This is a bit of a rant, I'm working for a SaaS company as a solo mobile dev, where I built 3 native iOS apps from scratch. The main app is a glorified stats app with a lot of CRUD functionality and users love the app - 4.8 score on the App Store. Problem is the app is not actually generating income, it's a more of an accessory to the web app. And due to the raises over the years, management thinks the value they get from it is not on par with how much it costs them. Now they want to add an Android app but keep the costs down and someone had an idea to switch to RN so that there's only one code base. They don't realize how this could end up as shooting themselves in the foot.
Now I'm considering what's the best course of action for me:

1. Get a new job - I'd like to avoid that, currently the overall arrangement is really good, I work with amazing, talented people, have a full creative freedom - almost no meetings, just working on improving the app(s) and adding new features and it's fully remote, not even tied to any timezones.
2. Suck it up and switch to RN - also not a good option
3. Fight - explain to them why RN might be not a good idea and pitch them something like the KMM(which I just learned about), essentially keep them happy by giving them the Android app while still keeping myself happy by not ditching the native development completely... this could be potentially good for me, will get to learn some new tech and grow

They dropped this on me on Friday and it kinda ruined my weekend to be honest. They did mention they are happy with me and that they want to keep me.
Any thoughts/input? Is there some other option? Or can you recommend a tech stack I should use?

I just got a melanistic male groupie, and I have some questions. Do people like studding to melanistic males? Especially low gens? (Can melanism even pass down?) If I were to sell him, how much could he go for? I half expect he'd be an unpopular choice of stud due to the fact you can't see any markings on him without using the wardrobe. I'm tempted to keep him just because but I wouldn't mind making some GB. (I do think he'd make for a cool space themed king tho lol) Thoughts?

After a couple of hours I was finally able to decipher the contents of this signal. Unfortunately, it's not as important of a discovery as I imagined. It's just a bunch of random basic math. But I guess it's better than nothing :P Feel free to use the images anywhere you want :)

🪞
Welcome back to the Asylum write-up, where we explore the decade-long slow-motion car crash that is the Emilie Autumn fandom.
Sorry this installment took so long to upload! Just a heads-up, I may take some time to deliver the last one too – these posts take forever to format on Reddit's finicky-ass editor, and my dumb real life is currently keeping me from precious Internet time. Thank you for your patience! You have my word that everyone who pre-ordered the final installment will receive a PERSONAL, HANDWRITTEN letter autographed and illustrated by me, a list of the snacks I consumed while composing this write-up, some exclusive behind-the-scenes secrets, and a pony.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4.1 – Part 4.2 Part 5

Places, everyone This is a test Throw your stones Do your damage Your worst, and your best (...) And if I had a dollar For every time I repented the sin And commit the same crime I'd be sitting on top of the world today (“God Help Me”, 2006🎵)

Quick recap of where we left off. First, there were five to ten halcyon years of pleasant and meaningful interactions between EA and her blossoming fanbase, prominently by way of her official forum. Then, circa 2009-2010, EA's online presence shifted towards sudden anger outbursts, ban-hammering, and an increasingly top-down communication style.
This created a sort of primordial rift within the fanbase, between those who supported EA's right to speak her mind and regulate her own fan spaces however she pleased – and those who thought that her reactions were rude and inappropriate (at best), and that even fan spaces should allow for reasonable, non-abusive criticism of the artist.
Between a poorly-handled book release (see Part 3), the controversial (Part 2) or dubiously true (Part 4) contents of said book, and serious shade from various former collaborators (Part 5), more and more fans had pressing thoughts about EA's work ethic and choices. EA attempted damage control through drastic forum rules that made it virtually impossible to voice any “serious” critical opinion. It didn't work, of course: instead of squashing the mutiny, she created a schism.
Critical fans and active haters started congregating on unofficial platforms.

“WITH MUFFINS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?”: TROLL LIKE A GIRL

So here we were, the early 2010s. The official forum (which had about 700 members in 2006, if you recall) was now thousands-strong, reaching just over 12,000 registered users in 2012 – not all of them active, but still. In terms of sheer numbers and content creation, the party was POPPIN'... but increasingly in parts of the Asylum that escaped EA's jurisdiction, such as Tumblr, where they could speak their mind freely.

You play the victim very well You've built your self-indulgent hell You wanted someone to understand you Well, be careful what you wish for, because I do (“I Know Where You Sleep”, 2006🎵)

