Kaz Blog

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[kazriko2]

Various nerdy projects

I have so many projects going on that I should probably write them down somewhere to make sure I don’t forget what step I’m on with each one.

Frite XT. Someone tossed an original IBM PCXT case out at work here. I want to turn it into a ARM base PC Emulator box.

I’ve backed the La Frite board on Kickstarter, should arrive next year sometime.

La Frite has 2 USBs, desolder the connectors and run wires out to internal usb hubs.

Need to clean the case out and remove the boards that are there. The connectors are extremely corroded and most of the boards are probably useless. The CPU has been removed from the system.

Install a 3.5″ floppy. Need an adapter to USB. Use internal USB connector. 

Do the same for a 5.25″ floppy. This is tougher because the usb adapters for it are harder to find, and most are read only. Read only is probably fine.

The case has a full height 5.25″ hard drive. Planning to hollow this out, and put the Frite board inside.

Use Meanwell 12 and 5v supplies, rail mounted. 12v already owned, 5v would need to be bought.

Add 5v rail mount relays. one for 12 and one for 5v.

The big chunky switch on the side will instead switch 5v to the relays. The 2 meanwell supplies will always be powered up just so that it can supply 5v to this switch, should be very low standby current.

the other side of the switch will go to a digital input on the frite board.

The frite board will have an output going to the relays as well. When it turns on, it will turn this output on to keep the relays active. If the switch is turned off, the board will keep power running just long enough for a clean shutdown.

USB ports on the back, for most connectivity. Use the slot covers with ports.

Use 2 DIO pins for AT or PS/2 keyboards, Hopefully track down an original buckling spring AT plug keyboard.

Frite will boot to X, then run 2 programs. Dosbox emulating a 4.77mhz XT, and Ratpoison for the windowmanager. This means that it will look really similar to an XT because Ratpoison has no window decorations, but if someone knows how to use ratpoison, they could launch new terminals and use it like a linux computer.

Izuna Router. Maxe a new PFSense router for my house. Started out with parts I had laying around, adding some bits that are still needed.

Had Asus E350 motherboard on hand. MicroATX board that is half depth. The ethernet port is awful. Done.

Using an HP nic with Intel chip for both connections. Gigabit. Done.

Acrylic case, designed for wallmount. Low-profile PCIe slots. In process from a laser cutter

Habey 60w DC-DC power supply. I had this on hand. Done.

PNY 120gig SSD. Purchased for $30 from Bestbuy. Done.

Various screws and offsets. Ordered.

External 12v power supply. UpBright off amazon. Done.

Total power consumption: 21-30w.

Vyers Windows Gaming System. I currently don’t have a windows gaming system, since I’ve dismantled Emizel. Assemble a Ryzen 2200g computer.

Antec 150w MiniITX case. Done.

Asrock MiniITX Motherboard. Done.

AMD 2200g. Done.

Install all parts in system. Done.

250gig Samsung (Done) or 250 gig m.2 hard drive. Decide if the samsung sata drive is enough.

Windows 10 copy. Need to purchase.

Usalia Upgrade. Need to get a X470 and a new video card, and eventually replace Vyers with a VM host with GPU passthrough.

Might not even bother with this, since Vyers will probably suffice, but it’s a long term goal.

Asrock Taichi x470.

Vega56 graphics card, or 1070? Haven’t decided, may be based on opportunity.

A 500gig m.2 drive?

Sicily Upgrade. Switch Sicily to a Ryzen based system, with ECC memory and add new SSDs as either L2ARC or WAL drives.

The motherboard would be from the Usalia upgrade, whenever that happens.

ECC memory would need to be purchased.

Case has 2 3.5″ external bays. Buy some 2.5″ ssd hotswap racks for them.

Possibly switch from a 3x3.5″ hard drive rack to a 5x3.5″ rack so I can fit 2 more platter disks in.

Might need more PCIe sata boards.

Maybe use Optane for either the WAL or L2ARC.

Majorita Colocation and Upgrades. When we move out of this office, I need a new home for Majorita. Also, they’ll be returning some of my servers and NAS systems, so I’ll have some better drives to install.

Would be a good idea to put the 4x4tb drives in before taking it to the colocation site.

Made contact with a colocation site for $75/mo.

It would be a good idea to buy a second system so that we have spares if the system ever goes down. $195-$280 to buy another nearly identical system, without the memory.

Epyc upgrade would be close to $2000. Would there ever be a case where I could justify that cost?

130XE Repair. My 130XE, the first computer I ever owned, was discontinued because we couldn’t get it to work anymore, we bought another 130XE and later XEGS to replace it. I want to fix it.

Purchased a monitor to SVideo cable. Done.

Power supply from XEGS is still working and putting out the correct voltage. Done

Ordered 20 spare memory chips from china due to long lead times, just in case. They were cheap.

Ordered a SVideo to VGA adapter. Can’t find a SVideo capable screen anymore.

Removed the bios switch from the sysntem to simplify the troubleshooting. Will just use the existing atari dos rom.

Once I have the adapter here, I can start troubleshooting the system.

[kazriko2]

Librem Phone, what I need to replace...

