A couple years ago I replaced my old house thermostat with the Amazon Thermostat. After many many trials and attempts and the help of some very kind reddit people, I got it working. The winning arrangement was as follows.
C thermostat connected to (C terminal Control board and White wire from AC unit)
G thermostat connected to (Y terminal Control board and Red wire from AC unit)
R thermostat connected to R Control Board
W thermostat connected to W Control Board
Y thermostat connected to Y Control Board
Not sure why that was the way that it was, but it worked.
Fast forward 2ish years (Like 3 months ago) and the heat stopped working. Blower would run, but heat would not kick in. Tried many things and ended up calling a technician who recommended replacing the board. I replaced the board (Original White Rodgers 50A50-241) with a new one designed to be the universal replacement (White Rodgers 50A55-843). I connected everything exactly the same way as it had been connected on the old board, and the heat worked which was all I cared about at the time, I did not check AC.
Today I tried turning the AC on for the first time and the heat and AC turned on. I turned it off and went to the board and checked voltages and the only terminals with voltage were C to R while off.
Figuring maybe this new board was somehow different from the old I swapped the Y and G wires at the thermostat such that everything was 'properly' wired in that all thermostat terminals were connected to their exact counterparts on the control board. Only extra piece was the White coming direct from the AC unit was still on C and R from AC was still on Y. I tried calling for AC and the heat kicked on. Checked voltages and there was voltage between C and every other terminal when the thermostat was set to cooling. When off only voltage was still between C and R.
I am once again without any ideas and turn to you fine people of this subreddit for assistance. Thank you in advance.

WANTS
Zelda Game and Watch (1989, ZL-65 CIB)
I’m also looking to trade for Game Boy DMG Games,I got tons already, so just let me know what you have for trade, but big wants are:
Beethoven (DMG EUR)
Beetlejuice
Darkman (DMG USA)
Maui Mallard
Mega Man IV (DMG USA)
Mega Man V (DMG USA)
Metal Master
Super Breakout (grey cartridge for GB DMG)
Spud’s Adventure
ZAS (DMG JPN)
Switch Wants
Icoclasts CIB or New Standard Switch
Phoenotopia Awakening PE standard edition (CIB or New)
Red Dead Redemption CIB or New
PS4 Wants
Red Dead Redemption 1 CIB or New
PS5 Wants
Weird West (CIB)
Control (CIB)
Your Lists, you can always try, I like a bunch of stuff :)
Thanks for looking!
Hi,
I’m happy to provide pics for any items and detailed condition descriptions.
HAVE:
Legend of Zelda Game & Watch (New)
\*\*\*
Switch
Akka Arrh (LRG New)
Arietta of Spirits (New Red Art Games)
Atari Recharged Collection 1 (New)
Bloodrayne Betrayal (New LRG)
Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 (LRG BB New)
Cotton Reboot (CIB) Devil Engine (New JP)
Devil May Cry Triple Pack (New, code expired, Only has DMC 1 on cart)
Doom: The Classics Collection (New LRG Best Buy variant cover) Drainus (New SLG with Postcard) Dying Light (CIB)
ExZeus (New) Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core Reunion (CIB) Fire Emblem Warriors (New)
Game Builder Garage (CIB)
Ghost Blade HD (CIB)
Grow: Song of the Evertree (New)
Ittle Dew (New with all goodies)
Ittle Dew 2 (CIB with map and Manual)
Kamiko (Rare New with soundtrack and card B-Side)
Koumajou Remilia Scarlet Symphony (CIB)
Kyogeki Quartet Fighters (CIB B-Side with CD and Goodies)
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (New)
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (Case, manual and stickers only, no game) The Mummy Demastered Collector’s Edition (New LRG)
NeverAwake (New JP)
Ni No Kuni (CIB)
Oniken + Odallus Collection Limited Edition (New)
Onimusha Warlords (Japanese Release with English CIB)
Pokémon Pokeball + box Only, (no pokeball)
Pressure Overdrive (New) (SLG)
Psikyo Collection Vol.2 (Japan) (New) R-Type Dimensions EX (CIB SLG with Postcard) Space Invaders Invincible Collection (CIB SLG)
Star Hunter DX + Space Moth (New SLG with Postcard)
Superepic The Entertainment War (New) TriggerHeart Exelica (JP New)
Toaplan Arcade Garage: Zero Fire (JP New)
Toaplan Arcade Garage: Hishou Same! Same! Same! (JP New)
Wonder Boy Returns Remix (New with Postcard)
The Wonderful 101 (New Kickstarter edition with holographic cover) Xeodrifter (Red Art Games) (New) Xeodrifter (Atooi/LRG New)
3DS
Andro Dunos 2 (New)
Astérix le Domaine des Dieux (PAL CIB)
Brain Age Concentration Training (CIB)
Code Name Steam (New) Dr. Kawashima 3DS (French PAL CIB)
Fragrant Story (New)
Go! Go! Kokopolo Anniversary Collection (Limited Run Games) (New)
Kid Icarus (manual and inserts only)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Nintendo Selects) (New) The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Handheld Game of the Year Edition) (New) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo Selects) (New) Metroid Samus Returns (Case and insert only)
PES 2013 (CIB)
Resident Evil Revelations (CIB With misprint cover and the corrected cover) Sega 3D Classics (New)
Sega 3D Fukkoku Reprinted Archives 1 (New)
Sega 3D Fukkoku Reprinted Archives 3 Final Stage (New)
Shakedown Hawaii (New)
Steeldiver (New)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (CIB)
DS
6 Loose DS carts (Crosswords DS, Mon Coach Personnel, Moshi Monsters 1 & 2, Mots Croissés, Scribblenauts)
Teenage Mutant Ninja 3 Mutant Nightmare (CIB)
Super Nintendo (carts only)
Batman Returns
The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (PAL Version)
Super Famicom (carts only)
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
Return of Double Dragon
Super Ghouls N Ghosts
Turtles in Time (Super Famicom)
Torneko No Daiboken (Dragon Quest IV Spin-Off)
\*\*\*
Wii U
Super Mario 3D World (Case and manual only, no disc)
*** PS5
Death Stranding Director’s Cut New
Devil May Cry 5 CIB Kena Bridge of Spirits Deluxe Edition (CIB)
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (New LRG) The Pathless (New)
*** PS Vita
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (New)
La-Mulana EX (LRG New)
Odin Sphere Leifthrasir (CIB with high quality custom made manual)
Risk of Rain ( LRG CIB)
The Swapper (LRG New) Teslagrad (New)
Xeodrifter (LRG New with barcode hole under seal)
*** PS4
Amazing Princess Sarah (New) Assassin’s Creed Ezio Collection (CIB)
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (CIB) Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (CIB)
Assassin’s Creed Unity (CIB)
Cobra Kai (CIB)Darksiders III (CIB) Disco Elysium Final Cut (CIB) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (CIB)
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition (CIB) No Man’s Sky Beyond (CIB) Sega Genesis Classics (CIB)
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap (New LRG, Master System cover)
PS3God of War Collection (CIB)
***
Amiibos
Palamute sealed
Palico sealed
Sephiroth Sealed

Hello,
Im not able to set my HDR to 1000 nits, with Windows HDR Calibration it stops at 400 Nits.
Im using a RTX 4080 and recently bought a HDMI 2.1 cable, I tried this tutorial as well:
https://www.reddit.com/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/18ja4ol/samsung_oled_g8_hdr_measurements_firmware_16031/
The only thing I cant change is the service menu, is there a way to change this without buying a custom remote controller? My phone (Pixel 8) cant do it as far as I know.
Or is there another way to reach 1000 nits?
Thanks!

Downloads

Stable - Gaiman (Recommended)

Android, Linux, OS X, Windows

Experimental (Not recommended)

Automated Installation

Catapult Game Launcher (3rd party, pretty convenient, more details in the link)
CDDA Game Launcher (3rd party, pretty convenient, more details in the link)

Manual Installation

Android, Linux, OS X, Windows
iOS

Compiling Guide

Controls (not up to date, controls for mobile can vary)

Helpful Guides

• Item Database
• Skill Training (Siersha - up to date for build #10626)
• Modding
• Detailed Guide (mlangsdorf)
• Quickstart Guide (DracoGriffin & AMurkin)
• Improved Text Readability (Bilb0)
• Tutorials
• Video Guide (Vormithrax)
• More Video Guide (GrandpuhTy)
• Written Guide (Pr0manTwitch)

Featured Let's Players

Individuals that are currently known for playing C:DDA. List is subject to change (maintain active and current streamers), send modmail if you'd like to be added.

Player(s)	Twitch	YouTube
Vormithrax	Link	Link
TheMurderUnicorn	Link	Link
TheCritsyBear	Link	Link
RyconRoleplays	None	Link
Orange01gaming	None	Link
nonsonogiucas	None	Link
GrandpuhTy	Link	Link

Memorial

Individuals that used to play C:DDA but have gone on hiatus or stopped streaming. These are mentioned here as requested by the community for being noteworthy.

Player(s)	Twitch	YouTube
flakaby	Link	None
Pr0manTwitch	Link	None
CromulentArcher	None	Link

Semi-Multiplayer - WatchCDDA.net

WatchCDDA.net is hosted by r7st and allows for semi-multiplayer ASCII version of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It can be a bit confusing to get started so make sure you check out the Instructions page for more details and join that Discord to communicate while playing. Any issues need to be expressed on WatchCDDA's Discord, not the subreddit - any troubleshooting posts will be removed.

• Requirements:
• WatchCDDA.net Account (set up is on Instructions page)
• SSH client (like PuTTY)
• Willingness to use ASCII (no tilesets yet)

FAQ

• How do I use this subreddit?

If you're new here, make sure to read through the above. Secondly, any simple questions should be confined to this weekly announcement post. If you've found a bug or a new strategy, or wondering what type of playthrough to try, you should make a separate post about those.

• Flairs? What are those?

There are two types of flairs: user flairs (which are currently customizable) and post flairs. If you make a post, make sure you're flairing it appropriately for others. There are some exclusive flairs you cannot pick but should be on the lookout for, such as:
Changelog - these posts have very informative posts regarding changes.
Fixed - these posts generally have a solution to a bug or problem.
Lastly, if you flair a post [Help Wanted] and someone answered satisfactorily, make sure to re-flair it with [Solved] so others can find the solution instead of looking through tons of posts.

