Once an egg sac hatched at our communal postbox and it was magical, all these tiny yellow spot sprite things bumbling around and setting off. Put a good narrator on and people would have watched for hours.
Honestly, I'd love to give them their own little pkace to play Ancap King if it meant thry stopped breaking civilization for the rest of us.
I think it's more the £50 notes. Much like using a USD100 note in the States, it's a bit big for most daily purchases.
I ended up dumping most of mine on a couple expensive souvenirs in shops expensive enough that they'd deal with it or breaking them in banks.
If you have the chance, check out the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
The DEC PDP-1 and IBM 1401 exhibits would both fit the aesthetic pretty well.
EA now being a model to aspire to?! What next? Cats chasing dogs? Sunshine at midnight? America showing responsible global leadership? nVidia making a fairly priced GPU?
Some people like to use a stored balance as a financial discipline tool. Don't put a "real" funding source on the account and then you can only spend the $100 you committed to, and not go whale-mad and drop $500 on premium currencies.
It's easier just to price in the fee than having to shut down or retool a project.
The problem with attribution is the difficulty of 1000% accurate compliance.
If you grab 100 lines of code from a repository, or five paragraphs from a story, there's probably a claim there. If you grab a single word, there's probably not. But in the middle, there's a paralysis of uncertainty-- is n lines similar enough to create liability? Can you remember where you saw what reliably? You end up with a bias towards "over-attribution" and it becomes difficult to pare it back. Does everything need a full Git-style commit history? Are we forever stuck keeping a credit on a project because it's difficult to prove you've fully scrubbed their contributions?
Focus on how we pay artists (ideally lush grants) and forget about credit. Maybe establish a culture where it's voluntary and acceptable-- that people feel that they're allowed to cite their raw materials, and reuse doesn't make the work lesser-- but don't try to use the courts to force people to try to remember and track where they saw something when they just want to create, or it creates a hostile environment.
Hey, the broken clock's right!
IP law always had a built-in scale pronlem. Without a registration-required copyright model, and probably some sort of mandatory licensing rate system, the sheer logistics of finding and arranging rights made a lot of business models inpractical. (For example, why aren't modern bookstores just print-on-demand kiosks, or streaming services have All The Content? In large part because it would cost thousands to track down owners and negotiate terms for $1.87 in royalties multiplied by every item in the catalog.)
This was ignorable for a long time, or even a commercial advantage for firms with access to large, pre-negotiated catalogs. The AI boom created a surprise market of non-incumbents who need to get access to a lot of IP in a streamlined manner.
If we open the door for bulk IP clearance to grant the AI bubble a stro ger legal footing, it can also allow other, potentially more interesting business ideas to slip through.
I'm concerned at that quota. If you only measure in terms of units produced, where's the metrics for quality?
I figure it would be the "good enough compliance gesture" like when router makers dunp a barely-building code sample to comply with the GPL.
Wouldn't the easiest way out for this just be to throw a repo up and say "host your own servers, go away."
It feels like that would be an approach that would be simple and cheap to deliver (they don't have to handhold any of it) but makes them look magnamanous-- "you'll be able to show your kids this game or get a nostalgia kick even 20 years for now, like how your dad pulled out the Atari 2600".
It's impressive how much of the recent deportation scheme leans on the cooperation of one tin-pot state.
There aren't that many other places with concentration camps conveninently located and leadership ready to deal. It's unlikely they'd build them domestically, it would take time, cost a fortune, and not achieve the explicit "we removed the evil foreigners" goal.
It would be interesting to see what happened if someone said "we'll pay you more than what America is paying to close the door." Would he have to just knock on every presidential palace in the hemisphere looking for a new partner? Try to scale Guantanamo 100x overnight?
The sacred rituals of Western civilization-- the election and the press-- were long ago subsumed by capital. You don't need to formally censor when the oligarchs own the media and will skew the messaging to serve their interest. You don't need to have a single party state when the Overton window has been dragged so far right that no electoral outcome can actually oust billionaire rule.
