But damned if we're gonna do anything about it.
I think these days most people use their video card as a sound card because monitors/displays generally have audio out as well.
But yeah. I remember having endless problems getting one of the Splinter Cells to run (I want to say Pandora Tomorrow?). After literally weeks of googling and discussing the issue on forums with others with the same problem, we found out that it had issues with the onboard sound for certain motherboards. Went out to Best Buy, bought the cheapest soundblaster they had, and no problems.
I mean... yeah.
We've seen this exact pattern happen in other industries. Bookstores were largely massacred by amazon et al. Which meant that the major publishers no longer controlled what we could buy (at a reasonable price). So rather than stand in an aisle and skim the Warhammer 40k books or see what had a cool cover, we read online reviews and even started reading (gasp) self-published books... in large part because other aspects of technological advance meant those self-published books could still be professionally edited.
And... that was awesome because it meant we got a constant feed of new voices rather than just the people who had enough connections to get a publisher's "slot".
And while there is very much something to be said about a nice crisp hardcover (just look at how ride or die I am on Michael Sullivan's kickstarters...), the vast majority of my books are ebooks that I read on my (as of late) onyx boox. Which is basically the hardcover and mass market paperback model of olde.
And we saw the exact same happen with PC gaming. I don't know the exact steps that led to it (and now realize I really want to) but in the late 00s/early 10s we rapidly noticed our stores that had became aisles were rapidly becoming single shelves on a rack that was mostly the latest Warcraft expansion.
And at first that sucked. I remember rushing to Gamestop the day that KOTOR 2 released only to have to basically fight the goblin at the counter to get the one copy they had and the number of times I had to explain that I did not want Halo instead. But, once we no longer had the ability to browse in stores, we saw various digital distribution platforms rise up and we started to have games like Warlock that shockingly launched at 30 USD instead of 50. And, much like above, we started to see a lot of new voices in a way that was reminiscent of the golden age of the 486 where you might buy access to an FTP server on a BBS because you liked a game that dev/studio had put on one of the 101 game CDs.
And we are seeing the same with film. COVID took away theatres. So a lot of people either started focusing on tv/netflix for a more convenient version of the big budget stuff. Or they went basically "indie" which led to the massive youtube/twitch boom. Or they realized that they could get "good enough" with a medium sized TV, some blackout curtains, and a soundbar (or a 5.1 setup if you are fancy). It wasn't quite as good as a movie theatre but you also had fewer people screaming along with the movie or ordering grubhub in front of you.
Which is why I very much think that movie theatres as we know them are going to be gone before 2028 (maybe even 2026). And it will be replaced with a very limited selection of "alamo drafthouse" level theatres that people rent for events and watch parties. Instead of "Hollywood" deciding that everyone wants to watch Mission Impossible 20 in theatres, it will be enthusiasts deciding they want to buy screen time to show the new Sailor Moon OVA and either selling tickets on their own or crowdfunding it.
I am less convinced that alternate voting models will make a significant difference (especially when we look at stuff like France actively unifying the left-leaning parties to fight fascism), but cool.
Unless you are going to implement that by early October, it isn't the topic at hand. The topic at hand is harm reduction and preserving human rights.
Yup. The problem isn't you not giving the slightest of shits about human rights. The problem is people not showing you the proper respect .
Anyone who is that much of a monster was never going to be an ally.
If you can look at women losing basic human rights over the course of a single workday and not care because the guy you liked that had spent literally decades actively dicking over Democrats in Vermont (seriously. Look it up. It is hilarious) didn't get the full support of the entire party instnatly?
You are a monster.
Anyone who ACTUALLY cares about human rights should understand the importance of voting for harm reduction. They should have fucking understood it in 2016 but they better fucking understand it in 2024.
Because, here is the thing: I'm Chinese. Both parties use my family as the bogeyman the moment it is convenient. AND we have been indoctrinated to let people step on us if it helps others because we "are the model minority". You give me a candidate who actually gives a fuck about 7.2% of the country and I am gonna scream from the rooftops in joy.
Doesn't matter. Because I also give a shit about women and immigrants and LGBTQ+ folk and so forth.
And if someone is throwing a hissy because they didn't win in 2015 at the expense of those folk? They are horrible and SHOULD feel bad.
You do both.