In one wing of Asylum Tumblr, a smattering of call-out blogs emerged, which laid out EA's various lies, faux pas, shitty takes, and general deep-seated terribleness in detailed timelines and screenshots (or, short of that, long-winded bullet points). While many such blogs framed it as “serious” whistleblowing and did their best to remain as fact-based and neutral as they could, there was some genuine disgust, animosity and creepiness towards EA on that side of Tumblr; for some ex-fans, “exposing the truth” was mostly justify obsessive hatred, prying and verbal abuse. Some, for instance, felt the bizarre need to side with EA's mother in their estrangement. (One user, with the URL “emilyautumnfischkopf”, argued in a serious and down-to-earth tone - but with zero sources - that EA's upbringing had been nothing but peaceful and supportive until she ungratefully kicked her loving family to the curb for no reason at all. They were later revealed 🔍 to have an alternate handle as “eaisalyingcunt”.)
Either way, through these blogs, a number of potential drama bombs that had mostly flown under the radar were dredged up from over the years – some of which were hard to ignore, even for supportive fans. Where to begin?
There was that nonsense in-joke song, captured twice on camera during the 2009 tour (to very little outrage, at the time), crassly called “Manatee Retard”📺. Or EA's scathing response, in print, to a wheelchair user who found it insensitive that she used a bedazzled wheelchair as a prop to do sexy acrobatics on stage. (“Your offence taken at my hard-won self-acceptance proves that I indeed have something to fight against”, she wrote). Spoken word tracks where she made trivializing knock-knock jokes about serious mental illnesses she didn't have, like schizophrenia and OCD. Multiple instances of calling Britney Spears a “bimbo” and a “Hollywood fucked-up”, resentfully claiming that she only shaved her head because she was “hopped up on drugs” and certainly not because she was “bipolar”, a word the press liked to wield as an insult anyway. (“That's almost like calling someone a retard!” Yeah, heaven forbid.) The meanest, most distasteful paragraphs in the book. Basically everything problematic EA had ever said or written.📝 In retrospect, it had been a long time coming, but it was a lot to take in – and certainly more off-putting, even to less emotionally invested fans, than silly lies about her age and last name.
In another wing of Asylum Tumblr, some fans had had it up to here and just wanted to have fun. 🎵 If Plague Rats had learned one valuable lesson from EA, it was how to crack a joke in the face of absurd tragedy – and the general state of the EA fandom certainly warranted a few.
In 2012, Fight Like a Girl was released. After six long years, three of which had been peaceful, the Opheliac era was officially over. The new album and ensuing tour confirmed that the Asylum had entered a process of glamorous Broadway-style militarization. 🎵📺
The mood board was “Roman general meets Vegas showgirl meets Victorian street urchin”.🪞 The color palette was, to naysayers, “musty pink and rotten, stale piss yellow”. 🐀 The keyword was “REVENGE” (through the power of... self-expression! sorority! brutal assault with rusty medical implements!). The chorus of the title song had an intriguing run-on line about getting “revenge on the world, or at least 49% of the people in it” 🎵 – which seemed like an awful lot, and was widely interpreted (to cheers, boos, or uncomfortable sighs) as a misandrist jab at literally all men on Earth.
The show was essentially a demo version of the musical, in that the setlist vaguely reflected the order of events in the story – but prior reading was essential in order to get what the hell was going on on stage. This one Broadway reviewer had not perused the literature before seeing the show 🔍, and hated: the set, the choreography, the skits, the plot, the lyrics, the music, the concept. (Seriously, you should read the review. It's not even my show and I feel like quitting show business.)
Pre-show VIP encounters, now violin-free, were lorded over by EA's new manager🐀, whose official title was “Asylum Headmistress”. (Interesting choice – she sounds fun!) The swag bags were less substantial than before, and the “greet” part of the meet-and-greet was rarely more than a quick hug and photo op.
On Twitter, EA continued to embrace her “I am very badass” fronting attitude...

Often wonder if cyberbullies r aware they’re fucking w/ a girl who’s BFs w/ maker of the SAW films & is marrying a knife-throwing scorpion. (🐀📝)

...and her taste for needlessly inflammatory statements. About an aisle sign in a supermarket:

If this does not infuriate you, then you're a fucking potato.

(Again with the confounding crypto-ableism, EA! 🔍) She also went through a phase of raging against Lady Gaga 📝, who had stolen her idea of using a wheelchair on stage as an able-bodied woman. 🔍 That failed to convince anyone that she wasn't the histrionic diva that haters made her out to be.
Spurred on by EA's rallying cries and “us vs them” mentality, loyalists turned the white-knighting up to 11. On Twitter, some Plague Rats got into cat fights with Lady Gaga's Little Monsters (what a time to be alive). Others tried to balance out the Tumblr negativity with initiatives like “Spreading a Plague of Love” – a “positive-only” confession blog, whose extreme fangirling, comically drastic rules and hyper-defensive tone📝 did not debunk the increasingly popular notion that “true Plague Rats” were a bunch of authoritarian and hopelessly brainwashed fanatics.
EA truthers and other anti-fans started lashing out at anyone who dared express any positive opinion of EA, solidifying claims that the backlash against EA was just a conspiracy of bitter, hysterical bullies.
All this to say: every passing day brought new reasons for fans to get mad at EA and each other, and everyone in the Asylum was in need of a laugh. It's not easy having a good time.🦠
Leading up to Fight Like a Girl and in the years that followed, user-submission-based meme blogs took off, most notably “Spreading a Plague of Lulz / Troll Like a Girl”. A lot of the early submissions were absurdist humor and toothless, cheezburger-Impact memes (a style that was, oddly, already dated at the time). Those often originated in good fun, and from loyal fans, on the official forum. But there was also true snark, satirizing EA's questionable ethics, outrageous claims, and easily spoofed artistic gimmicks. A new slang of Asylumspeak emerged: Glittertits (slight NSFW), GAGA!!, EA Gusta and all its memeface variants, Get outta mah house!, Are You Suffering?, Fight Like A Goat, [Random celebrity] copied EA (a subgenre in its own right), ...
Most of the “trolling” was directed at unrepentant bootlickers and, to a lesser extent, red-in-the-face haters and creeps. Meme blogs would post joke comments under “serious” or gushing submissions on Wayward Victorian Confessions, and taunt loyalist accounts by tagging them in their posts. When a few people complained on WVC that almost all of the Bloody Crumpets to date had been thin white able-bodied women, and a few fans responded by sharing their dream-casts for a more diverse line-up, the blog was flooded for days with confessions that “X should be a Crumpet” (candidates included RuPaul, Mitt Romney, Nicki Minaj, EA's therapist, and the WVC admins). Farcical shenanigans like that.
Ah, but some people will always cross the line, won't they. EA threads popped up on merciless, bully-friendly snark platforms like Lolcow, Pretty Ugly Little Liar, and Encyclopedia Dramatica. Snarkers with a mean streak and obsessive haters mingled in some of the more aggressive, 4-chan-spirited retaliation against EA – which would be called “brigading” in modern parlance. This included flooding EA's Goodreads page with one-star reviews (see part 4), repeatedly editing her Wikipedia page to include her legal name and birth year, and ensuring that Googling said name would bring up current pictures of her.
All of this compounded agitation fragmented the once-united fandom beyond recognition.🦠 Through substantial disagreements among fans, personal bickerings, layers upon layers of inscrutable in-jokes, and cross-platform telephone games, the Asylum morphed into a booby-trapped Escher room.
Satire blogs were taken in earnest. Earnest fan blogs scanned as satire. Memes would get called out as abuse. Appreciation without attached criticism would get mocked as bootlicking. Obvious jokes made by EA would be taken at face value. One divisive confession could trigger days and days of debate, to the point that WVC eventually banned confessions in response to other confessions. New waves of infighting created a confusing web of rival sub-factions🐀, each accusing the others of being toxic, cliquish, and delusional.
The shared fantasy was broken, the collective vision had crumbled, no onez was speaking the same language anymore. Fans would jump down the throat of other fans who held almost identical views about EA, except for that one thing she said or did that one time. Everyone had differing thoughts on what should or shouldn't acceptable to discuss, question, excuse, make fun of.
War is hell.

