Rudy Faile

Tag: featured

  • Everything I Loved about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

    Everything I Loved about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

    This game…. wow.

    First things first…. 10/10 on how I feel about my Nintendo Switch purchase. I never thought a console could get me away from PC gaming, and certainly not playing the same games (less optimized, and with a controller – which I hate) on a PS4 or XBox One (that’s still the iterations, right?).

    No, I don’t want to play Call of Duty 10 or God of War 15. Just looking at the lineup for PS4 makes me feel bad for people who were ripped off by these garbage games:

    mostpopularps4games

    Really? That’s the lineup?

    Aside from the fact that the only games on the list worth playing: Far Cry 5, GTAV, and Fortnite are WAY better on the PC, look how many numbers come after the games. It’s the same old crap, served up on a different plate.

    ENTER THE KING

    The titles available look better already. Check out Dunkey’s rare 5 outta 5 HOLY SHIT review of Super Mario Odyssey.

    The ones to come – look like the best ones yet. I’m talking about the new Mario Party, and the new Smash Brothers.

    But there’s one title that makes the attractive $300 price tag of the switch worth it by itself:

    BREATH OF THE WILD

    Oh my gawd.

    I’m an adult now, so I don’t keep up with these games like I used to – and I had no idea what to expect walking into this game.

    5 minutes after booting up my new Nintendo Switch and loading the game, I knew I made the right choice. I walked out of the resurrection shrine (where you start) and I was 8 again:

    I turned to my brother like a puppy in the pet store: “OHMYGOD IS THIS HYRULE? ISTHAT DEATH MOUNTAIN? IS THAT HYRULE FIELD? CAN I GETAHORSE? HYRULECASTLE LOOKS AWESOME, WHATARETHOSE MOUNTAINS BACKTHERE, CAN I GO THERE??!”

    My brother had a simple answer:

    “Yes, that’s Hyrule – and anything you see – you can explore. No unreachable terrain, everything has content.”

    I was hooked already, but that was just the surface.

    The game starts you off in the center of Hyrule, on the Great Plateau. This area is massive within itself,

    That area alone takes a longgggggggggg time to navigate….

     

    ….Then you zoom out:

    Holy shit.

    See this speck in the middle? That’s the Great Plateau where you start:

    greatplateau.png

    So right away on this massive starting area, the game wastes no time – and does something I love and wish a lot of other games would do.

    It gives you all of the tools that you’re going to have for the rest of the game, right away.

    Then it says: good luck! And you’re off into the world, you can go anywhere you want, check out anything you like. Nothing is off-limits if you’re clever enough (my brother told me you can go straight to Hyrule castle and fight Ganon, although I didn’t try).

    The world is massive, immersive, and beautiful. There’s content everywhere. Animals running around, creatures hiding under rocks. I was 30 minutes into the game leaving the great plateau, making my way to the first place I wanted to check out when a pile of rocks I walked by started moving.

    World boss?! But I’m so new! The game doesn’t care. If you step into an area you have two options: fight or flight. Being 30 mins old in my starter gear, I ran like hell and it was so much fun.

    Even the “trash mobs” walking around the game are challenging. The hints on the loading screen are there to help and are to be heeded:

    “Every fight is likely winnable depending on the strategy you take.”

    No fights are Slash & Dash here. You’ll be working in every engagement you come across and you’ll pay for it if you don’t.

    The mechanics are also super smooth, everything feels great and fluid. If you hit a head, it’s a headshot. If a mountain looks remotely climbable, it’s climbable. I’ve come up with (and seen people come up with) some insane combinations for things.

    The game seems to invite this and purposely allows everything to be beaten in a seemingly infinite number of combinations if you’re clever enough. There’s more than one way to do almost anything in the game, at any time, in any order.

    The freedom is intense. With such a large map and so many places to go – you’d think there would be a lot of empty spots – there isn’t. I have no idea how this game was optimized on a console that’s literally a tablet, but it amazes me.

    That’s the whole system

    There are so many puzzles, fights, areas to explore, main quests, side quests, hidden quests, odd quests – I’m through the main quest finally but I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to 100% this game.

    Here’s the icing on the cake – for the people who have 200-300+ hours to clear all the “vanilla” content this game launched with – There’s DLC. Are you kidding me?!

    The fact that people fit arguably the best game I’ve ever played on a cartridge that is about the size of two of my fingertips is freaking incredible.

    TL;DR –

    Nintendo Switch – $300

    Breath of the Wild – $40

    A gaming experience that you’ll never forget – Priceless.