I am not as focused on ranked choice as others (I very much argue we basically already have the outcome with the primary system) and would rather a focus on getting rid of the electoral college entirely to allow for a popular vote. It doesn't matter
What matters is making sure we have a country where we can push toward that in a few years. Since, especially in 2024, one candidate is outright talking about dismantling democracy entirely. And, because of 2016, we have a supreme court that is basically "what do republicans want us to do?" at any given moment.
Its great that you liked Sanders. I... have very mixed feelings about him and mostly am angry at how much influence he pissed away.
But here is the thing? If you don't think you are being represented by the party? Then work with it. Even Sanders learned that after he spent most of his career actively dicking over the Democrats and it resulted in him becoming a household name.
Contact your local Democratic party. The Internet loves to paint them as bogeymen who actively hurt any good candidates and... some do. But the majority are the idealists who joined up because they gave a shit about Obama or Hilary or even Sanders. But they support the people who run because... they understand that the goal is harm reduction. Someone who gives a crap and is willing to do outreach work? You have a LOT of influence and can work on seeking out those candidates who DO represent you. And as you shift the local party, so too do you eventually shift the bigger party. Because as much as people hate ol' Genocidde Joe: he is ridiculously left of Clinton and, in some aspects, even Obama.
I am glad we got The Squad, even if they are sometimes idiots. But Sanders should have led to a mass shift in the party as a whole.
Yeah. My father is a REAL piece of shit and said it in the context of "I hate that <homophobic slur> Bush" but it still sticks with me:
In primaries? Vote for who you like. When it is time for the real election? Vote for the platform you hate the least. Bare minimum, it gives you the right to bitch and moan come February. Because if you don't vote? You actively chose to not have a say in the government.
... well, you also may have been disenfranchised by a bunch of republican shitheads. But it is the thought that counts.
Also, if you are putting all of your energy into telling people that the election is rigged and the candidate is unelectable and your vote doesn't matter? It doesn't matter if that particular moron is "just venting" and still plan to vote. You are actively discouraging others from voting.
And those tend to be the same kind of idiots who think you vote once every four years. Rather than every single year. Because your representatives in congress matter a lot. So does the god damned local comptroller in your town. Because "grass roots" is not a bunch of people online deciding they like the c-span meme guy. "Grass roots" is about shifting your local party in the direction you want so that you can get those good candidates in office and turn a red state blue and so forth.
And THIS is why you vote for harm reduction every fucking year.
Yes, this has been part of a plan going back to even before reagan. But one fucking election of people whining that the wrong person won the primaries extra fucked the supreme court for the foreseeable future. And we have the same clowns trying to pull the same shit going into this Fall.
Have you ever tried to torrent something less popular? One seed with shit upload getting ganged up on by ten leeches. Five of which disconnect the second they hit 100%.
Regardless, a torrent-like approach would work for large creators like Michael Reeves where thousands of people are going to be willing to act as seeds indefinitely. Someone like Matt Yuan might be lucky to have enough seeds for the latest two videos.
And it also doesn't work for anything live. And becomes a huge mess for premiers where people need to wait for the upload to propagate. MAYBE the latter could be handled with pre-seeding with an unlock coming at the release time but... it is a matter of minutes until a kick level creator nopes out by uploading CSAM "for the lolz"
He is a human trafficking serial rapist. End of story. Anything else is just spewing his own propaganda to legitimize the very real hurt he does to the world.
Please, do not even pretend that a human trafficking serial rapist gives a shit about "the role of fathers in a child's life"
A lot of smaller multiplayer games and older live games. Also a not insignificant number of fighting games.
If you ever noticed rubber banding or games straight up being broken if the wrong player is the host: That is your friendly reminder of how shitty most people's internet setup actually is. People piggy backing off the starbucks on the first floor is a meme for a reason.
Were the ad companies interested in increased profits? Of course they were. But they also aren't a charity. And when they are buying ad space for a web comic but having zero impressions, they are going to be pissed. They aren't running a charity (well... some actually ARE but that is a different mess).
Again, this has been going on well before subscription models were even a thing.
That said, I do agree that it is a generational "problem". Youtube has been around for almost 20 years and, arguably, in its current form for almost 10. Significant parts of the internet have no memory of anything else. Like, my niece and nephew literally throw tantrums when they see tv commercials when their father is watching a football game. Whereas my sister and I remember the fights over who got to use the downstairs bathroom during the second commercial break in The Simpsons that week.
