captain_aggravated

captain_aggravated , 11 hours ago

Both of those statements are categorically false.

captain_aggravated , 12 hours ago

Helicopters and IMC don't seem to mix particularly well.

captain_aggravated , 11 hours ago

Given how little story they were willing to put into the last two games they made I'm not sure what they're going to do with the runtime of a movie, and if I'm honest I think I'd rather just watch an orchestra play selected pieces from the series' soundtrack than whatever they're going to do here.

captain_aggravated , 12 hours ago

You know, I think you've got it. The pitch for Enterprise was "What if we went back in time before even TOS when everyone was significantly shittier?"

captain_aggravated , 11 hours ago

It does actually attribute the quote to Douglas Adams at the bottom of the image.

captain_aggravated , 10 hours ago

At least per my copy of The Ultimate Hitchhikers' Guide Complete And Unabridged (a hardcover with all five books plus the short story Young Zaphod Plays It Safe):

The first book, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, starts out with the passage that begins "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun." Later in this passage, you find: "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe starts with a preface: "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened." The beginning of Chapter 1 reads "The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

I might be one of the very few people under the age of 50 to know THHGttG as a radio play first and a series of books second; All of the above and more in the books comes straight from the radio play, but their places shuffled around.

captain_aggravated , 20 hours ago

I've been daily driving Linux Mint for 10 years now. The answer to this question is "for what most people consider everyday usage, you have to use the Linux terminal about as often as you have to edit the Windows registry." And in fact over the 10 years I've been a Linux user, GUI tools in Linux are increasingly available, and I've heard Windows normies talking about the registry more.

When I started out, Mint shipped with Synaptic Package Manager, and a lot of distros didn't include a GUI at all. Now GUI package managers are the rule rather than the exception and most have bespoke polished app store -like things. You of course can still use apt or dnf or pacman or whatever, but you decreasingly have to.

I never once touched the registry on my Win 98, Win XP, Win Vista or Win 7 machines. Win 8 required a couple registry keys to turn off that...curtain that you had to click away to get to the login screen? and a few other "tablet first" features Win 8 had, and now I hear "just go and add these registry keys to put the start menu on the left, turn off ads, re-enable right click and retract the rectal thermometer."

Linux is becoming more normie friendly while Windows is genuinely becoming less normie friendly.

captain_aggravated , 20 hours ago

Using screenshots, demonstrate to me how the current edition of Linux Mint's Software Manager application is "garbage" and show me how the Apple App Store, Google Play Store or the Windows Store is better.

I can agree that there are not great software managers out there, Pop!_Shop always felt like it was malfunctioning to me, and Synaptic Package Manager works but has some significant klunk, but...what's wrong with Mint Software Manager that anyone else gets right.

captain_aggravated , 20 hours ago

Microsoft is one of if not the biggest and richest companies in the world and they got that way on a strategy based on the public's fear and hatred of reading comprehension.

captain_aggravated , 19 hours ago

The flaw is in the question: terminal apps practically always include more functionality especially for batch processing and automation of tasks.

I'll give an example: Find me a GUI application that can quickly convert a gigabyte of .doc files into .pdf format. Pandoc can do that with a single command.

Also: You're probably comparing the process of "using" a GUI app with "using" a terminal app, in other words, if you spend 8 hours sitting in front of Premiere or KDENLIVE clicking a mouse, you expect to do the same job with ffmpeg by sitting in front of it for 8 hours typing commands, right? But that's not how it's designed to work; it's designed for you to write scripts that do the things you commonly do, which takes time to do once, then you run those scripts, maybe even from the GUI.

I'll give a real example: the software I use for my personal journal is called RedNotebook. This stores the data in a human readable markup format (I think it's YAML?) and displays it in rich text, including the ability to display inline pictures. I like putting pictures in my journal.

First problem: what it actually does is store a relative path to the location of the picture in your file system; if ever I was to change the location in my file system where I store the journal or my pictures, or change operating systems, this would break. So I created a Pictures folder within the Journal folder to copy all pictures there.

