I run a business that relies on using a mobile hotspot. I use the hotspot to run several pieces of software on a Windows 10 laptop. For the time being, I cannot change anything about the laptop situation. Most of the software I use is only compatible with Windows 10, and I cannot use alternate software (My line of work is in the automotive industry, which is glacially slow to adapt to new things)
My problem with using an iPhone in the past has always been that the hotspot behavior leads to issues using the software. The hotspot has a tendency to turn itself off, sometimes dropping an internet connection at a time when the software requires it. In the absolute worst case, this can lead to a catastrophic failure that leaves me responsible for replacing expensive parts, but in the majority of cases it's just annoying constantly having to monitor it and reconnect if it turns off.
At this point, I'm aware that Apple has designed the hotspot to shut off during inactivity, and that there's really no changing that. I'm not sure why it's detecting inactivity specifically with these windows programs. For example, one of them will immediately give me a pop-up if it loses internet connectivity... You would think if it's scanning for that connection constantly, that it's not idle? I know it's kind of related to Windows too, because I have tools that are basically Android tablets. If I leave those tablets on, the hotspot never turns off.
It is not ideal to rely on that though, because I often don't bring those tablets in with me when I'm working. I also have tried going the route of carrying a separate hotspot device, but that got annoying. Especially during warmer months where I don't have lots of extra pockets. I also didn't like paying for it when I didn't really need to.
So is there any kind of work around for this? Maybe in automations? I've never really familiarized myself with that program, I'm totally out of my element trying to set things up there. Or possibly a program I could download for Windows that just runs in the background and keeps pinging the internet source or something?

One of the fascinating aspects of outsider reports and analysis is what they see. Given that at this point (1992) the internet was not yet widely available/accessible, this sort of thing would have been difficult to find. And of course SGI wasn't ever going to tell us the truth!
This will show you that SGI-USA (then called "NSA") was failing in recruiting far earlier than perhaps most of us in the US realized. SGI in the USA was basically a flash in the pan; it fizzled fast; and now it's just that rank stale smoke smell that lingers long after the fire's been put out.
This comes from Cults and Nonconventional Religious Groups: A Collection of Outstanding Dissertations and Monographs, "Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai in America: The Ethos of a New Religious Movement", Jane Hurst, 1992, pp. 150-151. Jane Hurst has some interesting research out there; while she tends toward being uncritically supportive of SGI, anyone who is making statistics available is a big help.

NSA members in the 1960s and 1970s were young (52% below age 30), more than half female (59%), and from a variety of occupations and social classes.

The Baby Boom generation were at most age 19 in, say, 1965 and at most age 24 in 1970.
This youthfulness is largely reflected in the early organization's origins in the American servicemen who returned from being stationed in Japan with their Japanese war-brides - those servicemen tended to be young and from a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, as the draft was still in effect during that time period (ended March 1975). In addition, the first General Director of the US organization, Masayasu Sadanaga, initially targeted college campuses for recruitment by offering lectures on Buddhism. Sadanaga changed his name to George M. Williams in 1972, in obedience to the (short-lived) direction back then of Japanese leaders adopting American-sounding names (first AND last) in order to appeal more broadly to non-Japanese Americans.

The percentage of Oriental members steadily decreased as more and more white and black Americans joined NSA as seen in Figure 10, above.

Figure 10 (I'll get to that line in another post.)
Most of the original "Oriental members" were those Japanese war-brides, whose first efforts to recruit new SGI members were directed toward other Japanese individuals.

NSA members came from the major religious traditions of Protestantism (30%), Catholicism (30%), and Judaism (6%). At the time these 1971 statistics were compiled, all areas of American society. By 1983, the age span was even more broad, with 11% of the members age 50 and above, 62% ages 30-49, 24% ages 20-29, and 3% below age 19.

For reference, here are the age ranges for the existing generations in 1983:

• Greatest: Ages 59-82
• Silent: Ages 38-58
• Baby Boomers: Ages 19-37
• Generation X: Ages 4-18
• Generation Y (Millennials): Age 3 or younger.

While these 1983 statistics aren't broken down by generation, here's what is clear:

• 11% of the SGI-USA membership was MUCH OLDER than Baby Boomers
• 62% was either Baby Boom generation or older (though younger than that oldest group)
• 24% was Baby Boomers
• 3% was younger than Baby Boomers.

This means that 97% of the membership of SGI-USA was Baby Boom generation OR OLDER!

IN 1983!!

Notice how this affirms the demographic estimate from this other research: "Soka Gakkai in America": Little appeal/interest outside of Baby Boom generation

Take a look at Table 4.
Specifically, the Age cohort (%) category.
For the Converts, 26% are older than Baby Boomers; 61% are Baby Boomers. That makes 87% Boomer and older. Only 14% are younger than Boomers.
No wonder SGI-USA is aging and dying, with these kinds of numbers!
We are seeing, like, 90% Baby Boomers in the group photos we've looked at.
The pictures back this up.
Also, this comment by an SGI-USA leader a few years ago during Minoru Harada's visit (anyone know what year that was?):

They [top SGI-USA leaders] then went off on how when we create these big-ass meetings, we shouldn't have to look into the crowd and see, and I quote, "A bunch of old-ass motherfuckers" The words of my "superiors", not mine. I think this is when they brought up the idea of 50K to my co-leaders and me. Source

"Old-ass motherfuckers" is all they have. How 'bout showing a little of that appreciation and gratitude SGI bangs on about??
Worse, "old-ass motherfuckers" is all SGI-USA can get.
Further, again referring to Table 4, SGI-USA's membership is solidly 2/3 women. That means it's going to be very difficult for women in SGI-USA to find mates to marry, which means childlessness will be more of a norm than an exception. Child-free is a valid and respect-worthy decision, don't get me wrong, but a religion's most reliable source of younger members is its own membership's children. Since SGI-USA's female members don't feel any responsibility or obligation to bear multiple children (like those poor, stupid Mormon sheepwomen do), there won't be any next generation to take over.
There's a reason so many religions have traditionally exhorted their membership to have lots of babies, why they condemn birth control and abortion. A big part of it is to keep their own numbers up! Source

It's the same problem happening in Japan within the Soka Gakkai:

On the other hand, aging is relentless. In terms of the Soka Gakkai's membership demographics, the "volume zone" where most members fall is the baby boomer generation who joined by the 1960s. They are now late elderly. In the past, the management of centers in various places was handled by the "Gajokai" consisting of Young Men's Division members, but it is no longer possible to secure personnel. Instead, in 2009, the Soka Gakkai launched the "Ojokai'' consisting of "middle-aged divisions,'' scolding them as "young people in their 50s'' and rushing to mobilize them. Source

GOOD LUCK!

For perspective, note that SGI-USA was managing to recruit just "1,000 per YEAR" - including all ages - between 1991 and 1999. Eight years of only 1,000 members added per year, with no accounting for the deaths or defections. Were the years after that more successful, recruiting-wise? I doubt it.

[Then-SGI-USA's public-relations director for the East Coast Bill] Aiken says SGI-USA has attracted about 1000 new members per year for the past eight years. - from 1999. Only 1,000 new members - across the ENTIRE 360+ million-person strong USA - in an ENTIRE year. And this extremely low level of success for EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW!! Source

From 2018:

In recent years, the number of young Soka Gakkai members has been decreasing rapidly . Looking at the participants in the simultaneous broadcasts and roundtable discussions, the majority are of the grandparents' generation, with only a small number of young people in their 20s and 30s, and the number of teenage boys and girls is almost an endangered species .
Therefore, what I am interested in is the population of Soka Gakkai by age group. This time, I would like to estimate the current population of Soka Gakkai by age , based on information I have personally seen and heard and verification from others . Please note that this estimate is very rough.
First, the largest number of Soka Gakkai members are baby boomers (born between 1947 and 1949 [Japan's Baby Boom]). This seems almost certain considering the history of the development of Soka Gakkai .
Also, the total number of members has already been verified by many people, and is estimated to be around 3 to 5 million people. This time we assume about 4 million people .
And this is what I heard directly from a staff member at headquarters last year, who said , `` The number of activists decreases by about 1/3 with each generation.'' I think this is a reasonable rate of decline that can be felt by looking at participants in simultaneous broadcasts and roundtable discussions. It seems that members who have stopped being activists are less likely to have their children join, so this time we will use a value of 1/3 per generation as the member decline rate .
Also, regarding the number of years it takes for generational change, the average age for men and women to give birth to their first child is currently 30 years old. Considering that the average age of childbearing for both men and women when the baby boomer generation was born was 24 years old, and that there are cases where not only the first child but also the second and third children are born, the generational shift will take 30 years. Let's calculate it as if it would take a year . In that case, the annual membership attrition rate would be (1/3)^1/30 = 0.964, or 3.6% .
It is unclear when this trend of declining membership started, but this time we will assume that it started in the year following the baby boom generation (1950). Source

And "Soka Gakkai is like an old people's club":

Regarding the problem of a decline in Komeito votes, or in other words, a decline in active Soka Gakkai members, many people concerned point out that the primary cause is the aging of Soka Gakkai members. The enthusiastic members of the generation who supported the growth of the society along with charismatic Honorary President Daisaku Ikeda are now elderly across the board. Most of the current new members are second- or third-generation members who join because their parents are members of Soka Gakkai, and they are not very enthusiastic about Soka Gakkai's activities. Today, many of Soka Gakkai's daily events are even derided by insiders as "like an old people's party."

And a more recent report (this year):

Back about 20 years ago a good friend and good guy, now deceased, from ChiTown, was commissioned by SGI Central Command to survey every contactable member of SGI in every district in America. The number he came up with was 5% of the number of Gohonzon passed out since, I guess whenever Gohonzon started to be passed out. The total number was about a million give or take, 20 years ago. These were contactable people, not practicing members. I remember going through lists of people we had on the books and trying to see if they could be reached. So the number we came up with was reported. Hearing nothing about it, I happened to run into my friend at some event at Soka U. He mentioned that he did the survey, and gave me the results. I believe he told me the facts. (Not everyone who practiced was a lying asshole.) So about 20 years ago SGI had about 50,000 “contactable“ people who had received Gohonzon. My estimate that about half of that number had zero interest in SGI. Thus 20 years ago, SGI had about 25,000 members still interested in SGI in some capacity. I think it’s the same number today. (2500 districts x 10=25,000.) Like I said before I went to FNCC twice last year, and everyone, including me, were old zany seniors. Neither conference was for old people. Conclusion: SGI is a senior citizen support group. When I joined in1969, we were all hippie ish, rejecting all the old shit, looking for something new and hip. Now SGI looks like old shit. Source

And another (this year or last):

When I joined 50+ years ago the ratio of youth to MD and WD was about 80:20. Now it's the reverse. Our goal is to move steadily back to a youth focus again. Source

Except it's obvious that SGI-USA doesn't HAVE "20% youth":

Youth? They've got to be fooling themselves!!! When I was still with the SGI last February (2023), I went to the kosen-rufu gongyo meeting at the center in my area. Mind you, the state I live in closed its center in 2021 for undisclosed reasons. That aside, the one I went to was in another state, and at that meeting, they had no byakuren, Gajokai, or Soka Group in attendance. Additionally, the only youth at the meeting were a few small children. Source
I feel that SGI is out of touch with anyone who’s younger than 60. The leaders are retired, have a lot of time on their hands and completely disregard the fact that people may work or have families. For young people it’s the old people taking nonsense. Source

The PROBLEM was already evident in 1983 - and none of the SGI-USA's big "Recruit-Youth-A-Thons", like "Victory over Violence" and "Rock The Ego Era" and "50K Liars of Just-Us" (everybody wants to forget the epic fail that was the "Gandhi, King, Ikeda" exhibit), has made the slightest difference in this demographic disaster. In fact, preparing for the 2018 "50K" event, SGI-USA likely had only 2,451 members in the 12-35 (or perhaps 11-39) age group, just 9% of the most generous SGI-USA active membership total (~30,000).

Ikeda could have preserved a "youthful" Soka Gakkai by passing the Presidency to a younger candidate, but Ikeda refused, because Ikeda was too focused on and obsessed with HIMSELF - his power, his prestige, his wealth, his status, his fame, his renown, HIM becoming leader of the world, his PERMANENCY, and his legacy. He refused to let anyone else come anywhere CLOSE to the power and control - he greedily, selfishly clutched it all tightly to himself and refused to share.
THAT is why the Ikeda cult Soka Gakkai/SGI is aging and dying. It's ALL Ikeda's fault, Ikeda's responsibility. IKEDA DID THAT.
Some "mentor". Source

SGI-USA has never managed to recover from that demographic bottleneck that happened no later than 1983.

Hello, lovely people! Our party has just hit Level 5, which means that I need to pick out some new spells for my Wizard. My School is Universalist, and my Thesis is Staff Nexus (with GM permitted options to swap out the staff spells I picked at first level using Downtime). I've taken the Loremaster archetype with Free Archetype.
Our party consists of a Bard, Champion, Cleric, Magus, and Summoner. Lots of healing and moderate damage output leading to longer fights.
We're playing through the Abomination Vaults, so keep that in mind. I'd prefer to avoid spoilers, please, but if I'm considering something that's going to be less effective it would be nice to know. We've just completed (or are in the process of completing, we haven't opened the way down yet) the fourth level (Belcorra's Retreat), so I'm aware that there are a lot of Undead and other horrible monsters!
I'd appreciate any advice on spell selection, but particularly for the two new spells I get to pick up at 5th Level, which can now be 3rd Rank.
My current "standard" loadout is as follows:
Cantrips:

• Needle Darts - My "signature cantrip" if you will. I want to hang on to this one, even though it's an Attack spell.
• Eat Fire - React to gain fire resistance! Fun, but it's come up exactly once so far.
• Shield - Another +1 AC, and Shield Block against any physical or magical attack is pretty great
• Draw Moisture - a character spell; for a researcher, keeping things dry is important
• Light - We don't all have Darkvision, so this is important for keeping hands free.

Innate Cantrips:

• Telekinetic Hand (Nagaji Spell Familiarity) - utility, but almost entirely unused. I'm still on the fence about picking up the next feat in this chain, and if I don't I'll likely retrain this one.
• Guidance (Magical Edification) - A nice use of a third action if Shield is not needed or on cooldown
• Sigil (Magical Edification) - Came with the other options!
• Message (Magical Edification) - Utility, particularly for communicating with a scout.
• Detect Magic, Rank 1 (Arcane Sense, from Bibliophile background) - Kind of useful

1st Rank:

• Mystic Armour - +1 AC feels pretty weak, but I need every point I can get. (This will put me at AC21 at 5th level)
• Briny Bolt - opportunistic Blind is nice, and our Hero Point module means that a reroll is more likely to hit. But relying on a Hero Point to be consistent isn't great. I'll likely replace this with Fear once I pick that up.
• Force Barrage - Automatic damage, but three actions for 10.5 average damage isn't amazing at 5th level. I'll likely replace this one with Pocket Library now that I have 3rd Rank spells available to boost my offensive options.