At least, in that context, we can ask who censorship serves? Is it about social cohesion and stability, or preserving the privilege of a handful of people?
Perhaps Microsoft needs to do a better job with framing and expectations management then.
If you tell me we're having cheeseburgers and bring out a lab of molecular gastronomy novelties, I'm hoing to say it's a pretty mediocre cheeseburger even if it makes some brilliant insights about the future of food.
If object permanance is such a breakthrough, why is it failing to rise to the level you'd see in procedurally-generated games from 35 years ago? It feels like they want to lean so hard on the model that they are using it beyond its useful scope. LLM style models might be good for "generate the next map of the procedural dungeon" but then you hand over to a different tool better at persisting state. Nobody will blame you for realizing different problems require different tools unless you're some cult-like (or investor-like) perspective that only a single all-inclusive model is the final endgame of all computing
Could we use biomass and hydro to bootstrap without fossil fuels?
We might have to go smaller scale, but if we have a playbook to follow, we can skip some wasteful false starts
The risk they don't seem to imagine is that their ownership and precious property rights are still conditional.
If you impoverish everyone so much that they no longer have a stake in preserving absolute property rights, it becomes a lot easier to sell "nationalise their assets" and "hang them from a petrol station canopy."
You might be able to find a few bodyguards you can bribe to protect a compound, but you're not going to be able to guard everything once society no longer sees value in recognizing your claims to ownership.
Even the "robber barons" of the past-- the Carnegies and Rockefellers-- at least knew that public gestures and restraint would help push that day back, but does Musk or Bezos have that level of understanfing?
Commodore 128DCR. Always on display at toy shop, now on display in my office.
I bought a '60s VTVM recently. It needs mains voltage, uses two vaccuum tubes, and does less than my $15 Aliexpress digital meter while taking 48 times the space, but golly it's nifty.
If the U.S. were to rewrite all of its laws tomorrow, what are the things that Democrats and Republicans would agree on?
Property rights. The almighty sole principle.
I bought "D" size batteries today
Daiso had both alkaline and traditional carbon-zinc batteries in this size. I chose the latter because it's for a 1960s device and I think that was the default battery chemistry in the era, plus modern alkaline batteries seem very prone to leaking when left alone for 10 years.
Tools for analyzing your own signal
I recently got my license (General class) and figured I'd start with a "marginally better than a Baofeng" radio, the ~$30 TYT TH-UV88.
The few attempts I've had trying to trasmit have resulted in people reporting "you got the repeater to register, but no sound" or missing significant parts of the message. I suspect the headset/mic setup that came in the box was dodgy at best (the earpiece was cracked in two, and I was never 1000% sure if the little module with a button on it was a mic or just the PTT button that would activate the on-unit mic) so I'm using the onboard speaker/mic. But I'm sure there's an art to "how do I hold the mic, how loud, and how far do I speak from it for optimal legibility".
What's the best way to develop an understanding of these techniques? I feel like it's rude to be just constantly begging for sound-quality reports. I thought about turning on my recieve-only RTL-SDR to record the local repeater, then try different styles to play back, but I figure I d
(Scottsdale, AZ) Gila Monster or Chuckwalla?
Currently in an argument- "too thin to be a Gila" vs "too beaded to be a chuckwalla"
Very sluggish, but it's only like 19c today. Maybe 25-30cm long
Theming / Font configuration: "bold" inherited unexpectedly
I've been trying to style my Qt apps since I discovered the old Motif-look Style Plugin still exists; maybe I can have software not made in 1994 that looks like it was!
In the process, I noticed an odd behaviour.
I set up QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct so I could use qt5ct to do the basic configuration.
If I set the "general" font as bold, and the "fixed width" value as non-bold, when I reload qt5ct, it's switched to bold. This can also be seen in other Qt programs.
