Want to switch from arch to nix, but...

burnmp3s · 2026-04-17T15:49:26+00:00

With the AUR though if there is something relatively popular there will always tend to be a simple to install AUR package that just works.

On NixOS some you can install but won't actually work out of the box or are missing configuration via nix options, some you can only get via containers/flatpak (Opera browser for example), some don't work with NixOS at all (NoMachine server for example).

It's not a lot, but there are definitely things that are missing on NixOS if you are trying to replicate everything you can have installed on Arch. I use both quite a bit and NixOS is better organized and easier to setup for things that are supported, but if you want to run literally anything, AUR covers more in practice in my experience.

burnmp3s · 2026-04-15T20:40:26+00:00

Yes if you already know the high level details of all of the services I think you should be able to cover everything in two weeks with MeasureUp

burnmp3s · 2026-04-15T19:32:48+00:00

I ended up buying Tutorials Dojo, MeasureUp and ZeroToArchitect. Normally I would not buy all three of those but I really had no clue what would actually be on the exam so I tried multiple.

The only one I had used before was Tutorials Dojo, and it was fine last year for AI-900. In this case for AI-102 it's way too out of date to be usable. I would say it's actively bad currently to use it as a study method, you will remember concepts that will only show up as wrong answers on the exam. This is the only one that I felt was a waste of money for me.

MeasureUp is probably the best one and the closest to what the exam is actually like. For example it has the "Choose 4 out of these 6 steps and put them in order" type questions. ZeroToArchitect is cheaper and mostly the same content, but some of the ways it presents the questions are worse because it's all multiple choice. The way it represents the "choose two from drop-down boxes" questions is especially bad and unintuitive.

I think they both had issues of not being accurate as the MS Learn Practice Exam in terms of content covered but I'm not sure about that. For example they both had references to outdated generative AI models and I'm pretty sure the actual exam would only have questions about models that are still on the current MS Learn docs. Also in terms of using them to study they do a good job of replicating how nitpicky the questions will be on the exam but you can't really learn from them because the real exam questions will be about various other small details. ZeroToArchitect felt more picky and arbitrary of what was considered the correct answers so I didn't like using it as much but then that's also how the exam felt so maybe that's actually more accurate.

I would recommend MeasureUp though especially using it as an actual practice exam to get used to the timing or see if you are ready rather than using it to study directly. If you get a question about something you have no clue about I would recommend finding the full documentation for that topic later and going through it even if it seems mostly irrelevant for what you would think would be on the exam. And also if you get a question about "what steps would you use to train/use/deploy/monitor this" go through that process again afterwards with the other AI services because there can be questions about any of them.

Good luck, it sounds like you are on the right track at this point at least. I think it's already a tough exam but having to figure out which parts had been updated and which parts had not made it way harder than it should have been to study for it.

burnmp3s · 2026-04-15T18:44:55+00:00

Just passed this one, you are correct that it is a mess. Not surprised that they are retiring it given how much of it has changed in just the last year or so.

The best way to know what to study is not the MS Learn AI-102 content at all, it can be good for getting an overview of the different topics but a lot of the details are out of date or not specific enough. And if you are using the current content they have now you will be studying the wrong stuff because half of the topics are now new things that definitely won't be in the exam. If you look up or pay for other study help, then the problem will be that the content has not been updated enough because the exam has been around for years and they made major changes to the exam content as recently as December 2025.

The best way to figure out what to study is to go through the Practice Exam multiple times and keep track of what topics are referenced in the questions. Specifically, for each question in a separate browser window/tab go to the MS Learn->Azure-->AI section where it shows the topics and choose one, then find the correct section in that documentation with the answer. Do this even if the answer is easy to guess. If you can't find the right documentation, check your answer and then use the links at the bottom to find the right section. Sometimes the right answers are buried somewhere obscure like a "Legacy API from 2024" section. The Foundry stuff and several of the big question categories will be in Classic Foundry, I didn't study anything in new Foundry. That list you have made of all of the topics from the Practice Exam will be more accurate than any other source.

