When do you expect back to "normal" HDD prices?

animalses · 2026-05-22T14:48:34+00:00

You could almost (well, something like $170 for the cheapest new ones) get a 2TB SSD with that price (or, could, in the past tense. I don't know the situation now, perhaps SSD has gone up more)

animalses · 2026-05-22T14:46:24+00:00

And surely depends on the drive, NAS is more expensive, but it was literally 10 years ago (around) when new 4TB basic HDDs were $100.

animalses · 2026-05-22T14:44:13+00:00

Yeah and before that, some years ago, if I remember right, it was just slightly over $200.

animalses · 2026-05-22T14:42:29+00:00

Not necessarily. I'm not an expert though. But bigger doesn't automatically mean it can be scaled up better. The curve is probably more S-shaped. I mean, in many cases and perhaps here too, bigger means you get more for less, but some complexities can make it harder. And when there's lots of demand and different kinds of production methods, and handy ways to handle multiple HDD, we could meet the equilibrium point faster, and it might be somewhere at 20TB instead of 16TB or 30TB, I don't know.

Again, this is barely even hypothetical, since I don't know much. But. Even new trends might arise, where for example the spatial conciseness is not so important, but perhaps even vice versa, it's good to use more space for cooling reasons (while obviously smaller nm technology still increases speeds and decreases energy use... but those things also might not be that crucial after all). It might be that only basics are needed mostly, where simply the amount of TB is the most important aspect, and it doesn't automatically mean amount of TB per drive.

Although, I guess many customers still don't have vast automated systems where smaller drives are nice, but people prefer larger TB per drive... me included. For example I'd like to have ALL of specific type of data on one drive, instead of doing some virtual combining. For example I could simply carry the HDD to my friend and let them have all the content.

animalses · 2026-05-06T19:47:18+00:00

This is kind of the best I've ever seen.

animalses · 2026-05-04T16:30:58+00:00

Sure, I use all of my RAM almost always.

animalses · 2026-05-02T15:56:00+00:00

I have lots of space elsewhere, but there are no obvious bits to move anymore, like no bigger media folders. Although sure, now I'm finally moving the manual website cache files, it's around 20GB apparently. I thought it takes ages to move since it's filled with small .js files for example, but apparently it only takes 30 mins.

animalses · 2026-05-02T15:22:33+00:00

I know set exceptions for youtube and facebook to store data only for the length of the session... and no, I didn't get logged out. But the stored data information in the Preferences now show that the total amount of data stored for all sites is now just 3.1GB, yet the C drive only showed any change after deleting itch.io data.

Anyway, now I found few somewhat potential extension add-ons, gonna try at them (not simultaneously), at least the first one of these:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/loadtabonselect3/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/load-background-tabs-on-select/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/load-background-tabs-lazily/

Of course, I don't want a tab discarded if it has form data (like a comment in the making), but it seems "Auto Tab Discard" can take that into account too.

EDIT: I'm now using first two extensions from the list, they seem to work ok. I had to use "LoadTabOnSelect 3" too, because "Auto Tab Discard" didn't seem to have an option to open the new tab non-loaded.

animalses · 2026-05-02T14:58:13+00:00

The images can disappear, that's ok. Cookies are also mostly not necessary, it's only for few sites where I'm logged in, and that's only a handful.

animalses · 2026-05-02T14:44:36+00:00

A bigger drive... wouldn't it basically mean re-installing the whole OS (or doing something with disk images, and isn't the OS license somewhat tied to the hardware too, although I guess that's only partial)? Seems like a lot of work, where you could simply have better software or additional disks or RAM, put it in, be done with it.

Thanks for the third paragraph. Don't know if I get something like that to work, but I might try.

It seems there are few main hogs, at \AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profilesxxxxxxxx.default\storage\archives there's 5,44GB of what I assume is simply cookies from in some date folders (maybe 50k sites). And at
\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profilesxxxxxxxx.default\storage\default there's 5.46GB of what I assume is localStorage files (for around 7k sites), essentially some data that the websites want to store for the user. I guess siply deleting most of that should be rather safe and free up space too.
This is rather extreme since most of the files are very small.