If I manually force the issue by editing qt5ct.conf, manually setting up a block like this, the bold fixed-width font still shows
[Fonts]
fixed="Go Mono,11,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0,Regular"
general="Helvetica,11,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0,Bold"
I thought this might be some weirdness due to the specific fonts I chose, but swapping in "Liberation Sans" and "Courier 10 Pitch" produce the same situation.
The only way I can have my fixed-width font be "regular" is to also leave the general font as "regular". This is not a connect
The super-rich are disappointingly boring.
So many of the .001% seem to have no visible interests other than running up the score. I mean, most of us, you get to $50 billion, hell, $50 million, and you'd probably quit and spend your days doing something you found personally rewarding, rather than continuing to chase further growth. It's not like they're still working until they can afford that Jet Ski, and then bailing for Ford Lauterdale.
I almost wonder if it's meaningful to try to evaluate them as humans-- to consider whether they're consciously evil-- since it seems like they act like the Paperclip Optimizer from bad sci-fi parables. I've seen more emotional depth from a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet.
You'd think that their spending habits would reveal some element of what little soul they might have-- personal quirks, tastes, foibles. This goes beyond the usual "they could afford to end hunger and disease with couch change" complaint. They aren't doing anything interesting in ANY space! If they had any sort of interests
Account Required, 2FA, Contract Signed In Blood... to see a PDF.
(Alt: The Drake meme. Upper panel shows him hiding his face from "Securing Customer Data". Lower panel shows him smirking at "Securing Public API Documentation")
Any computer scrap/surplus shops worth visiting?
I'm coming to SF for a few days next month, and am a bit of a retrocomputing enthusiast. Obviously, one of the first items on my itinerary is the Computer History Museum, but is there any place worth visiting if I want vintage-computing souvenirs, not just photographs?
On my last holiday, I went to Toronto and ended up spending a day heading out to the fringes of the city and rooting a scrap dealer's boxes for ISA cards instead of exploring culture, art, or history. :)
I know I should have shown up 10 years ago if I wanted to see the heyday of scrap dealers, but linear time and all. :P
Someone mentioned Anchor Electronics in Santa Clara, but I'm staying downtown and it looks like it's 2 hours each way from there via public transport, and even an hour plus from the CHM. I suspect getting a Waymo may cost a fortune if they'd even cover that area... I try not to be in cars when on holiday, but I can sort of make an exception for a technological novelty.
ID request (Phoenix area)
In this corner, we've had a large female widow for a year or so, but haven't seen her in a couple weeks. There are a few Pholcidae around, but this looks different. Maybe 10-12mm long legspan.
Some Wine games go blank when I leave the window
Currently using an X11 system, on an AMD GPU; the window manager is FVWM because I'm a nostalgic old git.
I use two screens, and most games tend to full-screen on one.
Had decent enough results with Proton via Steam on many titles. A few of them needed to be explicitly tagged "don't draw a frame around the full screen window" in the FVWM config, and I had a few where movies did that "show a test card instead of video" but no biggie.
I've recently had two harder nuts to crack. I'm using two games with Lutris: The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (it was $20 cheaper on GOG than Steam at the time!), and Genshin Impact.
Both of them play fine, so long as you keep the mouse within the full-screen capture area. But if I leave the window (say, using a keyboard combination or pulling the mouse outside the capture area), the games go blank.
SNK shifts the black box somewhat off of its original position, and I think Genshin just goes blank.
I experimented a bit with SNK's "wine config
(sigh) Another Blasted Mortal
Original parameters: (full body male vampire hunk), (shirtless), (thin necklace), (standing in graveyard), hunk, (long hair), (red eyes), (holding scepter), (wide angle), masterpiece, detailed, (moonlight background), realistic, (wind blown) Negative prompt: (head cut off), (extra fingers), (moustache), (beard), (anime), jeans, female Steps: 20, Sampler: DPM++ 2M Karras, CFG scale: 6, Seed: 3375192227, Size: 704x384, Model hash: 6ce0161689, Model: v1-5-pruned-emaonly, Denoising strength: 0.01, Hires upscale: 3.75, Hires upscaler: DAT x2, Version: v1.8.0
For years, I've had a wallpaper in rotation of the cover of the manhwa 'Rebirth' volume 1, (reference https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347683512i/29540.jpg) featuring the vampire protagonist in the moonlight with a decidedly surly pose.