SCORCHED EARTH SHENANIGANS: HONEY, I SHRUNK THE ASYLUM

Would you tear my castle down Stone by stone And let the wind run through my windows Till there was nothing left But a battered rose? (“Castle Down”, 2003🎵)

Haters vs sycophants is not really the kind of conflict where one side can come out on top (if you're participating, you've already lost). But in the long tug-of-war between “grassroots” and “EA-sponsored” fan spaces, the ultimate winner is obvious – in that the former is gasping in agony, a shriveled husk of its former glory, while the latter... is non-existent. This is due in no small part to EA's tendency, like the Czars of old, to settle conflicts by setting Moscow on fire.🔍)
That's not entirely fair: unlike EA, the czar only did it that once.
By early 2013, as EA was gearing up for her third Fight Like a Girl tour at the end of the year, the official forum was... not as lively as it once had been. Not just because of the stifling rules and disgruntlement towards EA, or because EA herself hadn't really posted anything on there in years; the Internet was also changing, and forums in general were fast becoming passé.
This made it difficult for EA to create a safe space where she could talk to fans, and fans could talk to and about her, in a way she deemed suitable (ie, a space she could gate-keep and regulate enough to keep it completely free from negative criticism). Social media was a minefield; she still posted regularly, but didn't interact very much. So EA and the Headmistress came up with a way to filter out the unbelievers: an official fan club📝, aptly called the “Asylum Army”, with a $100 entry price.
Joining the AA came with a dog tag, a sew-on patch, and a lifetime membership certificate signed by EA and – for some reason – the Headmistress. (Unlike EA's best friend and sound engineer back in the forum's heyday, I don't think fans ever really embraced the FLAG-era manager as part of the Asylum in-group. She came across more as a coordinator / businessperson / adult chaperone, at best.🐀) So, slightly better goodies than you'd get by joining the other AA 🔍 ... but not by much. The main appeal was that members would have access to exclusive content, special merch, giveaways, early bird tickets for future shows, and regular video chats with EA.
The concept itself drew a fair amount of criticism, as you can imagine. Between the name🐀, the price, and the inherent gatekeeping of a pay-to-join fanclub, many balked at the monetizing of a concept that had once (like, three years back) been significantly more DIY, grassroots, and inclusive. 📝🐀
Then again, many also longed for a positive, drama-free space where fans could just be fans. And while the creation of the AA was generally recognized as a quick cashgrab, a lot of people were surprisingly cool with it. EA was trying to finance her dream musical, after all – although a number of fans wished she had gone about raising funds in a less sketchy way.
So around 400 fans shelled out (which, according to the Headmistress📝, “basically cover[ed] the cost of running the fanclub itself – keeping the database up, website, etc.”). Enough for a close-knit, but sizable community. But already, there was a conflict of interest: a high fanclub entry fee essentially demands that you pledge loyalty to the artist over loyalty to your fellow fans, who wish to join but can't afford to. Sharing, caring, and ensuring no one felt left out were some of the more positive values cultivated in the fandom... but leaking exclusive content would surely piss off other paying members🐀, and make EA feel betrayed all over again. (And she had barely just started to mellow out on social media!)
...But then again, this is the internet. After the first month of secret AA drops (lyric sheets, some photoshoot outtakes – nothing too juicy, really), there were, yes, some leaks. EA was predictably miffed, and retaliated by... ghosting the fanclub for weeks at a time in its first few months of existence (great look!). She eventually found the “solution” to her problem, by providing something you couldn't right-click-save (and which had been part of the promised perks to begin with): live interaction.
Over webcam, she was her usual in-person bubbly, charming, funny self. Everyone seemingly had a good time during the fanclub video chat, and this gave people faith and hope.
There were a few more events, giveaways, etc. As promised, ahead of the fall 2013 tour (the last one to date, it would turn out), AA members got priority access to show tickets and VIP bundles. The latter were much pricier than before, and only included soundcheck, a photo-op, and three goodies: a tin of loose-leaf tea, a signed printer-paper setlist, and a small flag that said “F.L.A.G.”.🔍 Some stuff continued to leak – but, as some of the outlaws pointed out (scroll down to the Disqus comments), they were mostly relaying information that was relevant to the entire fanbase, such as updates about ongoing projects (the dragged-out recording of the audiobook, for one).
In early 2014, lifetime memberships were closed, and replaced with monthly, quarterly and yearly subscription tiers. Bizarrely, you ended up paying $3 more per month if you bought a $99 yearly subscription📝 – but it did include the patch, dog tag, and piece of paper!