2nd Rank:

• Invisibility - not being seen while in trouble is nice, though maybe another offensive or buff option would be better - Loose Time's Arrow is very appealing.
• Laughing Fit - Disable reactions, and hopefully Slow the target on a Will save
• Revealing Light - Reveal invisible creatures, or give groups of foes a miss chance

Wands

• Ant Haul - I enjoy carrying things. This wasn't a good choice for a first Wand, but I'm very happy to have it.

Staff (Staff Nexus Staff of Earth - I just wanted a cheap staff to get charges for Nexus spells)

• Tangle Vine - not particularly useful because it needs an Attack roll, likely to swap for Read Aura
• Scatter Scree - Area damage and create Difficult Terrain
• Enfeeble - Good status ailment and good duration on a failed save, though perhaps best against creatures likely to have good Fortitude saves
• Pummelling Rubble, Rank 1 - Honestly, I don't think I'm going to cast this. It's an opportunistic push, I guess.

Thus, on to picking Rank 3 spells for 5th Level.
An observation I made in our last major fight was that I need to improve my "boss fight suite". Currently that's pretty much Revealing Light, Laughing Fit, and Enfeeble (plus Briny Bolt if I keep that prepared). That is at least one spell targeting each save (and AC), but the effects are fairly light and none of them contribute damage to the mix.
I'd like to be able to contribute damage, but I feel that as a Wizard inflicting status ailments/buffs is more important (it's not like anyone else in the party is doing much of that). Doing both would be ideal! With that in mind, here's my shortlist of spells and my thoughts on them. I'd appreciate any insight into which of these might be particularly good (or bad) given our adventure and party makeup (and doubtless I've missed a few gems along the way too)!
Potential 3rd Rank picks:

• Agonizing Despair - It's single target Fear, plus some Mental damage. 14 Expected Damage isn't a huge amount (21 seems to be average for Rank 3 even for single target spells, and Heightened Thunderstrike expects 27), but even a little bit would be a nice contribution.
• Cave Fangs - It's Fireball damage, but close range and Piercing type. Creates a big old area of Difficult Terrain too, which could be especially useful against melee foes. I'm pretty sold on this one, since while groups aren't something we've traditionally struggled with it would be cool to have something to deal with them! Downsides being lack of ways to approach an enemy once they're enmeshed in the difficult terrain, but I'm sure that's fine...
• Gravity Well - Draws targets towards the centre of the effect. Big area, but I'm not sure gathering foes together is better than just hitting them with a Fireball, especially given the small size of the rooms in this adventure. Very cool though, and that's a selling point on its own.
• Gasping Marsh - Uncommon. A sustained barrage of area damage and the Sickened condition that can be redeployed at will, the only thing keeping me from locking this one in is the prevalence of Undead foes we've come up against. This is Poison damage, and requires a breathing target, and I have a feeling that locks it out of working on a lot of things.
• Slow - Inflict the Slowed status with a) a fortitude rather than will save; and b) without sustaining the spell. Looks great despite overlap with Laughing Fit.
• Glyph of Warding - Might be a cool option if I'm going to end up having Heightened lower level spells in my 3rd Rank slots most of the time. Summon Proximity Mine is a pretty cool ability!
• Time Jump - Single action double move is pretty awesome, but I suspect not a great use of a top-level spell slot. Probably one to pick up at level 7 or 9.
• Wooden Double - I should be able to pick this up from our party Magus rather than spending one of my own picks on it, but it seems like an absolute lifesaver. One to keep prepared in case of critical hits, but maybe an extravagant use of a top-rank spell slot.
• Haste - Give a party member an extra Stride. Great for me, but spending a turn setting this up feels like a slow start to a combat. I thought it'd be great for use on our Cleric or Magus, but I'm not sure *they* are as keen. I'd love some insight on how useful this ends up being in practice.

Additionally, I'm tempted to pick up (via scrolls) the following with an eye to Heightening them to 3rd Rank. Honestly, I'll probably grab as many as possible, but it'd be cool to know if there are particular standouts among these options - I haven't really considered Heightened spells before.
Spells to Heighten to 3rd Rank:

• Fear - I should have this already, to be honest. It's an alternative area attack at 3rd Rank, and works nicely in a 1st Rank slot (like my staff, for example). Not certain it's a great use of a third rank slot if I'm expecting to fight a lot more Boss monsters though.
• Thunderstrike - It wasn't a thing when we started playing, it's not my fault that the laws of magic themselves have changed since then! Heightened, it seems to be the best single-target damage available at 3rd Rank (and maybe anywhere before Disintegrate at 6th Rank), and if used on someone in metal armour it's still a debuff too!
• Dehydrate - A 10ft burst inflicting 4d6 Persistent Fire damage is pretty dang respectable, and the extra check for Enfeebled is just gravy. The 1 minute duration is a little confusing, however - does the area stick about and continue to apply Persistent damage to anyone entering it? Or starting their turn there?
• Heat Metal - Respectable damage, plus persistent fire damage and potentially make a foe drop an item. Relies on them carrying metal, though so does Thunderstrike if I want it to inflict conditions on the target.
• Sudden Bolt - Uncommon. Even better damage than Thunderstrike (worse scaling, but not for a long time), but no benefits for targeting an armoured creature. No status effects put me off this one.

And that's about it. My current thought process is that I'll take Cave Fangs and one of Agonizing Despair, Haste, and Slow. I do enjoy the idea of stacking detrimental conditions onto a target until it stops being able to do much of anything, but I'm not sure that's actually a viable playstyle given how effectively things make saves in Pathfinder.
Anyway. Thanks for reading this far, and my apologies for the wall of text - hopefully it was at least legible! Any thoughts you may have on spell selection (even if it's just "why would you take X when Y is just better?") would be very much appreciated!

Hi all,
So I am probably a third through a double crochet bag. I followed a youtube video for the first bit but now they are swapping colours so, I am just going to do as many rounds as I want for height and then finish with some D rings and single crochet.
So I have done 4 rounds for height already going the same direction and not turning my work because in the video, they didn't turn their work. But I have ready that you should turn your work? Should I now do like 4 rounds the other, 4 rounds the other way etc?
The thing I don't understand is, currently I am chaining 3 at the beginning of a round, then double crocheting into the first double crochet of the last round, then I am slip stitching after 65 double crochet into the 3rd chain ( following the tutorial), however, I don't understand what I would do if I turned my work.
Once I turned my work I would have 3 chains, then a slip stitch. Do I skip the slip stitch and double crochet into the 2nd stitch? How do I close of the round if going the other way. In this case the 1st chain is the 3rd chain?
Hopefully that all makes sense!

1. Mutual Funds are right
   
2. Sometimes you can get scolded in public by your boss
   
3. As a younger generation person, I must eat Kamala Pasand
   
4. Replace your Jockey with Amul Macho to get better returns
   
5. If your home crowd is booing your captian then fill the stands with schoolchildren
   
6. You can be a successful commentator even if you call Sandeep Sharma 'Sandeep Kumar', and misname every other player as you wish
   
7. Don't let the iPhone goooowwooaawwhhooo
   
8. David Warner is a good actor
   
9. One six from thala is more cinematic than most completed matches
   
10. Strike rate is not overrated. Maybe it is. I don't know anymore.
    

The title of the previous Bankedex has been making people think it only contained offers for NI. So here it is again, with all the current offers and with a more generic title. There are currently 5 active bank switch offers (and only one is specific to Northern Ireland!).
*****************
Here is the the ultimate guide to UK bank switch offers - the collective knowledge of ~140k BeermoneyUK members. Switch your bank account, get a cash reward for doing so. But don't switch your main account, open up a second account and switch that to get the money!
​
Updated 15/05/2024:
​
The most commonly asked bank switch questions:

1. I started to switch to XXX bank before the offer ended, am I still eligible for the bonus?

Yes, usually, most terms will state that a switch just has to be started (or applied for) before the end date or before an offer ends.

1. Do I have to transfer the required amount in all in one go, and does it matter if I pay money in before my switch is complete?

No and not usually, as long as the amount you pay in adds up to the required amount, and as long as you pay it in before the deadline stated in the terms. There has been one exception to this - Co-op - so check individual terms.

1. I need to switch "active" direct debits, does a payment need to have been taken before I switch?

According to Nationwide, an active direct debit is one that has been set up or had a payment taken from it in the past 13 months. So no, according to this. But why not just wait for the direct debit to be taken? You'll not have to worry about it then.

https://twitter.com/AskNationwide/status/1442939781491486720

1. How do I set up and switch an additional Chase current account?
   

   • See Chase instruction here to open an additional account.
     
   • The second account will be linked to the same card as your main Chase account.
     
   • Use the secondary account details and your original card details when switching.
     

2. What are the easiest/best direct debits to use for bank switching?
   

There are many: Paypal, Ebay, Moneybox savings account, Plum savings account, your credit card, Sprive Mortgage auto savings, Wealthify Robo Saving. We recommend ones that save money into an account in your own name. Here’s useful ones that have additional bonuses available via beermoneyuk

Site/App	Offer	Comment
Park Christmas (Search)	Save for Christmas via direct debit
Plum (Search)	A very useful direct debit	Easy and fast to set up
Sprive (Search)	Autosavings for mortgage overpayment direct debit (£5 bonus)	Easy and fast to set up
Wealthify (Search)	A very useful direct debit (£1/month min)	Easy and fast to set up

Questions about Bank Switching should generally be asked here. Posts on the subreddit asking questions about bank switching will probably be removed.

As always with the Bankedex, we need your help.

The post has been updated with the newest offers, and tips commented in the previous Bankedex posts, and those in other posts on beermoneyuk. But it is a difficult task keeping on top of all the questions. Please continue to share your experience with Bank Bribes. I will add questions/answers to this post. Your help is much appreciated - thanks to you all.

Current bank switch offers (£551 in total)

Bank	Bonus	Offer Deadline	Comment
Barclays	31k Avios for £48 spend	None	£100 profit, Requires premier banking
First Direct	£175 to switch	None
Danske Bank	£175 to switch		Northern Ireland only
Santander	£175 to switch	None	£15 extra available
Virgin Money	£100 to switch	31/05/2024	10% gross interest rates boost to 12% on £1k for 1 year (~£120 total) + extra £30 via Snoop

No switch, just sign up bank switch offers

Bank	Offer	Comment
Tide (click for details)	Spend £100, get £75 cashback	A beermoneyuk staple
Monzo (click to search)	Spend £1, get £5 or £50	£50 is for a business account
Starling (click to search)	Free National Trust Day Pass

Never switched a bank account before?

You should consider it. It is one of the easiest and most efficient ways of earning a little beermoney. It is advised to leave your main bank account alone. Instead, switch a secondary bank account, or open a new account at your current bank to be used just for switching. Recommended steps:

1. Open a second current account with your main high street bank (must be part of CASS service)
2. Set up direct debits on the second account (if required).
3. Add £1 to your second account. This will be transferred to your new account, allowing you to see when the switch has been completed.
4. Apply for a new account and arrange to switch to your second bank account (sometimes this is during the application process, other times it is after the account is opened).
5. Let the current account switch service take care of everything.
6. Make sure all other terms are met (e.g. pay in money if needed).
7. Receive your bank switching bonus.

You will hear about lots of people rushing through all of the switch bonuses available. These offers have been coming and going for years, my advice is to do an offer that tickles your fancy and try out a new bank. Then, if you decide you do not like your new bank you should sample another bank and get paid again!
​

Are there some bank accounts worth keeping?

Why yes. Some are quite good, and give ongoing rewards. For example, Club Lloyds gives free Disney Plus. See the "don't leave us please" bank rewards post. Some also give access to the best savings accounts (e.g. regular savers).

Detailed switch offer information

Whilst we do our best to make sure things are correct, sometimes errors do slip through. Always do your own research. Also, it may not be possible to work through all of these.
​

Barclays

Current offer: 31k Avios for full switch to Premier Banking, and paying £12/month for “Avios Rewards” for 4 months - works out around £100 profit when converted to Nectar points.

Direct link to offer (scroll down)

• You must switch to Premier Bank account.

These are premium accounts, supposed to be for those with £70k+ salaries. However, cycling £4201 each month also appears to do the job

Offer end date: None listed
Requirements:

• Open a Barclays Premier bank account & join Avios Rewards (£12/month fee), or
  
• Complete a full switch from a different bank (you do this from within the app, after opening the account).
  

Reward payable by: 1.5k Avios each month for Avios Rewards, 25k Avios paid in month 4 for the switch.
Available to existing customers: No.
Additional notes: it can be worth doing the Barclaycard Avios Plus offer at the same time, as you will get a discount on the credit card fee.

​

Danske Bank

Current offer: £200 for full switch

Direct link to Danske Bank offer

• You can switch to their Danske Reward, Danske Choice or Danske Freedom current account.

Offer end date: No end date given, may be removed at any time.
Requirements:

• Full switch (no direct debits mentioned).
  
• After opening account, pay in £1000 within 60 days (can be multiple deposits)
  
• You cannot have had a Danske Bank reward since 01/01/2024
  

Available to existing customers: only if you are a new personal current account customer. .
How long does it take to pay the bonus: paid within 10 days of meeting requirements.

​

First Direct

Current offer: £175 when you switch

Direct link to First Direct offer

• You can switch to their First account.

Offer end date: No end date given, may be removed at any time.
Requirements:

• Full switch (two direct debits or standing orders are required).
  
• After opening account, log in to mobile banking, pay in £1000, and make 5 debit card payments within 30 days.
  
• You cannot have had a 1st Direct account before.
  
• You cannot switch if you have an HSBC account opened after 01/2020
  

How to do it: Once your first direct account is open, simply log into your first direct app, select the account you wish to transfer into, tap ‘switch to us’ from your account menu and follow the instructions.
Available to existing customers: No. Also can't have had a HSBC account opened since January 2018.
How long does it take to pay the bonus: paid by the 20th of the month following that in which you met all of the criteria.

​

Santander

Extra £15: You can get an extra £15 by signing up to a Santander Edge account via Topcashback. If you don't have a Topcashback account, you can sign up here:

Topcashback sign up

Current offer: £175

Direct link to offer
You can switch to any of these paid current accounts: Santander Edge current account, Edge Up, or the Private Current Account

Offer end date: None given
Requirements: Full switch.

• Apply to switch when you apply to open the account (or existing customers can just switch into an existing qualifying current account).
  
• Complete switch of a non-Santander account, set up 2 active direct debits, and pay in £1500 within 60 days of applying/telling Santander you want to switch. Must keep direct debits active on account
  
• Cannot have had a Santander-group bonus previously (Santander, Cahoot, Cater Allen)
  

Reward payable by: between 60 and 90 days after opening the account.
Available to existing customers: Yes (can switch a non-Santander group current account into a new or existing Santander account). Existing customers may need to visit a branch.