Next year, the Librem phone is supposed to come out. It’s something I really want to jump on, I’ve been waiting for a good alternative to Android/iPhone for some time. There’s just a few things that I’ll need to get supported before I can ditch the old phone. I’ll probably need to keep the android phone turned off in my backpack just for things that won’t work with the new phone.

Things with web apps, possibly suboptimal experience, need to try them on a phone directly:

Time Tracker, replacing Toggl

Mail Client, replacing Gmail and Zoho apps

Discord App replacement

Slack App replacement

News Reader, replacing the NewsBlur App

Video players, replacing Netflix and Youtube apps

Chrome extensions, might work:

Two-Factor Authenticator, replacing Authy

Password Manager, replacing Lastpass

Things that have replacements on Linux, might need UI work.

Podcast app, replacing BeyondPod (Vocal?)

EBook Reader, replacing Aldiko (Calibre?)

Music player, replacing Spotify. (Amarok/Cmus?)

Mail client (use imap?)

Things I might need to write:

Fuel Tracker, replacing FuelLog, (Or switch to web based Fuelly?)

HP48 Emulator, replacing Droid48 (port Droid48?)

Things that will probably never be replicated, android emulator?

Cafe Rio App

Switch Parental Control App

Playstation App

[kazriko2]

2018 Goal Plans

I should probably keep the goals for not overspending on new games, and keep knocking out 4 platinums per year. PS3 seems hopeless for completion since it’s my largest backlog. I should focus on knocking out the smaller systems.

Smallest backlogs:

PS2: 48 Games

3DS+DS+PSP+GBA: 18+18+3+1 = 40 obsolete Portable games

Wii U+Wii+PS1+NES: 12+12+1+1 = 26 obsolete Home Console games

Switch+XB1: 4+2 = 6 Current Gen console games.

I’ll finish enough current gen games without having to worry about them.

I think I should do 12 Portable from this list, and 12 Home from this list, and  maybe 12 PS2 Games. That’s more called games than last year at 36 though.

[kazriko2]

2017 Goals: Status

Goal 1: 12 PS3 games. (Including Disgaea D2 and Ni No Kuni) 

Result: 20 PS3 games completed.

1. Quantum Conundrum, 6.25 Hours

2. Battle Princess of Arcadias, 18.5 Hours

3. Fuse, 8 Hours

4. Killzone 2, 5.5 Hours

5. Skylanders Giants, 15 Hours

6. Catherine, 12.5 Hours

7. Disgaea D2, 21 Hours

8. Lollipop Chainsaw, 7 Hours

9. Dungeons and Dragons: Shadow over Mystaria, 1 Hour

10. Golden Axe, 0.5 Hour

11. Altered Beast, 0.5 Hour

12. Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom: 1 Hour

First 12 total: 96.75 Hours

13: Doom 1, 7 Hours

14: Alice: Madness Returns, 15 Hours

15: Simpsons Arcade, 1 Hour

16: Doom 2: Hell on Earth, 8 Hours

17: Killzone 3, 5 Hours

18: Doom 2: No Rest for the Living, 4 Hours

19: Doom 3, 13 Hours

20: Stick Man Rescue, 3 Hours

Total PS3 Time, 152.75

Goal 2: 4 GBA/PSP Games

Result: 5 PSP/GBA games completed.

1.  Wizorb, 5.25 Hours

2. A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks, 5 Hours

3. Legend of Heroes: Tear of Vermillion, 34 Hours

4. Golden Sun: The Lost Age, 37 Hours

5. Platypus, 3 Hours

Total PSP/GBA Time, 84.25 Hours

Goal 3: 2 Windows games.

Result: 2 Windows Games

1. Incredipede, 4 Hours

2. The Yawhg, 0.25 Hours

Total Windows: 4.25 Hours

Goal 4: Half of all day one/full price purchases within 4 Months

Result: 15/26, 2 Missed, 9 Carryover.

1. Final Fantasy XV, 48 Days, 49 Hours

2. Demetrios: A Cynical Adventure, 47 Days, 10.5 Hours

3. Zelda: Breath of the Wild, 15 Days, 54 Hours

4. Gravity Rush 2, 63 Days, 18 Hours

5. Pinstripe, 74 Days, 3 Hours

6. Persona 5, 96 Days, 100.5 Hours

7. Nier Automata, 102 Days, 13.5 Hours

8. Cave Story+, 34 Days, 9.5 Hours

9. Everybody’s Golf, 21 Days, 25 Hours

10. What Remains of Edith Finch, 62 Days, 2 Hours

11. Graceful Explosion Machine, 61 Days, 6 Hours

12. Picross-S Mega, 10 Days, 25 Hours

13. Night in the Woods, 120 Days, 10 Hours

14. Opus Magnum, 41 Days, 27 Hours

15. Ebony Spire: Heresy, 9 Days, 1 Hour

Missed:

1. Trails in the Sky: The Third, 2 Hours

2. Pyre, 0 Hours

Carried  Over:

1. Knack II, 4.5 Hours

2. Danganronpa V3, 14.5 Hours

3. Ys 8, 9.75 Hours

4. Super Mario Odyssey, 0 Hours

5. Uncharted: Lost Legacy, 0 Hours

6. Knight Terrors, 1.5 Hours

7. Golf Story, 3.5 Hours

8. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, 3.5 Hours

9. Tokyo Xanadu EX+, 0 Hours

Time spent on New games: 294.5 Hours

Goal 5: 4 Platinums

Result: 4/4 Platinums

1. Teslagrad, 2.75 Hours

2. Welcome to Deponia, 2.25 Hours

3. Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, 16.75 Hours

4. Virginia, 3.25 Hours

Total Spent on Platinums: 25 Hours

Goal 6: Spend less on games than the ones I complete were purchased for.  