I've been smashing my 6900XT into the wall trying to get it to spit out something with a similar vibe, but a few more pixels than I can get out
It's still 1994 here!
The wallpaper is one of the standard XBM images included with the X11 distribution (in OpenBSD, it's at /usr/X11R6/include/X11/bitmaps/mensetmanus).
The fonts are the Modern DOS collection (8x8 for the battery status, 8x16 for the terminal). The window titles use the classic bitmap Helvetica which has no antialiasing and gives it a unique "Vintage system" vibe.
I was going to give it a full CDE install, but the build guides don't seem to work right; I might switch to SparkyLinux for this machine because suspending fails just often enough to be annoying.
Turnkey mini-PC for home-routing duties.
After a home rewire, I'm ready to bump up to 2.5GbE, and demote my old 1Gbps router/wifi box to "AP Only mode".
I want at least five six total ports, four of which need to be 2.5+ (three to different rooms, one for uplink, one 1G+ for the AP, and one "any speed is enough" for the networked printer :) )
It seems like the "mini-PC with a bunch of 2.5GbE ports running OPNSense" option fits neatly between "Build a router out of my old i5-2500K and some eBay NICs and ignore the USD450 electric bill", and "enterprise rackmount gear with Delta fans left over from people overclocking their Socket A Athlons."
I see a lot of machines of the form "fanless case with a little castle of fins on top, Intel N100 CPU, six 2.5G ports from I226 chipset". A representative example is https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806214512701.html
I suspect they may all be re-brands of the same basic product, but I wanted to know real-world experiences:
- Basic question: can anyone vouch for any specific one
2.5GbE router for home use
I've been prepping my home network for the promise of "fibre coming soon" in my city.
That meant wrapping the house in Cat6A like a giant arachnid nest, and having a couple desktops with 2.5GbE on board, but I'm not sure what to do about the routing setup. I have three Ethernet runs to "30cm from the ISP equipment" now.
For gigabit in this scenario, the turnkey solution is any random Wi-Fi/router/firewall box which has 1Gb WAN and four 1Gb LAN ports. But where do you go when you start wanting 2.5GbE?
It seems like the "Wifi/Router/firewall" boxes with 2.5GbE ports are quite spendy, especially if you want more than one LAN port. I know a lot of this cost is because they tend to be the latest-and-greatest in terms of Wi-Fi, with 82 antennae, but that's only a secondary consideration for me with the heavy users on wires. Hell, my smartphone only supports the 2.4GHz band!
It seems like other options include:
- 2-box solution: A slightly cheaper Wifi-Router with 2.5GbE WAN and one LA
Cleaning my overstuffed inventory
I'm trying to get back into GW2, in large part because it's one of the few MMOs I've liked that actually works well under Linux.
For a frame of reference, my main was a Nord Necromancer with ~33 mastery points, and the three easier-to-acquire mounts. I completed the main story and HoT, and sort of drifted out in the middle of PoF for like two years. Just bought the EoD expansion while it's on sale.
I've got one 20-slot bag and four 15-slots, and maybe 1-2 slots free at any given time. I suspect my problem is less "bag space" per se, and more a hoarding tendency-- crafting items, "turn it into some NPC for a quest" items, seasonal tonics and exchange items. Hell, I still have the Level 80 token that came with the original purchase, because I figured if I skipped to 80, I'd miss the Personal Story.