​

Virgin Money

Current offer: Extra 10% interest on £1k for a year (~£100 bonus)
Extra £30: You can get an extra £30 by signing up to Virgin via Snoop (you need to connect your Virgin account to Snoop). If you don't have a Snoop account, you can sign up here for an additional fiver too:

Snoop £5 sign up bonus
Direct link to Virgin Money offer

• You can switch to their M Account (free, ~10% interest total, gross), M Plus Account (free account, ~12% interest total) or Club M Account (costs £12.50/month for insurance and stuff, ~12% total, is one of the best value package accounts - especially if a joint account)

Offer end date: apply by 31/05/24
Requirements:

• Full switch (two direct debits required as part of the switch).

Available to existing customers: No. And can't have closed an account since 30/04/2024
How long does it take to pay the bonus: interest is paid monthly, so a a year to get it all!

​

General Bank Switch Questions

Current Account Switch Bribes - Why do they offer them?

They want your business. Banks like fighting each other for customers. Most of them know they can't win by highlighting their outdated systems and products, so they fight each other by offering potential customers cash bribes (or equivalent) to switch their "main" bank account.

Can I switch any bank account to get a bribe?

No. You must switch a bank account that is part of The Current Account Switch Service (CASS). Most high street banks are included. But some Neo Banks are not (e.g., Kroo, Revolut, & Monese are not included). You should try to avoid switching your main bank account. You can always open an additional account just to switch.
See here for a full list of CASS banks.

Is it too much hassle?

No. The Current Account Switch Service (CASS) makes switching your account between most banks smooth and effortless. You do not have to do anything apart from apply for and set up a new account at a different bank and tell them you want to switch your account to them. Everything is transferred automatically (except recurring card payments).

Is there the best route to sample all the banks with switch offers?

Do the offer ending soonest first. Then you might switch again. If you complete all offers in this post, you could earn yourself >£1000.

Some of these end soon. Will the offers come back?

Banks have been offering bribes on and off for many years. We can't predict the future. But this is not a new thing.

How long does a bank switch take?

Approximately one week.

Do I have to switch my main account?

You could. But you don't have to. Many people have second bank accounts. One option may be to open up a second account with your current high street bank, add some direct debits to this second account and then switch it to the new bank you want to try out. On the sub, people also like Starling or Monzo as they are easy to set up (but you might want to switch back to them at the end - their functionality wins vs any usual high street bank).
High-street banks also let you open multiple accounts. If you already have an account with one, you might want to open an additional one with your current bank first (Halifax, NatWest etc are reported to allow several current accounts and to be fast to open).

I have savings accounts at the same bank as my current account. Can I still switch to this current account?

Yes. Only the current account will be closed (some linked regular savers may be converted to normal savings accounts). You might want to consider if switching to a secondary account is a better option.

I have linked savers attached to my current account. Can I still switch it?

Possibly.

Which banks let me open a second bank account?

Most of them.

Do I need to activate the card on the account I am going to switch?

Just do it anyway. Some banks require it

What details do I need to switch?

• Sort code and account number.
• Debit card information.
• Usually, but not always, 2 active DDs on the account you are switching.

Do you need to have money in the account you are switching?

No. But it might be a good idea - this will allow you to see when the switch happens (i.e. when the money is transferred!).

I do not have a bank card with my old current account as it is very very old, can I still switch it?

Most online forms require card details, but you can usually switch such accounts over the phone.

My new bank has not given me my account number (e.g. NatWest).

Usually, these are sent via post/email when you sign up. But some banks don't have the account numbers on the card, or maybe letters get lost in the post. If this happens, wait for the card to arrive and contact their support. If you get a bot on the chat thing, type "speak to a human" repeatedly.

My new bank account is a premium account and it has a fee. Do I need to keep paying for this?

No. You can downgrade the account. But you should probably wait until you have been paid the bonus.

I don't like my new bank, do I need to wait for the bank card before switching again?

Yes. See question above. Most banks require the card details of your existing account.

I made an account just to switch. Can I switch before my new bank card arrives?

Best not to. You are asked to enter the debit card information as part of the process.

The offer says I have to pay in £xxxx. Does it have to be in one go?

No. You can transfer in and out. The total sent in has to be equal to or greater than the stated amount. You should be careful with this though, sending money in and out of an account can trigger anti-fraud measures.

The offer says I have to pay in £xxxx. Can I pay it in before the switch completes?

Yes. You can pay it before, after, or during. You can manually transfer it, or it can be transferred automatically from your old account.

I've been asked to verify my identity. Is this normal?

Sometimes automated checks fail. If this happens, you may be asked to manually verify your application by visiting a branch or sending in a copy of your ID.

I switched from Monzo/Starling and want to return, can I?

Starling does not let you return within 12 months. With Monzo, it's possibly a shorter one month that you have to wait.

Do I have to switch direct debits?

Check individual offer terms.

What is an "Active" direct debit?

An active direct debit is usually one where a payment had been taken in the last 13 months. But some bank switch terms require direct debits to have been paid out of the account. If an offer requires an active direct debit, it's safer to switch to an account that has already paid out direct debits.**

What are good direct debits to set up on a second account?

There are many: Paypal, Ebay, Moneybox savings account, Plum savings account, your credit card, Sprive Mortgage auto savings, Wealthify Robo Saving.

I recently switched to XXX Bank, and I do not like it. Can I switch again?

Yes. If you are not happy with the new service, you may want to switch to a new bank that will pay you to give them a try.

Do I have to stick with my new bank for any length of time?

No.

If I switch away, will the bank claw back the bonus?

Very unlikely. They would have to specify this in their terms, and none have ever done so.

My switch is complete, but I have not yet received my bonus. Will I still get the bonus if I switch this account before it is paid?

Probably not.

My most recent switch is not quite complete, but I have already received the bonus. Can I start another switch?

You should probably wait for the switch to complete.

Can I get more than one bribe from each bank?

Sometimes. With some banks (e.g. Nationwide), you can get a bonus for switching one sole and one joint current account. Other banks will pay you to switch again, as long as you have not had a bonus in a specified amount of time. You will need to check individual offer terms.

XXX Bank gave me a bonus before, can I get a bonus again?

You need to check the individual offer terms.

Will this affect my credit score?

Credit scores are a funny thing, What is more important is what is actually in your credit file. Obviously, if you apply for an overdraft then it will affect your "credit score". However, if you do not have an overdraft or you make sure that you have paid off any overdraft before switching banks, then a single current account switch should not negatively impact your credit score. Nevertheless, typically all major banks (excepting Monzo and Starling) do a hard credit search, and this will be recorded on your file. If you plan on applying for a new mortgage soon then you may wish to exercise caution in switching between a load of banks. This is because the hard searches performed by banks will appear on your report and may have an effect for 6-12 months.

Which banks do hard searches and which do soft searches??

See here. Most banks do hard searches.

• Hard searches: Bank of Scotland (first account only), Barclays, Co-op, Clydesdale, Halifax (1st account only), First Direct, HSBC, Lloyds (1st account only), Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, RBS, Santander, TSB, Ulster, Virgin Money.
  
• Soft searches: Starling, Metro Bank, and Chase
  

I have a bad credit score, will I be accepted to XXX bank?

Unfortunately, we do not know the acceptance criteria of the banks. You might be unlucky with one bank, but lucky with another.

My application was rejected. Why?

Nobody here knows. You could try appealing, but your only way to find out more is to contact the bank.

After switching my account, I still have online banking with my old provider. Do I need this?

No. You do not need to keep the online access (you could shut it down). But you may wish to retain these details in case your old bank suddenly appears with an offer that makes you want to switch back. Or open up a savings account.

Has anyone else been paid for switching to XXX Bank yet?

Check the terms of the offer you signed up for. Some banks have long deadlines and stick to them (e.g. Santander, TSB). Some are quicker. If you haven't been paid within the stated terms, then you should contact the bank's support.

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/weapon_tuning_the_final_shape
Hey, Guardians, it's the Weapons Team here with the weapon balance update for The Final Shape.
There's a lot to go through, from a comprehensive PvE weapon damage pass to Exotics changes, varying from substantial reworks to minor tweaks. We are also tamping down some outliers with an eye toward the World First race for the upcoming raid. And maybe there's a hint in here about a returning fan-favorite weapon, too...

Weapon Archetypes

Back in update 6.3.0, we rolled a set of Spec mods (Dragonfly, Surrounded, and Rampage) into the base functionality of those perks, and now we're coming for the rest of the Spec mods. We've increased base weapon damage almost universally (making exceptions for weapons that were already overperforming or that we buffed very recently) and have retired the following weapon mods:

• Boss Spec, Taken Spec, Minor Spec, Major Spec, and Adept Big Ones Spec.

We were already happy with the damage output of Exotic Primary weapons and Trace Rifles, so we only slightly reduced their damage bonus versus red bars. In most cases this means their damage output is roughly unchanged (since they receive the buffs below).

• Reduced damage bonus versus Minors from 40% to 30% (except Fighting Lion).

Included below are the matching damage changes by weapon archetype. Note that we made some exceptions for Exotic weapons that were already performing strongly and applied some buffs just to specific tiers of enemies. Except where noted, these changes are in PvE only. Also note that, because Exotic weapons can't equip mods, this gives them a larger relative buff than Legendaries, e.g., Riskrunner's maximum possible damage is increased 10% versus red bars, but Shayura's Wrath's is increased by 3% in effect because it can no longer slot a Minor Spec mod.
In addition to compensating for the removal of Spec mods, we've taken this opportunity to buff some weapon types that have languished in endgame PvE, most notably Pulse Rifles.

• Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants.
  
  • Pulse Rifles: 20%
    • Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.)
  • Pellet Shotguns: 10%
    • Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.)
  • Slug Shotguns: 9%
  • Fusion Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.)
  • Sniper Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: Izanagi's Burden's Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike's storm. (These are both performing well.)
  • Glaive projectiles: 7%
  • Linear Fusion Rifles: 5%
• Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)—this stacks with the base PvE damage increase.
  
  • Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20%
  • Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15%
    
    • For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode are included.
      • I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars.
  • Submachine Guns: 10%
    
  • Hand Cannons: 5%
    
• Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars).
  
  • Trace Rifles: 20%
• Increased damage globally, including PvP.
  
  • Machine Guns: 7%
  • Swords: 7%
• Splash damage from add clear-Exotic Primary weapons was overperforming in The Final Shape when combined with the damage buffs listed above, so we've pulled it down slightly on a handful of weapons.
  
  • Reduced splash damage by 10%:
    • Sunshot
    • Trinity Ghoul
    • Polaris Lance
    • Graviton Lance

Several releases back, we gave Kinetic weapons a substantial damage bonus in PvE to account for it being harder to use them in subclass builds. In general, we're ok with leaving this in place until we have a better-defined role for Kinetic weapons, but the bonus damage versus Boss-tier combatants was making it hard for weapons of other damage types to compete.

• Kinetic damage type weapons no longer deal bonus damage to bosses; damage to other combatant tiers is unchanged.
  
  • For example, a kinetic Sniper Rifle and a Stasis Sniper Rifle of the same subfamily will both deal the same damage to a boss.

We've also made some quality-of-life changes to several weapon types.

• Updated Heavy, Adaptive, and Aggressive Burst weapon intrinsic names to match burst count across all weapon archetypes. Functionality is unchanged.
  
  • 2-burst: Heavy Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Hand Cannons, and Pulse Rifles.
  • 3-burst: Adaptive Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Linear Fusion Rifles, and Adaptive Pulse Rifles.
  • 4-burst: Aggressive Burst
    • Includes Pulse Rifles.
• Removed the foundry name from the Veist Rapid-Fire, Häkke Precision, and Omolon Adaptive weapon intrinsics.
  
• Scout Rifles
  
  • Updated the hip-fire reticle to better show accuracy and aim-assist state.
• Hand Cannons
  
  • Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil's Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats.
    
    • Crimil's Dagger (Iron Banner)
      • Stability: 23 to 31
      • Handling: 23 to 31
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9
      • Airborne Effectiveness: 10 to 21
    • Something New (Solstice)
      • Stability: 27 to 30
      • Handling: 24 to 30
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9
• Low inventory Sniper Rifles were a little too low in PvE for our liking, so we've increased the minimum.
  
  • Increased minimum reserves from 14 to 17 shots; maximum reserve is unchanged.
• Linear Fusion Rifles
  
  • Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control.
    • Reduced firing animation kick and recoil for Adaptive Linear Fusion Rifles.
• Wave Frame Grenade Launchers deal competitive damage as of the Destiny 2: Into the Light update, but some stats on these didn't have a gameplay effect. In this pass, we're adjusting the blast radius.
  
  • The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled.
    • The default display stat for the blast radius has been changed from 100 to 50 (where 50 represents the previous baseline—any stat over 50 will result in a larger wave segment than what was possible before).
  • Special ammo Wave – Frame Grenade Launchers overperform as add clear weapons in their current state, so we've pulled the length of the wave back a little.
    • Reduced the length of the waves from 22 meters to 15 meters (except for Dead Messenger).
• Swords
  
  • Updated the Sword reticle to better indicate its charge state. When Sword energy is consumed, the amount of delay the Sword has before it begins to recharge now subtly appears in the reticle.
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fixed an issue where the Overwhelming Battlesong debuff from some missions would prevent Swords from recharging or losing energy while guarding.
    • Fixed an issue where unpowered caster Sword heavy attacks would not reset the Sword's energy recharge delay.
    • Fixed an issue where uncharged adaptive Sword heavy attacks cost the same amount of ammo as their charged counterparts. They now cost 1 ammo, same as other uncharged heavy attacks. ##Exotics

Divinity's ability to bypass combatant gameplay by generating a weak spot (called a "cage" internally) on command has too high an uptime as it stands, particularly with trigger feathering. We're not changing how effective the cage is or how feathering works, but we are increasing how long it takes to generate the cage, which will make it less ammo-efficient and less useful against targets that break aim frequently.

• Increased the number of shots required to generate the cage by 75% against combatants (PvP unchanged).

Rat King's firing animation makes the weapon hard to control at high rate of fire, so we've updated it.

• Swapped the firing animation to the same one used by other auto-fire Sidearms.

Devil's Ruin could be made to apply its firing animation to other equipped Sidearms.

• Fixed an issue where the firing animation from Devil's Ruin would get applied to other equipped Sidearms if the weapon was swapped during the firing animation.

Symmetry needed a little attention, particularly its reload speed and handling, so we took this opportunity to increase those via the catalyst.

• Catalyst now provides +10 reload speed, +10 handling, and the Eddy Current perk, in addition to its existing effects.

Gjallarhorn's Wolfpack Rounds always looked like Arc projectiles, regardless of the weapon's actual damage type.

• Updated the visuals of Wolfpack Rounds to match the damage type of the weapon.For example:
  
  • On Gjallarhorn, they will use Solar effects.
  • On the Royal Entry Void Rocket Launcher buffed by Gjallarhorn, they will have Void effects.

Touch of Malice's burn from the Darkness Ball didn't last long enough to be useful in PvE.

• Increased duration of burn applied by the Darkness Ball against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds.

Osteo Striga made it too easy to spread poison across a whole encounter from a couple of kills of weak combatants.