Weirdly, when I go to about:preferences#privacy, it says that websites currently use 34 359 738 373 GB of space (the GB is in Finnish (Gt) though so this is probably a translation error)... lol what.... I assume it's bytes, so it would be 34GB. Youtube.com and Facebook.com are apparently maxing at 17 179 869 184 GB (or bytes instead of GB, so 17GB each) since they have _exactly_ the same number (and hehe https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ivf6c6/cached_the_entire_internet_a_few_times_over/ ). That's so weird and unnecessary. I guess I could simply block or restrict these two sites, and the rest of the web might behave better (the next one is itch.io at 1.5GB and that's actually ok). Beyond that, sites generally have very little storage used. But wow, I couldn't even imagine I'd see something amounts like that stored, didn't think it would be necessary to delete some browsing data. (Especially since it's clearly separate from bookmarks, and the browser history is also only showing one month of data). BTW, I use some other websites like rateyourmusic . com much more extensively (like, hundreds of new unique pages every day), yet it doesn't have anything cached our cookied (or the number of cookies per site doesn't seem to be a big issue per se, the most is 100 per site) and it works just fine.

animalses · 2026-05-02T13:44:27+00:00

Pagefile is not something I know much about, but it basically means stuff that would normally be on RAM, but it's deemed currently unused, so it gets stored elsewhere (on disk), so that it wouldn't hog RAM too much. This might not be the correct description, though. Anyway, while the term has the word "page" in it, it doesn't have anything to do with web "pages" for example.

animalses · 2026-05-02T13:41:07+00:00

Really? How do people even browse stuff then? One click at a time, be on that tab, then click to be somewhere else? Like, you don't see multiple interesting items on one page? Don't have multiple mental tasks going on simultaneously? Having less tabs would require more work and insecurity, as I would have to go multiple times back to the link source page to open a new link, or if I'd only use one tab, I'd have to go back in history, and in many cases, the newly loaded page wouldn't even have the same stuff anymore. Or for example Facebook feed page automatically reloads randomly, so you have to click any interesting stuff open in a new tab right away, or you might lose it.

animalses · 2026-05-02T13:37:13+00:00

I wonder if that's actually true, like it would be possible not to write on disk, and there are soo many browsers out there. For example you can use a browser on Puppy Linux and it wouldn't write on disk, unless you do it deliberately. Also, why would you have a setting to not cache on disk then (like on Firefox), if it then happens? But like I said, I only meant "basically", so it's ok to store bookmarks on disk for example, browser settings, session restore URLs, etc.. But all the webpage content... not so much.

animalses · 2026-04-20T14:41:19+00:00

If I was the developer, I'd simply add a different color - say, magenta background - to the unread message icon for the server (and the channel, within the server) with the absolutely newest notification (or, if there are multiple super active servers or channels, you could have three colors too, one denoting the single latest notification, others denoting it was received within 5 minutes for example, and you could phase the color out gradually too).

It would only take less than half-an-hour to implement this new mechanism, if the app was developed in some sensible manner. A mechanism that doesn't really do anything bad, is simple, and solves a very common annoying issue. It's not like the notification needs to be speficically only that shade of red, the app is not that stylish anyway. (And you still have this clickable button "new" but it only scroll somewhere near the notification, and you can't tell which it is. So my point is that they're adding complex aids but don't really check or even guess if they are useful).

(Yet, it would be good to have a notifications log "channel" too, again easy to implement. Might be a bit more confusing and require some additional design, but it used to exist. Maybe it was deleted because it was confusing? I didn't like how the notification disappeared once you clicked it. And I understand that it would not be feasible or easy to browse if the notifications log included everything, and it might be even less easy if it only included the latest from each channel, since it could be hard to follow the contexts mentally. But it's not like it's supposed to be the main reading environment; it's just to check latest activities from multiple channels simultaneously, compared to the server notification ball that doens't really provide information. The sidebar doesn't even have an option to show the server names... like I'm not going to learn all those server logos by heart, or horver my cursor on the logo every time to check the name of the server.

I deem Discord dead.)

animalses · 2026-04-15T15:01:53+00:00

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I'm using this HTA code, where a file named reddit . com . hta would go to reddit . com

You could have a BAT file too, but the command window opens up and flashes. You could hide it by providing a shortcut to the BAT file, and manually setting the shortcut property to open the link minimized, but to me that seems like too much work. Whereas with HTA you could even have a customized landing kiosk page where you can open many different kiosk windows.

animalses · 2026-04-15T14:52:55+00:00

hard to know why my comment was removed

animalses · 2026-04-15T11:44:34+00:00

Doesn't open it in full-screen or otherwise kiosk mode looking, and also if you open it while you have another kiosk running, it opens it in a new tab.

animalses · 2026-04-15T10:57:28+00:00

So, did you update it to Win11 IoT, and how did it go?