Is there a good rundown for discard/sell/keep somewhere? One thing I've seen in other games that I appreciate is when they say "these seasonal items are now obsolete and will be delete
PSA: Buy some LED Christmas lights today
I got a Sylvania-branded strand of 50 "warm-white" LEDs (plus two loose spares) for USD 2.50 at the local grocery store, which I'm pretty sure is cheaper than buying a bag of the bare LEDs would run. They also come in other colours (blue, cool-white, bright red, multicolour)
The individual LEDs come in plastic shells which can be cracked open to retrieve the goodies inside, and have plenty long leads that are folded over to fit the "bulb" mounting.
This 9v battery contained six cells stacked like a layer cake
Picture of a disassembled Duracell 9v battery. Below the terminal assembly is a clear plastic case where you can see six sets of stacked rectangular terminals and fillings.
Mini-Review: Gamemax Titan Silent chassis
Writing this up because I haven't seen a proper review.
Note I've only been using the case for about a day so I don't have a strong baseline on thermals; this is mostly about the build experience.
Why I was interested My preference towards cases is very old-school. I like external drive bays, and have no interest in tempered glass or RGB. My long-term daily driver was a Cooler Master HAF XB, which is a delight to build in and offers exceptional expandability for its size.
The one place it's sort of limited is depth for GPU-- I have an ASRock OC Formula 6900XT, and it's 330mm, and you have to remove front fans and carefully wiggle to get it out of a slot. This has resulted in me breaking the stupid clip on my mainboard.
So I had a $125 rebate voucher burning a hole in my pocket and a growing sense that most of the remaining cases with drive bays will be gone in another year or two, so I'd better get one now or it will be gone.
The obvious question Yes, the front panel ca
Specific shopping suggestions
I'm going to be coming up from the US for a week in a few days. (When I booked the trip back in May, Canada seemed a lot less... flammable :( ) For me, a big part of leisure travel is indulging nerdy fixations in shops that there are no local equivalents for, away from the rest of the family asking "you bought WHAT?" until it's far too late to feel shame.
Any good suggestions for the following? (Extra points given for public-transit easy access; I enjoy a walking- and train-focused vacation)
- Anime goods shop
- Model-railway-centric hobby shop.
- Electronics-surplus shops/long-lived computer shops that have backstock dating to the era of George VI. The sort of place where you might find a LS-120 drive, weird Commodore stuff, or a cache of ISA cards.
- Neighbourhood-style coin shop (the sort of place that has albums for different series, and wouldn't take offense if I'm looking in the $50 range rather than the $50,000 range).
On a related note, I'd like to try to get some o
The Chinese Expansionist Threat the Western Media won't tell you about!
From the description of some random eBay listing. The text reads:
"Shipping: Free Economy Shipping from Greater China to worldwide. See details.
International shipment of items may be subject to customs processing and additional charges. (information icon)
Located in: Sofia, Bulgaria"
We spent so long staring at Taipei that nobody noticed when the entire PLA burrowed its way through the Earth and popped up in Eastern Europe!
Hopefully they brought some Belt and Road infrastructure cash. I don't think they've been doing so hot since the Warsaw Pact fell.
FVWM is all you really need
(screenshot of a rxvt window decorated with a fvwm theme. The title bar is rotated to the left and highlighted in red with white text, and reads 'marada@kalutika:~'.
The window is green-on-black and contains a vim session with the text 'You may not like it, but this is what peak desktop performance looks like.
Each window has a clear, square border around the edge. You know where one window ends and the next begins, and exactly where you can drag to resize them, even if you stack one Dark Mode window slightly ajar of another.
There's a titlebar that has a huge segment which can be clicked and dragged to move the window, rather than tiny icons and a search bar eating up all but a handful of pixels. The active window has a distinct colour you can immediately pick out.
That title bar is mounted on the side, so it's not consuming precious screen real estate when the trend is towards 52:9 aspect-ratio ultrawide monitors whichbarely have enough vertical space for one full