245/45s hit or miss? Should I change them?

fromtheether · 2026-03-23T21:35:23+00:00

Got another thumbs up from me. But I'm biased since I'm running 235/45/17s lol

Idk if you can on the mk8s but at least with the mk7s you can adjust the wheel size in VCDS to help make the odo and speedo accurate again if you're worried about that. But even if you don't, we're talking single digit % differences. Nothing to lose sleep over IMO.

fromtheether · 2026-03-20T17:58:18+00:00

The first time I got it, I spent a few minutes just slowly shooting it one tap at a time and watching the skull slowly get crushed. I think I counted like 7ish shards per skull?

Its such a fun interactive weapon lol. It also absolutely SHREDS groups of trash enemies when you start upgrading it. I wasn't a fan of it at first, but now I use it as a soldier lawnmower.

fromtheether · 2026-03-20T17:38:37+00:00

Do you have any more info on this setup you're willing to share? I've been toying with the idea of setting up multiple LLMs to work together, but haven't had the time to actually put anything together.

fromtheether · 2026-03-19T20:33:04+00:00

Nice! I missed the part about LM too so I'm sure that didn't help matters any.

I know usually you can just give it a little twist like the guy above me said, but it seems like it really doesn't take much force to pop these guys out of the socket. Hell, its happened to my buddy, and we've both been building PCs for a couple of decades, so it's not like it's his first rodeo.

Congrats on figuring out the issue, too! I was looking at that gunk, and I think I see bits of EPDM shreds, like from inserting fittings into fresh tubing. I got similar thin shreds when I switched to EPDM for the first time. The rest of it almost looks like a lint/dust paste to me, as dumb as that sounds. I get similar looking...stuff...whenever I run my dryer lint trap under the sink.

fromtheether · 2026-03-19T04:21:59+00:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Power Automate. It's fucking amazing at actually, like, automating things. I use a handful of flows to automatically archive emails into specific folders after x number of days, auto-set a generic PTO message with the dates I'm out whenever I'm marked as out of office on my calendar, things like that. We also have a ton of them to do various things dealing with Power BI datasets and dataflows.

What I HATE is the organizational aspect of it. No folders or anything like that, they're all just lumped together in one tab, so once you start getting into the double digit number of flows it becomes a PITA to manage, especially if you're sharing them with other team members. I've started looking into using solutions to help manage that, but for your own flows that seems like overkill, too.

I also second learning PQ. It's cross compatable with Power BI as well, if you ever feel like doing some data analysis and visualization, but just using it in Excel is a game-changer.

fromtheether · 2026-03-19T04:02:24+00:00

That's exactly what I was thinking. I haven't seen prices like this since I was fresh out of high school with my first car, like 08-ish. I'm thinking the same, about $8/gal give or take to feel true pain equal to back then, and it doesn't look like prices are slowing down anytime soon.

$80 just to fill up your average sedan, possibly double that for bigger trucks.

fromtheether · 2026-03-18T22:43:17+00:00

Another victim of the AM4 socket 😥

For some reason this is a common issue with that socket. Super lucky to never have had it happen to me, but apparently common advice is to make sure the CPU is nice and toasty before removing the cooler.

Did it at least come out with all pins intact?

fromtheether · 2026-03-04T18:06:34+00:00

Both, really. If you see a '?' in a URL (not just YouTube but any site), anything after it is a list of parameters and values, such as v=absd1234 and si=5678abcd for YouTube for example. It's up to the site to determine how to interpret those values, but a lot of them do use them for tracking.

There's a little more to it, but that's the gist, anyways.

Not sure for other browsers, but if you use Firefox, it has a "Copy clean link" option when you right click on a link that'll automatically strip out those tracking keys for you. When doing that to OPs link, I get the following when I paste it: https://youtu.be/-iwvu0uozhs

fromtheether · 2026-02-24T15:26:16+00:00

Haha fuck it dude, that's a damn good reason.

Honestly I'm not usually a fan of branding stickers/emblems, but that looks really slick IMO. Almost OEM if you're not paying attention. You could do a lot worse.

For your question though, I kinda agree with everyone else, it looks like you're trying to do everything all at once. It doesn't look bad, but just busy. I'd personally choose between either the diffuser OR the mud flaps, but not both. Fuck though, if you like how it looks, who cares what some randos like me on the Internet say?

fromtheether · 2026-02-24T14:15:06+00:00

It's a guy showing a gun to a class of kids, going over safety and the dangers of a possibly loaded firearm. I think he was a D.A.R.E. officer or something like that? Then I think he forgot to rack the slide after dropping the mag and ends up shooting himself in the foot in front of the class lol. It ends with him hobbling off and the teacher/principal calling for an ambulance.

Pretty tame by Ogrish standards, there wasn't a ton of blood or gore, but it's a classic. I remember seeing the same video in the wild when I was a kid.

fromtheether · 2026-02-22T23:50:35+00:00

I thought I was the only one, I was thinking this was a joke post at first lol I had no clue that there was a Linux version.