• Oh no, my anti-virus says the launcher is a threat!

Antivirus products are known to detect the launcher as a threat and block its execution or delete the launcher. The reason for this is uncertain, but most likely due to a launcher component, PyInstaller, that is commonly flagged as a threat by antivirus software. A sufficient workaround is to add the launcher binary to your antivirus' whitelist, or to select the action to trust this binary when detected. More information can be found from the launcher's FAQ on Github.
If you are paranoid, you can always inspect the source code yourself and build the launcher from the source code. However, you are still likely to get false positives.

• The UI is broken or weird, is this normal?

If you think the UI isn't set up correctly, make sure to press } to access the UI Settings panel. You will be given a choice of several different styles, with "Labels" being the recommended setting for new players and "Classic" for veteran players.

• I think the subreddit should have ... or The subreddit should change ...

Great! The modteam is always looking for feedback, please make a post about your purposed change or idea and let the community decide through voting and debate. If it's something that is a bit more sensitive, please send it through modmail.

Somebody requested that I write down some resources for Dzogchen in the sidebar, so I thought I would do a post as well to give a sort of background and offer anyone else the chance to get in on the conversation or building of resources too...
But first,

A Word on Secrecy, Safety Maturity, and Cults

I'm writing this post out by request of someone who messaged me, with the intention of reaching a wider audience, or all beings, who could benefit from learning about these teachings. I have to caution, though, that they may not be for everybody, and in that regard, I would advise gentleness, with yourself and others, with regards to this path. Please take care of yourself, and keep a measure of your own mind with regard to your mental health and these practices. I wish that those who read this post are only those who it may help, and I apologize preemptively to all those it may hurt, or if I've made any mistakes in my writing.
With that in mind, I can maybe share a little bit about the secrecy aspect of what is called Vajrayana. Someone who learns about these practices but does not genuinely practice them can generate obstacles to their own awakening; specifically with Dzogchen, there is a real danger of intellectualizing the practice such that one covers over their own mind with a sheen of thoughts and fabrication, blocking one from advancing towards awakening. In that regard, this particular practice is called self secret. From what I know, many Lamas won't introduce one to the practice if they aren't sure the student has the capability to grasp it, and also - the student won't be able to practice it or understand it if they're not able to.
On the subject of cults - I have to note that Dzogchen practice can be very personal, but that is not a license for any teacher to abuse you, in any form, ever. Things that happened in the past - students getting slapped, hit with shoes, etc. - happened in the past - but that doesn't make them appropriate teachings devices today. A genuinely compassionate teacher won't take advantage of your practice to abuse you, steal your money, degrade you, control you, or anything like that. If they try to - it is more likely that you've stumbled on a cult, and should get away as fast as you can.
As for what makes a good teacher - others have asked this question before, and u/krodha in particular has written out a good description many times, although I can't find the quote he usually uses unfortunately.
As far as general safety in the practice goes, Lama Lena has written this (and I'm shamelessly stealing it from her website):
"The responsibility to take care of your own mind rests with you; not the lama, not your mom, not your cat. So, take it upon yourself to be safe and use common sense."
Please, read that whole page and heed the warnings.

My Practice

I've been working with Dzogchen for about 3.5 years now, since approximately the end of 2020. I'd been interested in Mahayana practices for the better part of a decade before that, but mostly just practicing Samatha by the way of Anapanasati and Metta, and also through the framework provided by *The Mind Illuminated*. I had been curious about Dzogchen for a bit, mostly from reading about it on Wikipedia and just, in general, being interested in seeing what the fuss is surrounding vajrayana, tantra, and the "highest system" called Atiyoga.
By chance, I happened to see a comment on Dzogchen from someone who basically said "If anyone is looking for pointing out, feel free to message me." So I sent them a message giving my general background and motivation for the practice, and they invited me to join them on meditationonline.org - which had been a place they'd been doing meditation for a few years (and still do, I suppose I'd consider myself part of that sangha). I happened to meet the individual who I'd been messaging, a Nyingma lama called Dawai Gocha, and received pointing out, along with teachings for the next few years... up until the present day.
My main practice now is Dzogchen - I gradually transitioned into this from Anapanasati over the course of about six months - and most of my sessions are now just me resting in awareness - Rigpa. I generally do augment this however with other practices, like Satipatthana, mantra recitation, and other practices from the three main vehicles, simply because I like to do them and find them helpful on the path.

What is Dzogchen?

I can't say anything that has not already been said by others, in particular, meditation masters with vastly more experience than I have - but to put it simply, Dzogchen practice can encompass a large number of different types of ancillary practices, and one central practice, which the ancillaries are meant to accomplish. The main practice is resting in the Rigpa.

How to Learn

"Get pointing out instructions from a qualified teacher before embarking on Dzogchen and Mahamudra. A teacher can address pressing questions as they arise and give you a map and tools for the journey. As practitioners, we can rely on those who have hiked the trail before us." - Lama Lena
Since the awareness nature is always present in every being, it is both simple to learn and simple to maintain the practice - being that one just simply is introduced to the awareness nature, and then abides in it at all times.
As far as being introduced to that awareness, in my experience there are many avenues, such as getting pointed out in person( verbally or non verbally), in visions, through texts, in dreams, etc. In one of her videos, Lama Lena goes through, I think, five different days that transmission/pointing out can happen.
But in my experience, getting pointing out, repeatedly and periodically, from a teacher is the most effective (and probably the most important) way to learn, like having someone coach you through riding a bicycle, until you finally internalize the fundamentals and are able ride on your own. Even someone that can check your progress, humble you, and keep you from common pitfalls, can be extremely helpful. Dzogchen, to me and from what I have read from e.g. Tulku Urgyen, is very simple, so simple that many people are able to miss it extremely easily. Whether we miss it because we're so worked up, or because we are subtly fabricating something and fixating on the fabrication - there is a miss, and from what I know, it's better to realize that than carry on doing whatever else. The harsh reality of Dzogchen practice is that fixation, because we're so habituated to it as human beings, is extremely easy, and being led astray by fixation means your meditation becomes a conditioned Samatha practice. On a lighter note though - from my perspective, one we learn to continually distinguish between Consciousness from Wisdom, we are on very solid ground, and it becomes easier and easier to recognize when we've become fixated.
On the subject of teachers - I would consider myself to have had many teachers. My main teacher, I mentioned before, is a lama I talk to live over the internet, but I would also say I've received teachings from recordings, from books, and in dreams. For clarity, I will state again: having a teacher that you can use to verify your practice is very important so as not to fall into common pitfalls. Whether you are confirming your experience through texts, reasoning, pointing out videos, whatever - doing it repeatedly will help because otherwise, as a beginner, one can be lost for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc. without finding awareness again. I've seen people on Dzogchen who, unfortunately, even though they got pointing out from great teachers, were not able to full internalize the practice because they got lost in thoughts and then never were able to find recognize awareness again, and so need the pointing out once more. Others get the pointing out repeatedly - practice a lot, and attain good results over time. In that way, from my perspective, having continual access to the teachings is very important.
Fortunately, we live in a good time for this.
I'll get to recommend specifics later but - this is my perspective - although some people say that you can't get transmission over recordings or the internet, or from books - I actually do doubt that that is that case, just from experience. But, I must caution that all of my experience in this realm comes from after the point in time that I received live pointing out, so I would not take what I say as gospel. Once again, anything I say would defer to a knowledge and reputable teacher.
This all being said - regardless of how one feels at a specific time or place, there's no reason to ever refrain from confirming one's experience or view against the words of masters. There are others that have said this, who have more experience, but until we are Buddhas ourselves and phenomena have exhausted, there is no reason to ever stop practicing. Ever. If you are practicing, there is no need to make effort, and all phenomena will come and go without trouble until they are fully exhausted. Namkhai Norbu says almost exactly this in The Cycle of Day and Night.

Finding A Teacher - Resources

"Do not expect to travel this path guided only by books and the internet! Use the internet to find a teacher, then connect with them." - Lama Lena
It's taken a while to get here, my apologies for that.
For finding a teacher, I think any lama that has accomplished a three year retreat will be proficient in either Mahamudra or Dzogchen (both Atiyoga - subtle differenes but the same essential practice), and will likely be able to give pointing out instructions.
Not all may do so at first. Some may want a more personal relationship, some may require Ngondro, and some may say "sorry I don't really give those teachings". Some may require a baseline knowledge of the practice first - for example the Tergar program does.
That being said, there are many places to receive pointing out for free and in public.
Off the top of my head, I can name four that are always open and free: Lama Lena on Facebook and Youtube, The Rangdrol Foundation (run by the reddit user u/jigdrol), MeditationOnline.org, and The Pristine Mind Foundation . I know there are others, but at least to me on reddit and personally, these have been the most visible. I do know that Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and James Low occasionally give pointing out instructions and videos on the practice. As well - many other lama do on occasion, and especially Bon lamas - practitioners and Yogis from the Tibetan Indigenous religion, through teachings series or classes. Some may even do so if you are able to get a phone call with them.
Personally, I recommend finding someone who you can learn from personally, and allowing them to teach you whatever they can.
Edit: Here is a recent list of online teachers compiled by Dzogchen
Lama Lena Dzogchen Youtube Videos
Lama Lena Introductory Videos
Meditation Online Videos (Almost all Dzogchen)
Once you've received pointing out, there are also numerous public books, and texts one can read to deepen their understanding and/or background in the teachings, a few of which I've read and can list below. I'll also try to find some links that I care share too.
Many texts on Dzogchen, Mahyana and Vajrayana in general can be found on the excellent Lotsawahouse.org
A list of a few books that I've read and can personally recommend. Please note - these books (with the exception of Transcending AFAIK) are best read after having received transmission:
The Cycle of Day and Night by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection by HH The Dalai Lama
Zurchungpa's Testament by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Vajra Heart Revisited by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
Transcending Ego: Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom by Thrangu Rinpoche
Also, I've not read the Trilogy of Rest by Longchenpa but heard that they're excellent.
Anyways, this about wraps up the post. If you have any questions or additional comments, they are very welcome. I wish all of your the very best of luck on your paths, and that all beings may reach enlightenment.

