ewx | Network

This is a bundle of material for Scion 2E from Onyx Path Publishing, an RPG about people becoming gods which seems thematically somewhat like the Percy Jackson background. I don't think it has been in one of these bundles before.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ScionOrigin

This isn't a genre I particularly want to play with at present, but it looks like you get quite a lot for your money. Layout and design seem good, and the art avoids some common cliches although some of it does veer towards one uncanny valley or another.

Later - I'm reliably informed that the Storypath system itself uses mechanics similar to World of Darkness 1e, which I'd somehow missed.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3223/

Depending what corners of the internet you hang out on, 'regular' may at times awkwardly coexist with 'sexy.'

https://xkcd.com/3223/

oursin

Anyway.

Partner and I are in need of a solicitor for a fairly routine and non-urgent matter, so, looked up who it was we went to last time we had a routine life admin thing requiring the services of a legal professional.

(This was actually a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated, have I mentioned that archivists are really Not All That at keeping on top of their own papers? The cobbler's children syndrome.)

But, I found the name of the practice and looked them up on The Internetz and they are there, as having gone out of business some few years ago, on Companies House website.

And they are by no means the first solicitors I have had dealings with, though I think the ones in Kentish Town saw me through the purchase of First Flat and present dwelling and possibly various other legal matters, but are now no longer operating more or less adjacent to the Tube station.

I suppose that these days one should not anticipate that you have Old Mr Thing the attorney-at law and Young Mr Thing his son who keeps up the practice and Even Younger Mr Thing who is being brought on in the family tradition -

- and that these things come and go like everything else and they are no longer quite the repository of folk memory like in mystery novels.

Way back when I was starting out as a Wee Babby Archivist, I remember that a big thing of the day, practically A Crisis, was solicitors' records. As I was never actually employed in a repository where I had any direct dealings with the problem, I'm not sure whether this was due to practices going defunct, or just somebody going down into the cellar and realising that they still had all the papers from Jarndyce v Jarndyce back to its origins along with tons of other stuff. But anyway, there were Massive Amounts of Very Misc Material (quite surprising what turned up) which looking back I suspect had all sorts of issues around ownership to complicate matters even further.

(If anyone has recs for N London solicitors would be glad to hear of them.)

the_comfortable_courtesan

Wish to inform those that are interested in Clorinda Cathcart's Circle that Volume 25, Choices: Taking Decisions will appear this coming Friday, 27th March:

A Parliamentary election causes considerable upheaval to the summer plans of Society in general, and of Clorinda and her circle. But besides any choices concerning the government of the nation, several of them find that they have to make decisions touching on more personal matters.

The delay in making this announcement has been caused, in part, by problems with the Google Books version: but it is hoped that these will be resolved in a timely manner.

muninnhuginn

I don't often point out stuff I've read outside of the monthly list, but I found this article, I have stage four cancer – there will be no cure, but death isn’t necessarily imminent: this is how it feels to live in the long middle, resonated. (Apart from the faith as succour/loss of faith bit: lazy unbelief renders that moot). I find that invisibility of cancer as a chronic illness quite tough. The mismatch between apparent restored good health and the ongoing existence of treatment, testing, four-spoons-a-day energy is difficult to negotiate: there's a great desire to go along with folk's assumptions about one's wellness, to not remind folk of the ongoing situation. And that's tough for everyone, because once in a while the facts do have to be reiterated--and it's like breaking the bad news all over again.
Also, what is it with folk objecting to my belief in my own prognosis, as if accepting, living the maintenance treatment is something they can reject on my behalf? Fear, of course, but it's immensely annoying.
But, anyway, a better summation of how I am, where I'm at, than I could've done myself. And useful as I cosider whether to resign earlier in the year, rather than hold out to the end of the year and my 60th.

Current Mood: Seen

selenak

In the former, Jane sees herself as Alice to Sinatra's Luther, while in the later, Sinatra is informed it all comes down to Vader and Luke.

( Spoilers are saying hello to.... )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Munich

schneier_no_tracking_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/microsoft-xbox-hacked.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71771

It’s an impressive feat, over a decade after the box was released:

Since reset glitching wasn’t possible, Gaasedelen thought some voltage glitching could do the trick. So, instead of tinkering with the system rest pin(s) the hacker targeted the momentary collapse of the CPU voltage rail. This was quite a feat, as Gaasedelen couldn’t ‘see’ into the Xbox One, so had to develop new hardware introspection tools.

Eventually, the Bliss exploit was formulated, where two precise voltage glitches were made to land in succession. One skipped the loop where the ARM Cortex memory protection was setup. Then the Memcpy operation was targeted during the header read, allowing him to jump to the attacker-controlled data.

