Solus 4 July Steam update

I recently got fed up with Windows and decided to go with Linux on my main computer for the first time in over a decade.  I have been using Solus on my old chromebook for a year or so, and that is what I went with on my desktop.  Everything just worked on my desktop as it had on my chromebook.  I installed steam and it worked fine.  That is until this morning, the window for a steam update popped up and I clicked "restart steam."  Steam restarted and I was presented with "Failed to load steamui.so."

I had run into a similar problem many years ago and it was a huge hassle to get it fixed.  I started googling the error and I was not feeling better.  Then I added solus to the search and found this reddit post.  I hadn't opened the Linux Steam Integration program before because Steam had just worked, but I turned off native runtime as suggested.  Steam started up normally loaded the new update and was working as before.

P.S. How awesome is proton? The last time I had Linux as my main OS I had to run two versions of steam, the native linux one and the windows one through cedega. I may never go back to windows again on my personal computer.

Fictional IT Fuck-ups: Alien: Covenant

Here I was thinking the Empire's IT department was the worst, then I saw a show called Alien: Covenant. There was only one fuck-up but boy howdy was it a doozy. If knowledge is power Wayland's IT department is in desperate need of some fresh double a's.

The sin in question is the fact that David's Weyland account is still active after 10 years of him being missing. They should should have hit his account with a digital brillo pad after a couple of weeks. Instead David just waltzes onto the good ship Covenant, starts ordering the computer around and the ship accepts his commands.

"But muh voice recognition" I hear you saying. The fact that the these mass produced androids can perfectly mimic each other is all the more reason to not use any form of biometric security on your ships. If anything the androids should have the lowest system privileges, opening up the crew's stasis pods and performing experimental surgeries is right out.

Politics

Who is Jeff Indeed?

who the hell is jeff pic.twitter.com/UlKVBbBLgw

— Bob Vulfov (@bobvulfov) December 31, 2016

Jeff is a cancer upon the rural route 13 book club. He has been pilfering my ideas and passing them off as his own for years. Up till now I have let him get away with it because of his alleged possession of between one and nine nuclear weapons, but I will not let it go unchallenged if he co-opts my opinions of The Napoleon of Notting Hill, our first book of the new year. I believe my integrity is worth possibly condemning the residents of rural route 13 to a nuclear hellstorm. It's like Buck said in The Call of the Wild, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." Next week when I look around upon the smoldering remains of my neighbors, I will do it knowing that they died with the certain knowledge that Jeff is an intellectual fraud.

My 2016 Remington R51

Like many people I have craned my neck to watch the car fire that is the Remington R51.  I read the reviews and watched the youtube videos following the initial release.  The schadenfreude was strong.  All the same I did like to looks of the gun and before the reviews came out I had considered purchasing one.  Despite some more shaky reviews of the re-engineered R51, I went and bought one at a gunshow recently.   I still like the looks of it and given its ruined reputation I felt like I would at worst have a forgotten oddball in a few years (someday I'll get that Colt New Agent DAO of my dreams).  At approximately $400 it was worth the risk.

When I got it home the first thing I did was disassemble it.  Let me say this was a chore, I have taken down some odd guns before but it is obvious that this pistol takes its design cues from and gun made in the 1910's.  It has gotten easier the more I have done it, but it will never be a Glock or even a 1911.  I loaded and unloaded the magazines. While I was manually unloading the magazines the nose of the bullets kept catching on the lip that holds the follower in.  I think this is the origin of most of the issues with this pistol.  I also dry fired it a few times to get a feel for the trigger.  No surprise the oddball pistol has an oddball trigger.  It feels fairly light and is very crisp, but there is no discernible reset.  If the hammer is down the trigger is all wobbly and squishy.  Its not bad its just weird.

One of the things that first attracted me to the pistol was that it was all metal.  Steel slide and aluminum frame.  The frame is made of a seemingly similar aluminum and finish to what you find in most AR15's.  The frame is more prone to nicks and dings that most AR's I have used.  I don't know if it is the metal itself or the finish, but as a whole the frame isn't quite as durable as I would expect.

After a week or so of fondling my new pistol I had to go to the range and actually shoot it.  I bought a few boxes of different name brand range ammo and one box of primo hollow points and headed out.  I won't lie after reading all the reviews and watching all the videos I was a bit pensive; but nothing horrible happened.

On this trip to the range I shot 214 rounds and had only 2 malfunctions.  I started with the browning 147gr.  Both malfunctions were in the first magazine.  The second round didn't fully go into battery and the seventh and final round failed to feed correctly.  After that I had 207 rounds with no problems.  Again I feel the magazine is the culprit.  All I did after that first magazine was slap the magazines to make sure the heads of the cases were completely against the back of the magazines.  I shot 50 rounds of 115gr fmj, 100 124gr fmj, 50 147gr fmj, and 14 115gr +p hp.  It is too soon to make a definitive statement, but I feel that at least with my pistol the only thing it needs is a good smack on the magazine.  This may still preclude the R51 from being a carry gun, but that is a decision each person has to make for themselves.

All in all I feel like I got a good gun and one that I will keep.  As far as the reputation goes I think the likes of Glock have set a new bar for reliability that has made persnickety guns no longer acceptable.  This is a fairly new thing,  I can remember reading gun magazines in the 80's and 90's give glowing reviews to guns that were just as finicky as the R51.  Those reviews were not shilling or sources of controversy.  It was just accepted that some guns were only reliable with certain brands of ammo, or would only work properly with first party magazines, or etc.  20 or so years ago the people I know wouldn't buy steel case ammo at any price, now everyone does so without a second thought.  If this were a wired article I would coin a new term: Glockification, because that's what happened.  Guns like Glocks were made such that they could eat any form of ammo.  Remington probably should have taken that notion into account when they produced the R51.

Second opinions:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn_j2ZbGyH0AzkPOSNRdSqiUkyrbHsPK3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcf1cTJCGk4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Raspberry Pi is such a ripoff

The Raspberry PI is sold as a cheap single board computer, less than $40.  All you need is a sd card, keyboard, mouse, and a tv (hdmi or composite).  Balderdash.  To get the most use out of this alleged cheap computer you must have a usb wireless adapter, because only plebs use the built in wired network card.  You will also need a powered usb hub to connect other things.  Don't forget a table to place this ball of lies upon, and a chair to hold up your unworldly behind.  You will also need clothes to wear, a bed to sleep in, a house to put all this stuff into.  Don't forget the geopolitical infrastructure necessary to build and electrify this dastardly device.  As you can see this $30 computer can actually cost tens of thousands if not millions of dollars.  What a rip off, no other sbc or microcontroller has such onerous requirements.

Encryption is the new gun control

The same people who don't know anything about guns, know even less about computers and the internet.  Get ready to have your digital anuses violated.

Peak social networking

Social networks are bogus. If they have to spam you into joining, you don't need them. If I want to see pictures of my niece I can text my brother, I don't have to go to facebook. If I want to talk to my parents I call them with my cellphone telephone. Hell I am this close to busting out a goose feather, a nib, and some parchment. I would rather use any other form of communication than be a steer lead to data collection slaughter.

P.S. Linkedin stop trying to trick me into joining your bullshit website.

P.P.S. Twitter is sometimes funny.

Unintentionally (?) funny literature

"He'd flown all the way to Houston from Pasadena..." -- The Martian

NHL 95 is better than NHL 94