Purtle's Internet Lineup for May 21st, 2024 8:00pm
Pics:

• my favorite part about this was people asking Adam Wingard what inspired him and he's just like "i think it's cute when my cat takes a nap in her lil cat bed." https://twitter.com/ThatWitchMia/status/1792264981712671230
  
• paper mario TTYD remake: oh my goodness gracious. this is not an edit. we won. we won so hard. https://twitter.com/Dededaio2/status/1792907310785830917
  
• these two might have the most catastrophically poor distribution of any pokemon in history https://twitter.com/Lewchube/status/1792960406010396726
  

Clips:

• bring back old trolls https://twitter.com/roxaplasm/status/1792234956405543407
  
• What if Pokemon and AnimalCrossing had a crossover game https://twitter.com/spicyBeefu/status/1792964068577296679
  
• Free-to-play versions of some of Falcoms games were apparently released in South Korea as part of a service called FROG in the 2000s. The way it worked was that players would watch ads that periodically popped up during loading screens. Pretty funny to see in action. https://twitter.com/bowloflentils/status/1780632118151856541
  

Videos

• Happy 20 years of Shrek 2! To celebrate, we are proud to unleash the official trailer for Shrek 2 Retold, our crowdsourced, scene-for-scene remake of the greatest fairytale sequel ever told! https://twitter.com/the3GI/status/1792318791944159460
  
• Find your rhythm with new Character BGM Settings in the Audio tab where you can change which track plays during a fight! Music throughout Street Fighter history is available for purchase with Drive Tickets or Fighter Coins - all packaged by series. Coming with the Akuma Update! https://twitter.com/StreetFightestatus/1792676674770792785
  
• It's your graduation day and this music starts playing https://twitter.com/MaryoZimmerman/status/1792712035035439333
  
• ELDEN RING Shadow of the Erdtree Story Trailer [3:15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uT8wGtB3yQ
  
• Marbler has done it! For the first time ever, Super Mario 64 has been beaten in 0 A presses! https://old.reddit.com/speedrun/comments/1cx5yid/marbler_has_done_it_for_the_first_time_ever_supe
  
• Here comes new challenge screens customizations! Brighten your matches with these illustrations from kangyaku, the artist behind the web comic "You've Got This, Juri!" Pick them up with Fighter Coins or Drive Tickets on May 22. https://twitter.com/StreetFightestatus/1793039068114108517
  

Articles/News/Other

• Red Lobster files for bankruptcy https://old.reddit.com/news/comments/1cwgslp/red_lobster_files_for_bankruptcy/
  
• Nintendo acquires Shiver Entertainment from Embracer. "Shiver’s focus will remain the same, continuing commissions that port and develop software for multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch." Shiver recently worked on porting & developing Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1792702231893946845
  
• 10-year-old swept into storm drain to become an organ donor, dad says https://old.reddit.com/news/comments/1cwq5t2/10yearold_swept_into_storm_drain_to_become_an/
  
• Scarlett Johansson Says She Declined ChatGPT's Proposal to Use Her Voice for AI – But They Used It Anyway: 'I Was Shocked' https://old.reddit.com/technology/comments/1cwsv4o/scarlett_johansson_says_she_declined_chatgpts/
  
  • Scarlett Johansson's response to Sam Altman ripping off her voice https://old.reddit.com/interestingasfuck/comments/1cwthib/scarlett_johanssons_response_to_sam_altman/
• Microplastics found in every human testicle in study https://old.reddit.com/interestingasfuck/comments/1cwzggv/microplastics_found_in_every_human_testicle_in/
  
• Minors again found working at Alabama poultry plant where 16-year-old died, Department of Labor says https://old.reddit.com/news/comments/1cx7umd/minors_again_found_working_at_alabama_poultry/
  
• Twitch - Today we’re rolling out two new content filtering and blurring tools that give you more control over your viewing experience. https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/1792965279959658758
  
• Tucker Carlson launches show on Russian state TV https://old.reddit.com/NewsOfTheStupid/comments/1cxcd7p/tucker_carlson_launches_show_on_russian_state_tv/
  
• JUST IN: Boeing offers condolences after a passenger was killed on a Boeing 777 plane, says their “thoughts” are with the passengers and crew. In total 30 people were injured and a 73-year-old British man was killed. The incident happened after the plane fell a whopping 6000 feet. “Suddenly the aircraft starts tilting up and there was shaking so I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling,” a passenger said. “Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are and broke straight through it.” https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1792929488730194207
  
• Why Were Older Pokemon Games More Memorable? and what takeaways on adventure games can we learn from this? (links below!) https://twitter.com/han_tani/status/1792888131248955781
  
• Gamers Have Become Less Interested in Strategic Thinking and Planning https://old.reddit.com/gaming/comments/1cxf1ei/gamers_have_become_less_interested_in_strategic/
  

First of all, I'm so grateful for each person here who has shared about their experience at Ballet 5:8. I found ex58 after a random TikTok search one night last November, on the off chance anyone on TikTok had a negative experience there like I did. I found a series of videos from one ex-dancer at 5:8 who shared her experiences and mentioned this subreddit, and I debated about making a post for a while. Part of me was terrified that J would see it and figure out who I am and hate me even more for it (which is definitely my people-pleaser tendencies + trauma coming through), but I really don't care anymore. Hi J, if you're there. 👋
I was a staff member at Ballet 5:8 for four-ish months, which is a minuscule amount of time compared to many of you. It's heartbreaking to hear what you endured. I guess my four months there demonstrate how quickly J and the culture she's created can completely shatter a person's self-worth, faith, and beyond.
I was fresh out of college and desperately looking for a job. "Desperately" because I was in the midst of a season of rough mental health and family dynamics, and I needed something to keep me occupied. Up to this point, I had done PMarketing/Advertising for a few agencies as internships and part time, but nothing full time. I stumbled across a LinkedIn job post for an open staff position at Ballet 5:8 that seemed to align with my skills perfectly. It seemed to be some sort of match made in heaven that Ballet 5:8 was also a Christian organization and I was a Christian who had danced for 10+ years. All I needed to do was move across the country to Chicago. What could possibly go wrong?
The First Red Flags

• Turnover Rate - While I was interviewing, my soon-to-be-boss (not J) mentioned that 5:8 had been looking for someone to fill this role for at least a year, but the past few people they had chosen to fill the role either left or moved on to other opportunities. Huh. Despite multiple people filling the role, there seems to be a common denominator...wonder who...
• Salary & "Benefits" - My high-school-age brother, who worked as a cashier at Panera at the time, made slightly more than what I made as a salaried employee at Ballet 5:8. Oh, and health insurance? Definitely not. It's laughable. I know you're a non-profit organization, but if you're going to try to hire someone to promote your entire brand, you might want to consider paying them more than Panera.
• Love Bombing - During my second round of interviews and as they were preparing to tell me I got the job, I remember Julianna saying something similar to, "We've been searching and praying for this role to be filled for years and we've finally found you. You're the person we've been waiting and praying for." Yeah, yeah. It was music to my people-pleaser ears at the time, but deep down I knew it was a load of crap to get me to sign on and drink the B58 kool-aid.
• Job Description - They made it sound like I'd be managing and directing a team, which is something with which I did have prior experience. However, they failed to mention that the rest of the "team" was currently a product of their imagination and they were planning to one day hire more people to support my role. This part alone led to a vast amount of stress on my part and infinite expectations on J's, because at least they had one person now, rather than none. Maybe I'll tell some of those stories here someday, which make up the bulk of the horrors. They had absolutely no idea what they needed, but they had a precise vision for the miraculous outcome that would follow each project and task I was assigned. A massive TikTok following overnight! A whole perfect Wikipedia page! Becoming bigger and "more obnoxious marketing-wise" than Shen Yun! Yes, those were a few of the goals.

I know those red flags should've been more than enough to make me run for the hills rather than accept the job. Hindsight truly is 20/20. Without my already terrible mental health clouding my judgement, or the love bombing mixed with my people-pleasing tendencies, there is no way in hell I would've ever agreed to work there.

1. BTN > College Graduation? Beyond the Nutcracker is ridiculous in my opinion, but unfortunately that's not what this is about. This is about the fact that Julianna & my (other) managedirect boss (who has since left 5:8) wouldn't let me go to my own college graduation ceremony because Ballet 5:8 was *far more important,* despite me requesting to attend my graduation 4+ months in advance and already making arrangements for a hotel, flights, and my grandparents to come. For context, I took summer classes and graduated during the summer term, so my university's next commencement was in December. Why did Julianna need me at 5:8 so desperately at that time? None other than to have me help operate the damn BTN ticket booth. I wish I could say I quit then and there when they told me I couldn't attend my graduation, but I stayed. My last day with Ballet 5:8 was working that Beyond the Nutcracker show, which otherwise would've been my graduation day.
   
2. Merry Christmas By late Novembeearly December, I was completely broken. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't focus, I couldn't even cry anymore. I could, however, feel the most overwhelming sense of anxiety at the thought of giving my two-weeks notice. I will never forget the night I pressed the send button on that email, going directly to J and my boss. If I thought J's intimidation tactics during the previous 3.5 months had been hell, I hadn't seen anything yet. Unfortunately, the morning after I submitted my two-weeks notice was a work day, so I went in early and tried to prepare myself for J's rage. It came, but through snarky comments under her breath, rushing past me on her way into her office, the silent treatment, and multiple vague and dramatic messages in the all-staff Slack. "Nothing like a good punch to the gut right before Christmas!" Oh please. You've managed to control and/or traumatize an entire organization for years. Don't let me, a barely 20-year-old at the time, intimidate you. There's a grinch or scrooge joke in here somewhere. In brief, she didn't speak a word to me for the last two weeks of my time there.
   