  • Everything I hated about Star Wars: The Last Jedi

    Everything I hated about Star Wars: The Last Jedi

    This is long delayed. I watched this film when it released in theaters last December, but as it recently pushed to Netflix – I decided to have another look. I hated it just as much as the first time, if not more. So without further ado, here’s everything I hated about Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

    You get mastery of the force, and you get mastery of the force, and you, too!

    Leia suddenly has mastery of the force, can survive space, and uses a combination of these two factors to will herself back to the ship.

    After a direct strike to the bridge by Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter wingmen, every single member of the resistance leadership is killed, since – you know, they were all on the bridge of a single ship. All except for Leia, who is sucked into space from a hole created in the explosion – where she not only doesn’t die, but shows mastery of the force as she blindly wills herself to safety.

    Stop it.

    This is something I had an issue with in the original trilogy. In both the books and the latter movies (Episodes I-III) we see how young Jedi training begins. Remember how they didn’t want to train Anakin Skywalker (who was like, 8) because he was too old? Some folks trained for dozens of years without ever being granted the rank of knight, or master for that matter. At the height of the clone wars, even the Jedi council wouldn’t grant Anakin the rank of master, even though he was granted a seat on the council.

    Yet, we see in the short time between Luke Skywalker using a lightsaber for the first time, ever, in Star Wars: A New Hope at the apparent age of 33, to just a short while later at the beginning of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, all of a sudden – Luke’s a Jedi Knight? To me, this was a fault of the original trilogy, but not a deal breaker. However, it came dangerously close to being a deal breaker in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when Rey, someone who had never held a lightsaber or used the force, was a total match for Kylo Ren, who received training from both Luke Skywalker, and Supreme Leader Snoke.

    Okay – let’s say we can move past that. Let’s chalk it up to people having a natural affinity for the force, this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the other problems this movie had.

    Plot Holes- Plot Directions that make no sense

    They set up The Force Awakens with the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke as the primary antagonist. Not much is known about the origin, background, motivations, or power of this antagonist. We expect some of the mystery to unravel in The Last Jedi, when suddenly:

    ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

    Could you imagine if they destroyed Darth Sideous in Empire strikes back? Or worse…. Attack of the Clones? We’re two movies into this new trilogy, and they Ned Stark him without ANY background?!?!

    I’d also like to take this time to mention how severely I dislike Adam Driver as Kylo Ren.

    I don’t know what it is, but the acting just feels so forced. I wish Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) was like 30 years younger; he would’ve been a sick cast for the role.

    Come on son.

    I won’t even get into how much Luke Skywalker’s demeanor doesn’t make sense; he is super annoying throughout the film. Even Mark Hamill admitted he didn’t like Luke Skywalker in the last Jedi – and that’s been covered in depth, so I’ll spare you. I will, however, talk about how odd the ability to project a realistic hologram of yourself across planets seems. Even Yoda in all the films relied on communication devices or self presence across worlds. If he could have created an instant, realistic presence of himself – a lot would have been different in those films. Oh, then he dies.

    Whatttttttttttt…..

    Oh yea, Captain Phasma? What’s her story? Too late. DEAD.

    Alright, back on plot follies – and I’m gonna wrap this up. There’s an old saying that goes:

    “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.” ― Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

    There were so many times throughout this movie where the characters were presented with “the one choice to make this work” ….except it wasn’t. Finn and Rose travel to Planet Casino in order to find the one Master Codebreaker in the universe who can hack Snoke’s ship and get them on board… nope jk, the dude they find in their cell is just as good. Oh and P.S. they can track ships through lightspeed now.

    Okay, can live with that, how about the biggest plot hole of them all?

    HOW ABOUT WHEN HOLDO LIGHT SPEEDS INTO THE SHIP?

    Seriously? This is a thing? Doesn’t this sort of change…. everything? Every protagonist in these films, from the rebels in the original trilogy to the “resistance” in the new one, could have just warped into shit?

    Here are some questions:

    • Why did all those people need to die getting the plans for the death star?
    • Why was Rogue One a film?
    • Why did they need those plans to find the death star’s one weakness and put the bombs in the one hole that would blow it up?
    • Why was A New Hope a film?

    So, yeah – they could have just filled up some ships, piloted by three people, and had a space 9-11 on the death star – job done. No need for plans, no need for crazy missions, just a warp warp, done.

    Oh, then guess what – in The Force Awakens… The First Order built an Ion Cannon? No problem – warp warp warp.