• Now has a 4-second cooldown on the poison burst on kills. (Poison burst from sustained damage doesn't receive this cooldown.)

Necrochasm's add clear role wasn't as strong as we'd like, so we've buffed it and replaced the Outlaw perk on the catalyst with a new, custom perk that leans into this role.

• Intrinsic perk now provides increased reload speed after precision kills.
• Increased duration of burn applied by the Cursed Thrall explosion against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds.
• Catalyst has been rebuilt.
  
  • One for Thrall: Damaging 3 combatants in quick succession provides a period of increased damage, range, and aim assist.

While The Lament’s damage is roughly equivalent to other Swords, the healing on hit largely removes the intended downside of using a Sword for boss DPS, and the chained heavy attack was too strong.

• Reduced healing effect by 20%.
• While this weapon does inherit the 7% global buff to Swords, we've reduced the damage of the high end of the chained heavy attack by 20% from that point.
  
  • This means combos at lower stacks are less affected by the change than combos at higher stacks.

Dead Man's Tale's rapid-fire hipfire fantasy isn't landing as well as we'd like, so we've bumped up the rate of fire and added a bit of stability to Cranial Spike to make this easier to control. At the same time, its strength is skewed a little high on mouse and keyboard and a little low on controller, so we've tuned accuracy and magnetism (controller reticle friction) to address this.

• Baseline:
  
  • Cranial Spike stacks now grant stability in addition to aim assist stat and range (+2 per stack).
  • Increased reload speed benefit of Cranial Spike stacks.
• With catalyst, iwhen hip-firing:
  
  • Slightly reduced accuracy benefits.
  • Increased magnetism falloff scale (1.6 to 1.7).
  • Increased baseline rate of fire from 130RPM to 140RPM.
  • Removed PvE-only damage buff that scaled with stacks of Cranial Spike and added a 15% damage bonus at maximum stacks of Cranial Spike.

The Colony's fantasy of spawning self-replicating insectoid robots is something we've wanted to juice for a while now. This update allows The Colony to deal with waves of combatants in a unique way.

• Now spawns additional insectoid robots on final blows. More robots (up to five) spawn from tougher combatants.

Truth has fallen far behind other Exotic Rocket Launchers, largely due to its lackluster damage, and we wanted to lean further into total rocket count.

• Increased area-of-effect (AoE) damage such that it doesn't lose noticeable damage due to not dealing impact damage.
• Increased total reserves by 3. (This is on top of the reserves change to high impact Rocket Launchers from the 7.3.5 update.)

The Queenbreaker's damage output is outpaced by Legendary Linear Fusion Rifles, so we've increased its damage and reserve ammo to compensate. We do see frequent requests to move Queenbreaker to the Energy slot, but given the number of Special ammo damage options in this slot, we have opted to push it further in the Heavy slot. We're working on some functionality changes to this weapon for a future update as well.

• Increased damage versus bosses, minibosses, Champions, and vehicles by 12%.
• Increased reserve ammunition by 3.

The power from Cerberus+1's focus fire perk from the Exotic catalyst was limited by it being always available. We've changed this to only being available following a kill, allowing us to increase its strength.

• Focus fire now will activate on Special reloads following a kill and will no longer reduce range or rate of fire.

In a world where Bastion has competition for a Fusion Rifle in the kinetic slot, we felt that it was time to lean further into emulating Saint-14's combat style.

• Reworked Saint's Fists perk: Dealing damage with melee increases your charge rate, damage, and reload speed for a short duration. Landing a majority of pellets in a burst increases melee damage.

Eriana's Vow has fallen behind other anti-barrier Special weapons and, as a Solar weapon, has the opportunity for a subclass tie-in.

• Breaking a matched shield or piercing a Champion's Barrier will cause the target to ignite.

Deterministic Chaos didn't have a clear niche when it shipped, so we've redesigned it to be an anti-Champion and weakening powerhouse.

• This weapon is now intrinsically anti-barrier.
• The Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal perks have had their locations and behavior swapped.
  
  • Heavy Metal now causes every 4th bullet to make targets volatile.
  • Vexadecimal now causes every 16th bullet to also weaken targets.

The flexibility offered by The Fundamentals (on the Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger Exotic weapons) is useful, but most of the time there's no need to switch damage types rapidly, so it's irritating having the current damage type clear on death.

• The Fundamentals now maintains its state across death or respawn. ##Perks

Alacrity working in solo activities is intended, but it's too strong a perk to have 100% uptime in PvP.

• Will no longer work in Rumble.

Archer's Gambit has been brought down a bit so it can be used on Legendary weapons.

• Reduced draw time buff from 66% to 60%.
• Reduced buff duration from 8 to 4 seconds (but it can now stack up to 8 seconds).

Grave Robber needed some extra love.

• Will now activate on dealing damage with a powered melee, in addition to standard melee kills.

Chain Reaction is too strong on Special ammo weapons in its current form, so we've branched it between Heavy and Special ammo weapons and will be shipping it on new Special weapons in The Final Shape.

• Special: About 15% smaller AoE size and 20% less damage.
• Heavy: Same AoE as before and 30% more damage.

Eddy Current was a little too slow to activate and didn't provide a strong enough bonus, particularly when amplified.

• Now takes 1.5 seconds of sprinting to activate instead of 3 seconds.
• Also provides a bonus to handling and a 5% scalar on each stat at base.
• Being amplified will immediately activate the perk at its maximum effectiveness.

Underdog was shelved a long time ago, but we wanted to swap it out for a more viable perk on weapons that still had it.

• Instances of Underdog have been replaced with Pulse Monitor.

Osmosis and Permeability have some interesting build-crafting potential, but when all they do is change damage type, they don't have enough general utility. It's also irritating when the perk effect falls off when you don't actually put your weapon away.

• These no longer drop off when pulling out a Ghost or similar actions.
• Now partially refill the weapon's magazine on activation.

The previous Chill Clip change hurt slow rate of fire weapons disproportionately and left Rapid-Fire Fusion Rifles as the clear best option, so we've branched the functionality to account for this.

• Adjust the number of slow stacks applied based on properties of the weapon.
  
  • In this case, Rapid-Fire Fusions like Riptide will still require 3 shots to freeze, but slower firing Fusions only require 2.
• All other archetypes have been un-nerfed and only require 2 shots to freeze.
  

High Ground's functionality wasn't delivering on the concept strongly enough, so we've granted it better baseline functionality while retaining the fantasy.

• Reworked to provide a stacking damage bonus when getting kills in any context (like Rampage) or instantly granting the maximum amount of stacks when damaging an enemy from the high ground.
• PvE max bonus increased to a 25% damage bonus, and PvP max increased to 15%.

The Killing Tally perk on the original 21% Delirium Machine Gun has been updated to match the version found on random-rolled weapons.
Perks that currently match your equipped subclass have been changed as follows:

• Osmosis and Tessellation now match the damage type of your equipped grenade.
• Permeability and Elemental Capacitor now match the damage type of your equipped Super.

Deconstruct had a variety of issues that cropped up when it started to appear on AoE weapons. It's been updated to address bugs and prevent exploiting ammo generation:

• Now refills from reserves instead of from thin air and should trigger more reliably across weapon types. ##The Future

Now that we’re largely happy with weapon damage in PvP, we’re going to move the PvP-specific tuning out of the game modes and into base weapon tuning in the future. This will give us the ability to fine-tune damage per weapon subfamily, e.g., on precision Hand Cannons instead of all Hand Cannons.
We also have some big systems changes we’re working on for a future release, including redesigns of the PvP and PvE ammo economies, introducing more player choice into weapon mods and more new weapon types.
And that's all we had for today. We hope these changes will help you better understand how your arsenal will fare once The Final Shape arrives on June 4 and that you can better prepare your loadouts for the new raid. Be on the lookout for another sandbox-focused article coming on May 22 about abilities and Exotic armor.

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/weapon_tuning_the_final_shape
Hey, Guardians, it's the Weapons Team here with the weapon balance update for The Final Shape.
There's a lot to go through, from a comprehensive PvE weapon damage pass to Exotics changes, varying from substantial reworks to minor tweaks. We are also tamping down some outliers with an eye toward the World First race for the upcoming raid. And maybe there's a hint in here about a returning fan-favorite weapon, too...

Weapon Archetypes

Back in update 6.3.0, we rolled a set of Spec mods (Dragonfly, Surrounded, and Rampage) into the base functionality of those perks, and now we're coming for the rest of the Spec mods. We've increased base weapon damage almost universally (making exceptions for weapons that were already overperforming or that we buffed very recently) and have retired the following weapon mods:

• Boss Spec, Taken Spec, Minor Spec, Major Spec, and Adept Big Ones Spec.

We were already happy with the damage output of Exotic Primary weapons and Trace Rifles, so we only slightly reduced their damage bonus versus red bars. In most cases this means their damage output is roughly unchanged (since they receive the buffs below).

• Reduced damage bonus versus Minors from 40% to 30% (except Fighting Lion).

Included below are the matching damage changes by weapon archetype. Note that we made some exceptions for Exotic weapons that were already performing strongly and applied some buffs just to specific tiers of enemies. Except where noted, these changes are in PvE only. Also note that, because Exotic weapons can't equip mods, this gives them a larger relative buff than Legendaries, e.g., Riskrunner's maximum possible damage is increased 10% versus red bars, but Shayura's Wrath's is increased by 3% in effect because it can no longer slot a Minor Spec mod.
In addition to compensating for the removal of Spec mods, we've taken this opportunity to buff some weapon types that have languished in endgame PvE, most notably Pulse Rifles.

• Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants.
  
  • Pulse Rifles: 20%
    • Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.)
  • Pellet Shotguns: 10%
    • Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.)
  • Slug Shotguns: 9%
  • Fusion Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.)
  • Sniper Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: Izanagi's Burden's Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike's storm. (These are both performing well.)
  • Glaive projectiles: 7%
  • Linear Fusion Rifles: 5%
• Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)—this stacks with the base PvE damage increase.
  
  • Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20%
  • Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15%
    
    • For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode are included.
      • I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars.
  • Submachine Guns: 10%
    
  • Hand Cannons: 5%
    
• Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars).
  
  • Trace Rifles: 20%
• Increased damage globally, including PvP.
  
  • Machine Guns: 7%
  • Swords: 7%
• Splash damage from add clear-Exotic Primary weapons was overperforming in The Final Shape when combined with the damage buffs listed above, so we've pulled it down slightly on a handful of weapons.
  
  • Reduced splash damage by 10%:
    • Sunshot
    • Trinity Ghoul
    • Polaris Lance
    • Graviton Lance

Several releases back, we gave Kinetic weapons a substantial damage bonus in PvE to account for it being harder to use them in subclass builds. In general, we're ok with leaving this in place until we have a better-defined role for Kinetic weapons, but the bonus damage versus Boss-tier combatants was making it hard for weapons of other damage types to compete.

• Kinetic damage type weapons no longer deal bonus damage to bosses; damage to other combatant tiers is unchanged.
  
  • For example, a kinetic Sniper Rifle and a Stasis Sniper Rifle of the same subfamily will both deal the same damage to a boss.

We've also made some quality-of-life changes to several weapon types.

• Updated Heavy, Adaptive, and Aggressive Burst weapon intrinsic names to match burst count across all weapon archetypes. Functionality is unchanged.
  
  • 2-burst: Heavy Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Hand Cannons, and Pulse Rifles.
  • 3-burst: Adaptive Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Linear Fusion Rifles, and Adaptive Pulse Rifles.
  • 4-burst: Aggressive Burst
    • Includes Pulse Rifles.
• Removed the foundry name from the Veist Rapid-Fire, Häkke Precision, and Omolon Adaptive weapon intrinsics.
  
• Scout Rifles
  
  • Updated the hip-fire reticle to better show accuracy and aim-assist state.
• Hand Cannons
  
  • Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil's Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats.
    
    • Crimil's Dagger (Iron Banner)
      • Stability: 23 to 31
      • Handling: 23 to 31
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9
      • Airborne Effectiveness: 10 to 21
    • Something New (Solstice)
      • Stability: 27 to 30
      • Handling: 24 to 30
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9
• Low inventory Sniper Rifles were a little too low in PvE for our liking, so we've increased the minimum.
  
  • Increased minimum reserves from 14 to 17 shots; maximum reserve is unchanged.
• Linear Fusion Rifles
  
  • Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control.
    • Reduced firing animation kick and recoil for Adaptive Linear Fusion Rifles.
• Wave Frame Grenade Launchers deal competitive damage as of the Destiny 2: Into the Light update, but some stats on these didn't have a gameplay effect. In this pass, we're adjusting the blast radius.
  
  • The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled.
    • The default display stat for the blast radius has been changed from 100 to 50 (where 50 represents the previous baseline—any stat over 50 will result in a larger wave segment than what was possible before).
  • Special ammo Wave – Frame Grenade Launchers overperform as add clear weapons in their current state, so we've pulled the length of the wave back a little.
    • Reduced the length of the waves from 22 meters to 15 meters (except for Dead Messenger).
• Swords
  
  • Updated the Sword reticle to better indicate its charge state. When Sword energy is consumed, the amount of delay the Sword has before it begins to recharge now subtly appears in the reticle.
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fixed an issue where the Overwhelming Battlesong debuff from some missions would prevent Swords from recharging or losing energy while guarding.
    • Fixed an issue where unpowered caster Sword heavy attacks would not reset the Sword's energy recharge delay.
    • Fixed an issue where uncharged adaptive Sword heavy attacks cost the same amount of ammo as their charged counterparts. They now cost 1 ammo, same as other uncharged heavy attacks. ##Exotics

Divinity's ability to bypass combatant gameplay by generating a weak spot (called a "cage" internally) on command has too high an uptime as it stands, particularly with trigger feathering. We're not changing how effective the cage is or how feathering works, but we are increasing how long it takes to generate the cage, which will make it less ammo-efficient and less useful against targets that break aim frequently.

• Increased the number of shots required to generate the cage by 75% against combatants (PvP unchanged).

Rat King's firing animation makes the weapon hard to control at high rate of fire, so we've updated it.

• Swapped the firing animation to the same one used by other auto-fire Sidearms.

Devil's Ruin could be made to apply its firing animation to other equipped Sidearms.

• Fixed an issue where the firing animation from Devil's Ruin would get applied to other equipped Sidearms if the weapon was swapped during the firing animation.

Symmetry needed a little attention, particularly its reload speed and handling, so we took this opportunity to increase those via the catalyst.

• Catalyst now provides +10 reload speed, +10 handling, and the Eddy Current perk, in addition to its existing effects.

Gjallarhorn's Wolfpack Rounds always looked like Arc projectiles, regardless of the weapon's actual damage type.

• Updated the visuals of Wolfpack Rounds to match the damage type of the weapon.For example:
  
  • On Gjallarhorn, they will use Solar effects.
  • On the Royal Entry Void Rocket Launcher buffed by Gjallarhorn, they will have Void effects.

Touch of Malice's burn from the Darkness Ball didn't last long enough to be useful in PvE.