As a hardware attack against the boot ROM in silicon, Gaasedelen says the attack in unpatchable. Thus it is a complete compromise of the console allowing for loading unsigned code at every level, including the Hypervisor and OS. Moreover, Bliss allows access to the security processor so games, firmware, and so on can be decrypted.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/microsoft-xbox-hacked.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71771

tamaranth

2026/040: Enshittification — Cory Doctorow

Compared with the climate emergency, genocide, inequality, corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and sustained racist, homophobic, misogynist and transphobic attacks, the internet is just a sideshow. But the internet ...is the communications medium we will use to organise to save our species and planet from their imminent eradication. We can’t win these fights without a free, fair and open internet. [introduction]

Audiobook, read (with vigour and enthusiasm) by the author. Doctorow's foundational argument is something most internet users will agree with: that big internet sites, such as Facebook, Amazon, and the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter, have become much less usable and user-friendly over recent years. (I would add Del.icio.us, Vinted, Goodreads, LiveJournal...)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: angry

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/3/23/why-is-the-fur-of-sea-otter-pups-so-different

Via Alaska SeaLife Center, which writes:

Look closely. Can you see the differences between the pup coat and adult coat of a northern sea otter?

Sea otters have a different coat for the first three months of their life, with a longer loft and longer guard hairs than an adult coat. The pup coat keeps pups afloat on top of the water, just like a lifejacket.

Our rehab team has described it like “a cotton ball in water.”

Here’s a close-up look at Un’a’s coat when she was first admitted at about 2 months old, and at her coat again 6 weeks later after she molted. Notice the reduction of the lighter colored guard hairs.

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/3/23/why-is-the-fur-of-sea-otter-pups-so-different

watervole

I belong to two Civil War reenactment groups. The Norfolke Trayned Bandes and Little Woodham.

The Norfolks have a strong connection to Bullace Farm and many of them spend a week there every year as volunteers. This year, the volunteers from LIttle Woodham are visiting the farm for a day.

I really really want to be there, but it's a three hour trip on a mini bus, and three hours back again. And I'm paranoid about long journeys. I've had three really bad (lasting more than two months) of sciatica in the last few years, and two of them were triggered by long journeys.

If you've ever had sciatica, you'll know just how painful it is. If you haven't, all I can tell you is that it's the most painful health condition I've had in my life and it can leave you pretty much immobilised for the duration.

The last bad attack was triggered by a long train journey. I chose train rather than car, as I knew I'd be able to get up and walk round at intervals, but sadly, even that and doing tai chi at stations when there were changes, wasn't enough.

By the time I got home I was in agony. My husband picked me up at the station, and I didn't do any journeys after that for quite some time. Even the short distance to physio appointments had to be done lying on the back seat of the car. Sitting upright was't an option, even for five minutes.

Over the next couple of months, I worked my way through three different physios who all agreed that I needed an operation (to be fair, my original bout of sciatica a few years before HAD needed an operation), until, finally, Manfred came back to England (he has an elderly parent in the Netherlands). I walked in with all my weight on my walking stick, and walked out without the stick.

Took a couple of weeks to finish off the job, but that man is a miracle worker. (He correctly identified the cause of my previous bout of sciatica, as well.)

Ah well, to cut a long story short, I shall not go to Bullace Farm, even though I madly want to.

If you want to know what the farm is like, watch Tales From the Green Valley.

Watch on YouTube

oursin

Happy birthday,

robot_mel!

andrewducker

It always surprises me that Boots isn't open until 9am. You would have thought that there'd be enough people wanting to pick up painkillers or similar on the way in to work.

eaglespath_feed

https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-6454658-2-8.html

Review: Dark Class, by Michelle Diener

Series:	Class 5 #5
Publisher:	Eclipse
Copyright:	2022
ISBN:	0-6454658-2-8
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	349

Dark Class is the fifth novel (not counting the skippable novella) in Michelle Diener's Class 5 romantic science fiction series. As with the previous novels, this follows romance series conventions: There are new protagonists, but characters from the previous books make an appearance. It's helpful but not that necessary to remember the details of the previous books; the necessary background is explained enough to follow the story.

By now, series readers know the formula. Yet another Earth woman was secretly abducted by the Tecran, encounters a Class 5 ship, and finds a way to be surprisingly dangerous and politically destabilizing. This time, Ellie has been mostly unconscious since her abduction and awakes in a secret Tecran base after the Tecran have all been murdered. There is a Class 5 AI involved, but not a full ship; instead, Dark Class picks up (or, arguably, manufactures) a loose end from Dark Minds. Other than that break from the formula, you know what to expected by now: a hunky Grih, a tricky political standoff, a protective Class 5, a slow-burn romance, and a surprisingly capable protagonist who upends politics through plucky grit and refusal to tolerate poor treatment. Oh, and a new selection of salvaged clothing and weapons to make Ellie beautiful and surprisingly dangerous.