Sometimes I kind of want to be part of the cool kids and register to the Asylum Army. Then I remember how it came about, what you could get for the same price a couple years ago, how the whole thing was and is handled, and that I won’t support any of this bullshit. (And then I roll around naked in all the money I’m saving.) (🐀)

Still, a number of fans rejoiced at the affordable monthly option, and joined – if not for the exclusive content and merch (which were... okay, but not much to write home about), then for the friendly, drama-free exchanges with an artist they actually did love, in spite of all the frustration.
For the still-too-poor or still-undecided, there was always the forum! It wasn't as active as it used to be, but a few die-hards still managed to keep the lights on... until, inevitably, Someone Did Something and Ruined Everything. (Once again: EA's wrath is spectacular, but rarely completely unprovoked.) The incident features one notable figure in the Asylum community. Let's call him the Collector.
OK, so maybe you remember the meme I linked to in Part 4, with Christian Grey and the ginormous EA hoard. Well, that's the Collector's collection. The “Violin” promo that I called the "Holy Grail of the fandom" in the same paragraph? Also his. The handwritten lyrics that went for $940? Guess who won that auction. Over the years, the Collector had probably spent five figures on EA merch and shows, and although that fact was a little unsettling, he was a very active, easy-going, and generally well-liked fixture of the fandom.
One day in 2012, shortly after the Headmistress had replaced EA's old Chicago BFF as main forum admin, the Collector's account got banned or restricted over something dumb. When the ban wasn't lifted as quickly as he hoped, he took it... the way one takes things when one is unhealthily invested: he started spamming Headmistress and the mod team with increasingly rambling and abusive emails (lost to time, probably for the best). When that didn't work quickly enough, he tried a different route.
One of the many auctions that the Collector had won, some years prior, was EA's old iPod Touch📝 – which contained all of her favorite tunes and, buried somewhere in the data cache... a phone number. Which the Collector tried calling. And wouldn't you know it: EA picked up. She congratulated him on his sleuthing skills, listened patiently as he made his case, apologized for any distress caused by the unfair account restriction, and then they got married.
Kidding! She freaked the fuck out, hung up, and banned him for life from the forum and all EA shows and events.
After his ban, the Collector allegedly still tried to attend at least one VIP pre-show (one source in the comments says he was allowed to buy some merch, refunded for his ticket, and escorted out). He joined the Reform forum to bitch about EA and try to rally people to his cause, possibly made revenge posts about her on darker snark forums, and continued to hound the Asylum mod team. So in June 2014, EA came up with a radical and unexpected fix to the Collector problem.

The official Asylum Fan Forum has been shut down permanently. I have personally paid thousands of dollars each year to keep the forum safe and secure for you ... Unfortunately, the forum has not been kept safe and secure for me, a truth which disappoints me greatly, instead becoming a place where people who have physically threatened myself and my staff prey upon forum members, pressuring them to contact me and my staff on their behalf. If the gullible wish to humor my stalkers (who live in their parent’s basement at age 30 something) and thus put me in danger, they may do it on their own dime. They may also fuck off, because stupidity can kill, and I won’t be your victim. To those who enjoyed the forum, you know who to thank for its closure. (“On the closing of the Asylum Forum”)

Voilà! This is how a decade-long archive of shared history ends: not with a bang, but with a dirty delete and a sod-off communiqué.
The obliteration of the forum took everyone by surprise...

I was actually on the forum when it was taken down. I was navigating between posts and when I went to click on a different board, an error message came up. I honestly cried a little, I'm not ashamed to say. (WVC admin on Reddit, 2024)

...and I do mean everyone:

Chicago BFF / ex-admin, the next morning: Whoa, EA forum shut down? Ex-mod: It turns out that if someone spends enough years actively “waging war” to destroy what they can’t have, eventually they’ll be successful. * eye roll * Not even mods got prior warning. Just all the sudden, poof, gone. BFF: Really? She did not let the moderators know?! This is sounding worse and worse. Uggh. I’m so sorry. Such a loss. (...) Ok, threats are serious, but why not just put it in archive mode so no one can post? (...) Sad. I shall light a candle in the forum's honor. (Facebook posts; scroll down for screenshots)

It was a gut punch, especially for people who had poured countless hours into the community, or could have used some prior warning to save years of their own writing from the role-playing threads. One last chance to take a look around the place that had meant so much to so many.

From the wording of the announcement of closing the forum and a number of other things, it sometimes seems like EA doesn't like her fans much. :/ (🐀)

Three months after the forum was nuked, Battered Rose (a venerable EA fansite, which had been around since the Enchant era and had one of the most complete EA galleries online) announced that it was shutting down too.📝 The admin, who had also been a long-time forum mod, cited a lack of “time, energy, passion, or money” to keep the website going... and being upset at the sudden disappearance of the forum. It was, truly, the end of an era for the Asylum.
...Well, no point in living in the past. For those who could afford it, and still wanted to talk to/about EA after that (not everyone did 🐀), there was always the Asylum Army fanclub!
Over the summer of 2014, EA held regular live chats and Q&A's, and... many attendees really enjoyed them, and thought the AA was well worth the money after all. She also quietly parted ways with the much poo-pooed Headmistress around that time.

Just spent over 4 hours giggling, drinking tea and playing guessing games in chat with EA and other Asylum Army members ... No griping, no downers, just lots of fun. I think I like the way the ‘new fandom’ is going and now I’m really glad I finally decided to join the Army. (September 4, 2014🐀; Battered Rose had closed the day before)

The forum was lost forever, but perhaps that was a chance for a fresh start. Could this fanclub thing really be the Asylum Renaissance that fans had been longing for?