• Increased duration of burn applied by the Darkness Ball against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds.

Osteo Striga made it too easy to spread poison across a whole encounter from a couple of kills of weak combatants.

• Now has a 4-second cooldown on the poison burst on kills. (Poison burst from sustained damage doesn't receive this cooldown.)

Necrochasm's add clear role wasn't as strong as we'd like, so we've buffed it and replaced the Outlaw perk on the catalyst with a new, custom perk that leans into this role.

• Intrinsic perk now provides increased reload speed after precision kills.
• Increased duration of burn applied by the Cursed Thrall explosion against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds.
• Catalyst has been rebuilt.
  
  • One for Thrall: Damaging 3 combatants in quick succession provides a period of increased damage, range, and aim assist.

While The Lament’s damage is roughly equivalent to other Swords, the healing on hit largely removes the intended downside of using a Sword for boss DPS, and the chained heavy attack was too strong.

• Reduced healing effect by 20%.
• While this weapon does inherit the 7% global buff to Swords, we've reduced the damage of the high end of the chained heavy attack by 20% from that point.
  
  • This means combos at lower stacks are less affected by the change than combos at higher stacks.

Dead Man's Tale's rapid-fire hipfire fantasy isn't landing as well as we'd like, so we've bumped up the rate of fire and added a bit of stability to Cranial Spike to make this easier to control. At the same time, its strength is skewed a little high on mouse and keyboard and a little low on controller, so we've tuned accuracy and magnetism (controller reticle friction) to address this.

• Baseline:
  
  • Cranial Spike stacks now grant stability in addition to aim assist stat and range (+2 per stack).
  • Increased reload speed benefit of Cranial Spike stacks.
• With catalyst, iwhen hip-firing:
  
  • Slightly reduced accuracy benefits.
  • Increased magnetism falloff scale (1.6 to 1.7).
  • Increased baseline rate of fire from 130RPM to 140RPM.
  • Removed PvE-only damage buff that scaled with stacks of Cranial Spike and added a 15% damage bonus at maximum stacks of Cranial Spike.

The Colony's fantasy of spawning self-replicating insectoid robots is something we've wanted to juice for a while now. This update allows The Colony to deal with waves of combatants in a unique way.

• Now spawns additional insectoid robots on final blows. More robots (up to five) spawn from tougher combatants.

Truth has fallen far behind other Exotic Rocket Launchers, largely due to its lackluster damage, and we wanted to lean further into total rocket count.

• Increased area-of-effect (AoE) damage such that it doesn't lose noticeable damage due to not dealing impact damage.
• Increased total reserves by 3. (This is on top of the reserves change to high impact Rocket Launchers from the 7.3.5 update.)

The Queenbreaker's damage output is outpaced by Legendary Linear Fusion Rifles, so we've increased its damage and reserve ammo to compensate. We do see frequent requests to move Queenbreaker to the Energy slot, but given the number of Special ammo damage options in this slot, we have opted to push it further in the Heavy slot. We're working on some functionality changes to this weapon for a future update as well.

• Increased damage versus bosses, minibosses, Champions, and vehicles by 12%.
• Increased reserve ammunition by 3.

The power from Cerberus+1's focus fire perk from the Exotic catalyst was limited by it being always available. We've changed this to only being available following a kill, allowing us to increase its strength.

• Focus fire now will activate on Special reloads following a kill and will no longer reduce range or rate of fire.

In a world where Bastion has competition for a Fusion Rifle in the kinetic slot, we felt that it was time to lean further into emulating Saint-14's combat style.

• Reworked Saint's Fists perk: Dealing damage with melee increases your charge rate, damage, and reload speed for a short duration. Landing a majority of pellets in a burst increases melee damage.

Eriana's Vow has fallen behind other anti-barrier Special weapons and, as a Solar weapon, has the opportunity for a subclass tie-in.

• Breaking a matched shield or piercing a Champion's Barrier will cause the target to ignite.

Deterministic Chaos didn't have a clear niche when it shipped, so we've redesigned it to be an anti-Champion and weakening powerhouse.

• This weapon is now intrinsically anti-barrier.
• The Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal perks have had their locations and behavior swapped.
  
  • Heavy Metal now causes every 4th bullet to make targets volatile.
  • Vexadecimal now causes every 16th bullet to also weaken targets.

The flexibility offered by The Fundamentals (on the Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger Exotic weapons) is useful, but most of the time there's no need to switch damage types rapidly, so it's irritating having the current damage type clear on death.

• The Fundamentals now maintains its state across death or respawn. ##Perks

Alacrity working in solo activities is intended, but it's too strong a perk to have 100% uptime in PvP.

• Will no longer work in Rumble.

Archer's Gambit has been brought down a bit so it can be used on Legendary weapons.

• Reduced draw time buff from 66% to 60%.
• Reduced buff duration from 8 to 4 seconds (but it can now stack up to 8 seconds).

Grave Robber needed some extra love.

• Will now activate on dealing damage with a powered melee, in addition to standard melee kills.

Chain Reaction is too strong on Special ammo weapons in its current form, so we've branched it between Heavy and Special ammo weapons and will be shipping it on new Special weapons in The Final Shape.

• Special: About 15% smaller AoE size and 20% less damage.
• Heavy: Same AoE as before and 30% more damage.

Eddy Current was a little too slow to activate and didn't provide a strong enough bonus, particularly when amplified.

• Now takes 1.5 seconds of sprinting to activate instead of 3 seconds.
• Also provides a bonus to handling and a 5% scalar on each stat at base.
• Being amplified will immediately activate the perk at its maximum effectiveness.

Underdog was shelved a long time ago, but we wanted to swap it out for a more viable perk on weapons that still had it.

• Instances of Underdog have been replaced with Pulse Monitor.

Osmosis and Permeability have some interesting build-crafting potential, but when all they do is change damage type, they don't have enough general utility. It's also irritating when the perk effect falls off when you don't actually put your weapon away.

• These no longer drop off when pulling out a Ghost or similar actions.
• Now partially refill the weapon's magazine on activation.

The previous Chill Clip change hurt slow rate of fire weapons disproportionately and left Rapid-Fire Fusion Rifles as the clear best option, so we've branched the functionality to account for this.

• Adjust the number of slow stacks applied based on properties of the weapon.
  
  • In this case, Rapid-Fire Fusions like Riptide will still require 3 shots to freeze, but slower firing Fusions only require 2.
• All other archetypes have been un-nerfed and only require 2 shots to freeze.
  

High Ground's functionality wasn't delivering on the concept strongly enough, so we've granted it better baseline functionality while retaining the fantasy.

• Reworked to provide a stacking damage bonus when getting kills in any context (like Rampage) or instantly granting the maximum amount of stacks when damaging an enemy from the high ground.
• PvE max bonus increased to a 25% damage bonus, and PvP max increased to 15%.

The Killing Tally perk on the original 21% Delirium Machine Gun has been updated to match the version found on random-rolled weapons.
Perks that currently match your equipped subclass have been changed as follows:

• Osmosis and Tessellation now match the damage type of your equipped grenade.
• Permeability and Elemental Capacitor now match the damage type of your equipped Super.

Deconstruct had a variety of issues that cropped up when it started to appear on AoE weapons. It's been updated to address bugs and prevent exploiting ammo generation:

• Now refills from reserves instead of from thin air and should trigger more reliably across weapon types. ##The Future

Now that we’re largely happy with weapon damage in PvP, we’re going to move the PvP-specific tuning out of the game modes and into base weapon tuning in the future. This will give us the ability to fine-tune damage per weapon subfamily, e.g., on precision Hand Cannons instead of all Hand Cannons.
We also have some big systems changes we’re working on for a future release, including redesigns of the PvP and PvE ammo economies, introducing more player choice into weapon mods and more new weapon types.
And that's all we had for today. We hope these changes will help you better understand how your arsenal will fare once The Final Shape arrives on June 4 and that you can better prepare your loadouts for the new raid. Be on the lookout for another sandbox-focused article coming on May 22 about abilities and Exotic armor.

I'm going to upgrade my iPhone SE 3rd generation to an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 plus. However, I'm pretty unsure as to which one of these two I should choose. I'm aware switching from my 4.7" 15 hour playback SE to the 6.1" 20 hour playback 15 is already probably gonna feel like a world of difference, but I'm wondering if it's best to go all the way to the 6.7" 26 hour playback 15 plus. That being said, I'm also a bit concerned the plus will just feel too big. Since there's no apple store in my city, I can't look at them in person. Any advice?

Current state of technology enables creating small and simple communication devices offering high level of privacy and security. A good example may be Meshtastic devices. However, a necessity to use smartphone (possibly infected with a spyware) may break both privacy and security. It would be much better if the text message could be entered on the Meshtastic device itself, and then have it encrypted internally before transmission. Unfortunately, most Meshtastic device do not offer a full keyboard. An option could be entering the text as a Morse code, using the key of capacitive pad. The Morse code however covers only a limited set of characters, and its knowledge in society is limited. Therefore, I'd like to propose another method for entering text. It is based on two digital inputs. They may be two capacitive pads, or a double paddle Morse key. Please note that I have developed the below described procedure from scratch. I have not investigated if similar procedures are implemented (or may be even patented?) by anybody. So if you would like to use it in a commercial product, please make the necessary investigations yourself.

What we may generate with two inputs?

Below I put the ASCII diagrams of possible events that we can send with two inputs. I mark low level (_) as "inactive" and high level (‾) as active. The inputs are marked as In1 and In2.

Event Wavevorfm E1 In1: __/‾‾\__ In2: ________ E2 In1: ________ In2: __/‾‾\__ E1i2 In1: ___/‾‾\___ In2: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾\_ E2i1 In1: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾\_ In2: ___/‾‾\___ E1f2 In1: _/‾‾‾‾\_____ In2: ____/‾‾‾‾\__ E2f1 In1: ____/‾‾‾‾\__ In2: _/‾‾‾‾\_____ 

So we have 6 elementary events: Event 1, Event 2, Event 1 in event 2, Event 2 in event 1, Event 1 followed by event 2, Event 2 followed by event 1. Each of them may be easily generated with two independent switches, two capacitive pads or double Morse paddle.
We may also generate more complex sequences, like:

Multiple E1i2: E1i2 In1: ___/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\____ In2: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾\__ Multiple E1i2 finished by E2f1: E1i2 In1: ___/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾‾‾\__ In2: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾\____ Multiple E2i1 E1i2 In1: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾\__ In2: ___/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾‾‾\__ Multiple E2i1 finished by E1f2: E1i2 In1: _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾\____ In2: ___/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾\__/‾‾‾‾\__ 

Using of possible events for entering text.

First, with E1i2 and multiple E1i2 we may select an appropriate group of characters (for example we may have four groups: "upper case letters", "lower case letters", "digits", "special chracters").
Then, the selected group is split into two equal subgroups, and the first and last character of each subgroup is shown. Then the selected group is handled in the same way, until only one character is left. This character is then selected and added to the created message.
Below is the sample code showing the proposed procedure:

#!/usbin/python # The demonstration code for two-key character selection. # Written by Wojciech M. Zabołotny (wzab01@gmail.com) # This is a public domain code (under CC0 1.0 license) c=[] for i in range(ord('A'),ord('Z')+1): c.append(chr(i)) # We have three indices: # start, end, split start = 0 end = len(c) while True: split = (start + end) // 2 if start == split: # The character is already selected, print it print("Chosen:"+c[start]) break if split > start + 1: line = "["+c[start]+" "+c[split-1]+"]" else: line = "["+c[start]+"]" if split < end - 1: line += "["+c[split]+" "+c[end-1]+"]" else: line += "["+c[split]+"]" #print(start,split,end) print(line) sel = input("sel:") if sel == "1": end = split else: start = split 

Below is the process of selection of the K character.

$ python [A M][N Z] sel:1 [A F][G M] sel:2 [G I][J M] sel:2 [J K][L M] sel:1 [J][K] sel:2 Chosen:K 

Of course the user should be able to correct the character entered. That can bee achieved with E2i1 event. Double E2i1 event may be used to clear the whole text.
When the whole message is assembled, it may be sent with E1f2 event.
The above procedure does not use E2f1 event, which may be used to leave the whole procedure.

Example implementation

I don't have an implementation for microcontroller yet. A simple demo function with Python running on a PC and using numbers instead of the above events is shown below:

#!/usbin/python # The demonstration code for two-key character selection. # Written by Wojciech M. Zabołotny (wzab01@gmail.com) # This is a public domain code (under CC0 1.0 license) # Create groups of characters uc_letters=[] for i in range(ord('A'),ord('Z')+1): uc_letters.append(chr(i)) lc_letters=[] for i in range(ord('a'),ord('z')+1): lc_letters.append(chr(i)) digits=[] for i in range(ord('0'),ord('9')+1): digits.append(chr(i)) specs=list("\"\'{}[]!?@#$%^&*()-+=/\\,.<>") groups=[uc_letters, lc_letters, digits, specs] # Main loop # We have three indices: # start, end, split grnr=0 c=groups[grnr] start = 0 end = len(c) txt = "" while True: split = (start + end) // 2 if start == split: # The character is already selected, print it txt += c[start] start = 0 end = len(c) continue if split > start + 1: line = "["+c[start]+" "+c[split-1]+"]" else: line = "["+c[start]+"]" if split < end - 1: line += "["+c[split]+" "+c[end-1]+"]" else: line += "["+c[split]+"]" #print(start,split,end) print(txt) print(line) sel = input("1-1st half, 2-2nd half, 3-del char, 4-clear text, 5-send text, 6-next group:") if sel == "1": end = split elif sel == "2": start = split elif sel == "3": txt = txt[:-1] elif sel == "4": txt = txt[:-1] elif sel == "5": print("Transmitted msg:"+txt) txt = "" start = 0 end = len(c) elif sel == "6": grnr = (grnr + 1) % len(groups) c = groups[grnr] start = 0 end = len(c) else: print("Unknown key") 

I'll send a link to the microcontroller implementation as soon as it is ready.

Hello, I just want to ask. Is recursion very important? Is it frequently used? I am struggling to learn it because I cant really visualize or imagine how it works so that I can use it to solve a problem case.
Im a 1st year self-learning c++.

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MNS Oengro

“How’s the fuel status of the Oengro?” Grionc asked.
Vastae, eyes glued to his console, replied without hesitation. “We have just enough blink fuel for one jump, but we aren’t going anywhere once we get to the other side without a refueling ship.”
“One blink is all we need. And if the Oengro is good to go, the other, smaller ships should be fine too then,” Grionc responded, bringing up the system map on screen with her paws. “Four minutes to blink limit. Have the ship’s crew secure themselves for the blink and get ready for shift change to execute post-blink procedures when we arrive.”
“Yes, High Fleet Commander,” Vastae acknowledged with a brisk nod.
Suddenly, three quarters of the sensor readings on her sensor board disappeared, and the fidelity on the remaining took a nose-dive in accuracy. A low murmur ran through the sensor stations, which she waved away with a paw. “No need to panic. It looks like our friends jumped before we did, as arranged. Our sensors are on their own for now.”
Vastae swallowed hard. “Are you certain about this plan, High Fleet Commander?” Vastae asked nervously. “Not that I don’t trust what Sphinx— Speinfoent cooked up, but this is a last-minute plan modification we haven’t rehearsed. And with our fuel situation, we only get one chance here.”
Grionc put a calm smile on her face. “Remember that exercise we did with the Grass Eaters a while back?”
“Which one?”