But... I am an old. I remember heartfelt blog posts from some of my favorite webcomics and gaming news sites that were basically "Look. Hosting costs money. Especially as we are getting a lot more popular. I go out of my way to curate what ads we run on this site and have an inbox set up in case a company sneaks a bad one in. Please whitelist me in your ad blocker so I can keep doing this in the evenings".
And... I dunno. It is just REALLY frustrating to watch people pretend they care about... anything all while dicking over "the little guys". Because Google is going to get their cut. The pewdiepies of youtube will also get their cuts because they have literally been doing this for years in the form of sponsored videos. But the low/mid tier creators? They aren't getting the massive sponsor deals (unless they want to do raid shadow legends or better help) AND are going to not be getting their ad revenue or youtube premium money because no ads were run.
Yeah...
How often do images "not load" when browsing lemmy? How often do sites get hugged to death even now? And that is kilobytes of data.
Video is a mother fucker. It always has been. Those of us who are old enough to remember will understand WHY youtube was such a revelation (or why so many porn sites still have a huge thumbnail archive...).
And it is why the various "youtube alternatives" like Nebula or (sex pest adjacent) floatplane don't have free video. EVERYTHING is paywalled because free video would make their hosting costs increase exponentially.
And yes, in theory, distributed hosting can lessen that burden. Anyone who has played a listen server heavy online game will already understand why that is a pipe dream.
I mean, it is great that you have very specific rules in terms of what kind of ads you will tolerate. You should write a letter to John Google about that.
But also? We have been through all this before. Back in the day, ads on websites were incredibly unobtrusive. A small png at the top of the page that everyone skimmed past. But people still wanted to block those because only the evil sites were sellouts who needed to pay for hosting and blah blah blah. Which more or less started the ad war we have going to today. First they were simple jpegs. Then they were animated gifs. Then they were annoying animated gifs. Then they became flash ads. Then they became flash ads about how this shitty age of empires ripoff totally has boobs. And so forth.
Because if people aren't looking at ads? The people who buy ads know that. So we get ads that are harder to look away from. Until they are ads we can't look away from because they are embedded in the videos themselves.
And, until we live in a post scarcity society where energy is infinite, it is going to cost money/resources to host web content. Ads are still the closest thing to an "effective" way to pay for a lot of that. And that means a war to have ads that get past ad blockers and ensure eyes get on them.
There is nowhere else. The only other companies that can consider a YouTube scale product already noped out.
I mean... that is the point.
Pay for premium, watch ads, or don't watch at all. You and Google are both in agreement.
So I finally broke down and made a very poor purchasing decision and ordered an e-ink writer to be a notepad/e-reader hybrid. Partially so that it is less of a hassle to read books I got from kickstarters and the like while still using the kindle app for the disturbing amounts of money I throw at Amazon.
Historically? I loved goodreads because theoretically I would get good recommendations based on what I liked. In practice, that has never happened but it is still nice to see if I read something in the past. And once I have multiple ebook ecosystems, it will be nice to actually check that rather than spend the first 100 pages wondering if this is familiar.
So any good recommendations? I suspect what I SHOULD do (and will likely start doing more as a self betterment thing) is just put a note in my personal nextcloud every time I finish a book with a quick summary and some thoughts. But having the big database is also really nice.
Thanks
So I've been grabbing a few shows I want to watch reruns of while playing Balatro that don't have good blu ray releases. My piracy is fairly limited these days so I don't bother with private trackers (do have a VPN though). In the past, I never really had an issue with grabbing a few one offs off the popular, maybe honeypot, sites like rarbg and 1337x.
But over the past month or so, I've noticed I have gotten a lot of shitty files. Skips here and there or garbled colors for a scene or two. At first I though it was just a bad file since re-downloading the torrent had the exact same problem.
But, on a whim, I did a recheck and had to download like 40% of a torrent. And then 20% the next time. Which made me assume my NAS was fucked or I was dealing with a lot of packet lsos (... I AM dealing with a lot of packet loss from my ISP). But when I redownloaded a "known bad" torrent I had the exact same corrupted file.
So am I just REALLY unlucky? Or is there an epidemic of shitty/malicious seeds on the public trackers these days?