...I have come today to a very difficult but necessary decision, and that is to discontinue the Emilie Autumn Official Fanclub. The site itself, and the community chatroom, will remain open to you indefinitely, but I will no longer be making updates to the site. (Newsletter, September 8, 2014📝)

...Never mind, then.
Turns out the fanclub had been the Headmistress' idea all along. EA had been reluctant from the start, and although she really enjoyed the live chats with a safe community of people “who are there for the right reasons”, she couldn't overcome her fundamental discomfort with the concept. Lifetime and regular members would receive a bunch of digital downloads and a -35% coupon on the Asylum Emporium for their troubles. EA said she would definitely pop back once in a while for live chats, for free, just for fun, but to my knowledge, she never did.
And so the most devoted fans were left standing in the rain...

She is happy, she made it. She is fulfilling her dreams, found love and happiness after all the pain. I understand that she now doesn’t need “us” anymore ... That doesn’t change the fact she broke my heart with taking the Asylum Army and the forum from me. Yet, I am happy for her. (🐀)

...while naysayers pointed and laughed, Nelson-style.🦠

I don’t feel sorry at all for the people that paid for the Asylum Army fan club. Most of them knew that EA is an atrocious business woman and has broken many promises before. In fact, I laugh at them. They seriously thought that EA would actually stay consistent with this? (🐀)

EVERYTHING MUST GO: THE ASYLUM WHOLESALE

EA fans were left without an “official” home for about three years. This gave them plenty of time to be annoyed at EA for: not releasing the audiobook on time, not materializing any new project for a while... and the new sin of peddling random, ridiculously marked-up AliBaba jewelry as “merch” on her official store. Think faux-antique cameo pendants and $30 Big Ben rings (...because the Asylum story is set in London, get it?).

The whole accessories section looks like a tacky overpriced English souvenir shop. (🐀)

The fanbase lost a lost of steam in those in-between years, because there wasn't much to stick around for. As evidenced by the positive reception of the AA live chats, even in the midst of unresolved drama, out-loud interactions in a friendly environment have always been EA's saving grace. Considering the amount of online hate, there are shockingly few accounts of bad IRL encounters with EA: most people say that in live conversation, she comes across as a fun, warm, and genuinely sweet person. Some report that their negative opinion shifted after meeting her.
But there were no chats or live shows anymore. There was only social media, where she ignored questions and vague-posted about overdue projects – and the newsletter📝, which was all saccharine love-bombing to promote bland dropshipped trinkets. For fans who remembered the handcrafted merch (and two-way communication) of the early years, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

​

In the past four weeks, I've deep-dived into the ideal Video settings for my R5. I was never happy with what the camera gave me, so I want to share the following insights just in case they may benefit some of you. It's going to be a bit long winded, read on if you're a nerd and perfectionist like me... Shout out to Jason of Points in Focus on YouTube, as well as Rodrigo Pollo, Josh Sattin and Todd Dominey, who were some of my many sources. There's also a Redditor that has highlighted the wonkiness of Cinema Gammut colors (hi!) and I agree with them.

