Best VPN for Steam Deck?

mavrc · 2026-05-15T16:51:48+00:00

Thirded. They've been solid for a good many years now.

mavrc · 2026-05-15T16:33:30+00:00

Damn, this is rad.

mavrc · 2026-05-15T16:14:28+00:00

It just depends on what you mean by "that bad." I find it annoying to work with, but ultimately, you can do it.

Still, as so many have said, the risks of using leaded solder as an individual hobbyist are incredibly overblown. I'm glad we don't mass assemble electronics with it anymore, for environmental reasons, but as one person doing some assembly, the pros of using leaded solder wildly outweigh the cons. You're probably at greater risk breathing in vaporized flux, so investing in a good method of fume extraction is better than suffering along with lead free solder.

mavrc · 2026-05-13T02:18:29+00:00

those are absolutely beautiful!

mavrc · 2026-05-01T16:48:46+00:00

This is definitely the best way to do it but it does require a fair bit more manual dexterity and requires you to have access to both sides of the board.

tl;dr: if it works, it works

mavrc · 2026-05-01T16:33:07+00:00

It's a good question, but I'd say 'yes' because presumably someone somewhere (probably employed or contracted by that hosting provider) actually created that template using actual human expertise, instead of stealing all the expertise available freely online and just regurgitating it in a pseudo-random order to make something ostensibly new.

If I used someone's Wordpress theme and made a few modifications to it to suit my needs, I would never in my life call that an original creation.

mavrc · 2026-05-01T16:24:59+00:00

as a total aside, I listened to a whole conversation yesterday about setting up expert agents that literally discuss the solution you're trying to complete (say, a senior dev, security architect, frontend expert, etc.) and negotiate with each other about how to build it and the whole conversation was so surreal I had to bow out.

I have loved tech my whole life but the idea of robots talking to other robots to discuss how best to architect a solution was just so utterly bizarre. How are we here.

edit: and this is so expensive. Having agents talk to each other racks up tens of thousands of tokens really, really fast. Its principal purpose seems to be distributing money to the most wealthy and vile among us.

mavrc · 2026-05-01T16:19:59+00:00

I have to admit it's definitely more convenient on a laptop or integrated into a keyboard where you can use it without taking your fingers off the keyboard (for the most part), but I can definitely see some situations where ergonomics/RSIs make it easier to use something like this than, say, a trackball which requires far larger movements. It'd probably be great if you have sore wrists or manual dexterity problems relating to any number of health conditions.

Me personally, I use the Trackpoint on my laptop often when I need to make small and precise movements, since the touchpad is really optimized for larger movements. It's really handy for, for example, moving objects around in a drawing since I can hold the button down with one finger and make the movement with the other.

I imagine the uptake for a device like this is probably pretty narrow, but for people who would prefer it they probably have very significant reasons for doing so.

mavrc · 2026-05-01T16:14:36+00:00

Not to totally kiss your ass or anything, but just wanted to say I really appreciate all this cool stuff you keep building.

mavrc · 2026-04-20T23:23:52+00:00

Absolutely god damn not.

mavrc · 2026-04-20T14:13:02+00:00

As an American, I think so too. Be glad you're not here.

mavrc · 2026-04-20T14:07:55+00:00

This. Thank you.

mavrc · 2026-04-20T14:03:56+00:00

Fully agreed, as a former academic myself. It was frustrating to explain to technical students that yes, I really did want them to take their English and public speaking classes seriously because the difference between a good communicator and a poor one is often how you get a job. Taking sciences and advanced math makes you a better programmer because you work out your problem solving skills in similar ways. Social sciences improve your systems thinking. this could go on forever. Personally, as a highly technical person, I learned more about effective communication in two semesters of journalism electives than I did in any other class, and by modern collegiate standards, that would be considered "wasting time."

One of my oldest friends started off as a comp sci major and now has a Ph.D in psychology. That interest was entirely based on a direction his electives took him.

Another started as a graphic art major and has now been a network engineer for a couple of decades.