So... Gundam 00. It has always felt like the black sheep of the "main" shows. Everyone makes fun of it for being a "ripoff" of Wing (to the point there are even meme pictures in the official gunpla stores in Japan) and it felt largely forgotten relative to the never ending love affair with the UC and the pushes to make SEED a thing while avoiding the acknowledgement that the vast majority of "main" Gundam shows are retelling 0079+Zeta.
So I put off the watch for a while. Because I love Wing (like most Americans, it was my first Gundam) but I also fully acknowledge that is batshit insane and mostly a retelling of 0079, Zeta, and CCA.
And... I know Japan has very strict anti-drug laws but I am pretty sure they were on the same stuff that made Wing seem like a good idea. But whereas Wing's pacing felt like complete insanity to the point you would FEEL like nothing happened and then realized three wars started and ended over the course of two episodes, 00 seemed obsessed with ending every climactic cliffhanger/battle before the first commercial break. It works amazingly well on a binge watch to make you watch "one more episode" but I REALLY wonder how people tolerated that when it aired on TV. "Oh cool. The battle we have all been waiting for is about to happen. And... it is over before we see Ibushi squirt some dashi into a pan in a suggestive manner".
But, for all its flaws? I think season 1 is up there with Iron Blooded Orphans in terms of being a genuinely good "real" Gundam show (War in the Pocket is still GOAT but that was very clearly a side story, similar to Rogue One in the Star Wars franchise). We have a roster of pilots with clear flaws and mysterious pasts that pretty much exist to explore the idea of whether you can ever truly achieve peace through violence. And... it is insanely bleak. It is clear from the start that Saji's plotline is going to be there to make us useless in the rain and... it somehow ends worse than anyone can possibly imagine on every single front of that. And the climactic battle is simultaneously more pointless and more brutal than basically anything short of IBO.
And then... we have Season 2. Which is mostly a rush to explain all those mysterious backstories as well as the overall mythos. I assume this was intended (right down to not even having the namesake gunpla model until the end of Season 1) but it really undermines almost all the "vibes" of the first season. And I kept expecting Ian to quote Rodney Dangerfield and scream "We're all gonna get laid!" with how so much of season 2 felt like a collection mission for every Gundam meister's girlfriend.
And while 00 definitely cheated by having two "end of show so everybody dies" sequences... it ends on way too hopeful of a note. Don't get me wrong, I like a Gundam that doesn't leave me staring at my TV's burn-in prevention screen while I drink whiskey. But after how ridiculously bleak Season 1 was... 2 just felt like a copout.
Also let's ignore that the Gundams were literal reality warpers. And that it is clear someone watched Beerfest and had an epiphany on how to keep such a fan favorite character around.
But, for all of Season 2's MANY MANY MANY flaws, I still frigging loved it. Because usually, the overall story is secondary to the emotional beats of a Gundam. Yes, we are all super eager to know what the latest Char clone is planning but what we really care about is what it will mean for the Pilot. And, don't get me wrong, I was very invested in all of the pilots (even frigging Tieria). But I kept watching because I needed to know what Ribbons or the Feddies or A-Law would do next.
Also, let's not overlook the sheer ballsiness of ending the show with "And we are doing a movie!".
So yeah. Gundam 00. More or less abandoned by Bandai. Mocked by Eastern audiences for being a ripoff of the Gundam that was explicitly targeted at the Sailor Moon demographic (seriously...). Mocked by Western audiences because Eastern audiences mock it and we are all weebs to one level or another. Season 1 is some of the best that "mainline" Gundam has ever been. Season 2 is... good by Gundam standards.
And two parting notes:
- Anyone who disparages this had better speak to their (non-existent) God about their crimes against cute and adorable Haro units doing repairs on the White Base equivalent Could have done with a lot less large breasted women in skintight outfits bouncing around and more cute Haro units being cute.
- While I still take issue at just treating it as a blatant Wing ripoff, I do have to say: in a franchise where you have a child soldier who would be fine with being executed because it means he can rest and someone with blatant split personality issues... Heero is still the craziest Gundam pilot ever. And Relena is somehow even crazier than that. The number of times Allejulah went full Hallelujah and my response was still "Still not crazier than Heero"...
Looking for a solution to manage and access the directory on my NAS that is full of ebooks. Optimally I want to be able to web reader them but also automagically send it to the email that sends it to my kindle. And e-book wise, the majority of mine are epub/mobi that I got from various kickstarters or humble bundles. But I also have some RPG books (so PDF with a LOT of pictures) and manga (PDF or CBR).
