it's about chess.

it's fascinating to me how for a while now chess has been widely considered as a game that has been "solved" in the computer era. in every state of the match there is a calculable optimal move, and the goal of each living and breathing player is to learn to imitate the patterns specified / prophecized by the computer as close as they're able to.

obviously there are other games in which any PC is infinitely better than a human player, like shooters where a bot has perfect aim and reaction time unachievable to a human, but computer play (or cheating, by extension) in these games is widely disregarded, and for a good reason, no one has any interest in comparing human gameplay constricted by biological limitations, to how a game would be played by a bot, and we don't even consider these games to be "solved" by computers, as comparison to machine gameplay invalidates the point of the game itself. (there are still many popular competitive game genres that haven't been "solved" by computers, with stuff like MOBAs consisting of far too many variables and stuff happening each frame for a computer to be able to develop a universal optimal strategy, so while for a different reason than, for example, CS:GO, we still don't look at MOBA e-sport teams as bunch of people trying their best to imitate a machine playing.)

so what's the case in chess? how did a game that has throughout the past few decades devolved to imitating a machine managed to preserve it's popularity? i think it's super interesting how simultaneously, every chess player strives to achieve machine perfection, and, the reason why people are still interested in chess because it's impossible to. until we progress into transhumanism and necessitate a redefinition of "human", the impossible strive of the bio brain for the (already discovered) mathematical equilibrium is what fuels the goal of playing chess.

I LOOOOOOOOOVE REAPER

but i can't use it because it's not FOSS

BUT IT'S SOOOOOOOO GOOD

today via the method of heritage i acquired an audio / video system in the body of a Sony's Compact AV System DAV S500, designed to bring the joys of home theater to any lucky owner. it works simultaneously as a dvd station, a radio adapter, and most importantly, a general audio / video player. as i won't be using it to watch anything and possess 1 (one) music dvd, in practice it's gonna serve as a soundsystem.

the model has been released in 2001, and it definitely looks the part, with every single media cable being different from modern standards. it offers no support whatsoever for the convenient technology of bluetooth, so for a second i considered getting a cheap external bluetooth adapter but i think i'll manage without it. i might plug it to the Raspberry Pi and setup a web controlled soundsystem, or just leave the cable laying and connect it when needed.

the system has a weird ass subwoofer which looks either like a decorative piece or some fancy pc, that's because the actual speaker is at the bottom of it, facing the ground. it's accompanied by five cute little speakers whose names are:
center
front R
front L
rear R
rear L

together with the big subwoofer and the main interface they seem like a happy family, and unless a cat pees on one of them i think they're gonna do great.

i heavily recommend anyone interested in straying from the mainstream recommendation engine limbo to check out more independent browsers, like https://marginalia-search.com/ (a cool list of resources for that can be found at https://sadgrl.online/guides/surf/).

the methodology allows for finding personal websites and posts ditching the classic article-style writing prevalent today, and sometimes stumbling upon cool retro website designs.

decided to ditch spotify for the foreseeable future in favor of selfhosted solutions, set up navidrome on the raspberry pi with a web interface for querying downloads / music imports. the library is cleanly managed by beets, the clients for both android and desktop feel great, and now I actually get to make use of the accumulated plethora of saved "music recommendation" posts. it does also feel less dependant on the big algorithm as ultimately i can only listen to what i have accessible locally, so I guess it's not as much of a tether to some recommendation engine (said by the person still using instagram).

(music is fetched from youtube music of all places using a browser emulator :p, not everything i want to listen to can be found on torrents)

recently finally upgraded my magnificent "homelab" hardware by replacing my single Raspberry Pi 3B model with a 4B one. This supposedly small change in numeration carries immense improvements and pushes realms of possibility beyond any horizon, as the new device posseses a ludicrous supply of 4GB of RAM, compared to the 1GB of the previous model.

this angelic surge of power isn't yet utilised to the fullest, as currently the pi is hosting navidrome, this website and a discord bot, all of which aren't exactly overwhelming in terms of required resources. still, it feels amazing to work with hardware blessed with the knowledge that you don't have to navigate a minefield of OOM freezes.