Result: $193 finished more than spent.

2017 Goals: 100% Complete.

Time by Platform:

PS4: 372 Hours

Vita: 185 Hours

PS3: 152.75 Hours

DS: 128 Hours

Wii U: 70 Hours

PS1: 64 Hours

Switch: 60 Hours

Linux: 57 Hours

3DS: 44 Hours

GBA: 37.75 Hours

PSP: 29 Hours

Wii: 11.75 Hours

PSP Mini: 8.75 Hours

Windows: 6.25 Hours

GBC: 5.5 Hours

[kazriko2]

Open letter to Patreon

Greetings, I apologize for bothering you at your email address instead of through other means, but unlike most messages you're probably receiving right now, I'm not directly complaining about the new fees being passed to Patrons. The problems with that are merely a symptom of the problems with another change made to Patreon recently. The Anniversary billing system.  When I signed up for Patreon 3 years ago, there was only one reason that it was useful compared to what I was already doing. It consolidated all of my support into a single, easily tracked payment in my bank account. There certainly wasn't any other reason to sign up for it. I don't care much about the extras that most creators put up, I just want to try and ensure their continued survival. The site for viewing the extras was extremely deficient. There was no RSS feed for one, and there still isn't. Almost everything else I follow across the entire internet uses RSS, Atom, or some other similar feed format. Instead of using a simple syndication system, you flood my email box with notifications of new posts, 66% of which I simply archive and ignore, which is a massive daily timesink. Your system doesn't support multiple images in a single post either, and has poor browsing to go between multiple posts on a single creator, or on all creators. The singular useful feature was concentrating those payments down to one. And now that's been wrecked, and there's no reason for Patreon to even exist anymore because of it. Not only does it break the nice, single entry in my bank statement and replace it with hundreds of disparate entries that are difficult to track and obscure what's going on with the rest of my finances, but to add insult to injury each of those hundred entries will now be 38% higher because the creators complained about the negative results of your anniversary system, and instead of reversing it you doubled down and shifted those fees to us.   I'd be perfectly fine with paying the fees on the transaction if there was a single transaction to pay the fees on. This would be $4 per month instead of $35-40 per month. But both the impact on my bank statement and the impact on my wallet from that ill-conceived feature means that it is probably untenable to continue using Patreon. Your new system penalizes the most enthusiastic users of your service the most. Patreon is already over half of my family's monthly entertainment budget. To absorb the additional fees at this level, I would have to cancel Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, AND Youtube Red. Since other family members use all of those, that is impossible. There were many alternatives to what you attempted to do prior to this. One would be Prorating instead of charging for the entire previous month. The weakness to this is that someone could try to sneak in at the end of the month, grab the data, then cancel, but you could easily add a cutoff where instead of prorating after a certain date of the month, it would just pre-charge the next month. You could also pre-charge people who sign up if they haven't been on the platform for very long, or are pledging a much larger amount than their normal pledges. Don't let a few bad apples wreck things for everyone else, create countermeasures for them alone. If you insist on keeping the Anniversary system, there's still one thing that you could do to not allow VisaMasterCard to fleece your customers further. You could allow us to prepay the month's worth payments at a time of our choosing. Simple interface, "At X day of the month, Charge enough to fill the account to $X, and pay that amount * 0.029 + 0.35 in fees" and if we use more than that before the next funding date, you can charge us the further transactions with their fees. This would be an acceptable compromise to allow Patreon to still be a viable platform.  What's worse is that you're not even allowing your creators to tweak things to soften the blow of this change. One of the people I follow said they were going to drop the pledge amounts down so that they would be charged the same amount as the old tiers, but because of other changes, this is impossible.  Paternalism... I can't even pledge to some of the tiers of people I support because you're worried about people changing their pledges down to where they would have been previously.

On the other hand, it really makes no sense any further for creators to use Patreon even if their customers would come along with them. Here's a chart showing various scenarios under old patreon, new patreon, and other payment services, in an Apples to Apples comparison instead of an Apples to Oranges comparison that you used. Comparison of old Patreon vs new Patreon, Apples to Apples. As you can see, the old patreon was better than Paypal for pledges under $5 where the creator supported more than one creator on the site, but if they only supported one, it was universally worse. The new patreon? It's always the worst except for the  single-creator case on the old patreon, which was just slightly worse. It's also significantly worse in all cases than the 95% that you're quoting to your creators. At $10, they only get 89%. On the gripping hand, I actually think it might be illegal to pass through credit card transactions fees to your users. I've already started shifting my support to other means, just like I had it back in 2013, but it is a minor hassle to do this. If you find a way to preserve the single monthly payment system I will be able to enthusiastically return and tell everyone else I know to do the same. Otherwise, I'll be sending this same letter to all of the creators I support and asking them for alternate means to support them.