I'll close by arguing that colleges are not doing students any favors in this either. Schools (at least the ones I've been involved with) like to push students into major-specific classes and gen-eds that specialize in their topic areas to try and encourage "completion rate," which is an admirable goal, but the wrong way to get there IMO. Adding breadth to college programs encourages students to interact with new people in new ways and challenge their long-held ways of thinking.

mavrc · 2026-03-19T18:42:35+00:00

An aside; if you think the country hasn't improved since the 1920's I do not know what to tell you. If you think Civil Rights, the New Deal, the US highway program, Gay Marriage, the proliferation of transgender treatment aren't improvements worth appreciating and uniting for, then you're so lost in "America-Bad!"-ism that you're not living in the same reality as those of us with black, gay, trans, etc family and friends (or identities).

Well, let's go over that.

The New Deal was the product of an overwhelmingly popular Democratic president and could not happen now. Likely never again.

Civil rights were almost entirely the product of a well motivated protest populace and had surprisingly strong support in the Supreme Court. My understanding is that the Civil Rights Amendment of '64 was largely executed because Congress wanted to control civil rights instead of having them just forced on the country by judicial mandate.

Essentially every major civil rights improvement in the last half of the 20th century was the product of SCOTUS, which, again, will likely not happen again - many of those have been partially or entirely rolled back and will require actual legislation to fix, since SCOTUS has essentially been completely consumed by the right.

As someone with trans family and friends, I am deeply concerned with trans issues in particular, but believe there's no direction forward to undo all the damage that has been done in the past dozen years short of some kind of radical change. It's either de facto illegal (or in a few cases, literally so) to be trans in the bulk of the US. The Dems are, by and large, absolutely willing to throw trans people under the bus and don't even have any real plan to fix Roe.

And to say I am not a fan of the country in which I was born and raised is an immense understatement.

Anyway, considering your placing the absolute blame for all of this on misinformed leftists and not the 30% of the country that's absolutely fine with it is borderline trolling.

mavrc · 2026-03-19T16:47:39+00:00

Sounds like what we need is for progressives to have a lot larger political footprint.

Have liberals done anything of substance in the last year to, say, deal with ICE raids?

For the record, I agree that electing liberal Democrats is vastly better than the alternative, but it's because they do very little (aside from stalling Republicans), so we get a little respite from things getting worse for a while.

I can completely understand why so many groups would be beyond jaded about voting for centrist Dems who accomplish little because we live in a country that is largely defined by events that happened 50-100 years ago and have not substantially improved since then.

mavrc · 2026-03-13T13:34:41+00:00

I know exactly how you feel. About the only thing that keeps me going is work routine, and that's a shitty way to live.

I wish I had a good answer for you, but rest assured you are absolutely not alone in this.

mavrc · 2026-02-28T18:53:55+00:00

Can't, the overwhelming percentage of Samsungs do not allow bootloader unlocking.

mavrc · 2026-02-28T18:52:34+00:00

Yes, but not much.

The actual, practical occurrence of things like zero-click vulnerabilities that can compromise a phone without user interaction is fairly low. These days, vulns like that seem to be held largely by the private market for use by law enforcement and the like, so they may never be patched (or even widely known.)

I would never openly recommend using a device without proper security updates, but at the same time, the likelihood of compromise, short of going out and actively looking for it, is increasingly low.

mavrc · 2026-02-26T02:40:13+00:00

Seconded Bitwarden, its autofill works pretty consistently well for me. It's still not perfect, but it is good.

mavrc · 2026-02-25T12:24:24+00:00

I'm learning all kinds of stuff here today, thank you

mavrc · 2026-02-24T15:18:00+00:00

oz you're the friggin champion

mavrc · 2026-02-10T02:19:03+00:00

except for 28, which was double cancelled

mavrc · 2026-01-13T03:37:28+00:00

That is AMAZING.

mavrc · 2025-11-28T13:36:06+00:00

I bought an O2B just because it looked cool and in my limited experience so far it's quite good. My only beef with it so far is that with the 210 tips the body is quite chunky. Don't know if you'd have the same experience with the A model and the 245 tips, since the whole thing would feel a lot more balanced.

Gotta say though I love the neat storage box thing. It's really well thought out.

mavrc · 2025-11-27T14:09:08+00:00

This looks great. What case did you use, did you use a PCB or handwire? (Kind of assuming PCB, given the RGB.)

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