4 months ago

“Since it’s New Years, it’s time to have some fun,” Mark announced with a grin to Grionc and the rest of the curious bridge crew. “I’m going to show you guys a fun teambuilding exercise we did on Terra.”
“Teambuilding exercise?” Grionc asked suspiciously.
Mark didn’t let her skepticism color his enthusiasm. “Well, I’m not sure how much teambuilding it does, but it is fun. And I have never seen aliens do it. In fact, this might be the first time this has ever been done outside of Sol!”
“Fine, fine. What are we doing?” she relented.
“This exercise is what we call the trust fall.”
“The trust fall?” Grionc repeated. “It’s about building trust? Like trust in your crew?”
Mark nodded vigorously. “It’s supposed to. I’m not sure if it truly works, but it truly is fun. You and I can demonstrate for the crew.”
Grionc sighed. “Sure. What do I do?”
“Come stand over here,” Mark pointed to a spot on the floor, and then stood in front of her with his back to her. “What I’m going to do is I’m going cross my arms… like this… and on the count of three, I’m going to fall backwards, and you have to catch me when I do.”
“Huh. That seems dangerous. What happens to you if I don’t catch you?” Grionc asked, mild concern creeping into her voice.
“Traumatic brain injury, probably. Something similar for your species too, I assume,” Mark shrugged nonchalantly. “But don’t worry about that. We have good medical facilities on the Nile, and you will catch me. That is the point of the exercise. Alright, you ready?”
Sensing his insistence, Grionc sighed and held her paws out, bracing herself. “Ready.”
“One, two, three…” Mark did as he described, crossing his arms, and falling backwards into Grionc’s outstretched arms. She grunted with slight effort as she intercepted his fall and then gently lowered him onto the ground, “Oomph. Huh. You Terrans are lighter than you look.”
“Yeah, my bones are nano-grafted,” Mark grinned, bounced up to full height, and circled around her back. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
Grionc crossed her arms and held her breath for a moment. “One, two…”
She didn’t move. A few seconds later, she let go of her held breath. “I can’t.”
“What? Why not?”
Grionc muttered excuses. “No, it’s just— my tail— our balance mechanisms are different, I can’t just fall backwards on purpose—”
Mark insisted. “It’s not that difficult. Just let go. Don’t worry. I’m right here. I promise I’ll catch you.”
She held her breath once again, psyching herself up for a few more moments.
“One, two… doh, I can’t.”
Mark lightly patted her on the shoulder. “That’s okay… don’t worry… Hey, Speinfoent, come over here and give her a light shove. Alright, on the count of three. One, two—”
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare! No! Don’t touch— Yowwwwwww!”
Grionc continued, “And now… we fall. And we trust that our new friends will be there to catch us.”

ZNS 2228

“They’ve blinked,” the computer officer reported.
“Did we catch their blink vector?” Skvanu asked urgently.
“Calculating… got it! We triangulated their blink vector and probable destination! Entering it into our fleet navigation computers,” she responded, paws flying over the controls.
“How long before we can execute the blink?” Skvanu pressed.
“Two minutes before we hit the limit ourselves,” she replied, not looking up.
“Good, get the crews ready and start the countdown. I want to blink the millisecond we are clear of the system limit. And get all systems ready for what’s on the other side. They almost definitely have an ambush waiting for us. I’m guessing that’s where the remaining nine or so squadrons of Sixth Fleet are waiting for us,” Skvanu said confidently. “Twelve Lesser Predator squadrons to twenty-six of ours. Doesn’t matter how many upgrades they have, we will defeat them, especially since the first three will be within railgun range. Get those gunnery crews and point defense computers ready.”
“Blinking in seventy seconds,” she announced. “Sixty-five seconds—” Suddenly, she stood up, “Eight Whiskers, our FTL communications are open again! Both Datsot and Gruccud have just responded to our last message!”
Skvanu spun around to face her. “That makes sense. Whatever device they used to stop our communications must have been on one of the ships that just blinked out. Is there any priority intelligence from either?”
“Yes! Datsot has an emergency transmission for us. It’s from Ten Whiskers Ditvish!”
“What is it?” Skvanu asked, his voice serious.
She began to read. “Lesser Predators have entered Datsot system in force. Nine squadrons spotted so far. They may attempt to engage our garrison force there… His guidance is that we return immediately to trap these aggressor ships, but leaves the decision up to you…”
Skvanu absorbed the information with shock. If those ships are really in Datsot, they must not be on the other side of wherever the Oengro is blinking. And with that context, this now smelled exactly like a planned trap.
He thought out loud. “This must be what the Lesser Predators planned from the start. If we chase, we have no idea what they have on the other side. There may be refueling ships. They may have already gotten away. By the Prophecy, they may even be sacrificing three squadrons to get us to blink through a singularity or anomaly. But wait… If we return to Datsot immediately, we might catch those squadrons split from the rest of their ships and cripple their fleet!”
Having made up his mind, he shouted urgently at the navigation station, “Navigation, hold the blink!”
“Halting the blink procedures.”
“A handful of ships have already completed the blink!” the computer officer reported, almost in a panic.
“Cease blink procedures! Fleet-wide, cease the blink!”
The order went out immediately, and it was a testament to the discipline of the Znosian Navy that most squadrons managed to stop the countdown just seconds before it went through.
“How many ships went through?” Skvanu asked urgently.
“We managed to stop most of our ships, Eight Whiskers. Only five combat ships from Squadron 6 went through.”
He sighed in relief. “Only the Prophecy can help them now… Turn us around. Let’s get back to Datsot.”

TRNS Nile

“I think we are in sufficiently deep space,” Captain Gregor Guerrero said to his crew. “Drop us out.”
“Yes, captain. Emergency drop-out in five… four… three… two… one… now.”
The ship shuddered and creaked as the emergency-stop was activated. The blink engine wound down, forcing the ship back into normal space.
Gregor turned to his navigation officer. “How far from Plaunsollib did we travel, in regular space?”
“Two months on their Alcubierre drives if they combat burn with all their fuel. Four if they plan on stopping,” she replied immediately. “They’d be going too fast to aerobrake anyway.”
“Good,” Guerrero said, gluing his eyes to his sensor board. Ships in FTL are difficult to detect, even on gravidar, but the state-of-the-art technology on the Nile gave them a few seconds of warning.
A few seconds later, the sensor officer’s voice cut through the tense silence. “I’ve spotted the Puppers in blink! All of them, tight formation. They’ll pass us in about fifteen seconds.”
Guerrero nodded his pleasure. “Good, let them pass. Tell me when they’re out of range.”
The seconds ticked by. “Ten… five… they’ve passed our position… and now they’re out of range.”
“Now, switch on the blink disruption field,” he ordered.
The hum of the ship’s ambient noise went up an octave, signaling maximum power drain as the ship’s thirstiest system kicked in.
Gregor looked at his information panel. “Full emissions control. EMCOM Alpha. Deploy the FTL jammer drone and then shut off our engines. If things go well, we’re about to be joined by half the fucking Bunny Navy in a minute.”
“Aye, Captain. EMCOM Alpha.” The rest of the crew nodded, working their controls with practiced competence.
“Jammer drone out. You think they’ve got wild weasels, captain?”
“Unlikely, but we take no chances. If they don’t…” He shrugged. “… we’ll just get our drone back later.”
A tense minute passed, then the sensor officer reported, “Captain, Znosian ships spotted on gravidar! Two… three… five in total… They’ve just been forced out of blink.”
“Five squadrons?”
“No, Captain, five ships.”
Gregor furrowed his brow, surprised, and took another glance at his console. “Only five ships?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright, keep the disruption field up, and analyze the drive signatures on them. Maybe one of them is this Skvanu guy we’re supposed to hit,” he speculated hopefully.
After half an hour, Guerrero finally called it quits. “No more guests are showing up. Looks like they must have wizened up at the last moment.”
“Aye, sir,” the executive officer said, shaking her head in disappointment as well. “It was a good plan. Could have stranded their whole fleet out here.”
“Well, bad luck— these things happen in war, Lieutenant. Don’t worry. We’ll get them next time. How are the guests we did get doing?”
“Out of blink fuel, as expected. They’ve been dumping cargo in an organized fashion. I think they’re planning to see if they can reach Plaunsollib with their subspace drives in a reasonable amount of time and call triple A.” Then, she asked, “Where do you think the rest run off to?”
“Probably Datsot,” Guerrero guessed. “Phone Sphinx and tell him he’s probably got the whole shit storm heading his way, ETA about a couple days. Get the estimates to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, we just need to silence the witnesses so we can use this trick again. Bridge to CIC: let’s keep it simple. One Kestrel for each of the targets. We’ll swiss-cheese them with railguns after. Just in case.”
“Aye, Captain. We’re not dropping off those TRO drones here, are we?”
“Nah. Too much work. No one is finding these guys ever again anyway.”

MNS Trassau

“I just got off a call with the Nile,” Loenda announced. “Looks like the Grass Eaters have discovered our ruse in the other system. The main enemy fleet is heading our way right this second.”
Speinfoent sighed, and suggested, “If we burn closer for just half a day more—”
“No more,” Loenda declared. “We are already risking nine squadrons coming this far into the Datsot system limit.”
“Alright,” Speinfoent agreed reluctantly. “We can still give them a present they won’t forget any time soon.”
“That, we will. That we will.” Loenda turned to her console. “All ships in Battlegroup 2, dump your payloads as quietly as you can. Then wait half an hour to change your vector and make your way to the system blink limit.”
“Yes, Battlegroup Commander.”

ZNS 1841

“Ten Whiskers, the Lesser Predators are turning around,” the computer officer declared, doing her best to hide her relief.
“What? Where are they heading now?” Ditvish asked, confounded.
“Towards the shortest path to the system blink limit, I think.”
“That’s it? They’re just leaving now?”
“Combat computer speculates that they might have seen that Eight Whiskers Skvanu is heading back to Datsot, so they are breaking off the attack,” the officer offered.
“That’s… not very Lesser Predator of them, but very logical,” he admitted. “They must have realized their plan failed and are now cutting their losses.”
He didn’t mention that his fleet was the one that came out behind, losing yet another precious supply convoy and then sending the whole combat fleet on a wild predator chase for nothing. That State Security goon might start to become a problem if he didn’t spin this well in his after-action report.
A few hours later, a foreboding feeling coloring his mood, he ordered, “Sensors, boost our radars towards where they changed vectors. I want to check to see if they dropped any drones or traps.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers.”
The 1841 boosted its radar towards the direction, blaring out signals on maximum strength and—
“Incoming… missiles? Ten Whiskers, many missiles! Dozens! Over a hundred! They’re well within our minimum abort range!”
“By the Prophecy!” Ditvish exclaimed. “All ships, execute combat burn away from them! Countermeasures and fire counter-missiles, at the ready! Track those missiles!”
Fortunately, the garrison fleet was still in high readiness from before. Their engines were ready to light up to full acceleration immediately.
Unfortunately, the missiles were already close. In desperation, his ships began dumping their entire loads of radar chaffs and flares into space behind them as they maneuvered away from the threat. Counter-missiles sped out of their tubes towards their rear, relying on their motherships’ sensors and radars to find the tiny alien missiles for them to engage.
Quietly gliding through space towards the enemy on inertia inherited from their motherships was the sizable swarm of Terran-made missiles. Obsolete for military purpose in Sol but still produced for the civilian and gray market, they were an easy addition on the TRO’s shopping list. Vast quantities of them had found their way into various shell corporations and dead drops all over Sol, then onto hastily constructed exterior pylons on Sixth Fleet ships.
While they were indeed several times outside of the maximum effective range of the Znosian ships at launch, missiles technically did have unlimited ballistic ranges in space — if their enemies were not moving and they did not need to constantly fire their thrusters to adjust course. Relying on a short first burn and then inertia, they flew most of the way towards the stationary enemy fleet completely undetected. By the time they were spotted, it was too late; the Znosians were well within their effective ranges.
Their intelligence chips might not have been super-Terran state-of-the-art computers, but the Pigeons had no problem realizing that they were discovered. They had been tracking the enemy targets using passive infrared sensors that did not alert enemy threat sensors to their presence. But the second that the targets started dropping flares to blind them, they activated their primitive late twenty-first century radars and homed in onto the priority targets they’d been given. Their main thrusters began their burns, adjusting their vectors to intercept the now-finally-moving enemy ships.
Then, they saw the incoming counter-missiles — fired by the enemies sporadically, obviously in panic.
The makers of the Pigeons might not have bothered to include next-generation electronic dazzlers on them, but penetration aid on missiles had been standard in Terran warfare for a century. They littered the space they were in with chaff and their own bright flares, coordinating with the other missiles in the area with short range laser communication to ensure that none in the swarm would confuse or disrupt each other.
The Znosian counter-missiles were certainly confused and disrupted though. Many veered off into phantom signals. Some lucky ones did manage to find their targets. When a few of their comrades dropped off their impromptu mesh net, the Pigeons constantly corresponded with laser communications to re-prioritize their targeting.
At the top of the list was the fattest, easiest target of them all: the enemy flagship 1841.
Seconds before impact, the missiles finalized their targets, and they spent every drop and fume of their remaining fuel on terminal maneuvers.
The Znosians’ close in weapons systems had milliseconds to engage the incoming threats. They performed admirably… for trying to deal with this unknown alien threat for the first time. A couple dozen more missiles were plucked out of space, but it was not enough.
Not nearly.
The rest slipped through the net.
Miraculously, the 1841 managed to survive initially. Despite it being the primary focus of the Pigeon mob, the other ships did their best to shield its most vital components in its rear with their own point defense. And the Pigeons — like most missiles of its era — were loaded with just enough firepower to destroy much smaller Terran ships. The larger hulls of the Znosian ships gave their obsolete mid-century intelligence chips a slightly more interesting exercise in module identification and targeting.
The massive Thorn-class battleship took fourteen hits to varying systems that the missiles visually identified as “that looks pretty important” on their final approach: its primary missile and gun tubes were trashed, venting atmosphere to space in those compartments. A proximity hit near the stern took out four of its eight massive main thrusters and several system modules at the rear of the ship. And perhaps worst of all, one Pigeon managed to zero in on its vulnerable front bridge, the explosion emptying its contents and occupants into vacuum.
Luckily for Ten Whiskers Ditvish, none of them hit the armored flag bridge where he was in the belly of the ship, vindicating the Znosian Navy’s practice of separating the two for redundancy.
Nonetheless, Ditvish fell to the ground as the simultaneous impacts temporarily overloaded the inertial compensators and shook the ship to its core. Sparks flew around him, and he smelled a pungent stink as the automated fire suppression systems kicked in to save as much as they possibly could.
He slowly climbed to his feet and looked at the scene around him. A sensor officer was spraying foam at a small fire with a handheld device, successfully extinguishing it in seconds. Several other of his crew were recovering and returning to their stations with remarkable calm. After all, they were elite, well-trained spacers and officers of the Znosian Navy.
Ditvish did the same, propping himself back into his command chair with slight effort. He operated his console in a concussed daze. One glance at the status board told him that the 1841 was a write-off. It wasn’t going to be combat effective ever again. At least its life pod systems were working, and he watched in relief as dozens then hundreds of crew members in the damaged sections of the ship climbed into theirs and ejected into the relative safety of vacuum.
He checked up on the other ships: several others were hit. Six had outright detonated: no survivors nor signals came from them. Two were irreparably damaged, their remaining crews also abandoning their ships in an orderly fashion. And another six had visible fires or scorch marks on their damaged hulls, but those crews were still valiantly fighting to keep their ships alive.
Ditvish noticed that the missile didn’t go for all his ships, just the ones on the outer edge on his sensor board— wait, the missiles—
To his horror, several more dozen missiles they’d detected were still active, and they were going for—
He looked at his computer officer’s station and yelled, “We have to warn them!”
She yelled something back at him, but he realized that he couldn’t hear her. Hitting the floor must have injured his hearing organs. He yelled again, hoping that she could still hear. “Warn the orbital support fleet! The logistics and fire support ships! Evasive maneuvers and take cover in the atmosphere!”
Her lips moved again. He got out of his chair and stumbled over to her in a daze, trying to hear what she was saying.
She was saying something.
It must be important.
“… not reach them. Our communication array… destroyed! Ten Whiskers, we need to get… We don’t have much time!”
Ditvish finally understood her from reading her lips. He didn’t respond. Just numbly watched the planetary battlemap of Datsot on the main screen.
It didn’t take long. They were completely defenseless.
The remaining missiles plucked every last orbital fire support and logistics transport ship out of the skies of Datsot. Most detonated; a few left behind trails of black smoke as they sank uncontrollably towards the planet’s surface.
Then, Ditvish’s hind legs gave out and he crumpled onto the bridge floor.
He was dimly aware of one of his subordinates dragging him towards the bridge escape pod as he blacked out.

