Drunkard's Walk Forums - Portal

Am I watching all of our regulars on AO3?

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:20:35 -0500

My User Subscriptions on AO3:

ASWCanuck
DartzIRL
DenSeraph
KanriKyaraProject
labster
Mal3
Matrix_Dragon
mp3_1415player
pixelwriter1
STMPD

There's one obvious gap, but as far as I know, Bob doesn't have an individual AO3 account.

Who else, if anyone, have I missed?

Making Bar-S hot dogs not taste nasty

Thu, 21 May 2026 02:37:07 -0500

I know it can be done. The ones that have sat under a heat ;amp on the convenience store roller machine for a couple hours are usually pretty good, even. Alas, regardless of whdther I pan fry them, boil them, oil-fry them, boil then pan fry, or even bake them in an oven on low heat for an hour, I cannot get rid of the strong, harsh chemical taste of the things, and a well-meaning relative-of-uncertain-degree (about a third of the town has the same last name, after a while you just default to "cousin" or "auntie/uncle") has given me a case of the damn things. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

2017-02-17: Gardening Leave

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:31:33 -0500

Chapter 1 of Gardening Leave is now posted to AO3.

The story is still in the process of being outlined, let alone written (it has a beginning and an ending; it just needs some middle), so I can't yet be sure how many chapters there will be. Definitely more than three chapters, though.

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:33:38 -0500

The Register: Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

Quote:The late great Grace Hopper used to hand out 30 cm (roughly 1 foot) lengths of wire as physical examples of a nanosecond: that's how far light can travel in one billionth of a second. If Google considers a 4 GB model to be "nano" sized, then it puts Hanff's hyperbolic comment about the climate footprint into real perspective. It gives a hint of the size of the real gigantic models in the datacenters metastasizing across the world.

A recent study led by Grace Liu at Carnegie-Mellon found that regular AI use caused measurable cognitive impairment. It's worth thinking carefully about what we trade away when we outsource our thinking and, separately, what the planet pays to power the systems we're outsourcing it to.

This vulture suggests you turn it off now, everywhere you can.

New version of NetHack released!

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:50:41 -0500

A mere 11 years after the last major release, NetHack 5.0 was released last weekend.

Fanfic^2

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:21:55 -0500

We have fanfic of our fanfic!

Closing the Circle (an unauthorized KanriKyara story), the first story posted to AO3 by ASWCanuck.

I can't speak for the other writers, but as far as I'm concerned, this is canon for KanriKyara.

As for the joke...

Spoiler

Wild Child

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:56:36 -0500

My not so dark World of Darkness fic, all inspired by an Anon on Tumblr last year.
\https://archiveofourown.org/works/746896.../195066946

Please comment, I need the feedback.

BGC LIGHT NOVELS TRANSLATED THANKS TO ABSOLUTE MAD LAD

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:01:50 -0500

Did said absolute mad lad use machine translation probably close to an LLM? Sure. Is the man more of a Tenchi Muyo fan likely just churning through said novels alongside various other LNs alongside the core Tenchi bits? Yup.

Do I give a damn? Look, I own physical copies of all this stuff, and I never thought we'd ever see the day when BGC 2032 Light Novels 1 and 2, the 2012-tastic garbage fire Hard Metal Guardians, and the actual Crisis-Crash bridging audio drama Soldier Blue understandable. I've spamposted a lot of BGC shit here over the years and often worried most of it means next to nothing 'round here, but this is nuuuuuts.

The novels themselves are pretty nuts too: Hard Metal is uniformly trying to rip off Railgun as aggressively as it can without the author having half of Kamachi's creative chutzpah (and boy is a Kamachi Crisis a really amazing image, especially after his high-tech Cute Kunoichis novels rely on playing around with high-tech bullshit in ways that'd suit the series well), LN1 Silent Fanfare works amazingly well as what feels like a standalone episode of Crisis with more of Toshimichi Suzuki's particular fascinations worming their way into the thing, and LN2 Break-Down 48 is more a retelling of the whole story in one novel, a sort of Greatest Hits which can't blend into any main story but does stand on its own somehow. I'm pretty sure the one manga Go Go Sabers will be translated soon, and wouldn't be surprised if we see some effort to translate the B-Clubs to boot.

So cool....

2016-09-17: Son of the Bride of Everyone's a Critic

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:46:52 -0500

The latest installment of the thrilling Critic series of stories is now available here.

Looking for a free media player for Android

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:26:29 -0500

Normally, I use VLC Media Player on all of my devices... but as of yesterday afternoon it's crashing without an error message on my Android cellphone and tablet.

Any suggestions for a replacement? Something that doesn't transmit my usage patterns back to its supplier is essential -- that's private information as far as I'm concerned. Freeware is good.