Site fees Source

Chart Raw Data

[kazriko2]

Patreon’s new fees

Here’s what I sent them today about those fees.

Your page says the following: "A new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 will be paid by patrons for each individual pledge starting on December 18th. This restructuring allows creators to take home a greater portion of their earnings, which is core to our mission of getting creators paid."

This seems to be a bit absurd. Not the 2.9% or anything, that's typical. The fact that you're charging $0.35 per pledge instead of per authorization. Since the fees are a passthrough from the credit card companies and they charge them on a per authorization basis, you'd be getting charged around $3.54 for my $110 monthly pledge, but you'd be claiming $31.19 additional in fees from that pledge to cover that $3.54 charge.

The whole point of Microtransaction pledge sites like Patreon are to defray the costs of the credit card fees by spreading it across many smaller transactions. With charging this fee, what point really is there to having it? I might as well just make a monthly Paypal pledge to each of them individually and it would cost the same amount.

[kazriko2]

License payments for exFat

I finally got enough round-tuits to buy a MicroSD reader, and transfer my Nintendo Switch memory to a 64 gig card. Interestingly, when I did this, it asked to download an update. 

I suspect this is the same as the Sony PS3′s “are you going to use aacs” question in the settings screen. By default, they’re not licensing the systems for that codec or file system. exFat’s only needed for large cards, and not everyone will get a card for their system, so why pay that license for every switch out there? 

But, I guess Microsoft probably got a few pennies richer when I went to a larger SD card...

[kazriko2]

Shorter games

I’ve been playing a lot of shorter games this month. Not really intentionally, but since I polished off two long ones first thing, I just drifted over to a bunch of palette cleansers. 

I just went to the bottom of my PS3 history (least-recently played games) and picked one. The first was Stick Man Rescue (#72). The graphics are simple, and it’s almost a game that I could make myself, but it was fun to just knock it out. spent about an hour on the remaining levels, and I had left the game at about 2/3rds done before. It’s a simple game, you just go and pick up 4 stick men at a time, and take them back to base. But they’re under threat, you have to kill opposing stickmen who are trying to drop bombs on them, or steam rollers that want to crush them, etc, so you can’t just focus on grabbing them and going home, you have to deal with a bunch of hazards, turn switches off, then take a load home. I enjoyed this one more than some of the later ones.

Lollipop Chainsaw (#73) was next. A decent little beat-em-up game. Punch zombies with pom poms, then slice them with a chainsaw. Lots of special moves, leapfrogging over them, etc, and various minigames breaking up the action. Decent little 7 hour game. This one was for a bounty on Completionator.

After the long games and the non-twitchy games, I decided to go back and finish a couple bullet hell shooters that I’d gotten about half way to 2/3rds through previously. Graceful Explosion Machine (#74) and Platypus (#75). The first one I can play for 40-50 minutes before I completely lose my concentration and stop being able to finish a level, so it took a number of sessions for the last 18 levels I had. Platypus, on the other hand, I finished the last two levels in a single sitting. I didn’t even think I was going to beat it that night, but the last two levels started giving me lightning guns, and that just let me plow through without losing all that many lives. 

Went back to the bottom of the list again, and started playing some Arcade ports on my PS3. It reminded me of just how badly Arcade games have aged. You can tell that Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystaria (#77 and #81) was originally an arcade game. It’s really, really easy to die in that game, and the thing munches virtual quarters like crazy. If I had played this at an arcade at $0.25 per play, it’d probably be $15 to beat both of the games in the collection. They were better than the other arcade ports I played, but still not fantastic.

Golden Axe (#78) was a series I’ve actually played in the arcade before. I can’t remember which game I played, but it was one of them. I don’t know how people actually enjoyed this game, it’s really cheap and easy to die in, and just not much fun. But I beat it in about 30 minutes, using maybe $5 worth of fake quarters.

Altered Beast (#80) is the last arcade game I’ll mention. It basically loops until you kill a certain number of “glowy” wolves and turn into a beast, and it’s like Golden Axe as far as its difficulty and stiffness goes. Not really a fun game at all. 

I’d probably give the D&D games a 6/10, and the two Sega games a 3/10.

You might have noticed a gap in the sequence. In the middle of all those arcade games, I played Universal Paperclips (#79) which is an auto-clicker game. It only took a couple days, but I had fun with it. You can click on the name to play it yourself. 

[kazriko2]

New releases, 10/17/2017

Playstation blog has another list of new releases. Guess I should go through them and see which ones I might want to grab. The answer? 3 that I really want, a few more that I wouldn’t mind having.

Chaos;Child: A VN, I’m sure. I’ll probably get this eventually too.

