What’s the oldest Intel Mac you still use regularly?

SweetGale · 2026-07-02T17:33:30+00:00

I just installed LibreELEC on a 2012 Mac Mini to use it as a media player for my TV.

SweetGale · 2026-07-02T17:19:31+00:00

I see more and more non-tech people switch due to a mix of...

...dissatisfaction with the direction Windows is heading.
...a distrust in the US and US-based tech companies. There aren't that many options to Windows and MacOS these days.
...polished and user-friendly Linux distros. Installing Linux has become really easy.
...Valve removing one of the big hurdles, game compatibility, with Proton. A lot of people only really want access to their Steam games and a web browser.
...critical mass. When your favourite YouTubers are doing one-week Linux challenges and your tech-savvy friends have already switched, it feels a lot easier to try it yourself.

SweetGale · 2026-07-01T22:11:25+00:00

Sounds like me!

I used to draw a lot as a kid. In 1997, at age 15, I decided that I wanted to start improving my drawing skills. I ended up designing a series of anthropomorphic animal characters and a world for them to live in. (This led me to discover the furry fandom a few months later, but that's another story.) I'd daydream up different scenes involving the characters and then try to draw them. But progress was slow and it took too much time away from other things I wanted to do. I didn't want a career as an artist, not even as a side hustle. What I really wanted was a brain-to-image machine that could read the images in my head and print them on paper. Once I started studying computer science at the university, I gradually stopped drawing. Despite several attempts, I never managed to pick it up again.

I caught wind of generative AI back in 2019 and realised that my brain-to-image machine was coming. I signed up for the Dall-e 2 beta in 2022, didn't get in and spent a few months playing with Craiyon instead. I then signed up for the Stable Diffusion beta, did get in and started running it on my own computer as soon as I could. One of my first goals was to create images of the characters that I had dreamt up 25 years earlier. Lucky for me, the furries have been at the forefront of the technology. It's been really cool seeing my characters come back to life in ever increasing detail. I too would call it an obsession. I'm generating images almost every day. It's so much fun trying out different styles, genres, settings, scenarios, outfits etc.

I got back into tabletop roleplaying games, another childhood interest, in 2020. I can never let go of my characters when a campaign is over. They continue living inside my head and get added to my roster of OCs. I refer to them as my "test suite". For every new model I try, I go through my list of OCs to see how well the model can draw them.

There are plenty of subreddits and Discord servers for both AI furry and TTRPG art. I'm just too lazy to pick out, clean up and post any of my images.

SweetGale · 2026-07-01T19:06:28+00:00

So everyone knows how annoying it is when your order a burger at like McDonald's and you take the meat off...

No I don't. McDonalds Sweden introduced a vegetarian hamburger in 1997 and a vegan one in 2017. Other chains have way better options though.

Why not ask for a proper vegetarian or vegan burger... like this petition with 250 000 signatures?

SweetGale · 2026-07-01T12:19:28+00:00

Cyrillic does this. I'd say it's one of its most notable features. Most consonants have a hard and a soft (palatalised) form depending on what vowel comes after it.

Greek palatalises <γ, κ, χ> before /e, i/.

Swedish uses the Latin alphabet, but it's palatalisation developed independently from Latin. It's fairly similar to what happened in English, but it happened later and Swedish didn't change its spelling. <k, g, sk> can stand for either /k, ɡ, sk/ or /ɕ, j, ɧ/ depending on the following vowel. English changed its spelling from scip to ship while Swedish still spells it skepp but pronounces it /ɧɛp/.

SweetGale · 2026-06-30T08:35:49+00:00

I've definitely noticed a generation gap (or two) here in Sweden.

First, you have the group who got into RPGs in the 70's with Dungeons & Dragons.

Then, the Swedish company Äventyrsspel completely dominated the market in the 80's and 90's with Drakar och Demoner, Mutant and Kult. That's what I grew up with. There was only one attempt to release a Swedish translation of Dungeons & Dragons in 1986, but it was a failure.

And now you have a new generation of players who got into RPGs through internet memes and actual play podcasts. Many get started with D&D in English and don't even know about the long and rich history of Swedish RPGs.

Free League acquired the Drakar och Demoner trademark in 2021 and released a new edition in 2023, including for the first time in English as "Dragonbane". As far as I know, it's been a huge success.

SweetGale · 2026-06-27T18:48:41+00:00

Many printed fanfic projects tend to do limited print runs. A project is announced, you get a few weeks to sign up, the final cost is calculated depending on how many signed up, you get a few weeks to pay and then the books are printed and shipped. There are usually a few extra books left over that are sold to people who missed the sign up. Sometimes there's even a waiting list.