3. Chicago (Again) It's been a few years since Ballet 5:8. I moved back home. I'm married now. And I'm moving back to Chicago now. My husband's job is requiring us to move there for at least the next four years, and while I'm excited at the chance to redo my time in Chicago, I'm also terrified that the bad memories will be too much and I'll be living in fear the entire time. That being said, what were/are some of the things you've enjoyed in Chicago? I'm open to any recommendations. 😅
   

If you managed to make it this far, thanks for reading. I've found so much comfort by reading all of your stories and I'm grateful to have the space to share parts of mine.

I have a Windows Server 2022 VM Running under Alma Linux 9.3 that is crashing roughly every 7 to 8 days with the following message in the /valog/libvert/qemu/Server.log file:
failed to set up stack guard page: Cannot allocate memory 2024-05-10 21:59:33.034+0000: shutting down, reason=crashed
I think this is linked to my using "virtio" as the drive type for my drive images.
At this point, the server is in production and I can't change to virtio-scsi. I initially set up the virtio drives due to the performance gain when mounting the qcow2 images from an all NVME ZFS file system. And the system absolutely FLIES. 15,000+MBps sequential read performance under CrystalDiskMark.
I have to stop this crashing though. Here is my Server.xml file:
WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTO-GENERATED FILE. CHANGES TO IT ARE LIKELY TO BE OVERWRITTEN AND LOST. Changes to this xml configuration should be made using: virsh edit NewSoftPro or other application using the libvirt API.
REDACTED REDACTED 196608000 196608000 50 hvm /usshare/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd /valib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/NewSoftPro_VARS.fd destroy restart restart /uslibexec/qemu-kvm

Help Needed: Diagnosing CAT Electric Forklift Issues

Hi caterpillar,
I'm experiencing some problems with my CAT electric forklift and could use some advice from the community. Here are the details:
Model: CAT 2EP6000
Symptoms:

• Intermittent power loss
• Error codes: 1909.1, 1305.1, 2305.1, 9330.7

Steps Taken So Far:

1. Battery Check:
   • Visual inspection showed no corrosion or damage.
   • Voltage measurement was within the recommended range (80V for my model).
2. Connections and Wiring:
   • Checked all electrical connections and wiring for damage or loose connections.
3. Throttle and Sensor Inspection:
   • Inspected and cleaned throttle sensors; no apparent issues.
4. System Voltage Check:
   • Confirmed stable voltage.
5. Hydraulic System Check:
   • No leaks, and fluid levels are adequate.
6. Motor and Controller:
   • No unusual noises; diagnostics pending due to lack of a compatible diagnostic tool.

Questions:

1. Has anyone experienced similar error codes or issues with their CAT forklifts?
2. Is there a specific diagnostic tool or method recommended for CAT forklifts to get detailed error information?
3. Any suggestions for additional troubleshooting steps or common issues I might have missed?

1.

-They stole seizures from bobo&co
proof/first time mentioning seizures from DD (anyone have the video where bobo&co first mentioned seizures?)

2.

-They originally went by the Dissociadid system but after having a falling out with bobo&co changed their name to Ninandco (bobo&co were one of the first systems online to call themsleves &co until Ninandco / kyaandco popularized it)

3.

-Someone made up a story about them having a new host in 2023 on TikTok, DD then took that story and ran with it even though it was proven to be a lie. This proves DD copies anything.
proof

4.

-Stole alters and parts of their inner world from a book called: The Illuminati Formula to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave by Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler
proof/detailing of what exactly they stole from the book
more proof of them stealing/copying from said book

5.

-Mara the alter was stolen from a popular TikTok creator who had an OC named mara*
proof/admission of stealing aka saying Mara is a fictive

6.

-Stole someone’s alters/story
Proof/that person coming forward to tell their side of things. Name censored for their safety**

Edit: added more things
Here’s a thread that details some stolen things

To start this story off, I suppose it's best to talk a little bit about myself and my experience in the TTRPG space. I've been an avid TTRPG enthusiast for almost two decades now. Yes, I'm a bit of an old hat/old fogey. I started my enjoyment of the hobby with Pathfinder 1st edition, eventually transferring over to DnD 5e when it first arrived on the scene, mostly because it was the new hotness, but I ultimately found that it was better suited for the type of games that I enjoy running at my table. While I very adamantly enjoy the structure that a game's mechanical rules bring to the table, 5e provided a rules system that wasn't invasive, and so me and my friends were able to focus on the things about the game that we enjoyed the most - the roleplaying, the storytelling, and (most importantly) the fun.
Many years would go by, as well as a couple of what I would consider to be successful campaigns - basically anything that managed to survive longer than 3 months. Scheduling, right? I digress. Eventually, I arrived at a point where my current circle of friends and I were itching to play a new campaign, and for the shits and giggles of it we decided we would livestream it on Twitch. At the time, we had managed to get affiliated on Twitch, and one or two of us would occasionally have a couple of viewers pop in when we were streaming whatever video game we were playing, and we figured it would be fun to do the same thing with our next campaign. So we did. As you might expect, nothing really ever came out of it. We were just doing it for fun. The campaign only lasted about 3 months or so, and we never set out with the expectation that what we were releasing into the world was anything amazing - we were just four normal dudes having fun playing a game we enjoyed, and if you happened to find yourself on our Twitch channel to see it, awesome! If not, cool. We weren't doing it for you.
So, yeah, that campaign eventually fell off, and we would eventually return to just streaming whatever video game excited us. One of friends got married, and had a kid, and was too busy for DnD. Another friend got a new job, and his schedule just didn't give him the time. Hell, even I managed to land a pretty decent job at the time, and I struggled to make time for our weekly video game nights, but I managed. But ever since that streamed campaign had ended, I had an itch in the back of my mind that I really wanted to scratch. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about livestreaming our campaign. Sure, it was nothing to write home about, but I fell in love with the showmanship of it all. Maybe it was because of the thought of the potential for someone to eventually watch it, but whenever we would stream, I would get in the zone and pretend I was putting on a show for thousands (even though we may have only ever had three or four viewers at max). Basically, I had fallen in love with the idea of putting on a show for others, and I knew I would jump at the chance to do it again in the future. Enter Wayne.
A little over a year ago (at the time of this posting), I was perusing through the /LFG subreddit and not looking for anything in particular, when I stumbled across a post that checked off all the boxes.
I don't like to admit that I'm picky, but that fact that this sub exists should give credence to that fact that one should, at the very least, have a criteria when looking for games to invest yourself in when looking at advertisements. And if my little backstory above should inform you, there were a number of things on my checklist that this post had. For starters, it was longer than a few sentences. Clearly, the person who posted this was meticulous about what they wanted and what they didn't want (I would learn, much later on, that Wayne was not the one who wrote the post, but one of his players). Secondly, the post was very adamant about what was of paramount importance at the table - rich and compelling narratives, deep exploration of characters, and a passion for roleplay. And thirdly, the plan was to turn this into a "production". The post even included a promo video of respectable quality. Clearly, the people involved with this had a plan, much more of a plan than my friends and I had when we streamed. And, I considered myself a pretty decent roleplayer, so I applied. They were only looking for 1 applicant, but I figured I had a decent shot, with my previous livestreaming experience, and the fact that I already owned a (what some would call excessive) microphone and camera. So I shot my shot. If I didn't get picked, no biggie, life goes on. But when I received a discord invite and told that I had made it to the second round of the application process, I was ecstatic.
It is around here that I should introduce you to our cast of characters (names have been changed, of course:

• There is, of course, me, Dave - a guy who fundamentally believes that fun and safety at a table supersedes everything else, who happens to really enjoy hamming it up in character, and telling exciting stories.
  
• Ava - an already confirmed player at the table, with a past experience of playing with Wayne. I would come to find out that Ava was the one who had written the LFG post. Ava was also in charge of Discord moderation, and the second round interview process. She has her own story, which I will allude to here, but is ultimately hers to share.
  
• Jelly - Wayne's significant other. Jelly was supposedly not involved with the upcoming campaign at all, but had a presence on the Discord, and have previously played in Wayne's campaigns.
  Seth - another already confirmed player at the table. Admittedly, Seth plays a minor role in the story, but his inclusion is necessary.
  
  • and Wayne - the lead character of our story. The DM of the upcoming campaign. The visionary. The guy who plans to have the next big thing in the TTRPG actual play space.