    Any problem in the universe….. I need one volunteer……

    I suppose these two films in the new trilogy would have been alright if you’ve never seen the six other movies. Had Disney bought the rights to Star Wars, then re-named it Star Battles and said “Hey, these movies have nothing to do with those movies,” I’d be stoked, totally on board. The thread I was hanging by, however, throughout these two “Star Wars” movies snapped when they warped that god damn ship into Snoke’s ship to get literally every character out of trouble.

    I don’t know if I can take another “Star Wars”.

    Oh Disney….

  • I built a crypto miner. You can too!

    I built a crypto miner. You can too!

    Table of Contents

    Background
    Purchase
    Initial Problems
    Success!
    Setting up your miner
    Conclusion
    Update

    Skip Background and get to installation

    Background

    Working through my master’s degree in technology, I began to notice a common theme. We pored over endless lit reviews which included futurists such as Ray Kurzweil and other like-minded fellows who spoke of an incredible concept just on the horizon of the Second Machine Age. This concept? De-Centralization.

    It didn’t really hit home until we began to see some data. Do you know which organization controls the most available hotel rooms at any given time in the world? It isn’t Marriot, it’s AirBnB. Any idea how many hotels AirBnB owns? I’ll give you a hint: you can’t divide by it mathematically. Let’s look at transportation: who do you think is providing the most passenger fares in the world? Oh, that little taxi company called Uber. How many taxis do they own? You guessed it.

    powerofzero.jpg

    I started to delve deeper into this de-centralization concept. Naturally, I stumbled across cryptocurrency, and suddenly, the dots connected. I’m no stranger to Cryptocurrencies, I have been following Bitcoin since 2010, and mined back when you could still do so on GPUs (those days are long gone and, sadly, I have no idea where that giant, old, 250gb externally powered hard drive is). I’m not going to act like I had a ton of coins like this poor fellow. I had a few, but that’s beside the point.

    Fast forward to 2017. Bitcoin is up to $12,700 USD at the time of this article, from a mere $758 exactly one year ago. I’ve been talking about Bitcoin for years, but it wasn’t until the currency surpassed $10,000 last month that people started reaching out to me.

    In what felt like overnight, I received messages in every medium. People that I haven’t spoken with in years, new friends and old the same. All wanted to know my insight on crypto:

    questions.png

    Yeah, even my mom at 5am

    I started to realize I knew more about crypto than I once thought. I read countless websites, and talked to a variety of people and thought: “what? I know more than this….” Ultimately, I decided to put my money where my mouth was.

    My initial goal was to get my hands on a few Antminer S9’s to mine Bitcoin. Unfortunately, they’re constantly out of stock due to an insane demand to the manufacturer, Bitmain, and as a result, the prices have been as high as $4,000+ for a single unit on sites like eBay and craigslist.

    antminers9.png

    Well, I knew I wasn’t going to pay a 37.5% markup on the retail price of $1,500… not to mention the additional power supply cost, so I returned to my roots. I mined crypto with a GPU before right? There had to be crypto out there that’s not on the SHA-256, still capable of being mined by GPU. Fortunately, there is. I chose to mine Ethereum due to its popularity, price, and smart contract focus. But remember, Peter, with high prices come high network hashrates.

    I’m lucky enough to live in Orange County, CA. Just a hop, skip, and jump away from a Micro Center. If you don’t know what Micro Center is, it’s great. Imagine Best Buy, Circuit City, and your favorite nerd passion had a baby. That baby is Micro Center.

    microcenter.jpg

    Purchase

    initialpurchasemicrocenter.jpg

    $1,034 later. I had a lot of computer hardware

    My Miner Specifications

    Component Name
    Motherboard: MSI Z170a Titanium Edition
    Processor: Intel I3-7100 3m Cache, 3.90GHz
    Storage: Crucial 275GB MX300 2.5 SATA SSD
    RAM: GeIL EVO POTENZA 8GB (2 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4
    GPU: ASUS Radeon RX 550 (x1)
    GPU: ASUS Radeon RX 550 (x2)
    GPU: ASUS Radeon RX 550 (x3)
    PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W

    I skimped a bit on eveything. Mining doesn’t require a lot of processing power (at least from the CPU), or RAM for that matter… the bulk of the processing power stems from the GPU. I elected for a simple i3 and 8gb of DDR4 RAM (DDR4 Required by Motherboard). The places I splurged a bit include the motherboard, PSU, and 3x GPUs. When I say a bit, I really mean a bit… this could have been much worse.