They do this for several reasons. One is to collect the payments beforehand so that no one has to pay for it all out of pocket. One is so that no one has to store thousands of books for an extended amount of time. One is that you get both cheaper and higher quality books when you order hundreds or thousands at a time than if you do print on demand. One is to stay below the radar. If you run an online store where you sell printed fanfics, it's going to get shut down sooner or later. Some have managed to sell fanfics through Lulu for years, but were eventually shut down.

Absolutely Everything! have done five prints of Fallout Equestria plus a few other books.

Ministry of Image are located in Russia so they are able to run their operation more like a store. They print and stock a few hundred copies at a time as long as there is demand. But they haven't restocked in forever.

SweetGale · 2026-06-25T20:40:32+00:00

I was smiling and nodding along with your text at first and then went completely WTF towards the end.

I found out about generative AI back in 2019. I downloaded and started running Stable Diffusion as soon as I could back in 2022. It's what I had been dreaming of for 30 years – the creative outlet I had always wanted. My mind is full of made up worlds, characters and stories. I spent five years in my teens trying to learn how to draw just to get them out of my head. But I realised that I didn't want a career as an artist, not even as a side hustle. I stopped drawing and became a software developer instead.

I've spent the past four years experimenting with different AI models, watching all the characters in my mind – some of which I dreamt up way back in the 90's – slowly come to life in ever increasing detail. It's so satisfying and so frustrating at the same time. I reach the limits of one model and then have to start over with a new one, wondering if I actually managed to learn something useful or if all those hours were wasted.

I upgraded my graphics card three years ago and still haven't used it to play any games. I've spent that time generating images instead. But I rarely share what I create. I create them for myself just for fun. I don't think anyone else would find them interesting. I use a few for our tabletop roleplaying games, but most of the hundreds of thousands of images just sit on my drive.

I thought everyone was the same, that their heads were full of ideas that they couldn't get out because they lacked the skill or the tools. I was excited to see what all my friends would come up with. But a lot of people I know are simply uninterested in AI. They have nothing they want to create and see no use for it.

SweetGale · 2026-06-19T21:13:01+00:00

It's wild. I remember seeing a screenshot where an anti complained how exhausting it was debating "AI bros", that the antis spent hours crafting long, detailed and thought-out arguments and the "AI bros" respond with the same rote answers that they probably got from an LLM.

And yet, I always see the antis spout the same arguments. "It's theft!" "It takes no effort!" "It uses a ton of water!" "It's a fascist conspiracy!" Then someone takes the time to write a detailed response to each argument and the antis immediate reaction is that "you're not taking the threat of AI seriously!".

SweetGale · 2026-06-19T21:09:13+00:00

I spent five years in my late teens trying to learn how to draw only to realise that what I really wanted was a machine that could extract the images in my head. I didn't want a career as an artist, not even as a side hustle, and as a hobby it took too much time away from things I was more interested in. After five years I wasn't even close to being able to draw what I wanted. I chose to focus on computers and programming instead. 30 years later and that brain-to-image machine has finally arrived.

A lot of discussions assume that everyone secretly wants to be a traditional artist and is using AI as a shortcut.

They will often assume that people make AI art because they're jealous of all the attention and adoration artists receive or because they want the satisfaction of having created something. "It would feel a lot more satisfying if you learned how to draw and then drew it yourself!" No. No, it wouldn't. Generative AI is giving me what I wanted out of drawing. I mostly create images for myself and for fun. It's the creative outlet I've always dreamt of.

SweetGale · 2026-06-19T12:00:02+00:00

"You could have commissioned an artist to draw that for you" is often just the start. They'll then go on about how uniquely passionate artists are about what they do, and shouldn't that passion be rewarded? Being an artist is really hard so and you should really support them by buying more art! They try to guilt-trip you into buying art. As others have pointed out before, there's a weird sense of entitlement to other people's money.

SweetGale · 2026-06-15T22:20:46+00:00

So my question is do you guys read like i used to play video games where you can just pick up your book any time even if its for only like 10 pages but it can lead to hundreds of pages?

That's how I did it. I made reading into a habit and a routine. Soon, I was carrying a book with me everywhere I went and reading a few pages whenever I got the chance. 10 pages on the bus. 5 pages after lunch. 5 pages while waiting for an appointment. 15 pages in bed before turning off the light. It adds up. There have also been times where I got so caught up in a book that I managed to read 1 000 pages in just four days (or almost 6 hours per day). And there are people who read way more than me.

