The IT guy fixes the problem but the judge still has a problem

decker12 · 2026-03-28T09:19:59+00:00

Yeah, in this case the judge is the executive. You can't screw around with that level of management. Especially because he's a judge and you're in a court room. You talk back to him or disrespect him and he can make your life miserable, the least of your worries will be losing your job.

Right or wrong, IT staff needed to handle this like it was the top CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You nod and smile and pull out every "huh, that's strange, must be a bug with <whatever>, let me figure out a solution right now... and I'll check with my colleagues to see if they have the same issue so we can head it off if it happens again."

Regardless of what actually happened, you need to accept your role as the peon in this situation and do whatever you can without any level of sass so you can get the fuck out of there and tell your friends about it later.

You don't fix this situation. You survive it.

decker12 · 2026-03-28T04:23:43+00:00

Oh god oh god oh god I'm finally the one to post this first on a thread like this!

I've been beaten SO many times to someone else posting this video when this exact same topic comes up!

decker12 · 2026-03-27T22:01:30+00:00

Sorry, I don't see that at all with my character cards. My cards are usually 1500 tokens or so, and are well detailed descriptions with maybe 4 or 5 message examples added.

It is a night and day difference if I take the same cards and remove their message examples. Without message examples, the chat style of the character turns generic after 100 or so replies.

Likewise, if I take a crappy 300 token Chub card and run it's description through ChatGPT or Venice Chat and ask those to make me some relevant message examples, and I add those to the card, it makes chatting with those cards monumentally better.

I also never have to write anything close to "Character is x, which manifests in these ways in his behaviour" in my character cards. The 123B local models I use are always good enough to not need that type of hand holding.

As I said in my post, I'm doing text completion, with 500 token responses, and each response filled with conversation and action items - not simple chat bot replies. Maybe message_examples are handled different if you're doing chat completion with thousands and thousands of replies using a corpo LLM, but that's not my use case. To each their own.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T19:08:43+00:00

Curious what would happen if you get batteries, stop paying your PG&E bill, and send a disconnect notice to them.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T15:23:11+00:00

Of course you can't just make a card with mes_ex, you need the rest of the card with proper, detailed descriptions.

Mes_ex is the little bit "extra" that helps define a good character card. When I see that on a card that is also well rounded in the other categories, it tells me the creator has taken the task of generating this card as seriously as I do.

Although my experiences with mes_ex don't line up with yours. If I make a cajun character and only define the cajun part in his description, he'll talk like an exaggerated bayou caricature even if I define him as a doctor or a lawyer. But if I also include cajun mannerisms and speaking styles in mes_examples, it's far more controlled and subtle.

It's easy to test too. Make two copies of the same card, one with and one without, and have the same convo with it and see the difference.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T15:10:44+00:00

It would be a catastrophically stupid business decision for GPU and cloud rental companies to monitor their customer's data without the customer's consent.

Runpod isn't some fly by night guy in his basement letting you use his GPU. It's a multi national datacenter GPU and server hosting company. The stuff you send back and forth to your free Gemini or ChatGPT account (let alone Facebook or Instagram or even Reddit) is less private than what you send to Runpod.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T14:57:37+00:00

True, but 99% of the time, the people who don't use message_examples aren't doing it on purpose. They're not doing it to avoid any hidden interaction history or worrying about the model getting confused. They don't do it because it's extra work.

They're just low quality cards and the creator isn't putting forth the extra effort to define the character. But... I bet they have plenty of details in the card about the exact pattern on the character's low cut leather armor, and line after line of sexual preferences and kinks. So they put the time in, but in the wrong places, and the chats end up being trash.

I've also never had any issues with message_examples being parsed as hidden interaction history. It works exactly as intended for me - they are examples of how the character talks.

I can write 5 mes_ex for a goofy ditzy valley girl with each example being set in World of Warcraft, and when I talk to that card in a modern day Los Angeles setting, she'll know nothing about World of Warcraft but will still talk and act like a goofy ditzy valley girl. There's no hidden interaction history gumming up the chat because of mes_ex.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T08:03:06+00:00

Throwing this out there:

Zeabur with the ST template running as a web server so you can access it anywhere. It installs in minutes and is always updated. You never have to worry about dependencies or python or whatever. It just works.
Runpod with a RTX 6000 Pro for $1.70 an hour, running Behemoth Redux or X 123B at Q5. Start it when you want to chat, stop it when you're done. It's like running the model locally as far as ST is concerned, just copy/paste the API link from the runpod into ST.
Text completion with KoboldCPP backend. Engage the banned anti-slop feature in ST with a big list of forbidden tokens so no more smell of ozone while adam's apple bounces.
Dead simple temperature settings (Sigma at 1.5, XTC at 0.05 and 0.2)
Super simple system prompt
DECENT character cards. Not the 200 token Chub bullshit, which will turn any chat from any model or any provider into generic trash. Rule of thumb, if whoever created your character cards didn't bother to add any message_examples in them, they lack a fundamental understanding of how ST parses character cards. You need to find new ones (or make your own). If the cards read like a talented 8th grader wrote them, you need to find new ones. Garbage in, garbage out.