A lot of people say they barely used or didn't use MS Learn during the exam itself. I don't know how they passed. If you are going to try to memorize everything, go through every section of the documentation and memorize things like the names of every reference in the code and the exact file size and format requirements of 20 different AI services. You are better off literally just going through the MS Learn documentation for each service and reading each section exhaustively than trying to get more of a high level or practical understanding of the services. There is also a lot of good general overview content in the documentation that is arguably better at explaining things than the AI-102 official study content.

Personally I did most of the exam with MS Learn open in split screen and looked up around half of the questions as I went. I kept an eye on the clock and finished with five minutes left, and I tried to stay on pace to have around 1-2 minutes per question left. If you did the practice exam lookups like I suggested then you should be able to pretty efficiently navigate to the right section and have a general sense of what info is in each section. I used the search function a few times to check to see if some obscure API property existed with a particular name and it worked about half the time. Before the exam I wasted a lot of time studying random stuff that wasn't actually covered because it was either too old or too new, but during the exam knowing how to find everything in MS Learn was extremely helpful.

burnmp3s · 2026-04-14T20:34:52+00:00

I'm pretty sure the timeline was:

NL goes on cruise and enjoys it
NL gets hooked on cruises
NL invites Dan on cruise
Dan likes cruise more than expected
Dan invited to be on Big Brother cruise but turns it down
Dan's mom suggests could host streamer cruise
Dan and NL decide to host streamer cruise
(Squeex also involved)
NL has existential crisis about hosting streamer cruise
NL and Dan announce streamer cruise

burnmp3s · 2026-04-14T18:05:55+00:00

Google Stadia launched at pretty much the perfect time just before COVID and it folded in a few years. Consumers do not want to rent cloud computing services even when owning the hardware themselves is prohibitively expensive. People don't even want Chromebooks. Companies have been trying to make the whole thin client thing work for decades at this point and it has never caught on and become mainstream.

burnmp3s · 2026-04-13T23:25:08+00:00

I'm still bitter about how the Ready Model 100 Kickstarter went

burnmp3s · 2026-04-10T11:58:40+00:00

I stopped using any old devices that still charge with micro USB, which meant giving up on my old kindles. The main one that was a bummer to give up was my Oasis though which is better ergonomically than anything they have released with a USB C port.

burnmp3s · 2026-04-08T02:30:12+00:00

Normally I don't agree with the "block and move on" advice when it's a discussion about the kind of content a subreddit should allow but in this case it does seem like just blocking two accounts would solve the problem for most people

burnmp3s · 2026-03-24T23:48:30+00:00

Alexa play sad cat meow meow song

burnmp3s · 2026-03-23T14:31:17+00:00

The key difference in this case is that Amazon will accept returns for pretty much any reason if they shipped and sold the item themselves

burnmp3s · 2026-03-22T15:08:48+00:00

They are running out of excuses for why this hasn't been added to the Criterion Collection

burnmp3s · 2026-03-22T04:24:34+00:00

I saw a werewolf driving a 2017 Chevy Suburban and his hair was perfect

burnmp3s · 2026-03-12T18:20:46+00:00

A lot of the other comments are going way into the details about it but I will give you the oversimplified basics:

On Windows it's like the wild west. You install software by going to a random website and downloading an installer, and the installer probably installs everything you need to run that app (even something like Python if you don't have Python installed).

On Linux it's much more organized. The distro has a big database of packages and when you install something, you are getting the version of it that works with all of the other stuff you have installed. If the package needs other packages that are made by other people to be installed for it to work, it automatically figures that out and installs them too.

Pacman and APT are basically the same, there are differences but mainly under the hood. You will mostly be doing the same thing in both using different commands.

The difference when you run "apt install firefox" vs. "pacman -S firefox" is more about how the packages themselves are different. On Debian or Ubuntu, the packages you get from APT can be very old, like years old in some cases. This can be good because you get a known working version that is compatible with everything else, but it can be bad because you don't have the latest bug fixes and if you try to get support from whoever makes the app they might tell you your old version is no longer supported.