1. Shoot in LOG – IMO, yes, you should. Only this unlocks 10 Bit 4:2:2 which grades really well and runs smoothly provided you're on Silicone machines. Arguably, 10 Bit 4:2:2 h265 in LOG was the true game changing feature the R5 brought into the market, so take advantage.
2. For LOG post production, the Canon LUTs work well if you expose as Canon thinks you should. This gets technical quickly and if you just follow the ETTR dogma, Canon's LUTs will clip your highlights into oblivion. A proper CST workflow in Resolve works better but is complicated for novices. In any case, you will have to test your exposure / CST / LUT workflow so I highly recommend you get yourself familiarised with Zebras and False Color tools (if you use an external monitor). The histogram on the R5 is absolutely useless for video exposure. Clipped highlights, not noisy shadows, are the biggest weakness of the R5's image, in my opinion.
3. But which LOG flavour and color space? This comes down to your taste, but I have found the following produces the most natural looking footage. I shoot CLOG 1 / BT 2020 at a base ISO of 400. Like everyone else, I jumped on the CLOG 3 / Cinema Gammut Train when the firmware update hit, but I just didn't like the footage 90% of the time. It is proven that the sensor's dynamic range in photography mode is better at ISO 400 than it is at 800 (not surprising) in the Electronic shutter mode (which is what the R5 also uses for video). It's not a huge difference from 800 to 400, but it's there - half to one stop. This was also revealed in the CineD tests – both of them, the initial one as well as the one when they re-tested with CLOG 3. In the manual, Canon claims that CLOG 3 has more dynamic range then CLOG – in theory, maybe. The curve may be designed to give more DR. But on the R5? None of the tests you can find online have properly proven this. The DR is distributed differently, but not necessarily increased. There ARE tests, however, that show the sensor performs better at ISO 400 - so that's what I go with. Bonus: Why not use BT 709? Well, that would defeat the purpose of capturing LOG at 10 Bit 4:2:2 in the first place. You would be throwing out a bunch of color information already at capture.
4. There can be severe horizontal Banding in underexposed areas. When I first saw this, I couldn't believe my eyes (check out Josh Sattin's comparison of Z8 with R5 on YouTube to see what I mean). A 5K€ camera was producing big horizontal chunky lines of banding running across the image. I contacted Canon and they claimed not to be able to see anything. WTF. I thought my camera was broken. Then I found this in the manual: With Canon Log, movies may be affected by horizontal banding, depending on the subject or shooting conditions. So I didn't imagine things. It's right there. In. The. Manual. To avoid this, expose correctly. In practical use, a non issue, but still leaves a bitter taste.
5. Cinema Gammut, avoid. In my experience, it gives crazy saturation to red, magenta, orange. It may be a wider color space than 2020, but it can look extremely unnatural. I had rare occasions where it did work well, for example with greens and blues, but skin tones were always a pain point. (If you do want to use CLOG 3 and Cinema Gammut, I suggested you go to -1 saturation in the Canon Log Settings.) I realise this point is the most subjective, so if you have a great CineGammut workflow running, I applaud you!
6. External Recording – it may work for some of you, but I never bothered. What turns me off the Ninjas is their cost, the noisy fan and hunger for batteries as well as bulk and weight. I shoot mostly Gimbal work nowadays and every gram counts. I bit the bullet and got the fastest Card on the market for internal shooting. If you do use Ninjas, note this: The HDMI interface on the R5 is version 2.0 and it does NOT transmit Cinema Gammut correctly, so set to BT 2020. You will still have to mess around with the legalize settings and post-production hassle (ProRes RAW doesn't work on the dominant Color grading software, Resolve). For me it's a no. Bonus: Make sure your HDMI cable is at least a 2.0 version!
7. Sound: Manual recording set to a quarter strength gives you the best audio dynamic range (nod to Jason of Points in Focus, who tested this). Run your mic hot-ish and you'll be fine at this level, it works well with the Rode or Sennheiser video mics. If audio is important for you, AVOID IPB Light as it uses compressed AAC audio. The non-compressed LPCM at 48 Khz / 16 Bit that you get with ALL-I, RAW, IPB is pretty decent and noise-free.
8. I can't stress this enough: avoid Auto White Balance! The R5 dials in aggressive amounts of Tint "correction" to combat any perceived color shifts. It just doesn't work well at all unless you're in perfectly clean 6500K daylight. If you shoot LOG h265, getting White Balance right is critical to getting good skintones. Log doesn't mean RAW, you ARE baking color into the image. Unfortunately the Custom WB function is a mess in R5 for video, but you can actually eyeball this quite well off a monitor, if said monitor is set up correctly with a LUT. I use a color meter (LUMU Power 2) to verify, and it helps.
9. Rolling Shutter. 8K RAW as well as 4K HQ give you the most rolling shutter at about 15 ms and this is certainly visible in faster paced Gimbal work. Rolling shutter drops to around 9 ms in regular 4K, which is what I now use for Gimbal work. Though it's not a full halving, it's a significant, visible improvement for any panning. I still shoot talking heads in 4K HQ as the Rolling shutter is not an issue with static work. As for my Canon Log settings, I go +1 sharpening for 4K HQ and +3 for regular 4K. That matches them reasonably well.
10. 12-Bit RAW has about another half to one stop more DR in the highlights, but is also tougher and more fiddly to grade than the 10 Bit H265. It also defaults to CineGammut so it has the same tendency towards saturated reds. (CRAW gets decoded by default as CineGammut in Resolve.) I tend to prefer the look of the 10 Bit 4:2:2 shot in BT 2020 in terms of color. If you do shoot RAW, I again recommend setting to CLOG 1 in camera – not because that Log curve gets baked into the image (it doesn't), but because it unlocks you ISO 400 shooting. RAW capture at ISO 400 in Clog 1 will then allow you to decode in Resolve using the CLOG 2 curve at ISO 400 and reach the theoretical maximum of DR in terms of any video material from the R5.

Point 11 was going to be a wishlist for better features etc. but then I realised, I could buy a R5C... But honestly, the crappy battery performance of that camera really is a deal breaker for me.
Sorry for the long post but I really hope this may help some of you. Good luck and happy shooting!

Hi,
Here's some DD on Intel. There's a lot of bullshit, just read the TL;DR.
My position:
17 Dec25 $60 Calls, net basis of $1.57, unrealized total gain/loss of ($842.18).
Before discussing ratios, technicals, etc. Let's go through the most relevant business units.

Revenue Analysis

CPU Market
Intel currently produces the fastest CPU chip on the market in the 14-900K and 14-900KS on 10nm lithography, compared to the AMD's 7950x3D on 5nm.
While Intel does fall short in categories beyond speed compared to AMD, such as being much more power-hungry (on a turbo overclock Intel's flagship chip consumes 253W's compared to 162W for AMD) and prone to instability (seen in recent reports of motherboard crashes,) Intel still retains 78-82% of CPU Market share as of February.
Intel will likely retain this CPU dominance in the coming years with its adoption of more recent industry technologies like EUV tech, which should allow for convergence and then surpassing TSMC's manufacturing edge by late 2025/early 2026. Additionally, if Intel is able to effectively compete on old lithography at 10nm, if they were to reach parity of lithography <=5nm, they could actually expand their CPU dominance.
Therefore, Intel's share of the PC/OEM revenue from CPU sales will likely remain consistent and potentially improve depending on AMD's ability to implement new 3D memory and transistor designs, and as 40-45% of Intel's revenue is derived from this market, as PC sales return from the 2022 post-covid collapse, we can expect Intel's revenue to grow at least in line with the growth of PC/workstation sales, which, though weak in Q1, is set for healthy growth throughout FY24 and FY25.
GPU/AI Accelerator Market
Intel did not even compete in this market until April of this year with its launch of Gaudi 3, and as Nvidia currently holds 98% of the data center GPU market, a near-absolute monopoly, raking in $47.5B of revenue in FY23, even if Intel is only able to capture 4% of that market share from Nvidia, that's ~$2B of additional revenue on top of its existing FY23 revenue of $55.4B, and that's assuming Intel only captures 4% of Nvidia's current market share.
Until we see how Intel's accelerator actually performs in the market, however, I don't think additional assumptions can be reasonably made.
Foundry
Intel's foundry business has gotten a lot of bad news lately, especially due to the restructuring of financial statements to better reflect the amount of revenue it eats up.
But I think it's important to realize that by dividing up intel into the design business and the foundry business as separate units, we're likely to see each business more successfully compete against their respective peers (TSMC vs. Intel Foundry, and AMD/Nvidia vs. Intel Design.) But not enough time has passed since the change to see any evidence to substantiate a theory one way or another yet.
And as near-shoring continues and funds from the CHIPS Act are handed out, I do want to point out that Intel's foundry competitor, TSMC, has never operated a chips manufacturing plant in America before, compared to Intel, a company very familiar with American chip manufacturing. And I don't think it's a given that TSMC's new American plants will operate as successfully here as they did in Taiwan, due to staffing and cultural issues; staffing issues would impact Intel's new plants as well of course, but if the issues are cultural, rather than just the ability to find skilled employees, TSMC could lose margin and benefit less from the CHIPS Act than Intel.
But TSMC could also retain its advantage by investing in other Western countries with similar cultures to Taiwan such as Japan and South Korea, which it has already begun. But Intel doesn't need to dominate TSMC, or even effectively compete with the company: if Intel just broke even on its costs, that would be an additional $7B of revenue on top of Intel's trailing annual revenue of $55.4B.