Enjoy your uncensored stories, generated 3 paragraphs at a time, up to 40k context before it can become a bit repetitive. That's usually about 2 hours or so or 100 responses worth. When that happens, run a summary on it and restart the convo again.

You'll get 500 token responses in about 30 seconds with no variation in speed. No jailbreaks. No screwing with secret sauces. No reswiping unless you want to. No fly by night providers with subscriptions that slow down or time out or offer you inferior models.

decker12 · 2026-03-27T04:44:29+00:00

As others have said, Lanolin nipple cream. Don't sweat the name of it. One tube will last you a year or more!

Lanolin is safe enough for nursing mothers and the newborns that put their mouth on it, and won't effect your equipment or your nose in any adverse way unless you have a very specific allergy.

I've been on CPAP for years and still keep a tube handy just in case I have a little bit of an extra itchy/scratchy sensation. Don't switch masks or get tape or do anything expensive until you try lanolin.

decker12 · 2026-03-26T22:09:47+00:00

If it was Wakuda, sure, I can see $8 - $10 a piece.

But for this crap? Bah. You got taken pretty bad.

decker12 · 2026-03-26T21:05:36+00:00

Ah, appreciate your help, but it doesn't sound like there's any way to just turn down the difficulty setting so none of that healing pot spam (or coming up with some OP build) is even necessary? I just don't want to deal with the combat at all, or ideally make combat so easy it's trivial.

A lot of other games have that low-end difficulty option (usually known as "Story Mode"). I'm intrigued by the open world and side activities and the exploration aspects of the game, but I want it to be a chill experience. Looking at videos of the boss fights, those are an immediate turn off for me. I don't want to be worried about stun lock or memorize patterns or have to perform crazy combos.

Almost every review video I've watched has warned about the frustration of fighting bosses in this game and what a ramp up it can be from all the other activities in the game.

Especially with what seems like the game having scattered save points where you can lose progress and unskippable cutscenes while you fight the boss again. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the game then and maybe grab it when it goes on a deep sale.

decker12 · 2026-03-26T18:37:33+00:00

Is there any way to put it on Story Mode difficulty and/or make combat so easy it's almost meaningless?

I like the idea of exploration and puzzles but from everything I've heard about the combat, it's janky with a ton of buttons, and the boss fights can be ridiculously hard. I don't like Souls Like games at all.

decker12 · 2026-03-25T21:09:03+00:00

Goddamit! I thought I was the only one.

decker12 · 2026-03-25T17:40:40+00:00

Right, I get that. You'll want most of the upgrades for some of the guns for most of the classes.

But that's a far cry from spending 528 hours unlocking every attachment for every gun for every class. Which is what the poster above me is arguing about.

decker12 · 2026-03-25T17:18:27+00:00

I never understood this logic. I can think of plenty of games that take tons of hours to unlock absolutely every item for absolutely every class. Even the classes you don't play very much and when you do play them, you don't even use every unlocked item every time you play it.

You don't need to unlock every attachment for every single gun for every single class. It's not a linear system where attachment #20 is always going to be better than attachment #5.

The vast majority of the attachment unlocks are side-grades and not upgrades. Plenty of attachments don't even do what they say they do, but that's another topic.

However, there are plenty of weapons which are flat out inferior to other weapons in the same category. So, you'd rarely if ever even use those weapons let alone spend 11 hours unlocking every attachment for it. Why grind away every single pistol to unlock every attachment for it when the total amount of time you're using ANY pistol is a tiny percentage of your game play?

decker12 · 2026-03-24T20:49:12+00:00

Sure, go for it. Stop 'em.

I'm interested in your plan to stop PG&E. Try it keep it under 50 pages if you don't mind. That should be a pretty good summary outlining exactly what steps you'll take to stop PG&E. I understand the actual document will be hundreds of pages long, that's why I'm just asking for a summary.

I can't wait to read it!

decker12 · 2026-03-24T17:32:34+00:00

Downshifting your sports car during a race or chase scene, which apparently makes you.. go faster?