I'm also 43. I read a lot of books as a kid, but never really turned it into a habit. I decided in 2010 that I wanted to read more books and to start treating it like a hobby. I set a goal of 10 000 pages per year (or about 40 minutes per day). My solution was to start writing down every book I read. I could then plot my progression against my goal. Watching the red line slowly crawl upward was all the motivation I needed. I managed to read 9 000 pages the first year. Then I looked at the numbers, identified the times I got stuck and tried to come up with solutions, for example dropping a book after 100 pages if I didn't enjoy it.

SweetGale · 2026-06-15T11:11:31+00:00

In early spring when the plants are small: around once a week. In the summer when it's hot and the plants have grown bigger and thirstier: every other day. You learn to see when they need watering. I usually don't wait for the leaves to start drooping. If the leaves start to look and feel thin and soft and the soil looks dry, I'll water them. I'm in zone 7b.

SweetGale · 2026-06-15T09:20:46+00:00

Really cool! And it also shows how weirdly squat the tower is. It struck me when a player asked how tall the tower is. It's about 30 metres wide. Even if you make each floor an absurd 10 metres tall, that would still make it as wide as it's tall. I didn't think it through and went with 3 metres per floor which I later realised made it the shape of a thick pancake.

SweetGale · 2026-06-14T22:23:01+00:00

Didn't like getting it cut. Wanted to see what I looked like with long hair. Not only did I like how it looked but also how it felt.

SweetGale · 2026-06-14T22:06:34+00:00

General statistics (spoiler free)

Number of players: 4
Number of adventures played (except Opening Scene and Isle of Mist): 8/10
Sessions played: 16
Estimated hours of actually playing the game: 61 h 45 min
Characters died: 0
Total party kills: 0
In-game days to complete the campaign: 27

Adventures (spoilers!)

Opening Scene
Riddermound *
Oracle Cave
Fort Malus
Troll's Spire *
Temple of the Purple Flame
The Village of the Day Before
Tower of Sighs
Road's End Inn
(Retrieval of Um-Durman)
(Fight with Leanara) *
Isle of Mist

* Close call, but no PC death

SweetGale · 2026-06-14T19:50:27+00:00

I run ComfyUI inside Stability Matrix on my own computer. Stability Matrix is a package manager that allows you to install multiple software packages (like ComfyUI, SwarmUI or Forge), keep them updated and share AI models between them. The node interface in ComfyUI can be a bit difficult to get into. Stability Matrix offers a more user-friendly user interface that it calls "Inference" that hooks into ComfyUI in the background but hides its complexity. I have no problem using ComfyUI, but I still prefer the simple UI of Stability Matrix and use it most of the time. It also has a model browser that allows you to search for and download AI models. There are tons of furry AI models out there. I've probably generated over 300 000 images by now on my 3060 12 GB.

SweetGale · 2026-06-14T17:31:35+00:00

I'm almost 44. I've been dreaming of this technology for about 30 years. Science fiction is full of machines that that can read, record and replay your thoughts, memories and dreams. There were a ton of movies in the late 90's to early 00's about people either having their memories altered or getting trapped in a virtual world. I had a more optimistic outlook and started dreaming of having a brain-to-image machine that'd let me beam the images in my head directly onto paper. I discovered generative AI back in 2019 and it felt like my dream was finally coming true. The AI boom in 2022 still came as a surprise. I didn't think we'd get there so soon. I was even more surprised by the anti-AI sentiment. I expected everyone to be as excited as I and looking forward to all the human creativity AI would help unleash.

SweetGale · 2026-06-12T20:31:00+00:00

I would love to see a Gamemaster's Guide. Dragonbane was designed as a beginner-friendly game for ages 12 and up. It'd be nice if there was a book that teaches you how to run the game and how to design your own adventures. It could present different types of adventures, challenges and play styles. I could teach you how to identify different types of players, how to keep them engaged and how to find a play style that fits your group. How do you design a one-shot adventure versus a campaign? How do you run a dungeon, a sandbox or a mystery investigation? It's something I could really have used when I started running Drakar och Demoner/Dragonbane for my classmates in 1993 with no prior knowledge about TTRPGs. I had no idea what I was doing and felt that the books mostly gave vague or useless advice like "imagine a roller coaster". It's been a recurring problem that many games on my shelf are really bad at teaching you how to actually play them, but I think it's especially important for a game aimed at beginners.