Stock Pricing

Now that we know where Intel stands against its competitors in key products, how does it price against these competitors?
It currently sits with a TTM P/E of 33.6x compared to 237x for AMD, 79x for NVDA, 29x for TSMC (I believe AMD and NVDA are more relevant for price comparisons given their revenue is gotten from Intel's main source of revenue, design, rather than manufacturing, with TSMC.)
Intel's forward P/E is 28.8x, compared to 47x for AMD, 38.2x for NVDA, and 23.4x for TSMC.
Intel has a dividend of 1.56%, AMD has no dividend, NVDA has a 0.02% dividend, and TSMC has a dividend of 1%.
So compared to its design peers, the stock is cheap; compared to its manufacturing peer it's modestly expensive.

Technicals

Intel's stock is within 20% of its 52-week low.
MACD (12,26) is -1.6.
EMA (9) is -2.1.
RSI of 41, off a recent low of 23.

Conclusion

There are better things to buy while we wait for Intel's turnaround to materialization, but Intel is actively trying to revive itself and it's comparatively cheap.
TL;DR
Intel's revenue could pop with the secular return of the PC/Workstation market next year, the CHIPS Act allowing for margin expansion in the foundry business, and the entrance into the AI market with Gaudi 3, but much remains in the air as the CHIPS Act funds were just allocated (not even distributed), Gaudi 3 just launched, and the foundry business was just separated as its own business unit recently.
I wouldn't recommend jumping in until more data comes out on their turnaround.
I'm aiming for a price of $45 before my expiration date as a gamble on the return of PC sales, the success of future Intel GPUs, and the fact I don't want to lose money.