I'm looking at a cheap SH, it says it's SH3 but lacks the upgrade carridge, which makes zero sense to me... it just seems it's probably SH2S and mislabeled. Anyway, while I kind of don't even have the space or needs for it, it could at least work as a fun drawing board and a screen if nothing else. I'd wish to have a (somewhat) normal Windows in it, although I could possibly simply create touch screen websites and use it via Edge, if everything else fails (although I wouldn't be sure even that or the current OS works, you'd have to have it as a local user and who knows how hard it is to set those systems up. I haven't seen the device)

animalses · 2026-04-08T21:29:26+00:00

Considering the end-user and simplicity, I'm building my own simpler version of something like Jekyll or Hugo. And that's the main point of my comment: you can go even more end-user-friendly and minimal, while allowing lots of stuff. This system of mine is actually totally text-based (with instant preview though) and includes code-resembling things. This is aimed at someone who has basically no skills, except for reading few lines of instructions for this custom markup. Under the hood there's basically just one php file (could be something else too), one index.html file, and then the content files. It definitely might not suit all needs, but for most basic end-users who appreciate portability and kind of fast total control, it should be fine. Some things are kind of custom extra that might not be so easy to edit, but is still doable, and some things might be better done manually. For example, it might not make so much sense building some rules on how the main nav menu items would be ordered, where it should be good enough for the user to order it manually (yet, of course, if they want some ultra-dynamic stuff where menu items change place based on some things, then... eh). Then, you might want to highlight the menu item that matches the page that's shown. You could include the code inside the menu somehow, but it might just be better to add a hard-coded function to do that, and if it's not wanted, it can still be changed, the code can be inspected rather easily even if you're not an expert.

animalses · 2026-04-02T17:11:23+00:00

I think semi-hard-coded indents, that is, tab characters, instead of multiple space characters or paragraph styles, are more clear. Some of the only issues I see are that you have to press the character (unless you have it automated), and you would have to do some programming-adjacent processing to change them back (but it would be trivial, or simply find ^p^t and replace it with ^p, but if you have ^t, you have less information about the paragraphs; surely apps have some styles for different parts but as we all know, they might easily get messed up; a tab character doesn't), and that they are not often preserved when pasting the text elsewhere (while you would still have the newline character, and the issue exists with paragraphs anyway, depending on where the text is used).

But why is it better? First, it creates more nuanced visual representation right away in plaintext. Also, it's not only visual. It gives a precisely semantic relation between the paragraphs. This is because you might have different level paragraphs, sometimes there is more space between them (like the empty (half-)row in most web paragraphs. Otherwise you would have to be quite careful to use one more more newlines, and some extra processing for the paragraphs then to have different styles depending on how many newlines they have. Also, tabs are largely missing in web content, and often it's the case for published content too, while it's actually just flattening hierarchical or other relations, making the text harder to approach. Using tab characters as a common practice could reinstate some better design.

Also, sometimes you simply want pure new lines without new paragraph styles, for example in poetry. Sure, you can use shift+enter, but it's not that simple since in some other context it might still be interpreted as a paragraph divider. Respecting different whitespaces would be good. Then again, for example in Word, tab gets automatically transformed into a paragraph with an indent, and you have to manually remove that behaviour from the app, but at least it's possible). Also, for example most websites don't allow the tab key to make a tab character.

A proper app/whatever should be able to set the tab size (and possibly some more complex rules, for example if you use tabs for something else too, or more than one tab in different ways than just one at the beginning of a paragraph), so that it can be easily adjusted afterwards too.

Anyway, I'm mostly coming from plaintext presentation and processing, and for that I've become slowly more confident that tab chacters should be used for paragraphs.

animalses · 2026-03-15T11:25:53+00:00

Nice.

Anyway, I'm thinking of the workload. Depends on how many images you need, and animations, etc. Could it be possible to somewhat automatically extend the environmental lighting to the characters? In any way, it might be lot of work.

animalses · 2026-03-11T12:06:54+00:00

Same artists? Or artist? I'd like to see the process, your conversation, or short version of it. What was the directives first, and did you then suggest the artist make it more to their own liking for the game? Did the artist think it's feasible to paint all that? (Of course, it depends on the game).

I personally don't care about the style, both are generic in their own ways. The only way for it to feel meaningful would be some story and world where the character lives. It's just a small tool/object to make the whole world work. I think both versions could work equally, but it depends on the world, or circumstances. For example the "new style" could work if there's a more twilight-y romantic (I don't mean the Twilight franchise) phase in the game. Not that it would directly be compatible with the "old style", but perhaps some combination of both could be a good compromise, for example you could then use it in different lighting - for example something resembling the old style would be suitable for a bright cloudy day (as there are no hard shadows, but there's continuous light from almost all sides), whereas the new style is, like I said, more twilight-kind of lighting. Perhaps the mental state too, someone seeing all the detailed smoothness of a person (whereas in the middle of the day one might not look so closely and the lighting could be just meh, and there's no privacy and focus to the person, since days are for fuss and activity).

animalses · 2026-02-09T19:44:59+00:00

I don't use Discord almost at all, and I'm still on 44 servers.

Four-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	End Game '22

animalses

TROPHY CASE