MNS Trassau

“Don’t worry, Speinfoent,” Loenda said, putting her paws around the junior commander looking glumly at the image of Datsot retreating from their view as the rest of the bridge cheered the better-than-anticipated success of the raid. “We’ll come back, and next time, we’re coming back for everything.”
“That we will, Loenda. That we will.”

Meta

There is no research that shows the effectiveness of trust falls for building trust in a team and plenty of research showing that falling backwards from a full standing position without adequate bracing or padding can lead to serious brain, spinal, and back injuries.
Coercion or retaliation against Malgeir employees who refuse to participate in trust fall exercises may be considered investigable or actionable violations of workplace safety regulations by the Republic Office of Occupational Safety or anti-discrimination regulations by the Office of Equal Opportunity.
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Previous
Chapter 53: Apostasy

I want to preface this by saying that I know that all resources for this mod and related modlists are provided for free and I deeply appreciate that. Nothing against anyone who put all this stuff together, I just want to know if I'm the only one whose spent hundreds of hours getting nowhere or how any of you manage to follow these guides through to completion without ending up with a broken mess. I'm extremely demotivated after wasting my holidays on this.
You start with The Best of Times, which is a walk in the park. Really can't go wrong with this it's so well setup.
If you want mods on top of this, the standard advice seems to be to go through the Wasteland Survival Guide, which I did. It took me a couple days, but I managed. This process wasn't as smooth as The Best of Times, and it's not always clear if I'm supposed to skip a mod I already have or install it again to overwrite something else. The STARS portion of the guide is a little trickier though, and although it's listed as optional, it's also referred to as a gold standard, so I didn't want to skip it. It's easy to miss the installation instructions for STARS because they're on a separate website that the guide does not link to, and the Nexus page for STARS is quite chaotic. Regardless, I made it through all of those two and towards the end it recommends the New Vegas Visual Renewal, and this is about where everything goes wrong.
Even though NVVR says it's compatible with TTW and includes notes for TTW users throughout, the install notes are not as detailed as the previous guides and in some cases the user is left to best determine what the instruction means based on what is on the nexus pages of individual mods. The STARS thing comes up again, a lot of mods from earlier are re-downloaded and overwritten. Regardless I followed all of this to the T right to the end of Renovation, but now it's time to generate LODS. This is another point where it all goes pear shaped.
The VNV LOD Guide is the recommended guide for LODS that NVVR gives us, though it doesn't seem like it includes any LOD patches for thing we did as part of NVVR, and in some cases overwrites things that we did specifically for NVVR. We were warned earlier about Tree LODS but told to install those anyway at the end, and Terrain LOD is listed as optional but we definitely changed terrain LOD stuff during the NVVR. But the official TTW guidance for LOD generation is again to ignore Tree LODs and in addition to all that, NOT to generate a terrain LOD (which I already did and which took 8 hours! It says it will take a long time, it does not specify in the region of 8 hours!) because this will destroy the default, hand painted and optimized LODs.
So now I don't know what to do. I've done this whole process over multiple days and it takes a lot of mental energy to concentrate on all the stuff I need to remember whilst proceeding with each step and all the stuff I need to come back to or keep considering. To make matters worse, I tried to go back to the WSG, but in the last week that got a massive update and looks nothing like the WSG I just installed, and if I start over, I don't even know if the NVVR will be compatible this time or if I have to generate new LODs. How do you guys manage this? How does it not break you?
EDIT: It seems my most reasonable course from here is to start over with the new updated WSG. Is there anything I need to know about properly cleaning my files before I do this? Or should I just go for one of the Wabbajack TTW packs at this point?

Disclaimer:This was made in the span of 3 days. I would have posted here daily if I had remembered that this subReddit exists.
Part 1(Monday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Her reflective skin was like gold waiting to be rubbed and loved. Her luminous eyes were like marbles designed for gazers. Her hair was like a sari, but as soft as silk, waiting to infatuate onlookers who fall in its honey-sweet trap. An example of the above is me.
2 years later, this infatuation still encrusted me. I was in Class XI, and we were studying to obtain Indian Secondary Certificate. Although it is exacting on us, we still have the time to appreciate our boons. I did so via writing a love letter, and presenting it to her. Today, I found out that I had left it at home, despite fatiguing on it. I was devastated. However, I replicated it while pooping on the toilet at the double.
I gave it to my crush, and then, due to being overwrought, ran away from her, hyperventilating, laughing, and crying at the same time. Unfortunately, she just said thanks to me at reccess. I was devastated. However, when I went home, I was taken out of the frying pan into the fire. My mother had discovered the original love letter.
She told me that she found it in my bag, and that we were going to read it together. I was in the most calamitous set of circumstances I had been in my entire life. Fortunately, her phone started ringing in the adjacent room, leading her to retrieve it and communicate to the other person. I darted towards the paper and vehemently did the needful. However, I froze in trepidation when I heard the voice of my crush's father's at the other end of the landline. However, since he works in a scam-centre, he just wanted to scam my mother.
When she finished rebuking him, she came back to the drawing room, where she had reserved my love letter. When pursuing it and interrogating me about its whereabouts, she was replied to via bewildered faces and expressions with a lack of fear. However, she grew tired of pursuing its whereabouts, and therefore, left the room. However, I believe that she has seen it, as they uncrumpled it and left it neatly folded on our bookshelf, which fills me with terror.
Part 2(Tuesday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Her reflective skin was like gold waiting to be rubbed and loved. Her luminous eyes were like marbles designed for gazers. Her hair was like a sari, but as soft as silk, waiting to infatuate onlookers who fall in its honey-sweet trap. An example of the above is me.
I decided to test my valour via generating and sending a love letter to her. Unfortunately, at the time, she just said 'Thanks', which had left me devastated. Moreso, I had to duplicate my letter while pooping out biryani I ate on Sunday, in the highschool toilet, since my mother had stolen my original letter. I thought I did the needful to destroy it. Unfortunately, it was all in vain, which caused my letter to be found by my father.
My father was about to beat me with his belt, which was the worst thing that could happen to a 16 year old Indian teenager. However, fortunately, somebody in uaeteenagers gave me advice, which I used. I dissembled my stories and weaved a lie that states that my friend dared me to give my crush a love letter, and that I was not in love with her, which persuaded my father that I was not in need of a thrasing.
I was relieved, and to make my amygdala, my insula, my insular cortex, and my periaqueductal gray even more elated, she had put a love letter in my bag that apologised for her lacklustre response towards me. She has requested a date that will be taking place tomorrow, and since my parents will be out, of the house, I saw eye to eye with her metaphorically, to ensure that we could literally see eye to eye with each other tomorrow.
I am currently, very elated by this, and am thrilled by a new experience that I will be experiencing. Until now, the only acquaintance with dates I had seen so far were in Hollywood pictures, which cater to a western audience, and therefore, until now, have led me to believe that us Indians cannot get dates due to our conservative nature. However, I was proven wrong, and will extract the moral of the impossible being possible from this memorable episode.
Part 3(Wednesday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Therefore, I valiantly and strenuously, produced a love letter and delivered it to my crush. She was elated by this, and made me elated as well, via inviting me on a date with her. I contentedly to do so, not knowing the consequences of the tragic decision I made.
Today, at 18:00, which is half an hour after I reach my house, I get prepared to go on the date and dazzle her, leaving my house abandoned. To my ginormous shock, she had apparently booked a taxi for me. I live in Dubai. My house was in Al Furjan, while our date was in Motor City, which resulted in a mere half-an-hour journey As I diffidently walked up to the restaurant, I was greeted with a ghastly sight.
She had arrived, but not alone. Her entire family was with her, from her parents, to her elder brother, to her extended family, including her grandparents, uncles, and aunties. They began bombarding me with questions such as my grades in different subjects. However, I had a notable concern:As with most Indian parents, her parents were averse to love, and believed in arranged marriages, similar to mine. There was only one way out, and it was of an execrable nature.
With a heavy heart, I began to rip the most stentorian, malodorous and most fervent fart I had released in my entire life. It had now reverberated towards the now tumultuous room. Amidst all the pandemonium, I escaped from there, and with the permission of a stranger, took another taxi back to my house in Al Furjan, where I would be unscarred from the danger of both my parents' potential revelation, and the disapprobation of the family of my crush.
I am now typing this amidst a stream of tears and a heavy heart. However, I have now learnt sacrifice, and that bitter truth that life would be blemished in one way or another, for example, in this case, either via the revelation of my parents, the disapprobation of the family of my crush, and sacrificing my potential wife. However, this is something that can neither be concealed in y hippocampus, nor my amygdala, which results in me sharing this.
(Please speak in English. I don't know Hindi.)

Disclaimer:This was made in the span of 3 days. I would have posted here daily of it weren't for the restriction of relationship posts to be only on Wednesday.
Part 1(Monday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Her reflective skin was like gold waiting to be rubbed and loved. Her luminous eyes were like marbles designed for gazers. Her hair was like a sari, but as soft as silk, waiting to infatuate onlookers who fall in its honey-sweet trap. An example of the above is me.
2 years later, this infatuation still encrusted me. I was in Class XI, and we were studying to obtain Indian Secondary Certificate. Although it is exacting on us, we still have the time to appreciate our boons. I did so via writing a love letter, and presenting it to her. Today, I found out that I had left it at home, despite fatiguing on it. I was devastated. However, I replicated it while pooping on the toilet at the double.
I gave it to my crush, and then, due to being overwrought, ran away from her, hyperventilating, laughing, and crying at the same time. Unfortunately, she just said thanks to me at reccess. I was devastated. However, when I went home, I was taken out of the frying pan into the fire. My mother had discovered the original love letter.
She told me that she found it in my bag, and that we were going to read it together. I was in the most calamitous set of circumstances I had been in my entire life. Fortunately, her phone started ringing in the adjacent room, leading her to retrieve it and communicate to the other person. I darted towards the paper and vehemently did the needful. However, I froze in trepidation when I heard the voice of my crush's father's at the other end of the landline. However, since he works in a scam-centre, he just wanted to scam my mother.
When she finished rebuking him, she came back to the drawing room, where she had reserved my love letter. When pursuing it and interrogating me about its whereabouts, she was replied to via bewildered faces and expressions with a lack of fear. However, she grew tired of pursuing its whereabouts, and therefore, left the room. However, I believe that she has seen it, as they uncrumpled it and left it neatly folded on our bookshelf, which fills me with terror.
Part 2(Tuesday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Her reflective skin was like gold waiting to be rubbed and loved. Her luminous eyes were like marbles designed for gazers. Her hair was like a sari, but as soft as silk, waiting to infatuate onlookers who fall in its honey-sweet trap. An example of the above is me.
I decided to test my valour via generating and sending a love letter to her. Unfortunately, at the time, she just said 'Thanks', which had left me devastated. Moreso, I had to duplicate my letter while pooping out biryani I ate on Sunday, in the highschool toilet, since my mother had stolen my original letter. I thought I did the needful to destroy it. Unfortunately, it was all in vain, which caused my letter to be found by my father.
My father was about to beat me with his belt, which was the worst thing that could happen to a 16 year old Indian teenager. However, fortunately, somebody in uaeteenagers gave me advice, which I used. I dissembled my stories and weaved a lie that states that my friend dared me to give my crush a love letter, and that I was not in love with her, which persuaded my father that I was not in need of a thrasing.
I was relieved, and to make my amygdala, my insula, my insular cortex, and my periaqueductal gray even more elated, she had put a love letter in my bag that apologised for her lacklustre response towards me. She has requested a date that will be taking place tomorrow, and since my parents will be out, of the house, I saw eye to eye with her metaphorically, to ensure that we could literally see eye to eye with each other tomorrow.
I am currently, very elated by this, and am thrilled by a new experience that I will be experiencing. Until now, the only acquaintance with dates I had seen so far were in Hollywood pictures, which cater to a western audience, and therefore, until now, have led me to believe that us Indians cannot get dates due to our conservative nature. However, I was proven wrong, and will extract the moral of the impossible being possible from this memorable episode.
Part 3(Wednesday):
I met my crush when I was in high-school. I was 13 and she was 14. When I set eyes on her, I knew that she was the one for me. Therefore, I valiantly and strenuously, produced a love letter and delivered it to my crush. She was elated by this, and made me elated as well, via inviting me on a date with her. I contentedly to do so, not knowing the consequences of the tragic decision I made.
Today, at 18:00, which is half an hour after I reach my house, I get prepared to go on the date and dazzle her, leaving my house abandoned. To my ginormous shock, she had apparently booked a taxi for me. I live in Dubai. My house was in Al Furjan, while our date was in Motor City, which resulted in a mere half-an-hour journey As I diffidently walked up to the restaurant, I was greeted with a ghastly sight.
She had arrived, but not alone. Her entire family was with her, from her parents, to her elder brother, to her extended family, including her grandparents, uncles, and aunties. They began bombarding me with questions such as my grades in different subjects. However, I had a notable concern:As with most Indian parents, her parents were averse to love, and believed in arranged marriages, similar to mine. There was only one way out, and it was of an execrable nature.
With a heavy heart, I began to rip the most stentorian, malodorous and most fervent fart I had released in my entire life. It had now reverberated towards the now tumultuous room. Amidst all the pandemonium, I escaped from there, and with the permission of a stranger, took another taxi back to my house in Al Furjan, where I would be unscarred from the danger of both my parents' potential revelation, and the disapprobation of the family of my crush.
I am now typing this amidst a stream of tears and a heavy heart. However, I have now learnt sacrifice, and that bitter truth that life would be blemished in one way or another, for example, in this case, either via the revelation of my parents, the disapprobation of the family of my crush, and sacrificing my potential wife. However, this is something that can neither be concealed in y hippocampus, nor my amygdala, which results in me sharing this.
(Please speak in English. I don't know Hindi.)

https://twitter.com/flashback_t/status/1790776888203280404
GPT-4 Omni seems to be the best model currently available for enterprise RAG, taking clearly the first spot and beating the previous best model (Claude 3 Opus) by a large margin (+8% for RAG, +34% for vision) on the finRAG dataset. Also it's the first model we tested which does not have a huge drop in performance when switching to vision instead of text processing (drop of ~4%, previously the drop was around ~30% for GPT-4 and Claude 3), clearly showing that there is indeed a different architecture in place compared to the previous generation models.
Seems like this might be the first model that achieves enough reliability to be usuable on an enterprise level for a lot of use-cases (especially OCR based).