There are at least a half dozen other individuals involved in this story, but ultimately play very minor roles. If at some point while I am writing this one of them pop up, I will update the list above to include them.
Back to the story. I was ecstatic to find out I had been selected for an Discord interview and scheduled it at my earliest convenience. This is where I first meet Ava. To be honest, I don't recall much about the interview, but I remember it being pretty standard and what I was expecting an interview to be. Mostly it was just going into detail about some of the stuff I had included in my primary application and talking about expectations and goals. I was told that after the Discord interview, the next step would be a participation in a practice one shot, to get a feel for how I would play at the table. After the interview was over, Wayne hopped into the voice channel, and this would be when I would meet the man, the legend.
I pride myself on being very good at reading people. I can usually pick up on when someone is trying to sell me something, pretty quickly. I tend to over analyze words and expression looking for intent. I have been gaslit and manipulated several times in my past by people very close to me, and so I have developed this defense when meeting people for the first time. Very rarely do I take someone at their word, or completely buy what they are selling when I hardly know them, and even less so to a complete stranger. In this case, when meeting Wayne for the first time, my defenses failed me.
Perhaps it was because it had been over a year since I last ran a campaign. Perhaps it was because it had been even longer than that that I actually got to be a player in a campaign. Perhaps it was because of that itch of wanting to perform again for an audience. Or, perhaps, it was because Wayne was very good at pitching his plans. Whatever the reason, my first impression of Wayne was that this was a guy who had a plan, and had the means to enact that plan, and I wanted to be a part of it in any way that I could.
Wayne, you see, had two big passions in life. The first was DnD. The second, as he would admit, was being an entrepreneur. He owned his own business in New York City. One of several ventures he had pursued, and it afforded him a premium NYC apartment and the time and luxury to spend on his second passion - playing DnD. And so, he thought, why not marry these two passions together? He had a great head for business. And according to him, the last campaign he had run was fantastic. So fantastic, he thought, that surely other people would enjoy listening to it. And so he hatched a plan - he would use his business knowledge and savvy to launch a Youtube channel that would be home to his next great campaign. But he had the foresight, at least, to know of just how saturated the DnD actual play space has become in recent years. If he wanted to be successful at this venture, he would have to stand out from the rest. And he had a solution to that. He wasn't going to put out just any old DnD actual play. He was going to create "DnD Cinema".
To do that, he said, he needed the right people that share in the same core philosophies that he had. Namely, a "pretentious level of hyperfixation on roleplaying and narrative storytelling". Most other actual plays, to him, were playing "beer and pretzels" DnD. You know, the type of game were you sit around with your friends having a good time and a laugh, where you might spend five minutes on an out of character joke, etc. Shit like that wasn't going to fly in this campaign. When you came to the table, you were going to be in character from start to finish. And recording sessions were going to be seven hours long. Could I handle that?
And I admit that I told him I could. Like I said, he had a way with words. He was clearly passionate about it. And he talked a good talk. And he was friendly enough. So he said he would be in touch. And the wait began.
Over the course of the next month or so, I would come to become friends with Ava and Wayne. We would hop into Discord and play games, talk about the upcoming campaign, etc. It was going to be several months before the campaign actually began recording, and so Wayne was still conducting the interview process while also working on worldbuilding for the campaign. He was also spending over $3000 dollars commissioning an animated table for the youtube video. This was clearly something he was very proud of, as he took every and all opportunity to talk about how amazing and innovative it was going to be.
You see, in Wayne's vision of "DnD cinema", the videos that would be put up on youtube would not include the faces of the players. Or battlemaps. Instead, it would be animated table that he could manipulate in editing at various cue points. It would feature portraits of the characters that would light up when they speak. It was the next big thing in the TTRPG space - a (frankly) audio only experience that was accentuated with the occasional fancy animation that cost thousands of dollars. No one else was doing it, he would say, and that would help him stand out even more.
It was also during these more innocent days that I would come to understand Wayne's obsession with Brennan Lee Mulligan. He idolized the guy. In fact, he would brag on multiple occasions that his significant other's job had her 3 or 4 degrees removed from Brennan - basically, she worked for someone who worked for someone who was involved with the Dungeons and Drag Queens season of Dimension 20, and he would often mention how he was hoping to use that connection to someday have a sit down and meet and greet with BLeeM himself. As time would go on, I would eventually find out that Wayne actually considered Brennan Lee Mulligan as his competition.
About a month would past before I would hear anything about my application. I never brought it up during our gaming sessions, as another core tenet of mine is that I don't want my friendship or acquaintance with someone to give me an edge over other candidates. I want my experience and what I bring to the table to stand on its own merit. This will come up later in our story. Eventually, I would get a message from Wayne asking me if I would be interested in participating in a try out one shot for the campaign. Apparently, he had completely forgotten that I had applied, and wanted to schedule in a last minute try out for me. My fellow players during the one shot would be Ava, some other member of the discord community, and Jelly.
I'll be honest, the one shot was nothing to write home about. And even Wayne would admit it was something he threw together last minute so that he could say I had my chance. I immediately found Ava to be a fantastic scene partner, and even for a one shot, put the time and effort into her character and actions. Jelly, on the other hand, was not that good. To be fair to Jelly, my criteria for grading her performance was strictly on the curve that Wayne himself said he was grading people on. I found her to be a very selfish player, who failed to pick up on narrative cues, and was solely focused on her time in the spotlight. But it was a trial one shot that didn't mean anything. My biggest take away from Jelly was that she was a player that I would not enjoy playing with in the future, and that I wouldn't seek out as a player at a table that I was DMing for. Not horror story bad (yet), but not good. Average.
When the application process was done, it would eventually come down to two choices. I was one. Wayne loved my southern twang, and thought it would sound good in a production. And we had become friends. The other was someone with a theater and acting background, who had been to Julliard. I was not selected. And I was okay with that. The decision did not impact my friendship with either Ava or Wayne, and we continued to hang out and play games together. I then learned of Wayne's new plan.
In the original posting ad for the campaign, it had been mentioned that a possibility for guest character appearing in the campaign could happen. The original idea was that, as members of the Discord community would play in one shots, Wayne would then be able to invite stand out performance to appear in an episode or two of the new campaign, as a gift to the community and to give those players a chance to play in a campaign with other players of similar caliber. This all changed as the months got closer to release date. The idea for guests at the table changed completely. Instead, Wayne's plan was to use the guest spots at the table as a networking opportunity. Don't forget - Wayne is an entrepreneur. This was a business venture for him, and successful businesses need to show growth. And he wanted to achieve growth at an accelerated pace. The plan was simple - as the channel grew, Wayne would scour the internet for similar channels with slightly higher subscriber count than his. Well, I say Wayne would do this. Wayne would actually pawn this off on to someone else. A tangent that I will perhaps need to touch on later in this story - Wayne was very good at finding ways of pawning off work on to others, and then taking the credit. He very much believe himself to be a manager, and other members of the Discord that showed any interest in the success of this venture as his employees. He would then engage in communications with these other channels in the hopes of achieving some Quid Pro Quo. You send someone to be a guest on our channel for a few episodes, and we'll shout you out. In return, he would send someone from his channel to theirs, and get a shout out in return. Something to note here - all of this was done without ever including his players in the discussion. He was offering them up to strangers without even asking if they even wanted to do that.
Time passes, and eventually recording for the campaign begins. It would be about two months into recording when Wayne approached me about being the first guest character. (At this point, I had been an active member of the Discord community for over six months now). He wanted me to be the first guest character for two reasons. The first was because I was familiar, and he wanted to test out the format before bringing in strangers. The second was because of my prior livestreaming experience. I was a part of an affiliated Twitch channel that met the criteria of having a slightly higher subscriber count than his. But for the most part, our old Twitch channel was dead. Sure, we still streamed games into the void, but there was practically no engagement. And I told him so when he asked me if I wanted to be introduced as someone from that Twitch channel. I was more involved in his community as that point, anyway. And so, I finally got what I was wanting - to sit down and play quality DnD with like minded individuals for the purposes of entertaining others.
At this point, only a handful of episodes had aired. The recording schedule had them a grace period of a month or so before release, and I admittedly hadn't watched them. Honestly, I wasn't that interested. I don't know if that's bad or not. There are a lot of actual plays out there of varying quality. And each one requires a lot of time commitment to watch. Already I was regularly watching Critical Roll, and I was having a hard time to find time to watch some of the other really good shows I was enjoying, like Dimension 20 and The Glass Cannon. On top of that, it was an game that I wasn't a part of, so yeah, I admit I hadn't watch any of it. But even if I had, it wouldn't have prepared me for what playing at the table was actually like. The released episodes were highly edited, with sound effects and music. It wasn't until I became actually involved at the table that I would find out just how manufactured the game actually was. And I use the word "game" very generously.
For starters, once recording began, all out of character talk and banter was immediately and explicitly forbidden. We were to remain in character at all times. Secondly, I would find out that Wayne had developed a "formula for success" in regards to time spent recording. No scene would ever last longer than ten minutes. If players spent too much time having their characters engaging with each other and the time elapsed, we were moving on the next scene, regardless of if it was a natural conclusion or not. Speaking of the characters, I would come to learn that the characters that the player brought to this campaign were secondary to the story that Wayne wanted to tell. "This campaign isn't character focused, it's story focused" he would say. The campaign simply did not have time for that. I don't like to toss out the word "railroaded" very often, but it quickly became apparent that there was a good bit of railroading being done here. The only character decisions or choices or conversations that would ever make it to the final cut were ones that provided what he thought would be the most interesting while pushing his narrative forward. And for a DnD game, there wasn't a whole lot of game being done here. Sure, the players had character sheets, and classes, but it was all superficial. Combat was a rarity on the level of a shiny Pokemon. I think mostly because Wayne didn't find combat narratively compelling. But in that case, I have to ask, why use DnD as your game system? If all you want to do is roll clicky dice and improv, there are much better systems out there. And speaking of the dice - I'm sad to say that in most cases they were superfluous, as well. The only real purpose the dice served to Wayne was when they could be used to clip epic moments of success or failure. A natural 20 or a natural 1 was gold for him, because then he could clip it into a Youtube or Tiktok Short and grow those subscriber numbers. For a game in which "every decision hung on the roll of a dice", there weren't a lot of dice rolls, there weren't a lot of decisions, and when there were decisions, most of the time, the outcome was predetermined by Wayne. Everything Wayne did in regards to this game was in service to growing his Youtube channel. And the sad part? It worked.
In a shockingly short amount of time, Wayne was able to grow his Youtube channel from just over a 100 subscribers to over a 1000. This was mostly done by his excessive push of Youtube and Tiktok shorts. For a short period of time, I was deemed trustworthy enough to have access to the Youtube channel's admin, and I could view the statistics. The turnover rate for shorts into actual video views was miniscule. Only a tiny fraction were tuning in for the actual show. At this point, he had just become a Youtube Shorts creator.
And I want to mention at this point - I understand and respect the hustle. The world of Youtube is a dog eat dog world, and you have to have to play the game to stay in the game - I get it. I don't have any issue with being proud of what you've created, and pushing it out to people. I really don't. My issue was with how deceptive Wayne was being with it. And how deceptive he was, in general, as I would come to find out.
You see, before the inaugural campaign had even launched, Wayne approached me one day to see if I would be interested in running a campaign on his channel, as I had experience before in it, and had expressed an interest in doing it again. And I will admit, I was excited about the prospect. But before my words of "Yeah, I'd love to talk about" even had a chance to dissipate into the ether, Jelly would hop into the channel, in the middle of the discussion to say, "You know who should run a campaign? Seth." And then immediately log off.
I don't have a lot to say about Seth. I think he is an amazing, caring, friendly guy. He also happens to be an incredible roleplayer and storyteller, and his character is Wayne's campaign is truly phenomenal. I envy how easy it is for Seth to get into and portray the wide arrange of emotions of a character. He also happens to be a great GM. I understand why Jelly would suggest him to run a campaign. What I didn't understand, at the time, were her motives. Wayne, Ava, Jelly, and Seth had all played in a previous campaign together, and Wayne and Jelly had become enamored by just how good Seth was. And even prior to that, Ava and Seth had a past campaign together. Jelly wanted to be a player in a Seth run campaign. And if Wayne was going to have a second campaign on the channel, she wanted it to be Seth's, and she wanted to be a player in it.
And so, immediately, any and all discussion about me running a campaign was ceased, and the legwork was put forth for Seth to run a campaign. Wayne would approach him about it, and he was interested. Seth would already have in mind the players that he wanted for it - two friends of his from outside the server, Ava, and another player from the Wayne campaign. Noticeably missing from that list - Jelly.
Strangely, Wayne would then tell Seth that if he was going to run a campaign on the channel, he would have to have an application process for the players, and open it up so that anyone could apply. After Seth had already stated he already had players in mind - players who already said yes. I don't know about you, but as a DM, I would never let someone dictate to me who I could have at my table. If I have players in mind already, it's because I have a reason. But Wayne demanded an application process be followed, and a second LFG post would appear in LFG for the Seth run campaign - that was noticeably advertising for 4 players. After Seth had chosen his players. The advertisement came with another well edited and narrated youtube promo that was, and still is, the highest viewed video on the channel. And all of it was a sham. Which I knew it was. And I confronted Wayne about it. It was then that I learned some unsavory backstory involving Ava and Jelly and the prior campaign. That is not my story to tell. I have shared my accounts of events with Ava, and she is considering posting an account from her perspective following this. The most I am willing to say on this is that involves situations that should never be okay at a DnD table, and that Wayne would gloss over and sugarcoat these situations as no big deal. It would lead to Ava not being comfortable with being at a table with Jelly which both I, and Seth, would understand.
Wayne, however, found this to be unfair and manipulative on Ava's part. Those past incidents should have had no bearing on Jelly's consideration for the Seth run campaign. Which is why he would demand an application process. He would then confide to me when I questioned the duplicity of the LFG advertisement that it wasn't completely misleading. There would still be someone chosen from the list of applicants - because he was going to make sure that Ava wasn't part of the campaign. After Seth had already told both Wayne and her that she was. After the players for that game had already come together for a session zero. He claimed that Ava had prior incidents of being difficult to work with, and that because he wasn't involved in the campaign, he couldn't be there to handle any situations that might arise of conflicts between players at the table. At the time I thought that was an odd statement to make - if you are trusting enough of another person, like Seth, to run a campaign on your channel shouldn't you be trusting enough in their ability to handle problems between players? Looking back now, I can only assume he made that statement because he was certain that Jelly would be a player at the table, and that problems might arise between Jelly and Ava. He asked that I keep the conversation between us. But that was something I could not do. None of that situation felt right to me. Wayne, Ava, and I had been friends playing games together for nearly a year now. I never saw any inclination of Ava being a "problem player" - she was great at the table, and a great person to hang out with. And I found it weird that Wayne would say those things about her, and not approach her about it. So of course I talked to her. For weeks she had been sharing her excitement of the new campaign with me, often with Wayne in the voice channel with us. Ava would then share with me her past experiences with Wayne and Jelly. Again, it is not my story to tell, but I am a good judge of character. I believed Ava's account of events. It made sense to me, with how Wayne and Jelly acted.
I wish I could say this story had a happy and/or satisfying conclusion. I'm not even really sure if there is a point to it, or even if it will be a good read. It has been clear for some time now that Wayne has been entirely obsessed with the growing of his Youtube channel, damn any and all bridges burned, and walking back some of his initial promises of what he claimed the campaign and the Youtube channel would be. It's also very clear to me that Wayne is someone who absolutely has to have control over everything, especially the narrative (fictional and real life).
There are so many minor grievances to air about Wayne that I haven't already touched on, and I feel like I've already taken up too much of your time already. Here's just a brief overview, I'd be more than happy to go into more details if you want them:

• Multiple players from the Wayne campaign confided in me about some of the problems they had with Wayne and how the game was being run. When Wayne found out, he blew his lid, and said that he was both Manager and HR, and no one should be complaining to anyone outside of the table. If they were going to complain to anyone, it should be him.
  
  • It turns out, Wayne has a prior history of being an asshole. Long before the Youtube channel, and the campaign, even before the previous campaign, he told his then group that they were playing the game wrong. He then found a new group, sang their praises to the old group, and then even brought both groups together to show the old group "the right way to play"
  • In addition to Wayne, he has two editors working for him. One of which he pays. The other one has had no compensation. The one not getting paid is doing the same work as both Wayne and the paid editor combined.
  • I mentioned way early on in the story that Ava was the Discord Administrator for the Discord server. After the Seth campaign incident, Wayne unceremoniously removed Ava as Administrator, told her it was "by mistake", and never put it back. As far as I can tell, there was nothing to warrant this other than control. I suspect it was because there were certain Seth campaign related channels or other channels he didn't want Ava to see.
  • The unceremonious removal of myself and Ava from the Youtube channel admin. Admittedly, we contributed very little to it, but it was removed without a word mentioned.
  • Recently making a post requiring his "talent" to purchase a minimum $5 dollar Patreon subscription. He has admitted to me the reasoning for this was to inflate Patreon subscriber numbers to entice new subscribers. He has since walked that back after much outcry from the "talent"
  • Asking Seth if it wouldn't be too much to convert his envisioned DnD campaign into a Daggerheart campaign, because Daggerheart is the new hotness, and will attract more viewers.

Ultimately, I suppose I feel disheartened and deceived. Deceived because I originally signed up for what I thought was going to be a bunch of friends sitting around and recording themselves playing quality DnD, and it has shifted so far from that original purpose. Wayne is obsessed over subscriber numbers and views, it's all he ever talks about. He claims that his goal is to reach a level of success to which all 10+ people involved will be able to achieve financial freedom (which he claims is roughly $2000 a month). I'm sure you've done the math, just like I have. Even if you believe $2k a month is financial freedom (I certainly don't), that comes out to $240,000 a year. That's an insane level of success to promise your players. Oh, I'm sorry, your "talent".
I feel disheartened because....there's actually good work being done here. Some of the players are some of the best I've ever played with. Wayne can actually be a good storyteller, when he's not pushing for likes or clicks. The editors do a really fantastic job. I have seen and listened to the work being done on the Seth campaign (luckily Wayne is only tangentially involved), and Seth's campaign is turning out to be something really special. There is something good being done here, but it seems so tainted by Wayne and his obsession for Youtube and Tiktok success. So, maybe this is an RPG Horror Story, maybe it's a cautionary tale. I dunno. I have committed to finishing out my run in the campaign, (I was brought back to the table multiple times because the players enjoy playing with me, and also I suspect I was involved in one of his highest viewed shorts), but my hearts not in it. I've told Wayne I've no interest in any of his future projects, and I wish him well on his Youtube journey. But in the pursuit of clicks, and likes, and subscribers, I feel like he has fundamentally lost what attracts people to actually watch and invest in TTRPG actual plays - authenticity.

Shared Kit 

Brittle Form Kit: 

Forged Form Kit: 

Hi Everyone,
So, I posted here Sunday about my reoccurring issues with my AT&T Fiber home wifi. Here is the link for context:
https://www.reddit.com/HomeNetworking/comments/1cvupcv/issues_with_att_home_network/
So, I got a range extender from AT&T today while I was at work. My wife set it up and tried putting it in three different locations in our house. First was in the den (biggest problem area) right next to her desk, she ended up then moving it to the room directly above the den (usually gets good wifi signal), then moved it to the opposite side of the den. The last place is where it is still sitting. It seems like it works well. It fixed the coverage problems, but the speed is still an issue. At this point, the speed problems are localized to just my wife's desktop and mine.
I've ran several speed tests, and most of them come back at no higher than 20Mbps (I'd say I'm averaging around >10Mbps) on my computer, and most of the time my wife can't even connect to fast.com to complete the speed test. When I look in our management app (provided by AT&T) it shows that both of our devices have a link rate of over 200Mbps. When I look in the Windows settings on both of our devices (in both the Network Settings and the Control Panel) it shows that we have a speed of over 200Mbps. Currently my computer is showing a speed of 433.3Mpbs. Problem is, I'm clearly not getting that.
I've tried everything I can think of at this point. I've checked the gateway location, moved the gateway closer to the problem area, checked for malware, disabled IPv6 on both devices, disabled all other network adapters on both devices. I am literally at a complete loss as to what could be causing this, and why there is such a massive discrepancy between what the computer is showing as the speed and what I am actually getting through speed tests.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Edit: Terminology