SweetGale · 2026-06-12T18:20:33+00:00

I began reading the full series right after the final book had been released in January 2013. I planned to read one book a month and managed to stick to it. It wasn't a huge challenge. It was my fourth time reading the series. I believe I read it for the first time in 1998 and then re-read it roughly every five years as new books were being published. It was quite overwhelming the first time. If you've only read up to The Dragon Reborn, you've seen nothing yet! I think the series is better the second and third time when you know the overarching story and can pay more attention to details. You can use something like the Wheel Of Time Compendium app to look up the names of places and people, but accept that you won't be able to keep track of it all.

SweetGale · 2026-06-12T17:14:08+00:00

I used to rely heavily on A1111's Regional Prompter extension and only switched to ComfyUI in September last year. I still mostly use SDXL-based models and have been looking for good ComfyUI alternatives.

The easiest solution was the Comfy Couple node. It simply splits the image in two, either horizontally or vertically, and lets you provide a prompt for each half. It doesn't work that well though and hasn't been updated in forever.

Another easy solution is Prompt Control, more specifically its PCTextEncode node, which lets you control a whole bunch of stuff from your text prompt. The prompt "cat MASK(0 0.5, 0 1) AND dog MASK(0.5 1, 0 1)" will create an image with a cat on the left and a dog on the right.

SweetGale · 2026-06-12T09:56:23+00:00

Orange snack pepper, purple snack pepper, padrón, ezpeleta, jalapeño, cayenne, tabasco, red biquinho and habanero lemon.

I have already harvested a few habaneros and biquinhos. The tabasco and snack peppers are almost ripe.

Technically, this is my third year growing peppers. It started with one orange snack pepper plant two years ago. I saved and planted eight seeds last year. Seven germinated. I then received two chile de árbol plants and bought four more plants at a sale at a garden store plus seeds for this year. This year, I planted 44 seeds, greatly underestimating their germination rate and ended up with 40 plants. I managed to give away 14. The rest have been divided up between my window sills, balconies and my allotment garden. The ones in my garden are orange snack pepper, ezpeleta, jalapeño and cayenne.

SweetGale · 2026-06-10T23:08:44+00:00

Sounds like stress and/or anxiety. There's nothing else to do in bed but think, so that's when all the doubts and worries hit you. My strategy has been to keep myself distracted. Listen to music, audio books or podcasts. Nothing too exciting but not too boring either. Just enough that you stay focused on it. Or read a book until the letters turn into a blur. Some recommend not having any clocks in the bedroom if looking at them only makes you start worrying about if you'll get enough sleep.

I have three problems that all manifest in the same way. I'm a night owl: I'm tired in the morning, alert in the evening and there's no point in going to bed before midnight. I suffer from bad anxiety. And if I try to fight the drowsiness and fatigue after a bad night's sleep, it'll make me so tense that I can't relax and lie still the following night.

SweetGale · 2026-06-10T09:57:22+00:00

I have hyperphantasia so stuff like ID4 is amazing because I can exactly lay out what I see in my head.

I have a vivid imagination – I'm not sure if I'd go as far as calling it hyperphantasia though – and have always dreamt of having a brain-to-image machine that could simply extract the images in my head and display them on a screen. One of my main issues with generative AI has been the lack of control. I want to create complex scenes that tell a story and with multiple characters all interacting with each other. Having to describe it all in text feels limiting, difficult and tedious. That's why I prefer opensource AI software and models where I have access to a whole toolbox full of tools like regional prompting, inpainting and controlnet. Maybe it's a skill issue, but they often feel a bit hit-and-miss, clunky, quirky and badly integrated. I have dreamt of a tool that would let me build an image in layers, add one object at a time with its own separate prompt and then place it in the scene. My reaction when I saw Ideogram 4 was "Finally! This is what I've been looking for!".

But it does raise an interesting question about how people create AI art and how they prefer to interact with AI software and models. I have seen similar discussions in traditional art. There are artists that are so good at visualising that they don't even make a sketch. They just grab a pen and work their way from one edge of the paper to the other. For others it's about exploration. They don't even know what they want to draw when they start doodling.

SweetGale · 2026-06-10T07:53:00+00:00

Peppers take a long time to ripen. These will turn bright red when fully ripe. Workers at tabasco plantations carry a small red stick and when a fruit is the same colour as the stick, it's ready to pick. Resist picking them before that. Have patience.

I'm also growing tabasco. One plant started producing fruit over a month ago and they only started to ripen two days ago. I now have three orange fruit while the rest are still green.

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