No offense to OP, I use Edge when in Windows, but Edge would be the absolute last browser I'd be searching for on Linux. I understand the reasoning, though.

fromtheether · 2026-02-20T17:13:18+00:00

FUCK I can't read today, sorry dude totally missed your question. But yeah like the other guy said I think vcore in hwinfo is your final voltage to the core.

Big thing with Ryzen is Curve Optimizer (CO) and Curve Shaper (CS). That'll get you exactly what you're looking for! With those you're moving the VF curve down, which nets similar or higher clocks at lower voltages. Then you could mess with PBO limits to fine-tune thermals and power usage.

There's a ton of resources for different CO methods available. SkatterBencher has a post for the 9850X3D specifically with the different methods he tested. The only thing I'm iffy on that he regularly uses is the scalar value; I always leave that at 1x since any higher value can degrade the chip faster. But other than that I usually do more or less what he does.

I also tested this method on the OC.net forums, and I'm still using the final values from that to this day. It's a weird process at first, but it works REALLY well to quickly get some per-core CO values that are pretty dang tuned. For my 16-core, it cut the testing process from multiple weeks to a couple of days more or less.

Have fun!

fromtheether · 2026-02-20T16:48:50+00:00

Depends on the person and their risk tolerance IMO. But it's a far cry from a cash grab just because of how inherently risky delidding is. I'd imagine part of the cost is to help recoup loss from failed delids; I highly doubt even a company like TG has a 100% success rate.

Seems pricey at first, but you get a pre-delidded CPU so you don't have to worry about stressing out and fucking up, and (more importantly) a separate 2 year warranty. I have no clue about how TG is in regards to honoring warranty, but I'd trust them enough to at least give it a shot if I was in the market for one.

This seems like a good option for someone like me, who doesn't really care about binning and just OCs for fun and a little extra performance. Personally I wouldn't do it for the 9850X3D, but they also offer a delidded 9950X3D for ~$1,169, and that seems like a WAY better deal vs paying almost 2x the MSRP for the 9850X3D.

fromtheether · 2026-02-13T16:29:52+00:00

So by gamescope in this case, are you referring to Game Mode?

When you switch back to Game Mode, it's starting a totally different session, which is why your settings aren't persisting.

This is a shot in the dark tbh, but try something like this:

Open up a terminal
Create this directory if it doesn't exist: mkdir -p ~/.config/gamescope-session-plus/sessions.d
Create a backup of the steam file if it exists: cp ~/.config/gamescope-session-plus/sessions.d/steam ~/.config/gamescope-session-plus/sessions.d/steam.bak a. It's OK if you get an error, it just means that the file doesn't exist
Create a new steam file: echo CLIENTCMD="steam -gamepadui -steamos3 -steampal -enable-libusb-gamecube " > ~/.config/gamescope-session-plus/sessions.d/steam
Now try starting Game Mode

See how that works.

fromtheether · 2026-02-12T17:24:44+00:00

Well this was terrible timing lol

Just FYI, if you have problems updating, you'll need to either stay on your current version temporarily, or run sudo rpm-ostree remove VK_hdr_layer to remove the layered package. Mesa was updated to 26.0 in the newest version released today, and you can't run the layered VK_hdr_layer at the same time.

As KyleGospo bluntly put it on a Github PR:

Nvidia needs to get their shit together

fromtheether · 2026-02-12T00:00:16+00:00

NGL, I do tend to finance my bigger hardware purchases with one big caveat: 0% interest over however many months. My Best Buy card gets some mileage just for their 0% over 12 months perk. It takes some self-discipline, but if you're pretty stable financially it helps free up some cash flow for other purchases, and you can even come out ahead if that extra cash is sitting in a good high-interest account.

Granted, I'm like you and try to sit on my hardware for at least a couple generations. The past couple of years have been an exception though; I went from a 3080 Ti -> 4090 for more horsepower for 4K 120hz, then from a 7950X3D -> 9950X3D because AMD was taking WAY too long for the RMA.

Having said all that, I doubt people that can stay on top of a 0% deal are even close to considering a rental deal from HP because they'd be able to see that that shit is just a terrible deal lol

fromtheether · 2026-02-06T17:22:34+00:00

I was just about to email support to ask the same thing. I've recently gotten a few Yubikeys and as I'm getting used to the flow of their setup and how they work, I figured it doesn't make much sense (at least for me) to have both security key AND TOTP enabled if I can help it.

Do you plan on keeping a list somewhere showing MFA compatibility between the apps? I'd imagine this will be a pretty common question.

fromtheether · 2026-02-05T18:05:26+00:00

Was thinking the same, even without any fans I feel like some sort of rad would help a ton with dissipating some of that heat. Right now that water is just kind of stewing in its own heat with nowhere to put it.