Summon Night 6: Lost Borders: Agh, so many games I want this week. This one is close to the top of my list, even though I still have about 3 other summon night games to play.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole: I want to play this game, but I can’t afford it at the moment. Maybe later.

Bokosuka Wars II: An RPG, or a Tactics game? Looks like a realtime roguelike sort of thing. Maybe I’ll grab it.The videos I’ve seen of it online seem to be people failing to figure out how to play it. It seems like you move all of the characters in your group at the same time?

Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden: This appears to be a Hidden Objects game. I really should try one of these some day.

No Heroes Allowed! VR: Another VR game, but one in a series I really like. NHR, also known as the Badman series before legal threats forced them to change it... And briefly called “What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord?” after that.

ELEX: My friend is really looking forward to this, but it’s not high on my list. Another one of those european action rpgs like Risen.

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny: Looks cool, though I’m not sure I’d ever play it if I bought it. A grid/turn based tactical rpg with a 3d first person overworld.

Rogue Trooper Redux: One that I might play if I were out of other games, but that’s unlikely to ever happen.

Spiral Splatter. A puzzle game.Eh.

Megaton Rainfall: VR game, and I don’t have VR yet. A super hero version of EDF perhaps?

The Jackbox Party Pack 4. A party game, I don’t think I’d get much use from it.

Real Farm: Another farm simulator. I never thought we’d have more than one farm simulator series at the same time.

Dungeons 3: Dungeon keeper style game. *shrug*

Gran Tursimo Sport: Racing game. *shrug*

Hex: Card Clash: I don’t play card games much anymore. Looks cool, but *shrug*

WWE2k18: Nah.

[kazriko2]

Net Neutrality, de-polarization.

I think it's worth trying to break the conversation out of its current polarization. 

It's either all Title 2, Internet as a Utility, or it's our current system with light regulation federally, but locally/state granted monopolies, no discussions about anything between. 

The current system isn't perfect, there's flaws in that competition has largely vanished in many places in the country, but in those areas there may be better solutions than just Title 2 Fascism. 

Here's the spectrum I see.. 

IaaU, Internet as a Utility. Two sub-branches.

IaaU Public option. So many people want this, local governments setup municipal broadband. I imagine they'll subsidize it. If they do it well, it'll collapse the competition. If they do it poorly, it might collapse the competition and leave their city with barely working internet.

IaaU,  the Title 2 world that so many on the net keep arguing for. I think this would be a disaster of stagnation. This is what is probably better referred to Title 2 Fascism. Private ownership, government control.

PTaaU. Packet transfer as a utility. This is kind of how DSL works. The phone company transports your packets on their private network to a data center, where you purchase an account to transit those packets to the internet. Now, most DSL customers get their line and internet from the same company, but the option is there to go with someone else. Speakeasy was one internet company that served as a pure internet transit provider for dsl customers.

FaaU. Fiber as a Utility. This would be the slightly less terrible version of public internet. The government installs a 8-12 fiber bundle to everyone's houses and maintains that back to vaults or exchanges. The companies then run their links out to the exchanges and link up a pair or two of the fiber lines to their services. Each house could access internet, TV, phone, or any other potential services that could come up in the future that we aren't predicting yet. I really want everyone who is supporting municipal broadband to look into this option instead. It's a lot of the same costs, but without as much ability for the local governments to ruin it through neglect, and it enhances competition.

CaaU, Conduit (under-road, under sidewalk, etc) as a utility. This is the Dig Once idea that a few states have implemented. There are pathways underneath the city that are publicly owned that companies can rent out to run their cables through, eliminating a large percentage of the cost of building out internet infrastructure. This is more expensive to new entrants than FaaU, but less impacted by the (in)competence of government.

Current System, Lightly regulated federally, heavily meddled with state/locally. All infrastructure owned by corporations, new entrants are (not) allowed by the local governments.

Fully free system. Anyone can run cables anywhere, very light regulation. This is not what we have.

[kazriko2]

IOMMU groups on Asus PRIME B350-PLUS

This is a bit of a scratchpad for me as I plug various things into the motherboard and see where they land in the groups.

There seems to be 8 IOMMU groups on this board. 

First run: RX480 in PCIe 3.0 slot, Audigy 2 in second PCI slot.

UPDATE: I was going to paste in multiple runs and show the differences in them, but spoilers, every PCIe and PCI slot in this thing other than the first PCIe3.0 16x is in Group 0... Which means the only way you can do any sort of GPU Passthrough is if your Linux video card is in the PCIe 2.0 slot, and you put your GPU to passthrough on the first PCIe3.0 slot. At least with the B350 chipset.

I was able to get the system to boot with my 5870 in the PCIe2.0 slot, so I may try swapping my video cards, blacklisting the 5870 in linux, then try to pass it through in the 3.0 slot.

Ungrouped.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1450 00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1451

Group 0, Seems to be everything connected through the B350 Chipset.