    Initial Problems

    I took everything home, promptly threw away every manual and box (WARNING: I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS) and started connecting things. Although I knew everything was connected properly, I couldn’t get the BIOS to show up on output.picofinitialsetup.jpg

    This wasn’t good. After consulting the motherboard error codes, manual, and every computer forum known to man (shoutout to Tom’s Hardware), I realized my mistake.

    I purchased a 7th Gen processor and a 6th generation motherboard. This was a serious problem because to flash the BIOS you need a 6th generation processor. I didn’t have one. It’s even more unfortunate because 7th generation boards come with a simple FLASHBACK+ mode where you can simply input a USB without display and flash the BIOS….again, I didn’t have that.

    Micro Center to the Rescue!

    Knowing the problem, I took my board back to Micro Center and explained the BIOS upgrade issue. The guy at service repair was super cool and knew exactly what I was talking about. Micro Center flashed the board in less than an hour for $30, which I was happy to pay because it was my mistake and I didn’t want to purchase another processor.

    Success!

    After flashing the BIOS, everything worked famously. I reconnected everything including the 3 GPUs. I created a bootable Linux USB using Win32 Disk Imager in the flavor of Ubuntu 16.04.3.

    From here, it was all gravy. I reconnected the motherboard to the Processor, RAM, PSU, SSD, and inserted the Bootable USB.success.jpg

    The most important thing, I think, in this whole process was naming convention. At the request of my good buddy and fellow grad student Travis, I named my new rig “CRACKBABY”.

    Once I got my crack baby all named and setup, to the command line I went!

    amdgpupro.jpg

    The most important steps here were getting Ubuntu to recognize the GPUs, and installing the mining equipment. Here are the steps:

    1. The first thing you need to do is install the dependency.

      2. $ sudo apt install software-properties-common

    2. Then, you can enable the repository and update apt.

      3. $ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
      $ sudo apt update

    3. Now, install the packages

      4. $ sudo apt install ethereum ethminer

    4. Next, you’re going to need a wallet to store the currency. I chose Mist.
      You need to install the dependencies if you’re going to use this option.

      5. $ sudo apt install libappindicator1 libindicator7

    5. With the dependencies installed, you can grab the latest release of Mist
      from the project’s Github page. You’re looking for the “Ethereum Wallet” package.
    6. Install the package with dpkg.

      7. $ sudo dpkg -i Ethereum-Wallet-linux64-0-9-0.deb

    7. Open up Mist and go through the setup. Save your private key
      and NEVER give it out.

      8. Your public key is how others send you money, and how you’ll get paid.

    8. Leave the application open to sync with the Ethereum network.
      It will take a long time and considerable hard drive space to synchronize everything.
    9. I recommend joining a pool to be profitable. Solo mining is hard.
      Joining a pool is easy, they have instructions on their page on how to connect.
      I chose Ethermine.
    10. Once the wallet syncs, and you’ve chosen a pool, it’s time to connect.

      11. $ ethminer -G -F your.poolurl.com:port/0xYOURWALLET.COMPUTER NAME --farm-recheck 200

    11. Replace your.poolurl.com:port with the pool you specified, those
      addresses will be specific to that pool and can be found on your chosen pool’s site.
      Replace 0xYOURWALLET with your public key, .COMPUTERNAME is up to
      you if you’d like to name your worker. –farm-recheck 200 is how often to check for jobs.

    That’s it!

    You can check the status of your worker using your pool’s website. On Ethermine they have an easy to access search function where you can plug your worker in.

    It was a really fun, albiet sometimes frustrating project. The hardest part of this whole process will be getting linux and ethminer to talk to your GPU. There are separate drivers and dependencies whether you buy a Nvidia or Radeon card, and it’s a PROCESS to set them up. I ended up ultimately returning the three RX550s for a pair of GTX 1070s. The hashrate of all three RX550s was less than a single 1070.

    doublegtx1070.jpg

    Using the settings I specified in this article I’m hashing at about 29 MH/s per 1070…

    crackbaby

    If this guide was helpful for you, you can tip me at ethereum: 0x92b2b7fb42c26b9469554db93be293ba263cfc88 or simply run the ethminer using my wallet address for a day or two (copy/paste):

    ethminer -G -F http://us2.ethermine.org:4444/0x92b2b7fb42c26b9469554db93be293ba263cfc88 --farm-recheck 200

    Update

    Eventually I expanded my operation to multiple rigs running 6x GTX 1070s each. I ran these miners successfully for about six months, then decided it was no longer cost effective after moving to a new state and paying a different rate for electricity.

    More questions? Feel free to contact me.

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