beastlykings

Ok so here's the story: A local brewery had a special "dinner with beer pairing" event. Small, 30 to 40 people. We bought tickets and went, it was delicious. All the meals were mushroom based.

There's a local company that provides mushrooms for local business only, no consumers. The owner of the company came to this dinner.

In a moment of gratitude and charitable giving, he offered to give everyone present a bag of spores. Just cut slots in the bag and let it go. He emphasized that they don't normally offer this, but that it's not too hard.

Months went by, we never heard from him. Then finally the email comes, come pick up your bags from the brewery.

We were out of town. We coordinated someone to go get ours but it was a week or two later than it was supposed to be, and it was several days more before we could pick them up from the friends.

Now here's my question: do these look ok? What do I do with them? An acquaintance of mine got theirs earlier, cooked up some straw, broke up the brick and put it in baskets with holes, a whole process. They aren't keen on helping me as they aren't sure if my bags are ok, they are learning as they go.

My bags look like they are fruiting already?

My wife is afraid of them. I have a feeling they're probably safe? But I would love some advice and direction.

I'm sorry I haven't done more research, I waited too long and now everything is happening so fast, it's quite overwhelming.

Thanks in advance

Recently tried singani for the first time, it's super unique.

I brought a bottle home with me, and you can buy one brand in the USA/UK, Singani63, which is the main brand in Bolivia just relabeled for international sale.

So far I like it straight, and also I've made what is essentially a Tom Collins with it, brings out a lot of the flavors.

Out and about I had a singani sour, but I didn't look into the details of what was in it, and I'm not a mixologist 😬

I'm getting my manager at work into flashlights. He's got a pair of D4's on the way, and I told him about my buddies D18. He liked the idea but wanted to see it. I showed him today and he was blown away, wants to keep it in his jeep when off-roading.

But I just realized Hank doesn't sell the D18 anymore...

Is there another light that would fulfill the same popcan sized wall of light that the D18 does? Or is anyone sitting on a D18 they're willing to part with?

Price is a factor, preferably around that same hundred dollars, but I'll pass along options even if they're more expensive.

Anduril is also preferred, but not required.

Hi there! Hopefully this is the right place. I tried searching for what this might be and I came up with a lot of different answers.

This is a store bought can of plain tomato sauce, we were making soup. We noticed this white paste on the side of the can, when I poked it it was soft, almost like a thin fat?

Smelled fine, and the sauce looked fine otherwise. But we got nervous and threw it away, afraid of botulism or other nasties. Plus we wanted to finish cooking.

Does anyone know what this is? Some sources said it might be calcium nitrate, but they also say it would be hard and wouldn't break up in your fingers if rolled. This was a paste.

Anyway, just wondering for next time, figured you guys would know. Thanks!

Hi there! I've had this printer about a year now. I used to use my buddies og Ender 3, and when the V2 was on sale I "upgraded" and got my own.

I realize now that for just a bit more money I could've had a much more performant machine, but, oh well. I'm gonna use this for a good long while. I only print as an occasional hobby, or to augment my other hobbies.

Anywho, it's been on a shelf up and out of the way all winter, unused, in a climate controlled room.

I pulled it out the other day to do a few prints, it works great. Ran about 12 or 16 hours of prints through it. But today I noticed these cracks. This seems to be the belt tensioner for the bed? Did I have it too tight? Am I supposed to relax it while it's being stored?

I can probably print a replacement. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were.

Thanks!

A nugget of information for everyone, that I just learned this morning:

We all know that cats nails naturally shed, that's why they need a scratching post, to reveal the pointy new nail.

Well apparently, as cats age, their nails thicken, and it can get to the point where they stop shedding. And if you don't notice it, the nail will keep growing in a circle, until it stabs into their own paw meat. From what I read, this is extremely painful, because it just keeps digging deeper, and never stops.

You can prevent it by checking all your elderly cats nails every so often. Apparently they can become ingrown in as little as 3 months, if it's gonna happen.

Now my cat needs a vet appointment, because one of his nails did this, and it's too bad for me to safely fix. I think he'll need antibiotics.

We didn't see it because we usually only trim his front nails, not his front thumb(?) nails, or his backs. His backs are fine, but they will be getting checked going forward.

Mods, hopefully this is allowed here. I know it's mostly memes, but this is the most cat centric place I could find on Lemmy. And I certainly didn't know this before today. If I'd caught it sooner, I could've saved him some pain. Maybe someone else can save their pet the same fate.

Edit: Cat tax:

It's a 1989 Singer(?) Sonata Sew-Ease 6621.

I'm sure it's not the finest piece of machinery out there, but for $10 it came with a pedal, several bobbins, some thread, a few needles, and everything on it appears to be in working order.

After a video chat with my mom, I was able to run a test stitch:

I'm not sure if this is gonna take off as a hobby for me, but I'm gonna give it a go with what time I can spare! I even have a crappy projector I might try to use 😬

Hi there, I've been meaning to go get more serious about my data. I have minimal backups, and some stuff is not backed up at all. I'm begging for disaster.

Here's what I've got: 2 8tb drives almost full in universal external enclosures A small formfactor PC as a server, with one 8tb drive connected. An unused raspberry pi. No knowledge of how to properly use zfs.

Here's what I want: I've decided I don't need raid. I don't want the extra cost of drives or electricity, and I don't need uptime. I just need backups. I want to use what drives I have, and an additional 16tb drive I'll buy.

My thought was that I would replace the 8tb drive with a 16tb one, format it with zfs (primarily to avoid bit rot. I'll need to learn how to check for this), then back it up across the two 8tb drives as a cold backup. Either as two separate drives somehow? Btrfs volume extension? Or a jbod connected to the raspberry pi, that I leave unplugged except for when it's time to sync the new data?