My (60F) son in law (43M) and daughter (43F) had a very ugly divorce that has resulted in their kids (18M, 15F, 10M) no longer speaking to their dad and my ex SIL's side of the family no longer speaking to us, and refusing to attend any holiday or birthday event for the grandkids if we are involved in any way.
My son in law spent time in jail for screaming at the judge handling the divorce case calling him " a piece of human trash" and " enabler of deception" and bragging about writing rants about the judge online.
My daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia a few years into her marriage. Now her ex demands that my husband and I apologize and pay him damages because he claims we should have told him before the wedding 22.5 years ago that our family has a history of mental illness.
At the time of their wedding my daughter did not show symptoms. My mom, who was already deceased at the time, had schizophrenia. A few relatives in the generation before her also may have had it but they were in a time where it was hushed up.
My husband and I did not have any mental health issues. My daughter gets married and a few years into it she shows symptoms and gets diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her ex knew this and continued to be married to her and signing up for fatherhood with her.
My daughter found it hard to keep employment, and was stifled in her marriage. She filed for divorce and only then did her mental health become an issue with her ex.
He posted rants that he wanted an annulment because he was lied to and he wouldn't have married her if he knew she was going to be " insane." A lawyer friend told him he did know for years about the family history after my daughter got diagnosed and didn't ask for an annulment for nearly 2 decades, and California rarely grants them, very few lawyers do them.
The judge implied my ex SIL's vocational experts and he himself were untruthful about my daughter's employment prospects and ruled for alimony that had the potential to be renewed indefinitely since this is a long term marriage by CA standards. My SIL is furious at having to pay that and that it's insulting he has to be given a legally mandated amount to send his children. He claims there was never a marriage to begin with.
Now he says we are the real villains because we knew and should have made sure he knew, and not just assumed he knew that our daughter could become mentally ill. He said as compensation, we needed to pay for his lawyers and support our daughter so his alimony is 0 because the judge hates him now because of my lie and will likely extend her alimony forever as they are past 10 years of marriage in California.
I told him I'm not apologizing for not revealing privileged medical information that wasn't mine to reveal. AITA?

I have read the documentation for Remote Alert Handlers, but I have a question.
It says that Checkmk will log into a host over ssh and then execute the commands as a user. The default is root. It generates its own SSH key when you create the rule.
How is that key authorized to authenticate as root?
Why does it need to SSH at all? Why not just send a command to the installed Agent to run the command?
For security reasons, we do not allow SSH connections as root. I think that is a sane policy most everyone should have. How do Remote Alert Handlers work in that case?
I'd prefer to create a service account in our IDM system with an SSH key, and have CheckMK use that, and then sudo to run the Remote Alert Handler. Is that an option, and if so, how?
Thanks!

Hi, it's Stads again covering OU usage trends in April 2024. This is some form of a follow-up to my post last month here (https://www.reddit.com/stunfisk/comments/1bw1732/ou_usage_trends_march_2024/), where I discussed the 5 pokemon with the greatest usage differential between the general population elo bracket and the 1825+ elo bracket in the March 2024 stats. For this month, the stats are sourced from https://www.smogon.com/stats/2024-04/ . This time, I'll cover both the top 5 increases in usage and the top 5 decreases in usage between the two brackets. Let's start off with the increases!

1. Zamazenta (9.79% vs 23.87%, +14.09%)

Zama just keeps taking off in usage, climbing to 2nd overall in usage in the 1825+ bracket and dethroning the elephant last month. Like last month, I suspect Zama is simply an extremely solid pokemon that both checks and fits well into offensive structures. Month-over-month, I see that a novel spread of Impish 16/0/216/0/40/236 has taken over the 1825+ elo bracket this month, albeit only a small plurality at 12.142%. This spread makes it quite a bit more physically bulky while speed creeping Roaring Moon, a key opposing mon for Zama to check. However, this is at the cost of no longer outspeeding key threats like Weavile, Darkrai, and +1 Dragonite. There's been some shifting in which moves Zama is running as well, with Crunch becoming slightly less mandatory, Roar and Heavy Slam becoming more popular, and Substitute falling off quite a bit. I suspect the very standard Sub IronPress Zama simply has been adequately adapted to, and these shifts reflect Zama adjusting to deal with opposing setup sweepers and fairies a bit better.

2. Kingambit (24.50% vs 36.72%, +12.22%)

Another repeat performer, Kingambit continues to be a popular pokemon in all elo brackets but especially the 1825+ region. While most of SV OU continues to adapt and proliferate new strategies, Kingambit seems to be a more locked-in constant, with no new sets, spreads, or moves especially rising in popularity. Leftovers, Black Glasses, and Air Balloon continue to be the main trifecta of used items, and while most sets seem to be Adamant and investing in bulk, running Jolly and max speed retains a solid niche. It remains to be seen if anything can really knock Kingambit from its perch in the coming months, or if we've reached a stable equilibrium.

3. Glimmora (12.23% vs 20.26%, +8.03%)

Finally, a new face! The favoured lead for many Hyper Offensive teams in SV OU since the beginning, Glimmora had a great month in April, coming in at 6th in usage in the 1825+ bracket. Month-over-month, Glimmora has remained markedly stable in how it's used, but the 1825+ bracket loves Red Card quite a bit more, at 41.295% compared to to 15.172% in the general population. I suspect this is because Red Card can be tricky to use, requiring some prediction to be best used in displacing an opposing setup sweeper while switching into an attack that won't OHKO Glimmora. I wonder if much of this usage was pre-Volcarona ban, with how reliably Glimmora could take a fire-type attack from the moth and get rid of all its terrifying boosts. I'm a little surprised that Glimmora has thrived with the emergence of Fast Taunt Landorus-Therian with Earth Power, but perhaps Hyper Offensive teams have simply adapted and are now finding other leads that can adequately threaten Lando.

4. Roaring Moon (13.17% vs 21.04%, +7.87%)

Salamence's prehistoric cousin has been terrifying since it was unbanned with the advent of DLC2, but it continues to really come into its own. A ludicrously strong Knock Off can not only be leveraged to sweep teams but also break open cores for teammates to later abuse, and its typing and natural bulk gives Roaring Moon the ability to often find openings against mons like Gholdengo and Gliscor. Everyone agrees that Roaring Moon runs Booster Energy, Dragon Dance, Knock Off, and Acrobatics (with tera flying), but while the general population seems to enjoy Earthquake and then Taunt for that last moveslot, the 1825+ bracket has a mild preference for Taunt, with Brick Break narrowly edging Earthquake as the runner-up. I'm not positive whether this is more of a niche tool against screens or just the best option available against the ubiquitous Kingambit, but it's an interesting development that's only really taken off this month. As an aside, I'm quite surprised that Tera Flying + Acrobatics has persisted as not only the premier tera option for Roaring Moon, but realistically, the only option. Flying is an extremely good offensive type with few fat electrics around, but I'm a bit surprised that no specialized counter-teras have developed for Moon to beat some of its established checks such as Weavile and Dondozo.

5. Clefable (5.63% vs 13.32%, +7.69%)

This one did surprise me. While the happy pink blob (no, the other one) continues to fly largely under the radar amongst the general population, it's experiencing a breakout in the 1825+ bracket. I suspect this is because post-Volcarona ban, the metagame has gotten slightly fatter despite the presence of Waterpon and Kyurem, and Clefable fits excellently into many fat structures. Magic Guard is an amazing ability always, but especially in a hazard meta, and also makes Clefable one of SV OU's two premier knock absorbers alongside Gliscor. The support movepool is just as good as ever with Thunder Wave, Stealth Rock, Knock Off, Wish healer, and Calm Mind wincons all quite viable. Magic Guard and the prevalence of booster energy also makes Clefable an excellent user of Sticky Barb, which can attach itself to mons post-booster like Great Tusk and Roaring Moon, easily dooming their sweeps. The general population acknowledges this set with 13.93% Sticky Barb usage, but the 1825+ bracket expects it, with Sticky Barb as the #1 used item at 43.833%. The general population also seems to enjoy specially defensive Clefable sets quite a bit more - perhaps to better deal with Kyurem, albeit in a very risky way - while the 1825+ bracket leans into the Sticky Barb with physically defensive sets being ubiqutious. While Clefable has exploded in popularity, it does seem to be only on balance and fatter team comps, with its most common teammates being Gliscor (completing the knock absorption perimeter), Corviknight, Dragapult, Great Tusk, and Dondozo. If Clefable gets more usage on offensive teams, it'll truly be a sign that the SV OU meta has at long last started to slow down.
I'll also go over the 5 pokemon with the greatest usage drop between the general population and 1825+ bracket. If you see your favourites here, don't necessarily worry - they may still have realistic niches to fill on OU teams! But it is still good to analyze why certain pokemon will be favoured or disfavoured in certain environments.

1. Serperior (6.58% vs 1.44%, -5.14)

This is hardly a surprise anymore. While Serperior will have a certain floor of usage due to it's status as a starter pokemon and the allure of the Contrary + Leaf Storm combo, it's simply too pidgeonholed to exist much in the 1825+ bracket. Tera Blast is used around 60% in both environments, though I'm very curious if they tend to use the same tera type or if there's some difference. The slight boon of having a great matchup into Webs has also faded a bit as that playstyle has fallen off slightly, and with Rillaboom, Waterpon, and Grasspon providing plenty of grass-type attacking prowess, it seems unlikely Serperior will find a niche even with the exit of Volcarona. The real discussion is how Serperior will fare in UU come the June tier shifts, with many great answers such as Hydrapple and Tornadus-Therian seemingly poised to handle it.

2. Corviknight (10.69% vs 6.00%, -4.69%)

I'm not 100% sure why Corviknight remains popular amongst the general population while sliding in the 1825+ tier. It might be due to Lando-T taking its spot as a pivot, it might be because it simply doesn't wall things as hard as it wants to. Mirror Armor has a sizeable fanbase among the general population at 32.949%, but the 1825+ bracket practically ignores it at just 3.263% usage. In both environments, Corv is very predominantly physically defensive to better deal with threats such as Kingambit, SD Gliscor, and Roaring Moon. One absurd data point - Roost only has 90.999% usage in the general population. Is this a typo? Are there really 9% of people who don't use Roost on Corvinkight? I imagine even cheesy sets like Bulk Up + Power Trip would be running Roost. I have absolutely no idea what's going on here, and I suspect that looking too far into it will only induce madness.

3. Torkoal (6.91% vs 2.50%, -4.41%)

Torkoal is generally used to provide sunlight for Sun teams, but is rarely also run on trick room teams with Choice Specs to nuke everything with Eruption. Sun, among other 'gimmicky' Hyper Offense styles such as Webs, Trick Room, and other weathers, tend to be a bit less reliable up in the 1825+ bracket where teams are more sturdily built and nuking everything with force generally won't go quite as far. So it checks out that everyone's favourite sun turtle would get a bit more usage amongst the general population.

4. Cinderace (9.82% vs 6.13%, -3.70%)

Cinderace getting less usage in the 1825+ bracket represents the continuation of a philosophical shift to the hazard subgame. Hazards have been very difficult to remove conventionally this entire generation due to Gholdengo blocking most forms of removal. This means that previously, Cinderace having unblockable psuedo-removal in Court Change was an excellent workaround. Now however, offensive teams generally prefer to have their own hazards up and simply try to limit how many hazards get set up on their side of the field with tools like Fast Taunt Lando as well as the popularity of Glimmora and its Mortal Spin. I expect the general population will gradually catch up to this trend over time, though with Cinderace being a starter - and one banned in previous generations at that - it likely has a bit higher floor of usage than it would in a vacuum. I also note that the 1825+ bracket seems to try Blaze Cinderace a bit more, 26.526% vs 16.816%, with Blaze taking Pyro Ball from a very good attack to one that can really dent even bulkier mons.

5. Garchomp (4.18% vs 0.81%, -3.38%)

Another Pokemon whose general popularity is probably carrying it to decent usage among the general population, while the 1825+ bracket has moved on. It's slightly strange to me that SD + Scale Shot Garchomp sets have been completely absent from the meta, but perhaps that niche is simply not compelling enough with Roaring Moon, Gouging Fire, Kyurem, and even Haxorus as physically-attacking Dragon-type alternatives. What usage Chomp does get in 1825+ seems to be confined entirely to defensive hazard sets, with Rocky Helmet, Dragon Tail, and at least 1 hazard. But even in this use case, it's hard to find a real niche when Ting-Lu, Deoxys-Speed, Glimmora, and other great offensive hazard setters exist. I won't go so far as to say it's completely Garchover, but it may take a large meta shift on the back of a ban or two for Garchomp to find true OU usage again.
I hope this was an enjoyable follow-up to the previous post. Feedback is appreciated, let me know if I've missed anything this time!

I don't know if anyone has experienced similar but I'm having a frustrating experience where my account seems to be locked because I have reached my 500 generation limit for the month on my Creator account. They say it's supposed to reset on your billing date. I hit this cap late April and my billing date shows January 1st (annually). I reached out through their chatbot and ultimately have sent several emails to their support team. They say they typically respond within a day but it's been over 2 weeks. I can't seem to get ahold of any real person with a real response and I'm questioning if I should continue using this service or find another.
I have enjoyed using Mubert so far for what I'm doing. I think it's ease of use is much better than any other like service. But if I'm locked out of my account with no support, I may have no choice but to cancel.