Second problem: My phone takes 12MP or larger pictures and the journal displays them at full scale so they take up the whole screen. I'd like to shrink them.

Third problem: The app's "Insert picture" funcionality opens a file browser window written in QT which is different than the one from most of my GTK-based desktop apps use and I'd have to manually find the file.

Simultaneous solution: I wrote a short bash script that calls ImageMagick to shrink the image among a few other cleanup details, and builds the appropriate string to paste into my journal and puts that string in the primary buffer. I then wrote a Nemo Action so that the option to run this script appears in the context menu iff I right click on exactly one image file. Now I can add an image to my journal by browsing to its location in my file manager, right clicking, clicking Add To Journal, and then middle clicking in RedNotebook where I want to paste the picture.

There are hundreds of tedious little things I would do over and over again clicking through endless menus, windows and dialogs that I can script away, like paving my own bypass lane.

captain_aggravated , 19 hours ago

And there it is.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Fun thing I discovered: A lot of DVDs check which region the player is from and play a different warning at the beginning. VHS is analog and linear so that FBI warning is just baked into the video but DVDs can shuffle video on the fly. Fun fact: That's how they got the theatrical edition and the extended edition on one side of one DVD, if you play the standard edition it just skips the added scenes on the fly.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Way back when I still lived at home, my family had a little game, someone would put in a movie and the first one to guess which movie it was "won." I could often do it from the previews. DVDs spoiled this with their menus. Well, most of them did. Some of them do just start playing the film (or start at the previews).

I recently ripped my whole DVD collection to my NAS because, well, optical drives are going extinct. And I noticed some patterns. DVDs of contemporary movies from early in the format's history were often special events. They had specially designed one-off packaging, lots of extra features, extravagant menus, etc. As you went later in the format's run, packaging became standardized, and especially older pre-DVD movies that were being re-issued on DVD would often just auto-play the movie when inserted. They often had menus that had no animation or music so you could chapter select or toggle the subtitles on but you'd have to stop the movie to see them. Also, TV shows on disc suffered way more from disc rot than movies, I'm guessing the discs themselves were cheaper/worse.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Okay, who downvoted this? The MPAA?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Minor suggestion: Do it in winter. Transcoding video like that is a CPU intensive workload, if you're going to pump that much heat out of your PC case you might as well want it.

captain_aggravated , 22 hours ago

A lot of things made it a Winter project for me: wanting to assist my furnace rather than fight my air conditioner in the Carolina heat was one thing, also my work slows down a lot in winter, not as many projects to do, so I had plenty of time to mess with it over winter. Plus, in summer I keep my house at 74, in winter I keep it at 70, It's amazing how much that makes a difference in CPU temperatures.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Same question rephrased: Can seat belts be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing the effects of natural selection? After all, stronger individuals are more likely to survive car crashes.

What about wood stoves? Surely the fittest individuals are able to handle the cold?

We removed ourselves from "natural selection" a long time ago.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I think we're in a more similar position to birds of paradise. Several species of birds that live in the south Pacific/Indian ocean islands/Australia kind of region, where the weather isn't particularly harsh, their food is abundant and there are no natural predators, so natural selection has given way to mate selection. Male birds of paradise are fancy as fuck with brightly colored burlesque plumage not because it's any help surviving their environment, but because the girl birds think it's sexy.

I think our genus is in a similar position, but got there via a different route. Once the upright walking, hands having, brain thinking ape got dexterous and smart enough to build fire and cook food, there was a sort of bootstrapping period of becoming smart enough to do engineering, at which point we arrive at anatomically modern humans, and from there most physical changes have basically been "because it's sexy." Men have deeper voices because it turns women on. Women have permanent boobs because it turns men on, etc. People from Asia have distinctively shaped eyelids...is there some environmental pressure in Asia that doesn't exist in Europe or Africa, or is it because that eye shape became fashionable to ancient Asians?