00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:01.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 # First Onboard USB controller 03:00.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43bb (rev 02) # First Onboard SATA controller Ports 1-4? 03:00.1 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b7 (rev 02) 03:00.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b2 (rev 02) 1d:00.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) # Onboard ethernet controller. 1e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15) 1f:00.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1083/1085 PCIe to PCI Bridge (rev 04) # Second PCI Slot 20:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs EMU10k2/CA0100/CA0102/CA10200 [Sound Blaster Audigy Series] (rev 04) 20:01.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy Game Port (rev 04) 20:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port (rev 04)

Group 1

00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452

Group 2

00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:03.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 # Top PCIe 3.0 16x slot. 22:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480] (rev c7) 22:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device aaf0

Group 3

00:04.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452

Group 4

00:07.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:07.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1454 23:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145a 23:00.2 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1456 # Second USB controller 23:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145c

Group 5

00:08.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:08.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1454 24:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1455 # Second SATA controller. Ports 5 and 6? 24:00.2 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51) # Onboard Audio 24:00.3 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1457

Group 6

00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 59) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 51)

Group 7

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1460 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1461 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1462 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1463 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1464 00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1465 00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1466 00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1467

[kazriko2]

2017 Goals

Since I’m not finishing as many games as I used to, I suppose I should tone the goals down a bit. 12 PS3 games. (Including Disgaea D2 and Ni No Kuni) Finish: PSMini, PSP, GBA backlogs (Zenonia, Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, LOH: Tears of Vermillion, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn) 2 Windows games. (Perhaps Ys: Naphishtim and Chantelise?) At least half of the new releases that I purchase on day 1. 4 Platinums That brings my called games from 24 down to 18, which is close to my 1/3rd decrease in completions from 2015 to 2016. (and would be about 1/3rd of my 2016 total of finished games.) I just barely made that 24 before I ran out of time this year.

[kazriko2]

2016 Multimedia Completion

2009: 7 games Platinum: 2

2010: 41 games Platinum: 5

2011: 22 games Platinum: 0

2012: 43 games Platinum: 11

2013: 70 games Platinum: 4

2014: 84 games Platinum: 1

2015: 92 games Platinum: 5

2016: 64 games, Platinum: 7 (Current pace, 64 games/yr.)

2016 goals:

20/20 PS3 games (* for goal)

4/4 other games from obsolete platforms, such as PS1, PS2, PSP, Dos, Wii, DS, PSMobile... (Games with a ** at the end are for the goal.)

7/4 Platinums acquired ***

2.97/2 Average backlog length of completed games: 2 years

(1703 > 1458 ) Spend less on new games than the games I complete cost.

January

0.1: Fallout 4 Platinum (PS4) 1/1  ($59.99, 11/20/2015, 42 days) ***

1: Shovel Knight (PSVita) 1/2 ($13.49, 4/24/2015, 253 days)

2: Sketchcross (PSVita) 100% 1/2 ($7.99, 6/18/2015, 198 days)

3: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PS3) 1/3 ($5.00, 1/17/2014 716 days) *

4: Datura (PS3) 1/3  (???) *

5: Papo & Yo (PS3) 1/4 ($0.99, 7/12/2014 541 days) *

6: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC (PSP) 1/10 (New Game+, 100% BP, Hard mode) ($16.99 (PC), $37.99 (LE PSP), $29.99 (PSN/PSP) 3/30/2011 1747 days)

7: Final Fantasy 15: Episode Duscae (PS4) 1/13 (Free with FFType-0, 3/17/2015 302 days)

8: Dark Cloud (Platinum!) (PS2/PS4) 1/16 *** ($14.99, 12/12/2015 35 days)

February

9: Trails in the Sky SC (PSP) 2/5 ($29.99, 10/30/2015, 98)

10: The Talos Principle (PS4) 2/14 ($20.00, 12/20/2015, 56)

11: Firewatch (PS4) 2/15 ($17.99, 2/9/2016, 6 days)

12: The Witness (PS4) 2/23 ($39.99, 1/29/2016, 25 days)

13: Sly 3 (PSVita) 2/27 ($46.98, 1936 days)

March

14: Antichamber (Linux) 3/2 ($6.99, 747 days)

15: Assassin's Creed 2 (PS3) 3/23 ($13.29, 1551 days) *

April

16: Tales of Hearts R (PSVita) 4/5 ($39.99, 511 days)

May

17: Dragon's Dogma (PS3) 5/30 (PS+, RP $39.99, 938 days) *

June

18: Ratchet and Clank (PS4) 6/3 ($39.99, 53 days)

19: Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension (PS3) 6/4 ($19.99, 1086 days) *

20: Ys Origins (PC) 6/5 ($11.99+7.99, 1423 days)

21: Armikrog (Linux) 6/6 ($20.00, 1075 days)

22: Fleeing the Complex (Flash) 6/9 ($0, n/a)

23: Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (PSVita) 6/11 ($39.99, 172 days)

24: Pathpix Joy (Android) 6/14 ($0.99, 174 days)

25: Severed (PSVita) 6/17 (Platinum!) ($13.49, 52 days) ***

July

26: Atelier Ayesha Plus (PSVita) 7/4 ($49.99 (PS3)+$39.99 (PSVita), 1473 Days)

27: Uncharted 4 (PS4) 7/13 ($59.99, 64 Days)