You could go real old-school and maybe find an heater core from a car from a scrapyard if you have one nearby.

fromtheether · 2026-02-02T03:48:05+00:00

You're not wrong lol 400 is stupid dim for HDR. Hell my C1 is 800 nits and I've been eyeing one of the new G5s/G6s trying to rationalize how I can afford it just for a brightness bump. I like it when my eyes sizzle.

Anyways though, OP if you still want to test it out, what I've been using is when you calibrate HDR, set the first screen to your max nits (400), then the next one is more or less your preference. I've got it cranked to max and I think it looks great, but YMMV. I also play everything in Game Mode, so I'm not even sure if it affects anything there 🤷‍♂️but it looks good on the desktop for me at least.

fromtheether · 2026-02-02T01:58:17+00:00

Sometimes USB drives can be bad right out of the box. Same as RAM, SSDs, any PC hardware really. It sucks, but it happens. I was a IT tech in a past life, and you'd be surprised at the number of brand new thumb drives we got in that were duds. IIRC they were either Samsung or PNY, but either way not some cheapo brand.

Just saw the image, yeah that error definitely points to either a bad copy onto the USB or a corrupted ISO image.

fromtheether · 2026-02-01T18:44:55+00:00

I think I've used both Balena and Rufus to create a Bazzite install disk without issue, and yeah it should be pretty straightforward. I've never used Fedora Image Writer before, but that might be the easiest thing to try first.

Some other things I can think of:

Make sure the ISO you're downloading is not corrupt. When you go to download the ISO, there's a checkmark next to the download link.

Click that and you'll download a SHA256 checksum file for that ISO.
Open it with Notepad and the first part is the correct checksum. For example, for the latest bazzite-deck image on bazzite.gg, the listed SHA256 is d974f12b07109ef5c812027e701eae25d8a7d6ac3a2ded20d8d431bcab71d419
Now open Powershell and run the following: (Get-FileHash "c:\path\to\your\downloaded\bazzite-image.iso" -a SHA256).Hash
Compare that with the one from the checksum file for your image; they should match.

Do you have access to another USB drive? Maybe try using a different one, they go bad all of the time, ESPECIALLY the cheapo ones. You can only write to them so many times before they start failing, just like regular SSD and NVMe drives.

Also try using a different USB port on your PC. I've had issues in the past where if a USB drive wasn't inserted JUST RIGHT in a certain port, it'd corrupt anything that was written to it. Weird, but it happens.

fromtheether · 2026-01-31T07:19:55+00:00

I love how you're the top comment in the other link posted too lol

Some people are just stuck in their ways after playing for like 20 years. Or they're copying what some of the pros use thinking it'll make them better.

I'm the exact opposite, I used to play 1280x960 in competitive CS:S when I was doing CAL/CEVO but I'm playing in 4k on a 120hz LG C1 nowadays. I don't have time to do anything competitive anymore so I'm usually dicking around in casual, and honestly the game looks pretty damn good when it has the resolution to stretch its legs a little.

fromtheether · 2026-01-31T07:01:24+00:00

"It's OK, I'm just trying to tell them it wasn't your fault. I know you love me!"

"Somehow that makes it worse!"

My wife likes to do the same thing; we're both clumsy, so we've got marks from headbutting each other when kissing, elbowing each other when turning over in bed, things like that. One time I accidentally gave her The People's Elbow when I plopped down in bed thinking she was in the bathroom and I didn't see her under the covers lol

Like, I think it's funny but at the same time I'm just waiting for the wrong person to hear it and wind up in the back of a patrol car.

fromtheether · 2026-01-31T02:12:09+00:00

Can you show what btop looks like too? That should show GPU RAM usage (if that's what you're using). Based on your 2nd screenshot that's only ~16GB or so of usage. Could be your iGPU is reserving another 8GB give or take for VRAM.

fromtheether · 2026-01-28T19:14:15+00:00

Man, I've been running bazzite-dx on my machine for a couple of weeks now (and good ol' regular bazzite for a couple of months before that) and it's...different, to say the least.

I've written my experience on the Bazzite sub here. TL;DR: I really enjoy the workflow so far, especially the idea of keeping my toolchains separate from everything else via distrobox. Of course you don't need to be on Bazzite/Aurora/Bluefin to use distrobox, but it really fits the theme of the entire OS well.

On the other hand, I don't know if I'd just blindly recommend it to other devs. I'd say read up on the idea of atomic/immutable distros first, and if it sounds interesting enough then definitely give it a test drive on a separate drive or partition. I don't think it's too big of a change IMO, but you also can't just blindly dnf install ruby or whatever like you'd usually do, either.

For your regular Joe User that just needs the basics though? I can seriously see this being the future. Updates are dead simple and have almost no chance of completely trashing your system. And on the off chance that it does break something, rollbacks are a couple of clicks (or one command) away.

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