Did some research and checked the various reference lists. Mostly narrowed it down to
- Weird-ass Calibre running in Kasm and accessed through a god awful web UI: This is actually what I used for the past year or two because there was a solution that was fairly plug and play with unraid. I... would rather never do this again
- "Calibre Web" https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web. This seems to be what I actually want (an actual web interface to Calibre!) but it looks like the lead dev lost their shit with obnoxious demands from users. And while I appreciate they are still supporting it, "I am going to ignore the issues unless I feel like it" seems like a good way to get a bunch of unacknowledged CVEs...
- Kavita https://www.kavitareader.com. Only found out about this today but it looks clean and efficient (plex-like). REALLY not a fan of the subscription model already being there but I also don't want any of those features.
Thoughts? There anything better I am missing because none of these look all that great?
So over the years (decade?) I've used Ventoy a lot. For those not aware, it is basically a live USB that you can add other ISOs to to boot into those. Usually overkill but incredibly useful for those days when you need diagnostics, a simple terminal, and then to install something what you actually want.
But... it feels like I run into corner cases and issues with ventoy more often than not. Proxmox or Fedora or whatever decide to do something even slightly different and then I need to upgrade ventoy and blah blah blah. Also... I am not the most comfortable with downloading anything from Sourceforge these days. Let alone something that is going to have a LOT of power over whatever machines I provision.
So I suspect the real answer is to either set up a way to network boot (although, not all machines support that) or buy like five cheap USB drives and put them on a keychain and not over-complicate things.
But if I DID want to over-complicate them.. is there anything better than Ventoy these days?
Thanks
So for the past few years (?) I have been using wireguard to vpn into (effectively) my firewall and a dynamic dns setup to access that remotely. But with the shitshow that is google domains and the like, this seems like a good opportunity to look into a few of the alternatives. I am not entirely opposed to just going in and changing the dns server once I figure out what I am going to do on that front, but wireguard has always been a bit of a mess to set up for less "tech savvy" people who need access to the home network.
Every so often I see some cloud based solutions get suggested. Which is sketchy but I already have a few alerts set up to be able to remotely shut my network down if wireguard is acting up when it shouldn't be and shutting down a VM is a lot less of a "do I really need to do this?" than shutting off the entire network. But most of those solutions seem built around selling seats which means they want you to add individual devices rather than just setting up a tunnel.
So is wireguard still the gold standard? Or is there a more user friendly solution that will let me compromise a bit but also have a setup that doesn't require me to be physically on site to fix the inevitable hiccups because it takes hours of reading articles to understand the setup?
Thanks
Framework as in the laptop company, just for clarity. https://frame.work/. For those unaware, the idea is that these are laptops built with a high degree of modularity so that you can replace far more than a single stick of SODIMM with the goal of even upgrading your CPU and mainboard a few years down the line.
Also, Framework is partially owned by Linus Sebastien (Linus Tech Tips) so their marketing is "off the chain" as it were.
Over the past few years I have tried to convince myself to get one a few times. But... the pricing never made sense. As a quick exercise:
- A DIY (so no Windows key) 13th gen intel starts at 850 USD https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-intel?q=processor
- The associated mainboard+cpu is 450 USD https://frame.work/products/mainboard-13th-gen-intel-core?v=FRANGJCP04
- A Dell Inspiron 16 inch (since the samsung with the same specs was on a ridiculous sale and I am trying to prove a point) is 900 USD (on sale for 600) with a windows key https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-16-0-2-in-1-touch-laptop-13th-gen-intel-evo-i5-8gb-memory-512gb-ssd-platinum-silver/6539908.p?skuId=6539908
850+450=1300. So you really aren't even saving that much unless you actively refuse to shop a sale at Best Buy or pretend you are still a student when they ask. And that assumes you ONLY want to upgrade your mobo+cpu and nothing else.
But I still like the fundamental concept (of the marketing...) of upgradable laptops.
But then I finally watched the Tested teardown video with Norm (the heart and soul of Tested and has been since the Whiskey days) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drxOpMsr6sM and... the general takeaways were that there is a LOT of cool tech involved in the modularity but that the vast majority of people would never mess around with it after assembling their laptop for the first time. Also, Adam Savage has stickers.