2304-2306 Operation Orange Blade: This is a two year short war, fought between the neo-national Separatist the Rangers of Anger, against the Tribes of New Canaan leading the NCR to aid their ally to secure their borders.
2300-2308 Operation Brass Thunder: A slow burn clean up effort to stabilize western and south western Colorado after large amounts of refugees and fatalists flood into the region because of the Wars of Bonita and Escondito.
Side note: it was a violence heavy conflict due to large about of BOS deserters in the region that created powerful militias, use recovered weapons cashes leading to an unexpected brutal slog.
2310-2315 Operation Mountain Reign; Establishing infrastructure through out the Colorado Territory and establishing an alliance network within the region.
2310: The Maxson Madness/ Operation Freezing Icarus
A Impromptu raid and neighborhood shootout of a local ba grill being ran by and housing alleged R.O.T. sympathizers this event ended up setting the ground work for the Venturan civil war of 2313, after several member fled the country and went to Ventura.
2310- ongoing Operation Desert Rain: The Long range regional focus on maintaining stability and peace in and between the allied territories and this extensions while monitoring the Fatalist cult.
2313-2315 The Venturan Civil War: Not to be confused with the War in Ventura, the Venturan Civil War was a conflict that started after the Republic of Texas withdraws support of the fledgling country leading to mass panic and war to ensue in the power struggle. This event was ended by the NCR invasion in 2315 Side note: The NCR would use this opportunity to get the ROT Border with little resistance after hearing the group if Fugitives were spotted around the Ventura area.
2315 The mobilization for the invasion of ROT: Due to the ever-increasing pressure from the Fatalist Cult and their second somewhat loss after fighting two ideological wars against the ROT, an invasion was launched after a Red Raider group was caught trying to sneak into the town of Anonci. Before landing within ROT territory a standby was called due to a weighing political pressure back in NCR against possible ten year long war.
Notable events: the dissolving of the MWBoS ROT Alliance: Due to unexplained circumstances, the Mid-Western Brotherhood of Steel, after mysterious learning about the ROT involvement with the back door funding of the Fatalist Cult and the wild nature of their actions the alliance was broke and War was declared. 2312
The MWBoS-FC War The prolonged finally declared war against the FC. 2312
The NCR-MWBoS concurrent Non Aggression pact ROT/ War effect This discussion series ended with the NCR and MWBoS enacting a nonaggression pact and a semi-alliance as they both declared war against the ROT.
Side note: By this point, the Republic of Texas had expanded into Oklahoma, as well as parts of Louisiana. It had overstretched most of its resources, and trying to keep all areas properly equipped was now a well and weakened state that the FC was willing to turn on their once benefactors.
Additional side note with all these failing and no backers it’s was only a matter of time before subtractions broke off and multifaceted civil war would dissolve the fragile union.
2315-2318 Operation Flash Reaction: The stabilization of Civil War Ventura As part of the invasion plan taking over the only possible ally of the Republic of Texas was mandatory though Ventura has fallen to multiple war lords lead factions it’s largest was still looking to get into the ROT’s good graces. This but if knowledge lead to a Special Interest Task Force being sent into directly eliminate the leader of the largest war lord faction who technically had the remaining standing government and the majority of resources under his control.
Additional side note:
After the dissolving of the ROT the plan to stabilize Ventura took the majority of the newly directed effort. This endeavor took three years but only because it was difficult to squash all the small pockets of resistance across the region. With no hope the ROT would come to help or any other nation to assist, the smaller groups later surrender or fled the nation.
2319-2325 The Rise of the Grizzly Brotherhood and their Clash with the NCR
After the Venturan Civil War and Operation Flash Reaction a couple of the remnants of several different factions came together to form that most terrifying alliance in the entire Western United States. The Grizzly Brotherhood. This Masterminded collective set up shop in the great expanse of Wyoming just out of the NCRs reach but not for long. After a scout patrol ambushed a group of NCR Soldiers a war was waged between the two factions that lasted six years.

Hi im 17m and 2 on monday morning around 8am i was chilling at the park with my football i was playing alone for around 45min and then a teen girl approached me with her dog i guess that she’s around 14-16 yrs old she was well raised and politely asked me to take the ball for a few minutes to play with her dog and asked me to come if i wanted i said no and sat on my phone till she’s done
after a while she gave me the ball back and thanked me while going out of the field to the playground w her dog
And around 2 mins after she’s gone an old man came to me he was healthy and can walk freely and asked me why didn’t u play with her ? I said I don’t want to then he said ok how about u calling her again to the field and play w her for a while then we fuck her and run
I stayed silent for a while i was shocked…. Then i told him wtf? U want to rape a girl at that age ? R u serious? And he said why not? I looked at him in disgust and said fuck off and don’t touch her then he started to asking me to play football with him and kept chatting about different things even though im ignoring him and tell him to fuck off
i knew something was weird about him and honestly i was afraid of that weird conversation cus i thought he had a weapon with him or smth because he got a belt around he stomach while wearing a pajama after that he walked away ,
after that i got a call from school to come and take my certificate and i walked away while feeling concerned about leaving the girl and the man alone at the park but i noticed a man sitting in his car right of the park and i saw her huge dog then tried to stay in my car till the girl goes but i got a called again for being late
i still have some anger against this old man so im gonna be back to that park even though i have a test tomorrow but i can’t sleep while feeling concern about the girl everyday i will teach him a lesson tomorrow morning. But i don’t know if that’s the right thing cause i know i can’t control my anger and i might actually kill him so should i tell the girl about him or report him to the police even though i got no evidence??

Frey Holland

"I'll let you in on a secret, but… I'm a pretty big deal. Like, actually I'm kind of a big deal now!"
A New York native, Frey Holland is in reality a descendant of Athia’s lineage of matriarchs, the Tanta’s. Daughter of the Tanta of Love, Cinta, Frey has a powerful magical affinity within her. And that magic is only amplified by the magical parasite she calls Cuff—although he’d prefer Vambrace. For more info, look at my beautifully crafted, full-length respect thread of the girl of all girls.
Strength

• Breaks open a locked door with a launched projectile
  
• One of Frey's attacks leaves cracks in Tanta Sila's throne. The throne is presumably made of some type of stone.
  

Durability

• Takes a large fireball that sets the entire wall and a few bookcases aflame
  
• Her shield takes a hit that destroys Tanta Sila's entire throne room, leaving nothing behind but shattered walls and pillars
  
• Takes a kick that craters the floor and kicks rocks into the air
  
• Takes three blasts from Susurrus and falls off her dragon/mother's back down to the floor. Though she is teleported closer to the ground mid fall, the actual distance is still considerable
  

Speed

• Dodges a point-blank swing from Tanta Sila's sword

Magic

• Frey’s magic is divided by the Tanta’s, whose magic she absorbs after she defeats them. These give her the power over specific elements, namely:
  
  • Frey’s own magic: Earth/nature
    
    • Can use magic to make gigantic branches emerge from the ground
    • Frey can bind foes with living plants.
    • Her bonds are strong enough to constrain Tanta Sila, the Tanta of strength.
  • Tanta Sila's Magic: Fire
    
    • Can use Sila's control over fire to pull people towards her like a whip.
    • Sila's magic allows Frey to use a blade brimming with flames.
    • Frey can also unleash a flurry of fiery punches.
    • Can enclose an area in flames
  • Tanta Prav's Magic: Water
    
    • Can use Prav's control over water and gravity to float into the air.
    • Can summon a watery pillar that spouts out from the ground.
    • Can trap foes with water and then freeze them.
  • Tanta Olas' Magic: Lightning
    
    • Can use Olas' control over electricity to zip across the battlefield at high speeds.
    • Can make an area erupt in lightning.
    • Frey can create an illusory decoy of herself.
    • Can cast a storm-charged spear that erupts into lightning.

Misc. skills

• Frey Holland is immune to the Break, a magical disease that affects everyone else in Athia but her.
  
• Is adept at climbing/parkour, even without magic. With magic, these skills are only heightened.
  
• Eventually, she gains control over Torana's (magical portals) and is able to summon them at will.
  
  • These portals are inter- as well as intradimensional
• Has a super cool girlfriend <3
  

How to Use Frey on R slash WhoWouldWin

Frey’s main boon is her large variety of magical options. Her physicals aren’t all that impressive, but an opponent who is slightly more physically capable than her could be overpowered or overwhelmed by her sheer amount of options. Her speed with Olas’s magic (though only really expressed in gameplay, so should be taken with a grain of salt) is also incredibly impressive. If you are to use her, I’d suggest opponents who are more physically focused and maybe lacking in the magical/esoteric department.

First / Previous / Royal Road / Patreon (Read 12 Chapters Ahead)