And now we've arrived in a time where we have a functioning understanding of how genetics work, and the ability to manipulate those genetics at industrial scales. Seriously I think we departed the "it was cold so the ones with thicker fur were more likely to survive to fuck another day" phase of existence at some point, with the invention of writing at the latest.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I could imagine a technical limitation if they use some proprietary audio codec to send compressed surround sound that the browser somehow doesn't support, but on the other hand why the fuck am I giving a big tech corporation any benefit of the doubt?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I would also wonder how this would work with MMOs where the server side, both in processing power and in bandwidth, is not insignificant. I mean I suppose "are required to publish the code, no requirement that it's feasible for others to run" but...yeah.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I'm aware of good old fashioned multiplayer where an average Pentium 2 rig has enough grunt to host a multiplayer session and be one of the client machines, obviously games of that scale should be able to be run by enthusiasts. I'm talking about, what if something like WoW shuts down?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I've noticed Ashens is kind of winding down, release schedule is basically just the holidays now, has he announced anything? Retiring etc?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

after Polybius Heist?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are led into a long room. At the other end stands a beautiful naked woman. "When I ring this bell," she says" you may cross half the space between us. When I ring the bell again, you may again cross half the space between us." Both the mathematician and physicist groan and wander off. "Ah, it's Zeno's paradox, we can never actually reach her." The engineer, waiting for the bell, says "I think I can get close enough."

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

For the joke to work.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Nope, had to be cakes out, specifically to piss off the people who get angry when they detect something men stereotypically enjoy.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Were you neutered as a child?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I don't think it's the same joke when it's three turtles or a goat, because the joke is "I think I can get close enough...to engage in unspecified sex acts with this woman."

You think the same chemicals that turned the frickin frogs gay is responsible for this aversion to sexual thoughts? "Could it not be a naked woman? That clutches my pearls."

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

You objection is noted Mr. Spock. Man your station, please.

captain_aggravated , 12 hours ago

The mathematician is naked, something about pure and direct truth. The physicist is wearing a bow tie, chippendale cuffs and a banana hammock. The engineer has on his new invention: Assful chaps.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Which is why it should be considered bad practice to use the word "chemicals" as a synonym for "poison."

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Oh is that like bankofarnerica.com or whatever, hoping the r and n look enough like an m for at least some people to click?

edit: under absolutely no circumstances click on the above link. Your bank will be robbed and your foreskin soldered shut. To very don't.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Reminds me of Extreme-G 2. "Reah Fiyah Rockets"

Multi-pull miss aisle!

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

It ran on the N64 with that frame rate. It felt great, it felt FAST, and that drum and bass soundtrack from the absolute peak of the genre. If we're honest with ourselves it's Mario Kart wearing Axe body spray but holy damn does it work.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

The one that says

This Year's Ballot:

___ Fascism

___ Snooze (4 years)

sums it up.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Stardew Valley was released in 2016. My understanding is it took 10 years to make (Eric Barone worked at a movie theater, and when he wasn't at work he was working on the game) and he's been supporting and releasing new content for the game for 8 years now. The Wiki pages for the characters contain the artwork for the characters he's drawn, and redrawn, and redrawn over the years.

He basically won the cozy farming genre, it's time to move on, for his own health if nothing else.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

There is a post that's circulating around the Lemmyhood where someone asks an LLM to solve the "there's a goat, a wolf and a cabbage that need to cross a river" problem, and it returns grammatically correct logically impossible nonsense. I think this is instructive as to how LLMs work and how useless they really are.

Presented with a logic problem, it doesn't attempt to solve any problems or apply logic. That it does is search through the sumtotal of all human communication, finds dozens if not hundreds of cases where this or a similar problem has been asked, and then averages the answers. Because answers might be phrased in different orders or different sentence structures, or some people published wrong or joke answers sometimes but it has no means to detect that, they get averaged in with equal weight and so the answer it puts out begins with "Take the wolf and the goat, leave the boat behind. Take the boat back." It has a fascinating ability to output seemingly relevant and grammatically impeccable worthless noise. Just like everything I say.