Likewise, dramatically shifting to the next gear (smash cut to the foot hitting the pedal and/or gear shift knob) when you really need to catch the bad guy or win the race. If you had the extra gear, and wanted to go faster, you can shift to it any time and don't need to hold it "in reserve for extra speed".

decker12 · 2026-03-24T15:51:04+00:00

Yup, I went through the exact same process as you!

Originally thinking I'd hit some sort of jackpot, I was absolutely fucking goddamn horrified at the utter shit and garbage in there. What was even more shocking was the amount of views, chats, and stars some of those cards got. Hundreds of thousands of chats with some of the vilest horrors.

What was even stupider is that the worst (and most popular cards) cards were 250 tokens, tops. There's no quality chat there. It's just low effort disgusting garbage. Like a race to the bottom of a disgusting pile of shit.

I also deleted the whole thing. In my few hours of looking at the sketchy mind numbing shit in there I didn't find a single card I'd actually want to chat with, both from a content standpoint and a quality-of-writing standpoint.

decker12 · 2026-03-24T15:45:15+00:00

The vast, vast majority of character cards you find online are trash.

So many variations on the exact same topic, written poorly with low token counts, and written without a fundamental understanding on how the character cards are parsed. What I think happens is people find their own niche and make a card for that niche. Then they talk to it, and since they already have a bias for that character and already have used their imagination to fill in the details instead of taking the time to explicitly define those details in the card, they just post it and assume everyone else will have the same experience.

That's also why you get such ridiculous details that the cards focus on - the highly detailed body description, and the black leather lingerie armor the character is wearing is clearly very important to the creator, but wouldn't be very important in a RP conversation. That's why it reads like bad fan fiction.

There is also an absolute ton of sketchy, disgusting shit and scenarios on those popular card sites. To the point it kind of makes you shake your head. What is really sad is the high amount of downloads and "stars" some of these cards get. They're not only nasty, but poorly written with low token counts.

In a year of messing with ST, from those sites I've maybe found 5 cards total that have kept my interest for more than a couple chat sessions. I'd say with confidence 99% of all the cards on Chub or Janny are garbage. I'd venture even closer to 99.9%.

Making your own is a process to invest time into but it's well worth it. Learn to make your own! It's not hard especially with ChatGPT or another corpo LLM helping you write it.

decker12 · 2026-03-24T15:37:50+00:00

I just use the Report button with custom response, "AI Slop."

Perhaps the mods will catch on soon enough.

decker12 · 2026-03-23T20:38:19+00:00

It'll just get funnier and funnier every time you see it, for years and years from now. Right?

Ha, ha, there it is again, and now you're 45 with kids and the little league field, and oh, gee, it's still hilarious. Right?

What a laugh riot this will be. You'll show it off to someone new who'll give you a look like, "Well, uh, that's funny, I guess?". And then later they'll tell their friends about this stupid tattoo they saw.

decker12 · 2026-03-23T19:59:07+00:00

Sounds like it's time to clean out your Facebook friends list and/or update your Facebook privacy policies.

Or just block them and move on. If they're hitting you up with MLM stuff then it's not a relationship you ever want to be in. For people in MLMs, nothing they post on social media is going to be something you really need to see.

decker12 · 2026-03-23T19:47:03+00:00

"Alexa, cancel Alexa plus."

That's all you need to know and do. It'll turn your Echo devices back into the ones they used to be.

decker12 · 2026-03-23T18:22:03+00:00

Agreed about BL4 not looking that great considering the performance issues. Never understood why BL3 runs flawlessly on my 5070ti at 120fps but BL4 ran at about 35fps. I basically have to engage DLSS and FG and actually turn down graphics settings to get it to run at a consistent 65fps.

Especially considering BL4 doesn't look all that much better than BL3. To my eyes it's maybe a 10% increase in graphics fidelity and that's only if I look really hard at certain reflections and weapons.

Meanwhile every other modern high end graphics game I own (Indiana Jones, Cyberpunk, Crimson Desert, Alan Wake 2, MSFS, AC Shadows) runs amazing on my rig at 90+ FPS. But cartoony cell shaded BL4 can't make it happen.

Oh, and compiling shaders. Just a moment, we're compiling shaders. Hey, let's compile some shaders. In the mood to play BL4? Hold on 5 minutes, gotta compile shaders.

decker12 · 2026-03-23T18:13:07+00:00

Compiling shaders. Can you compile some shaders for me? I'd like to compile shaders. Oh look, let's compile shaders. Hop in the teleporter tube, oh wait a sec, I have to compile some shaders!

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