This usually happens but I usually get past it by using my manual save option but this time all my autosaves and manual saves crashes when I try to load it in. I have made the stupid mistake of making one manual save of this world even tho I knew this happens. It might have to do this is a cracked version of the game I downloaded but I would like to try get my world back since I have around 130 hours in it :')
Crash Dump Text 0.000 2024-05-19 15:05:14; Factorio 1.1.101 (build 62011, win64, steam)
0.000 Operating system: Windows 10 (build 19045)
0.000 Initializing Steam API.
0.001 Program arguments: "D:\Desktop\GAMES\factorio\Factorio.v1.1.101\Factorio.v1.1.101\Factorio.v1.1.101\bin\x64\factorio.exe"
0.001 Config path: C:/Users/TyleAppData/Roaming/Factorio/config/config.ini
0.001 Read data path: D:/Desktop/GAMES/factorio/Factorio.v1.1.101/Factorio.v1.1.101/Factorio.v1.1.101/data
0.001 Write data path: C:/Users/TyleAppData/Roaming/Factorio [180355/475708MB]
0.001 Binaries path: D:/Desktop/GAMES/factorio/Factorio.v1.1.101/Factorio.v1.1.101/Factorio.v1.1.101/bin
0.008 System info: [CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor, 12 cores, RAM: 5757/16332 MB, page: 6886/17356 MB, virtual: 4256/134217727 MB, extended virtual: 0 MB]
0.050 Memory info:
0.050 [0]: Unknown CMK8GX4M1A2666C16 8192 MB 2133 MHz 1.2 v
0.050 [1]: Unknown CMK8GX4M1A2666C16 8192 MB 2133 MHz 1.2 v
0.051 Display options: [FullScreen: 1] [VSync: 1] [UIScale: automatic (100.0%)] [Native DPI: 1] [Screen: 255] [Special: lmw] [Lang: en]
0.285 Video driver: windows
0.285 Available displays: 1
0.285 [0]: \\.\DISPLAY1 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 {0x05, [0,0], 1920x1080, 32bit, 75Hz}
0.313 [Direct3D11] Display: 0, Output: 0, DisplayAdapter: 0, RenderingAdapter: 0; d3dcompiler_47.dll
0.586 Initialised Direct3D[0]: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660; id: 10de-2184; driver: nvldumdx.dll 31.0.15.5244
0.586 D3D Feature Level: 11.1, DXGI 1.5+, SwapChain: 3,flip-discard,-,-,-,none
0.586 [Local Video Memory] Budget: 5198MB, CurrentUsage: 23MB, Reservation: 0/2727MB
0.586 [Non-Local Vid.Mem.] Budget: 7501MB, CurrentUsage: 16MB, Reservation: 0/3878MB
0.586 Tiled resources: Tier 2
0.586 Unified Memory Architecture: No
0.586 BGR 565 Supported: Yes
0.586 MaximumFrameLatency: 3, GPUThreadPriority: 0
0.587 Graphics settings preset: very-high
0.587 Dedicated video memory size 5966 MB
0.639 Desktop composition is active.
0.639 Graphics options: [Graphics quality: high] [Video memory usage: all] [DXT: high-quality] [Color: 32bit]
0.639 [Max threads (load/render): 32/8] [Max texture size: 0] [Tex.Stream.: 0] [Rotation quality: normal] [Other: STDCWT] [B:0,C:0,S:100]
0.667 [Audio] Backend:SDL(default); Driver:wasapi, Device:Headset Earphone (HyperX Virtual Surround Sound), Depth:16, Channels:2, Frequency:44100
0.755 Loading mod core 0.0.0 (data.lua)
0.808 Loading mod base 1.1.101 (data.lua)
1.016 Loading mod base 1.1.101 (data-updates.lua)
1.135 Checksum for core: 905122912
1.135 Checksum of base: 1054619811
1.309 Prototype list checksum: 3034860339
1.362 Loading sounds...
1.502 Info PlayerData.cpp:78: Local player-data.json unavailable
1.502 Info PlayerData.cpp:81: Cloud player-data.json available, timestamp 1716116146
1.631 Initial atlas bitmap size is 16384
1.668 Created atlas bitmap 16384x16384 [none]
1.672 Created atlas bitmap 16384x13048 [none]
1.672 Created atlas bitmap 8192x4208 [decal]
1.673 Created atlas bitmap 16384x5568 [low-object]
1.674 Created atlas bitmap 8192x4448 [mipmap, linear-minification, linear-magnification, linear-mip-level]
1.675 Created atlas bitmap 16384x6064 [terrain, mipmap, linear-minification, linear-mip-level]
1.675 Created atlas bitmap 4096x3216 [terrain-effect-map, mipmap, linear-minification, linear-mip-level]
1.675 Created atlas bitmap 4096x1856 [smoke, mipmap, linear-minification, linear-magnification]
1.676 Created atlas bitmap 4096x3088 [mipmap]
1.676 Created atlas bitmap 8192x2272 [icon, not-compressed, mipmap, linear-minification, linear-magnification, linear-mip-level]
1.676 Created atlas bitmap 8192x1496 [alpha-mask]
1.679 Created atlas bitmap 16384x14776 [shadow, linear-magnification, alpha-mask]
1.680 Created atlas bitmap 8192x2352 [shadow, mipmap, linear-magnification, alpha-mask]
1.680 Created atlas bitmap 2048x240 [icon-background, not-compressed, mipmap, linear-minification, linear-magnification, linear-mip-level, ]
1.685 Texture processor created (2048). GPU accelerated compression Supported: yes, Enabled: yes/yes. Test passed. YCoCgDXT PSNR: 35.83, BC3 PSNR: 33.82
2.280 Parallel Sprite Loader initialized (threads: 11)
8.983 Sprites loaded
9.017 Generated mipmaps (4) for atlas [3] of size 16384x5568
9.028 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [4] of size 8192x4448
9.050 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [5] of size 16384x6064
9.061 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [6] of size 4096x3216
9.072 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [7] of size 4096x1856
9.113 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [8] of size 4096x3088
9.124 Generated mipmaps (5) for atlas [9] of size 8192x2272
9.135 Generated mipmaps (3) for atlas [12] of size 8192x2352
9.153 Custom mipmaps uploaded (1942)
9.250 Factorio initialised
9.270 Steam Storage Quota: 1233/1234
95.816 Loading map C:\Users\brian\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\saves\new.zip: 24943725 bytes.
95.861 Loading level.dat: 66668074 bytes.
95.865 Info Scenario.cpp:204: Map version 1.1.101-1
Factorio crashed. Generating symbolized stacktrace, please wait ...
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B275D22C)
00007FF6B275D22C (factorio): (filename not available): luaL_openlibs
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B203DC51)
00007FF6B203DC51 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B203DD57)
00007FF6B203DD57 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B203E3D2)
00007FF6B203E3D2 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B203E361)
00007FF6B203E361 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B188B847)
00007FF6B188B847 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1D07710)
00007FF6B1D07710 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1D06278)
00007FF6B1D06278 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1E2F842)
00007FF6B1E2F842 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1E2AABC)
00007FF6B1E2AABC (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B24229A0)
00007FF6B24229A0 (factorio): (filename not available): lua_gethook
ERROR: SymGetSymFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1466DB9)
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B1466DB9)
00007FF6B1466DB9 (factorio): (filename not available): (function-name not available)
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FF6B2859178)
00007FF6B2859178 (factorio): (filename not available): luaL_openlibs
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FFE23337344)
00007FFE23337344 (KERNEL32): (filename not available): BaseThreadInitThunk
ERROR: SymGetLineFromAddr64, GetLastError: 487 (Address: 00007FFE253426B1)
00007FFE253426B1 (ntdll): (filename not available): RtlUserThreadStart
Stack trace logging done
96.239 Error FluidManager.cpp:474: connectionRecord.otherConnectionIndex < targetFluidBox->connections.size() was not true
96.239 Error CrashHandler.cpp:641: Received 22
Logger::writeStacktrace skipped.
96.285 Info CrashHandler.cpp:315: Executable CRC: 2602457318
96.285 Error Util.cpp:100: Unexpected error occurred. If you're running the latest version of the game you can help us solve the problem by posting the contents of the log file on the Factorio forums.
Please also include the save file(s), any mods you may be using, and any steps you know of to reproduce the crash.
98.037 Uploading log file
98.064 Error CrashHandler.cpp:266: Heap validation: success.
98.064 Creating crash dump.
98.200 CrashDump success