The only compelling use case I've seen for these things is writing frameworks for fictional stories. There was an episode of the WAN Show back when LMG still existed where Linus gave ChatGPT a prompt to create a modern take on the premise of the movie Liar Liar. And it came up with an actually compelling outline, I'd go see the movie made out of that outline. Because it's fictional, it doesn't have to conform to reality.

I doubt it could write an entire acceptable movie script though, it would have gaping plot holes, would have no theme or cohesive narrative structure, but every individual line of dialog would make grammatical sense and some conversations might even seem coherent.

As a research or information gathering tool, they're worse than useless because it has no way of detecting if information is up to date or obsolete, serious or farcical, correct or incorrect, it just averages them all together, basically on the same theory as the Poll The Audience lifeline on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Most of the crowd is almost always right. Except with this approach what happens is it will cite a completely fake made up paper and attribute it to a genuinely real scientist who works in the relevant field and allegedly published in a real reputable scientific journal. It looks right, it passes the sniff test. It's also completely useless.

And that's when they're not throwing weird emotional tantrums.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

sigh would you look at all that stuff...

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

I think you can get there in TF2 when considering subclasses via weapons loadouts. Demoknight for instance is a completely different play style than normal pipe/sticky demoman.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Remember OLD Youtube? With a 10 minute upload limit? Which is why the original Red Letter Media Mr. Plinkett review of The Phantom Menace, the work that basically invented the modern long-form video essay, was broken into 9 parts?

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Welcome to the world according to Republicans.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

What does "a good heat exchanger" look like in this case? You compress air, the pump heats up, so you ventilate it to keep it cool. The air in the tank is hot, and starts to cool as it sits in the tank, and this causes a decrease in pressure, which is why even with no leaks a shop air compressor will run for awhile, stop, then after awhile cut back on again.

I get that I'm applying a shop tech's "machines that I can move with a hand truck" understanding to factory-size operations here but...

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

I'm largely pulling from a video that Hyce published recently on the topic, that that there are several pros, cons and factors involved. Keeping a historically coal burning engine as original is definitely something a museum would like to do, but apparently as the world's coal power plants are shutting down, so are the mines. Modern coal plants burn coal that is ground fairly finely, steam locomotives prefer large chunks, so that's still a bit of a special order. Meanwhile it's fairly easy to find bunker C or used motor oil or even used cooking oil.

Firing a coal-powered engine is a back breaking exercise because the fireman IS the fuel pump, shoveling literal tons of coal from the tender into the firebox, but given the mass of the fire it is fairly automatic when responding to changes in throttle from the engine. Oil fired engines are a matter of turning valves, but without the mass of the coal bed a change in demand from the engine requires fairly swift action from the fireman.

Shutdown of an oil steamer is a lot easier, when you're done you close a valve, the fire goes out and she'll spend the next week cooling down to room temperature. With a coal burner you've got to extinguish or dump the fire, fuck around with ash, etc.

And, fires are a thing. Early in her heritage career, UP's Challenger just about burned down all of Utah. The state wasn't going to let them run it again without converting to oil. They had to do the same with the Big Boy for the same reason. Other heritage railways are making the move to oil firing because it's making more and more sense for 21st century steam traction.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

I did want to kneecap the idiot that decided to use a leaf blower to blow the sand off the parking lot of the apartment I used to rent in. Was kind of tempted to send the manager a bill for a new clear coat on my car.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

If someone were to call me a "short king," I would have their name legally changed to "Cellulite Queen" or "The Right High Honorable Sir Shriveldick Pissinbed III" or some other such.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Your name is now Baron von Halitosis Drinksfromcarton Esq.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Something that I often say to myself to end contemplation paralysis is "What's the worst that can happen?" or "What's the worst case scenario?" If I'm debating trying something in the kitchen. "What's the worst that can happen? I waste a few cups of flour and some yeast."

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Congratulations! now get out of here and you go be an awesome new dad. That table saw will wait.