28: LOOPical Pro (Android) 7/21 ($1.99, 43 Days)

29: Adventures of Mana (PSVita) 7/31 ($13.99, 30 Days)

August

30: Spaceplan (Web/Linux) 8/13 ($0.00, n/a)

31: No Man's Sky Platinum (PS4) 8/21 ($59.99, 13 Days) ***

32: Song of the Deep (PS4) 8/23 ($14.99, 39 Days)

33: Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PSVita) 8/25 ($29.99, 1297 Days)

34: Locoroco Cocoreccho (PS3) 8/26  ($0.00, 115 Days) *

35: Monster World IV (PS3) 8/27 ($4.99, 1554 Days) *

36: Zero Time Dilemma (PSVita) 8/31 (Platinum!) ($39.99, 61 Days) ***

September

37: Pathpix Magic (Android) 9/1 ($0.99, 85 Days)

38: Star Ocean 1 (PSP) 9/8 ($39.99, 2879 Days) **

39: Master Reboot (PS3) 9/11 ($11.99, 917 Days) *

40: Earthbound (WiiU/SNES) 9/18 ($9.99, 8058 Days)

41: Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon because I don't know (PS3) 9/28 ($20-disc+$8-psn, 786 Days) *

October

42: Rain (PS3) 10/1 ($3.75, 989 Days) *

43: Remember Me (PS3) 10/2 ($19.99, 957 Days) *

44: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) 10/9 ($29.99, 2602 Days) *

45: Trails of Cold Steel 2 (PSVita) 10/19 ($39.99, 43 Days)

46: Ico (PS3) 10/22 ($19.99 physical + $5.00 psn, 1852 Days) *

November

47: Steins;gate (PSVita) 11/6 (Platinum!) ($11.99 psn, 135 Days) ***

48: Persona 4: Dancing All Night (PSVita) 11/10 ($79.99 physical collectors, 504 Days)

49: My Name is Mayo (PSVita) 11/10 (Platinum) ($0.99, 1 day) ***

50: Actual Sunlight (PSVita) 11/10 ($0, PS+, 37 days)

51: Star Ocean 4 (PS3) 11/14 ($59.99, 2471 days) *

52: Little Inferno (Linux) 11/19)($5.00, 1271 Days)

53: Dragon Quest 7 (3DS) 11/19 ($39.99, 54 Days)

54: Shadows of the Damned (PS3) 11/21 ($29.99, 1980 Days) *

55: Evoland (Linux) 11/28 ($9.99, 1256 Days)

December

56: World Gone Sour (PS3) 12/3 ($4.99, 959 Days) *

57: Magic Orbz (PS3) 12/3 ($4.99, 2437 Days) *

58: Puppeteer (PS3) 12/7 ($19.59, 1132 Days) *

59: Dragon Age: Origins (PS3) 12/10 ($59.99, 2594 Days) *

60: Illusion of Gaia (SNES) 12/14 ($0.00, 6050 Days) **

61: Legend of Heroes: Song of the Ocean (PSP) 12/23 ($7.99, 1327 Days) **

62: Terranigma (SNES) 12/27 ($0.00, 6062 Days) **

63: Alone With You (PSVita) 12/28 

64: Pony Island (Linux) 12/28

($1458.11 spent on games completed.)

Systems (Game Native)

PS3: 20

PSV: 16

PS4: 8

Linux: 6

PSP: 4

Android: 3

SNES: 3

3DS: 1

PS2: 1

Windows: 1

Flash: 1

Systems (Actually played on)

PS3: 20

PSV: 18 (2 PSP)

PC: 10

PS4: 9 (1 PS2)

Android: 3

PSP: 2

3DS: 1

Wii U: 1

[kazriko2]

Fallout 4 storyline, spoilers

I’ll add some space here for people who want to avoid spoilers.

The institute... Shawn told me when I arrived that he was afraid of what I’d heard about them going in. Told me that he would correct the misconceptions. I talked to all of the heads, I wandered around and listened to conversations. The vast majority of what I heard in the commonwealth has been confirmed. The only point I haven’t been able to verify independently is what happened at the leadership conference way back in the history. Those records seem to be nowhere to be found. But, they’ve definitely been replacing people. They don’t even transport them back to the institute to be saved, they just kill them and bury them. They’ve replaced the mayor of diamond city, they’ve replaced the head of the Warwick settlement. I don’t know to what end yet. They treat the synths terribly, resetting their memory if they make too many mistakes. The synths seem happy, but you can tell there’s a lot of fear of the coursers with them. Don’t get me started on the artificial gorillas and how they treat the synths who tend them.

They seem to have contacts with, or have replaced all of the caravers in the commonwealth according to the terminals. Even Trashcan Carla, who is usually hanging around Sanctuary is one of their agents. 

Most of the people in the institute mean well though. Some of them even argue with their superiors about the synths being sentient beings, or complain about how it’s bad to save humanity if they lose their humanity in the process. Of course, when they talk to me, the good ones seem the most abrasive. The whole gleaming exterior of the institute is a facade though, if you go too far outside of the central area it’s almost as wrecked as some of the outside world. 

The first quest for them was annoying. Go retrieve a synth. He’s leading some raiders at Libertalia. “This proves that synths can’t be trusted on their own, unsupervised.” By that logic, humans can’t be trusted alone, unsupervised either. Far more humans became raiders than synths. It just shows how close to human they are. The worst part is, I had talked the raider down and gotten him to surrender, then the courser came and wiped his memory because he was impatient and “had his orders.” I don’t see why you should treat them any differently than humans that become raiders. Just kill them or make them surrender and stop raiding. 

I mostly did the Libertalia mission solo, because the idiot courser couldn’t stop getting into fights he couldn’t win with the brotherhood of steel. He just kept getting up, fighting them, then dying, then getting back up. He suddenly popped into existence when I went though the last door of the ship though. 

And the Warwick situation. They replaced him because the soil in his settlement was ideal for agricultural experiments. If they had done things differently, they could have just worked with them to grow the seeds, but instead they had to murder someone and replace them for their cover. 

So in the end, I have hope for the institute, but there’s lots of problems with their approach. They consider the outside world a threat, and oppose any group that gets too powerful on the outside. 

I don’t know how to resolve it just yet, but I hope I can find a way to guide the institute to being less awful while preserving the good they’re doing.

[kazriko2]

On gamergate and intimidation

I was recently sharing posts on the need for both sides to calm down in the Sad Puppies 3 thing going on with the Hugo, and one of my friends on the site replied to me about how they recently had a run-in with someone whose twitter feed was full of Gamergate and SadPuppies tagged retweets, and how it made them feel unsafe, given that gamergate people will, if you push them too hard, sometimes dogpile on you, dox you, and attack all of your friends. I went and tracked the tweets down and looked at them. Since I had been posting about civility, I figured I should lecture those who are theoretically on my side about how it hurts the image of the Sad Puppies 3 campaign to go around insulting and intimidating people while having the sad puppies name splashed all over their feed. He asked what he did wrong and how he was intimidating people... 

I wasn’t entirely happy with my reply, so I spent the next few hours mulling it over while playing Axiom Verge. Ultimately, the best I could come up with was “because you’re associated with gamergate, people will prejudge you about it. Thus, if you want to be taken seriously you need to do all you can to distance yourself from their prejudices.” 

But then, I realized where I had heard that line of thought before, and why I was thinking about it now. Earlier in the day, I had read an article about how black students were more likely to be suspended when talking back to the teacher in class, because it was interpreted as being more aggressive than when a white student talked back, and this had me thinking about a documentary I had watched 4-5 years ago about the “black code” which fathers would teach their sons, about how to behave so that you break people’s preconceptions and in the long run change people’s minds. 

The argument just didn’t sit right with me anymore.

I still think it’s pointless to insult people on the internet and the person I was talking to obviously took their bait hook, line, and sinker, but I’m not going to tell people to be quiet about it anymore unless they’re doing actual intimidation. It’s just not a valid enough reason that they’re intimidating people by their association with gamergate, especially with the associations that I’ve now dredged up in my own mind about it.

[kazriko2]

February 2015 Multimedia Completion

Games:

11. Mii Force (3DS) 2/13. I don't recommend this one. it's my least favorite of all of the 3DS Mii Streetpass games.

12. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) 2/18. I enjoyed this game, but I was really ready for it to be done.

13. Suikoden 2 (PS1) 2/22. A pretty good game, though not my favorite from the series.

14. Pathpix Boo (Android) 2/28. Pathpix is always a good timewaster.

Videos:

Apparently, I forgot to watch anything in February.

[kazriko2]

January 2015 Multimedia Completion

Games:

1. Nano Assault Neo (PS4) 1/5. Not the best game. It wants to be Super Stardust, but isn't quite as good.

2. Fat Dragons (PSVita) 1/11. Essentially, it's Joust.

3. Lone Survivor: Directors Cut (PSVita) 1/13. Trippy game. Worth playing at least once.

4. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (PS1) 1/17. Finished this, and later finished the epilogue. One of the more expensive games that I've ever played. I had to buy a new set of the game to finish it because the second disc was scratched.

5. Velocity Ultra (PSVita) 1/18. Fun game, kind of tricky to finish the last level.

6. Far Cry: Blood Dragon (PS3) 1/18. (100% trophies, 1/19)

7. Infamous 2: Festival of Blood (PS3) 1/21. A vampire story set in the Infamous universe.

8. Pixbox Puzzle Pack #1 (PSVita) 1/21. I really like the interface for this, my favorite interface for nonograms.

9. Tales from the Borderlands: Zer0 Sum (PS4) 1/24. My favorite thing from Telltale since Sam and Max.

10. Borderlands 1 (PS3) 1/31. Tales from the Borderlands inspired me to go back and finish this. Now that they've revived multiplayer, I think I'll go platinum it too.

Videos:

1. Bubblegum Crisis 2040. So retro and throwback... Watched this because it was about to fall off of netflix.

2. The Tick (Live Action) Fun, but more like a Seinfeld series than a comic book show. Patrick Warburton is good, as usual.