Together, Pale and Kayla dragged the mage back to the cave they'd been using for shelter, barely managing to get him inside before the snowfall began again. Pale tied his hands behind his back and his legs together using some paracord she had in her pack, and the two of them stood over the man, staring down at him.
"What now?" Kayla asked. "Do we wait for him to-"
Pale cut her off by bringing the stock of her shotgun across the berserker's face. He reeled from the strike, suddenly catapulting awake, his eyes wide as several of his teeth came spilling out across the stone cave floor. He coughed, spitting out a glob of blood before fixing her with a harsh glare. Smoke began to rise from his palms, but Pale stopped him by putting the barrel of her gun flush with his crotch.
"Unless you want to lose something, I'd suggest keeping your magic under control," she threatened. "Because if I pull this trigger, there isn't a healer alive who'll be able to give back what you'll lose."
The man snarled at her, but the smoke curling up from his hands stopped all the same. He spat out more blood. "The fuck am I still alive for?"
"I think you know exactly what you're alive for. Now, are you going to play nice and tell us what we want to know, or am I going to have to force it out of you piece by piece?"
The mage grinned at her, showing off a mouth full of missing teeth and liquid crimson. "You really think I'd betray my brothers like that?"
"Last I checked, your brothers are all dead," Pale said absentmindedly. "But still, I was hoping you'd pick the hard way; I needed to relieve some stress."
She let her shotgun hang from its sling, then drew her knife. With her free hand, she grabbed one of his fingers, then positioned the blade at the tip.
"Last chance to offer up what you know," she threatened.
The mage barked out a laugh. "Fuck off. You really think I'd ever-"
His bravado suddenly gave way to an agonized scream as Pale forced the blade of her knife underneath his fingernail. He thrashed in agony as she twisted the knife before roughly yanking it free, taking the fingernail with it. She held the disembodied nail up to him, then flicked it away.
"Have I made my point?" she said evenly. "Because last I checked, you've still got nine fingers and ten toes, not to mention a variety of other things I could poke at and prod at and cut off. And when you run out of those, I can just start skinning you bit by bit."
"Fuck you…" he breathed through gritted teeth. "I'll never-"
She took another fingernail for his troubles. Idly, Pale was aware of Kayla flinching with every scream that erupted out of the man's throat, but that didn't bother her.
Kayla had specified no death, but that didn't mean she couldn't make this hurt like hell.
She again positioned the knife at one of his fingertips, only for him to give a weak, shuddering, pain-filled cough.
"W-wait…" he croaked.
"I see your tongue has been thoroughly loosened," she surmised, though she didn't dare to move the blade even a millimeter away from his next finger.
"What do you have for me?"
"I can give you our leader's name."
"And?"
"What do you mean, and? He doesn't tell us anything, he just pays us and feeds us, like any good leader should."
Pale's expression narrowed. "You had better give me something more substantial to go on, otherwise I have no reason to keep you around."
"Pale-" Kayla began, only to fall silent when she held up a hand. Reluctantly, Kayla backed down, though she continued to look on with concern as Pale's grip around her blade turned white-knuckled.
"Tell me something useful," Pale demanded. "Unless you want to see exactly how much pain I can commit to before I get bored."
"Okay, okay!" the bandit growled. "Fine… our leader's name is Sven Greymane, the warrior-king of the northern isles. He's the one who ordered us to attack certain towns on this continent."
"Is that why you sacked some and completely bypassed others?"
He nodded. "Yes. That was all part of the plan – he'd give us locations to attack, pay us in gold and food to attack them, and then let us keep whatever valuables we wanted afterwards."
"And did he tell you why he only wanted specific locations attacked, while others were to be spared?"
The mage shook his head. "No, and we knew better than to ask questions given how good of a deal it was."
Kayla suddenly stepped forwards. "One of those towns was my village," she growled. "Your friends captured several people, including my father, and took them back to the northern isles."
The mage leaned in, squinting to get a better look at her, before finally shrugging. "I don't know anything about that."
"Liar," Pale hissed.
"It's the truth. I wasn't involved with the attack on any Beastkin town."
"Of course, you'd say that," Kayla said through gritted teeth. "You're worried about what will happen to you if you admit to us here and now that you had something to do with it."
"Don't know what else to tell you. I had nothing to do with the attack on you and yours, and I didn't take any Beastkin slaves."
"Enough of this," Pale snapped. "How long do we have to find her father?"
The bandit cracked a wide grin at her. "You're probably already too late. If the girl's father is anything like her, then he's already been deemed to be useless as a slave – too mouthy for his own good, and mouthy slaves don't last very long among my people."
A vein pulsed in Kayla's forehead as she clenched and unclenched her fists. "Answer the question," she demanded. "Assuming he isn't murdered before we can get there, how long do slaves typically last while with your people?"
"Depends on the slave. Men tend to last longer, provided they're young enough and in good health. Of course, he was taken in the first place, so I assume that someone saw some value in him, at least enough to want him for themselves. Now, that only accounts for a berserker warrior having a bad day and killing someone as a result. If he's unlucky, he'll succumb to the elements before long." The mage shrugged. "It wouldn't make any sense for us to spend all that time capturing and enslaving someone only to let them die so soon, unless they just so happened to be a massive pain in the ass."
"So you claim," Pale said dismissively. "What else do you have for us?"
"I've told you enough," the man grunted. "Now hurry up and let me go."
"And why would I do that?" Pale demanded. "So you can go back to robbing and killing the innocent? Is your life really worth the lives of the people you'd kill if we let you go?"
"It is to her." He motioned towards Kayla, who was staring at him and trembling as she bit her lip, deep in thought.
Pale's eyes narrowed. "Kayla."
Kayla jumped slightly at the sound of her name being called. She hesitated for a moment before letting out a sigh. "...You should let him go."
"You know I can't do that, Kayla. If we let him go, he'll just go right back to doing what brought him here. Either we end this here and now and prevent him from taking more innocent lives, or he goes on for however long it takes for someone else to put him down."
"I know!" Kayla spat. "It's just… I don't know what to do… I don't want to be responsible for someone's death like this…"
"I understand that, but this is war," Pale insisted. "Death is an unavoidable part of that."
"What do you mean, war?" Kayla asked, horrified at the prospects of what Pale had just suggested. "You… you really are a soldier, aren't you? That's why you're doing this – it's a chance to do what you were made to do…"
"War is in my nature," Pale insisted. "It is why I was created. You are correct that this is a chance to fulfill my prime directive, but not in the way that you think." She turned her gaze back towards the bandit. "I need to get off this planet and back into the war I left behind before it's too late to save my creators. If killing this man will get me there faster, then I will not hesitate to do that."
"But… you can't know that killing him will help with that," Kayla pointed out. "He's just one man…"
"Every second spent debating his existence is one not spent working towards my ultimate goal. I ask for your input on what to do with him because I value your opinion as my ally, and do not wish to alienate you by leaving you out of major decisions such as that, but that does not mean I will not try to make you see reason when I think you are about to make a terrible decision." Pale sheathed her knife and hefted her shotgun. "You are concerned with the loss of innocent life, yes? Well, letting me kill this man will save an untold number of them. Is his life really worth all of theirs?"
"You can't think of it that way! He's still a person, too!"
"He is," Pale agreed. "But as far as I am concerned, his right to life is now forfeit, as he used it to torture and murder other people."
The bandit suddenly burst out laughing. "Listen to you two! You're honestly debating whether or not to take a life. How quaint, not to mention innocent. Consider me entertained."
Pale bashed him with the stock of her gun once more, knocking a few more of his teeth out in the process. As he coughed on blood and bone shards, she turned back to Kayla.
"See reason in this," she implored. "Letting him live means-"
"I know!" Kayla interrupted. Her wolf ears flattened against her skull, and in a quieter voice, she repeated, "...I know."
Her tail lashed behind her, and finally, she shook her head. "...I was willing to fight for you," she said softly. "I tried to convince you that you weren't just a killing machine – that you had a sjel, and that it was worth something. And maybe I was right. But even if I was… even if you're not just a killing machine… you seem dead-set on trying to be one. And if that's what you want, then who am I to stop you? Do what you want with him, Pale; after all, it's what you were programmed to do."
Kayla turned and marched out of the cave. Pale watched her go, waiting until she was completely gone before acting.
A single gunshot split the night.

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, Ickbard for the help with writing this story.

• Lesson video
• Complementary video

INTRO

Today you're going to set-up another user on your system. You're going to imagine that this is a help-desk person that you trust to do just a few simple tasks:

• check that the system is running
• check disk space with: df -h

...but you also want them to be able to reboot the system, because you believe that "turning it off and on again" resolves most problems :-)
You'll be covering a several new areas, so have fun!

YOUR TASKS TODAY

• Create a new user
• Create a new group
• Create a new user and add to an existing group
• Make a new user a sudoer

Follow this demo

ADDING A NEW USER

Choose a name for your new user - we'll use "helen" in the examples, so to add this new user:
sudo adduser helen
(Names are case-sensitive in Linux, so "Helen" would be a completely different user)
The "adduser" command works very slightly differently in each distro - if it didn't ask you for a password for your new user, then set it manually now by:
sudo passwd helen
You will now have a new entry in the simple text database of users: /etc/passwd (check it out with: less), and a group of the same name in the file: /etc/group. A hash of the password for the user is in: /etc/shadow (you can read this too if you use "sudo" - check the permissions to see how they're set. For obvious reasons it's not readable to just everyone).
If you're used to other operating systems it may be hard to believe, but these simple text files are the whole Linux user database and you could even create your users and groups by directly editing these files - although this isn’t normally recommended.
Additionally, adduser will have created a home directory, /home/helen for example, with the correct permissions.
ATTENTION! useradd is not the same as adduser. They both create a new user, but they interact very differently. Check the link in the EXTENSION section to see those differences.

ADDING A NEW GROUP

Let's say we want to all of the developers in my organization to have their own group, so they can have access to the same things.
sudo groupadd developers
On most modern Linux systems there is a group created for each user, so user "ubuntu" is a member of the group "ubuntu". But if you want, you can create a new user directly into an existing group, using the ingroup flag. So a new user fred would be created like this:
sudo adduser --ingroup developers fred

ADDING AN USER TO GROUPS

Users can also be part of more than one group, and groups can be added as required.
To see what groups you're a member of, simply type: groups
On an Ubuntu system the first user created (in your case ubuntu), should be a member of the groups: ubuntu, sudo and admin - and if you list the /valog folder you'll see your membership of the sudo group is why you can use less to read and view the contents of /valog/auth.log
The "root" user can add a user to an existing group with the command:
usermod -a -G group user
so your ubuntu user can do the same simply by prefixing the command with sudo.
Because the new user helen is not the first user created in the system, they don't have the power to run sudo - which your user has by being a member of the group sudo.
So, to check which groups helen is a member of, you can "become helen" by switching users like this:
sudo su helen
Then:
groups
If you try to do stuff only a sudo user can do, i.e. read the contents of /valog/auth.log, even using the prefix sudo won't work. Helen is not a sudo and has no permissions to perform this action.
Now type "exit" to return to your normal user, and you can add helen to this group with:
sudo usermod -a -G sudo helen
Instead of switching users again, simply run the groups helen to check. Try that with fred too and check how everything works.
See if any of your new users can sudo reboot.

CLEVER SUDO TRICKS

Your new user is just an ordinary user and so can't use sudo to run commands with elevated privileges - until we set them up. We could simply add them to a group that's pre-defined to be able to use sudo to do anything as root (like we did with helen) - but we don't want to give fred quite that same amount of power.
Use ls -l to look at the permissions for the file: /etc/sudoers This is where the magic is defined, and you'll see that it's tightly controlled, but you should be able to view it with: sudo less /etc/sudoers You want to add a new entry in there for your new user, and for this you need to run a special utility: visudo
To run this, you can temporarily "become root" by running:
sudo -i
Notice that your prompt has changed to a #
Now simply run visudo to begin editing /etc/sudoers - typically this will use nano.
All lines in /etc/sudoers beginning with "#" are optional comments. You'll want to add some lines like this:

# Allow user "fred" to run "sudo reboot" # ...and don't prompt for a password # fred ALL = NOPASSWD:/sbin/reboot 

You can add these line in wherever seems reasonable. The visudo command will automatically check your syntax, and won't allow you to save if there are mistakes - because a corrupt sudoers file could lock you out of your server!
Type exit to remove your magic hat and become your normal user again - and notice that your prompt reverts to: $

TESTING

Test by logging in as your test user and typing: sudo reboot Note that you can "become" helen by:
sudo su helen
If your ssh config allows login only with public keys, you'll need to setup /home/helen/.ssh/authorized_keys - including getting the owner and permissions correct. A little challenge of your understanding of this area!

EXTENSION

If you find this all pretty familiar, then you might like to check and update your knowledge on a couple of related areas:

• Restricting shell access
• Linux Password & Shadow File Formats
• What's the difference between 'useradd' and 'adduser'?
• How to create users and groups in Linux from the command line
• Learn how to use the $EDITOR environmental variable to set your default editor to vim. With this done, visudo will use vim rather than nano for editing.

RESOURCES

• How To Edit the Sudoers File
• Sudo – An Advanced Howto
• A cartoon that should now make sense!
• Basic Linux Permissions: sudo and sudoers (video)

PREVIOUS DAY'S LESSON

• Day 12 - Transferring files

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