Combine that with all of their modular ports being 20 dollar USB-C dongles with single ports and... this feels a lot more like the kind of bullshit Apple does than anything else. Why use the USB C dongle/hub that works with all your other devices when you can buy a 20 dollar HDMI port instead?
Same with stuff like the (honestly insanely cool) modular keyboard layout. Basically, the keyboard, touchpad, etc are all panels that can be popped off and swapped around. So if you want stupid LEDs, you can have them. If you want an offset keyboard, you can do it. If you want a 10key numpad, you can do that too. It is a genuinely awesome idea but... it is a lot of engineering for something that people will use maybe twice in their ownership of the laptop (once to configure, one to replace when they spill their drink). Same with things like being able to swap out the back module to have a GPU when you want it. You do that once.
Which... makes it feel like people are paying a premium for easier assembly at a factory.
And as for the upgradable hardware? Storage and ram are on point and they should be praised. But you are basically buying whole new modules for the CPU/mobo and the GPU and so forth. Which... is kind of necessary because it is so rare to find an actual mobile sized GPU in a consumer available format. But it continues to just feel like you are buying proprietary parts from a company (Framework want other companies to make parts but I have not looked through the terms and licensing).
But also? A friend pointed out: How many sticks of DDR3 ram do you still have? Because I know that I have a big bin of computer parts "just in case" that I will never use but also can't be bothered to throw away because maybe I will. And that is what these modular parts become. You COULD recycle your old mainboad+cpu... or you can keep it in case you want to do a project that you never will and that would be perfectly fine with a raspberry pi or a cheap nuc anyway.
Contrast that with wiping your laptop and giving it to a nephew or dropping it off in an e-waste bin (and many stores offer incentives to do that).
All of which combines to... this feels a lot like the kind of "poison pill" compliance that Apple is doing on the right to repair side. They make a big deal about how they allow people to repair their shit now (that various governments threatened action...). But they tightly control the parts and rent out the hardware AND price it to strongly discourage hobbyists to the point that it mostly feels like they are just squeezing out the third party shops even more.
I'm torn because I do think the stated ethos is awesome. I... also have had no issues replacing my storage or upgrading my ram in my last few laptops but I tend to not get "flagship" models so there is that. But it is increasingly feeling like Framework is just building up IP to sell to manufacturers while having a net negative on the amount of e-waste in the laptop space.
So I was watching a few youtubes and remembered how the vast majority (of like the ten) nes games me and my sister had were hard as all hell. I loved to play Little Nemo and Street Fighter 2010 but I am pretty sure I never made it past the third level of either. Let alone infamously hard games like The Lion King.
Which got me thinking. Basically every game for the past 20 years has been designed around instant gratification and being accessible. We outright had to make a new concept "hard but fair" to account for games like Dark Souls that are designed to be difficult but beatable as opposed to putting you in a death spiral if you hesitate too long on a hard jump (hello Ninja Gaiden).
So do the younger folk even have a concept of a "favorite game" where you likely never experienced more than fifteen minutes worth of content?
So finally got around to watching a recent movie that I won't name since I am not sure if it was part of the marketing, but the premise was that there was an all powerful AI that was going to take over the world and it used a mixture of predictive reasoning, control of technology, and limited human agents who were given a heads up on what was coming.
It was... mostly disappointing and felt like a much tamer version of Linda Nagata's The Red (apologies as that is TECHNICALLY a spoiler, but the twist is revealed like a hundred pages into the first book that came out a decade ago). And an even weaker version still of Person of Interest.
Because if we are in the world where an AI has access to every camera on the planet and can hack communications in real time and so forth: We aren't going to have vague predictions of what someone might do. We are going to have Finch and Root at full power literally dodging bullets (and now I am sad again) and basically being untouchable. Or the soldiers of The Red who largely have what amounts to x-ray vision so long as they trust their AI overlord and shoot where told and so forth.
Or just the reality of how existential threats can be both detected and manufactured as the situation calls for utilizing existing resources/Nations.
Any suggestions for near future (although, I wouldn't be opposed to a far future space opera take on this) stories that explore this? I don't necessarily need a Frankenstein Complex "we must stop it because it is a form of life that is not us", but I would definitely prefer an understanding of just how incredibly plausible this all is (again, I cannot gush enough about Linda Nagata's The Red). Rather than vague hand waving to demonstrate the unique power of the human soul
spoiler
Or the large number of thetans within it