If you are this far into the series, you probably like the formula. That's my position. I don't care about the romance, but something about the prisoner to threat evolution of the kidnapped protagonists and the growing friendship with an AI makes me happy. This is not great literature, but it is reliably entertaining with a guaranteed victorious protagonist and happy ending, making it a comfortable break from more difficult books with emotionally wrenching scenes.

Dark Class is one of the better executions of the formula because it has long stretches of my favorite parts of these books: exploration of mostly-abandoned surroundings for neat gadgets while the AI and the protagonist slowly build a relationship of mutual respect. This book has bonus drones with minds of their own and an enigmatic alien spaceship that provides a fun mid-novel twist. The Tecran and the Grih repeatedly underestimate Ellie and are caught by surprise at dramatically satisfying moments. It's just fun to read, and I save this series for when I need that type of book.

As with the other books of the series, Diener's writing is serviceable but not great. She repeats herself, uses way too many paragraph breaks for emphasis, and is not going to win any literary awards for prose quality. The series is in the upper half of self-published works, and I've certainly read worse, but either the formula will click with you or it won't. If it doesn't, the prose is not going to salvage the book.

There is some development of the series plot, but it's mostly predictable fallout from Dark Matters. This book is mostly tactical and smaller in scale. I am a little curious where Diener is going with political developments, since the accumulated Earth women and Class 5 ships are in some danger of becoming a sort of shadow government through sheer military power, but I'm dubious this series will have enough political sophistication to dig into the implications. It's best enjoyed as small-scale episodic wish fulfillment for female protagonists, and that's good enough for me.

If you've read this far in the series, recommended; this is one of the stronger entries.

Followed by Collision Course, which breaks the title convention for the series.

Rating: 7 out of 10

https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-6454658-2-8.html

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260322.html

What would it look like to leave planet Earth?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260322.html

corrvin

So it's been two years since I posted.
( a quick catch-up ) Checky is ridiculously badly behaved at times, but we love each other and that's plenty enough for all the head-bonks.

I am still a librarian, now with 2.5 years of experience. I have so many plans and ideas, and I have from now until I retire to try to do all of them. I'm apparently really good at event creation, and maybe I can teach some other folks, too. I'm currently starting the outline for my April event hand-outs, and imagining what August stuff is going to look like.

My parents' health continues to decline, but just in a way to make them miserable, not in a way that's Approaching The End. I know what to do when we get to the end of things, but getting from here to there is still a bit foggy to me. They live two hours away, so every time I need to help them out, it's two hours down, two hours driving them to the doctor (who is usually 5 minutes from my house) and then repeat in reverse. It's exhausting, and I've let them know that I don't want to be doing that when I am 60, so if things go as I think, we'll have a few years to argue that out.

I think it'd be nice if they lived in the senior living down the street from where I work; they'd have people to talk to, and a nice outdoor space with plenty of community events (it's accessible for wheelchairs, too), and I could stop by during lunch three or four times a week. It would definitely be nice for me, at least.

But they still live in their nice quiet house in the country, which they love, even though none of their friends can visit (their friends are older and in worse shape, mostly) and even though their internet is absolute shit and worse than dial-up. Although they're working on setting up something better for that last-- I can't wait to be able to show them how to stream movies, or send them videos, or even video call.

ecosophia

It's getting on for midnight and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

(The image? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Jethro Tull, "Dark Ages"

cks_techblog_feed

Posted by cks

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/VolumeMakesOddThingsCheap

We have a bunch of networks in a number of buildings, and as part of looking after them, we want to monitor whether or not they're actually working. For reasons beyond the scope of this entry we don't do things like collect information from our switches through SNMP, so our best approach is 'ping something on the network in the relevant location'. This requires something to ping. We want that thing to be stable and always on the network, which typically rules out machines and devices run by other people, and we want it to run from standard wall power for various reasons.

You can imagine a bunch of solutions to this for both wired and wireless networks. There are lots of cheap little computers these days that can run Linux, so you could build some yourself or expect to find someone selling them pre-made. However, these are unlikely to be a mass produced volume product, and it turns out that the flipside of things only being cheap when there is volume is that if there is volume, unexpected things can be the cheapest option.

The cheapest wall-powered device you can put on your wireless network to ping these days turns out to be a remote controlled power plug intended for home automation (as a bonus it will report uptime information for you if you set it up right, so you can tell if it lost power recently). They can fail after a few years, but they're inexpensive so we consider them consumables. And if you have another device that turns out to be flaky and has to be power cycled every so often, you can reuse a 'wifi reachability sensor' for its actual remote power control capabilities.

Similarly, as far as we've found, the cheapest wall powered device that plugs into a wired Ethernet and can be given an IP address so it can be pinged is a basic five port managed switch. You give it a 'management IP', plug one port into the network, and optionally plug up its other four ports so no one uses it for connectivity (because it's a cheap switch and you don't necessarily trust it). You might even be able to find one that supports SNMP so you can get some additional information from it (although our current ones don't, as far as I can tell).