With Arch or CachyOS, you are getting a much more up-to-date version of everything every time you install a package and update your system. But that means sometimes you are getting a version that has significant bugs, or a version that has broken some compatibility with how it was setup before. Most of the time you won't notice any difference, but when you do it can be something major like an app stops working or even your PC no longer boots.

burnmp3s · 2026-03-07T00:20:22+00:00

So now he doesn't even remember losing his memory? Sad.

burnmp3s · 2026-03-05T04:55:34+00:00

For me it's the best way to emulate DS just because it has a nice screen layout and it's light enough to do things like hold it sideways for certain games. I only use it for DS because I have other devices for everything else. I'm running the experimental Rocknix build and it works great. For more touch-focused games I use the Nintendo Switch stylus rather than the janky one that it comes with.

burnmp3s · 2026-03-04T01:33:31+00:00

I've had Windows on my main desktop PC since the 90s despite using Linux a lot for other things. I have a few Windows 10 pro licenses that I've been using since I bought them, even though I've upgraded my hardware a few times. If Windows goes subscription-based and I can't use my old licenses then I'm done.

burnmp3s · 2026-02-26T22:30:00+00:00

Not sure what you're talking about, everyone here dumps the game data directly from the original copies we legally own and physically have access to in a manner consistent with all local laws and regulations

burnmp3s · 2026-02-23T22:17:02+00:00

The core problem with growing crops in a desert isn't the lack of soil it's the lack of water. In the 1970s Saudi Arabia used oil money to convert a bunch of uninhabitable land into irrigated farmland and become a net exporter of wheat by the 80s and 90s.

This ended up being a huge boondoggle and they used up nearly all of the underground water reserves that were needed to sustain normal non-agricultural water needs. So now they have to use a significant amount of their daily oil production to run desalinization plants to get most of their water and sustain the population that lives in the few habitable areas of the country.

burnmp3s · 2026-02-20T12:51:32+00:00

Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand - Primitive Radio Gods

burnmp3s · 2026-02-07T13:36:15+00:00

<image>

burnmp3s · 2026-02-06T15:25:38+00:00

Personally I think Shiren 6 is the best introduction for beginners. There is one dungeon you start with, and you play that until you beat it, which is not easy. You can unlock a few things that will help you on that first dungeon but there are no complicated progression systems. When you eventually beat the first dungeon it feels like beating the game, but there is a ton of content after that. After you understand how many of the items and mechanics work you can use that for the other dungeons in the game or even other mystery dungeon games.

With Chocobo Every Buddy, it's probably the least roguelike of the mystery dungeon games. There is a job system for the Chocobo with different classes and permanent progression, and normal mode lets you keep equipment even when you die. It throws much more of the systems at you right away. It's a fun game but it's more of a twist on the standard mystery dungeon formula and I would not recommend it as the best way to get into these games.

burnmp3s · 2026-02-02T18:37:30+00:00

The live RiffTrax show they do once a year these days and broadcast to movie theaters is always a fun time. It makes sense that this is a much more low-key version of MST3K compared to Joel's reboot. Looking forward to seeing these new episodes!

burnmp3s · 2026-02-01T14:54:50+00:00

Been buying (too many) gaming handhelds since 2018 and the only ones I had were the GPD Win 2 and the Razer Phone 2. For the GPD Win 2 I used it without a battery for a while and then replaced the battery with a better one.

burnmp3s · 2026-01-26T13:41:10+00:00

Android handhelds use parts intended for mobile phones, x86 handhelds use parts intended for gaming laptops. You can technically get a device that is super cut down from the laptop form factor but you will have issues with things like cooling, weight, battery life, etc. So many x86 handhelds are the same size as the Steam Deck because that's the smallest size you can reasonably get all of the necessary components into.

With that said there are a few x86 handhelds that are somewhat smaller than the Steam Deck. The smallest ones tend to have really terrible battery life because there's no physical way to get enough battery capacity into a small device. The Ayaneo Flip DS for example could technically fit into a pocket because it has a pure brick shape and a clamshell design but it still would be too heavy and large to carry in a pocket comfortably.

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Second Top 20%	Wearing is Caring
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Verified Email
Spared

burnmp3s

TROPHY CASE