Or do you have a similarly cheap solution that's less janky?

I just want to back up my data, with an amount of rot protection, cheaply.

I understand that it might make sense to invest in something a bit more robust right now, and fill it with drives as needed.

But the thing I keep coming to is the cold backup. How can you keep cold backups over several hard drives, without an entire second server to do the work?

Thanks for listening to my rambling.

!elianscript@sh.itjust.works

What is Elianscript? It's an alternative writing system whose properties combine the linearity of spelling with the free-form nature of drawing.

It's also kind of like a weak cipher, to those not in the know. Similar to a pigpen cipher, but instead of randomly jumbling the letters, we all agree to do it alphabetically. That way everyone IN the know, can read it. It's a lock to keep out honest people.

This is quite niche, and some might say it should be part of a larger cryptography community. But really it's more artistic than that, it's not meant to be jumbled or rearranged to make it more cryptic.

Anywho, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

Just want to add to the chorus, framework is awesome. This thing is so sleek and fancy.

There were a couple of hiccups with the DIY build. An out of position Wi-Fi wire on the hinge, and I wasn't told to plug it in before turning it on, so I thought I had a dud for a minute or two. But that's no big deal.

It was the deal that got me, I went with a 7840u, with the 2.8k screen. I bought my own ram, and reused a 2230 512gb nvme from when I upgraded my steam deck. That'll hold me over until I decide I need more 🤷‍♂️

It's only been a few days but so far I couldn't be happier!

Gotta stop myself from fidgeting with the bezel magnets, it's fun but I'm gonna break it 😬

Edit: Forgot to mention I'm running Bluefin, based on recommendations here. My first time with Fedora, and immutable/atomic based distros. I'm used to Debian based stuff. So far I haven't run into too much trouble. Though I AM struggling with my virtual machine.

I have three apps that I need Windows for still, there is no replacement. One of them might run in proton, but it's updated regularly, and interfaces with a shared database, and I'm just not willing to be the fly in the ointment if my setup breaks something for everyone.

The other is a Windows store exclusive, and that doesn't work with proton.

And the third I could find an alternative for, I just... It will be a lot of work converting the database over, and I don't want to right now 🤷‍♂️

Anywho the problem is the VM, Boxes, won't run in full resolution. It's locked at a lower resolution. Seems like a crazy problem, a feature that should already be baked in. I've tried SPICE virt-viewer, per some guides, but no dice.

I've got a thread up here about it if anyone has an idea? I know there's at least a few bluefin users here.

Thanks!

I've been toying with Linux on and off for almost 20 years now.

Started with damnsmalllinux on some ancient 600mhz Thinkpads. Dual booted Ubuntu for a long time, back when 3d desktop cubes were all the rage, so I'm used to gnome, synaptic and apt.

Tried to stick with it, but never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps. Eventually I kind of drifted away, and went full Windows for years. I always keep an Ubuntu LTS thumb drive around, and would use it occasionally for various reasons, testing etc etc.

Recently I installed Ubuntu 24.04, and had tons of stability issues. Mostly involving video output and the GUI. Screen would jitter left and right a few pixels. And sometimes maximized windows would be transparent to clicks, so you'd be clicking random stuff below the window. This was especially bad with Firefox and VLC, separately. I also had issues with removable drives not mounting properly. Standard stuff, I wasn't doing anything weird. Practically a fresh install.

So I tried Mint, cinnamon. And so far I really like it! I've not been running it daily, but just the same tinkering. And so far no issues at all. But that got me thinking, what else am I missing?

I'm comfortable in the command line, but not proficient, I appreciate a good GUI for most things.

I plan to do some gaming, so steam proton compatibility is important. I don't think that's hard to achieve, but I wanted to make sure, it's important to me.

Last time I played with KDE was a decade ago, I hear there's lots of new developments going on there? In plasma? Unless plasma is different now, IDK I haven't looked extremely hard.

I don't care much about customization, I don't want arch. I want something that is a pretty solid base, with decent features, and good support for when this go sideways. I feel like that's not Ubuntu anymore. Especially with them pushing into Wayland and flat packs.

I guess my question is, does Mint seem like a good distro to start with? Or am I not looking hard enough?

Thanks!

My CPU is an AMD 5600X. My test video is 1080p 30fps, I'm trying to bring it down to 480p using AV1.

This is my first time playing with AV1. I bought an A310 to play around with because I read that the hardware encoder was faster than software, albeit lower quality and slightly larger.

Quality isn't important to me, I have 700gb of 480i video that was saved at 1080p and inefficiently encoded, I want to reduce its size dramatically.

I'm using handbrake on Windows, and I chose AV1 SVT at first, and I average about 150fps, sometimes 120 sometimes 180. My CPU sits at 100%.

But if I choose AV1 Intel QSV, I average only about 40fps. And the GPU sits at 68%.

What am I missing? Thanks in advance

Edit: I found a thread from a year ago saying that encoding performance dropped after driver 4887, so I rolled way way back to 4885 from October 2023, and my performance almost doubled to 70-80 fps. But this is still far worse than SVT on CPU alone.

I read about a bug where the whole card can only be utilized if running two jobs simultaneously, so I tried this. The second job runs much slower, about 10-20fps. But that does bring me closer to 90-100fps combined, sometimes 🤷‍♂️

Something has got to be wrong, or maybe I'm expecting too much performance for the job I'm doing? I don't have any special filters set up. You'd think encoding 1080 to 480 would be lightning fast.