In both cases it's clear that these are cheap because of mass production. People are making lots of wireless remote controlled power plugs and five port managed switches, so right now you can get the switches for about $30 Canadian each and the power plugs for $10 Canadian. In both cases what we get is overkill for what we want, and you could do a simpler version that has a smaller, cheaper bill of materials (BOM). But that smaller version wouldn't have the volume so it would cost much more for us to get it or an approximation.

(Even if we designed and built our own, we probably can't beat the price of the wireless remote controlled power plugs. We might be able to get a cheaper BOM for a single-Ethernet simple computer with case and wall plug power supply, but that ignores staff time to design, program, and assemble the thing.)

At one level this makes me sad. We're wasting the reasonably decent capabilities of both devices, and it feels like there should be a more frugal and minimal option. But it's hard to see what it would be and how it could be so cheap and readily available.

(2 comments.)

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/VolumeMakesOddThingsCheap

questionable_content_feed

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5791

Emily is my wife's favourite character so this story is basically a little present for her (and possibly...for you???)

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5791

musesfool

After waiting as they spent a long, slow afternoon in the oven, I just went to town on some baby back ribs. Holy cats, they were good. Super messy, of course, but delicious! And I have leftovers, so I'll be able to repeat the experience this week!

The pecan shortbread (pic) turned out well, too. I'm a little sad there's no blood orange gelato to go with them, but once the chicken tenders are gone, I will definitely be making it!

In more fannish news, there was a post I saw somewhere on tumblr that talked about a crossover (or fusion? it didn't go into great detail) between Batfam and Dungeon Crawler Carl, and said that the Bats would all be outside during the collapse, and feel obligated to go into the dungeon. And I don't necessarily disagree? But I also don't necessarily agree, either!

In DCC, we're told the collapse happened at approximately 2:20 am PT, which means it was 5:20 am ET, and if you (and by "you" I mean me) believe Gotham is in New Jersey, that is probably after they are all home, and hopefully showering/sleeping, so I'm not sure they survive just by nature of being on patrol. Maybe if Tim is out in San Francisco with the Titans, where it would also be 2:20 am PT, he'd survive, but I'm not necessarily convinced he would go into the dungeon, either. Because there's whatever survivors on the surface to take care of also. Maybe they'd split up? Some would go into the dungeon to see what it was about and others would stay up top to manage any survivors, lead any fighting against alien invaders?

Like, could Kon take being underground for so long without access to sunlight? He should probably stay on the surface and help that way. (I also think this is a hard crossover to make happen simply because...there are canonical aliens in the DCU and also the Green Lantern Corps. So you'd have to do some fast talking/handwaving to get to the interesting parts, because how do the Green Lanterns not know about this? Otoh, you could go full AU/fusion and have Krypton be a world that was stripped ages ago and everyone is shocked to see Kryptonians on Earth. Same with Tamaran or Mars I guess.)

And I do wonder how Batman specifically would fare in a dungeon where killing is the preferred (by the System AI and the Syndicate running the thing and a large portion of the audience) way to survive and advance. He and Cass would find other ways, and I'm sure they would amass fans and, eventually, sponsors, but it'd be harder, I think, especially on the earlier floors. I think we have seen him kill aliens though, at least in the animated universes, so maybe he'd be okay at first with killing goblins and ogres and ghouls etc. Idk.

Jason, otoh, would be all, "I'm built for this!" and shoot his way to glory, or at least do the killing when Bruce and Cass couldn't. Steph and Dick might be pragmatic enough to come around to killing mobs, at least, ( spoiler for Dungeon Crawler Carl )

And while I think a fusion might be a better way to go than a regular crossover (I know there is someone writing a Superman and Carl are BFF in the dungeon, or at least creating art for it, but I don't know what they've chosen to use for backstory), I would love to see Damian interact with Princess Donut. Or the System AI deal with Oracle.

*

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Fool in the Rain - Led Zeppelin

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Richard Kettlewell

Another RPG bundle - Scion 2E

Inflation Timeline

I guess The Old Family Lawyer just doesn't exist anymore

Rather behindhand notice

"When you are simply maintaining, the world is at a loss"

Paradise 2.06 + 2.07

Interesting Links for 23-03-2026

Microsoft Xbox One Hacked

2026/040: Enshittification — Cory Doctorow

Why Is the Fur of Sea Otter Pups So Different?

Bullace farm

(no subject)

Morning medical annoyance

Review: Dark Class

(no subject)

Two years down the road.

Magic Monday

Mass production's effects on the cheapest way to get some things

Gone But Not Forgotten

like a star that can't wait for a night

Profile

January 2026

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags