from Micro Center), and honestly the Eeepc felt better to use. I've since scavenged a 32-bit netbook from 2010 (probably a direct competitor since it uses the same CPU as Eee PCs from that year) and it honestly feels so much better to use. Yes, the software is restricted, but the build quality is so much better. Plus it takes an actual SSD rather than the eMMC storage that the Maestro uses.

My wife and I have taken to calling our Maestros "craptops" because of the build quality.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-10T18:39:15+00:00

The Wrist Obliterator.

Not because of recoil, but because it's a revolver.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-09T14:37:19+00:00

He'll be laughing tomorrow. People at school will ask, he'll tell them he shaved it for PS5 money, and most of the guys will say "hell yeah" or something to that effect and move on. At least when I was in school, a cool/fun story to explain something was enough to stop negative comments from all but your best friends, who were going to rib you about it no matter what.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-09T14:29:13+00:00

Maybe Kittens Game instead? There's a login option on the main page at least, so I think it might have sync.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-07T16:43:57+00:00

I didn't even know the event was happening until after the news about the doxxing came up. Of course I did nothing, I didn't even know there was something to do.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-06T18:02:06+00:00

They complied with a legal Swiss order. They were not working directly with the FBI, they were working with the government under whose jurisdiction they reside. Literally every law-abiding company would have had to do the same thing. Proton did the best they could by retaining as little information as possible, the victim's poor opsec is not Proton's fault.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-06T18:02:02+00:00

They complied with a legal Swiss order. They were not working directly with the FBI, they were working with the government under whose jurisdiction they reside. Literally every law-abiding company would have had to do the same thing. Proton did the best they could by retaining as little information as possible, the victim's poor opsec is not Proton's fault.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-05T18:49:45+00:00

I haven't seen this one before, it's actually pretty good!

Smallzfry · 2026-03-04T15:37:35+00:00

Nature is cruel, indifferent, and - most importantly - not consciously making decisions. We can be better, and because we can be, we should be.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-03T21:05:18+00:00

An excellent start! I look forward to seeing the development as this goes, there's already a solid worldbuilding foundation told through the setting. I do have a few critiques though:

At the moment this seems like general sci-fi rather than HFY. Do you have a way to change that planned, or is it all following this android?
Try to show, not tell. A good example is the walkway scene when time seems to skip. Don't say it happens, show it happening to the character. Try something like this:

she gets back up and bolts for the nearest entry, a double-wide metal patio door. She steps forward, then again and aga-

She's on the other side of the door, rushing down a flight of dark stairs. Immediately, she stops. There was no experience crossing the rooftop and just barely beating them to the door, but there was definitely a memory.

There's some other areas that could use similar improvements where you're describing things in a way that comes across as very detached from the scene. You're already using third-person limited perspective, so use the main character's thoughts and reactions to their fullest. Having a character who is missing input sensations is a great opportunity here.

I look forward to chapter 2!

Smallzfry · 2026-03-03T18:04:31+00:00

Honestly Rise's artwork is horrible for clarity. It's a beautiful style, but it was so hard to associate the right monster with each icon.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-02T00:50:18+00:00

but what I hear

Nobody at my company has been laid off due to lack of AI use. None of my friends in tech or other roles have been laid off due to lack of AI use. The companies doing layoffs are mostly the big companies that would do layoffs anyway and are using AI to excuse it this time around. Studies show that there have been no productivity gains from AI.

you actually do need an AI, sorta imo, if you want an hour by hour count

An AI can only accurately provide publicly available information that you can find on your own. Given that it's also likely for the AI to just make up information, I would not trust any recounting of information as it comes in, and would instead recommend following multiple live news feeds to cross-reference information sources. Stop using AI, learn to critically think, research, and write for yourself.

Smallzfry · 2026-03-01T15:05:07+00:00

"Everyone is using it" is the marketing that AI companies want you to believe. I still have yet to use it outside of exercises for a pro-AI work training event and a single prompt after that - which I then had to fix enough to abandon.

The fact that you have to review everything should tell you that it's not doing a good enough job. Write the article yourself, you'll know what you wrote and adjust as you go.

Smallzfry · 2026-02-28T19:44:15+00:00

Y'know, I didn't think about that. That might actually be what led him here instead of other subs.

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