ulterno

ulterno, 4 months ago

Zoomed out a bit more, just in case you live too far.

Zoomed out a bit more, just in case you live too far.

ulterno, 4 months ago

either due to technical or cost effective

Mainly due to proprietary hardware+software solutions which cannot be ported now and remaking them with new hardware will require redoing the same processes as before (probably with additional stuff added by later laws) all over again.

ulterno, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Or you can just read it directly. Just need some light.

It’s actually better than plain text stored on a Hard Drive/ CD/ Floppy et c., which requires corresponding reading devices, format parsing systems, a display to show it and an appropriate power source, after which you can consider using a human to use the data (or remove the monitor and convert data into other data, in which case, you need another output device/network).

ulterno, 4 months ago

Cup of coffee here is $0.1203668386

ulterno, 4 months ago

Is paying via credit card with auto renewals the only payment method companies provide you? That’s pretty bad, I’d say.

Because, considering what you are having to do RN, it means that they can simply change a policy and next time you pay, you might find out the “account management screen and cancel” becomes unavailable.

There has to be a way to pay without having to give your credit card details… e.g. The payment gateway sends a request to your bank; your bank asks you for confirmation for one time payment; you confirm payment; the bank sends acceptance to request; payment gateway captures it and gives you your bill.

ulterno, 4 months ago

Maybe they just love Starbucks and don’t like that I quoted the “street” price instead of the Starbucks price.

– Which still comes out to be $8.4 for 2.

ulterno, 4 months ago

if the customer does not print enough

Meaning all home users are a bad investment for HP.

That explains the ink cartridges malfunctioning before giving enough prints. That’s been engineered into them.

ulterno, 4 months ago

I was one of those who used to dream of real time ray tracing before it became a thing. And now that it’s a thing, I feel uninterested by it (didn’t event try to buy one of those GPUs. It’s as if the dream was more fun to have than having it in reality.

ulterno, 4 months ago

My casio watch is waterproof. [100M Water Resistant] And it has a user replacable battery. With a gasket inside and cool looking screws. (yes, I consider screws to be cool) Also, it costs less than $20

ulterno, 4 months ago

• Casio watch warranty period: 24 months

• Casio watch advertised battery lifetime: 10 years

• My Casio watch actual battery lifetime: 5 years

• I didn’t have to open it until 2x the time of official warranty.

• The gasket had gunk in it on the outer side, so I cleaned it, but I could have gotten a replacement from one of the local Casio stores.

• The strap has broken 2 times until now (yeah, I’m kinda rough on it) and replacing that doesn’t void any warranty.

  • The standardised nature means, I can get either Casio branded straps (even from other models if my model is discontinued) or other generic straps.

• I am nearing the point at which it might require another battery change, but either way it’s worked pretty well.

• I take hot water baths with it and even though I never used it up-to 100m (I’m not really into diving), I haven’t seen rust or moisture in the inside.

• Of course, if you open the stuff and change something yourself, it’s up to you to warranty it. You can’t expect them to trust every tom, dick and harry who might:

  1. Not tighten the screws well enough
  2. Not place the gasket back in place
  3. Do any other random stuff

and officially say that they will cover that. I know I wouldn’t.

The point is, they let you do what you want and help you at a reasonable price (the replacement straps were priced appropriately).

I can’t say the same for the fancier models though.

ulterno, 4 months ago

I’d love to have a phone with 8 screws and a gasket in the back cover instead of the fixed plastic latches that the Fairphone and others have. Easily more water tolerant and love the industrial feel.

ulterno, 4 months ago

I’m not sure how funny this will be, but here’s how I broke my system twice in a single case. Step by step:

1. Migrated from Manjaro KDE to EndeavourOS KDE. Kept the previous home directory.
2. After a few updates, there was a problem with Plasma. Applications were not starting from the panels or the .desktop files (they worked from the terminal. The terminal emulator was in startup and worked that way)
3. After a few google searches, found out that downgrading glibc would do something, so downgraded… Worked for a while
4. While using pacman -Syu, I always checked for warnings (foolishly thinking that the downgraded and ignored glibc would cause a pacman warning if it broke dependencies) and there were none. So, the updated OS stopped working due to unmatched glibc. BREAK 1
5. To fix it, I opened one of my multiple boots (another EndeavourOS) and made a script using pacman -Ql and cp to copy new glibc related files into the broken system (because I was too lazy to learn how to do it the correct way with pacman and chroot didn’t work because glibc is needed by bash).
6. Turned out the script I made was wrong and I hadn’t checked the intermediate output from pacman -Ql, which was telling cp to copy the whole /etc /usr and other directories. (just if I hadn’t given the -r to cp) BREAK 2

In the end, I just made a new installation, this time with a new home and hand-picked whatever settings I wanted from the previous home, Viva la multi-HDD

ulterno, 4 months ago

That’s not the only thing they do. They also reduce your capacity for work… and life. I have a reason to believe that people dying from “overwork” are actually because:

1. People work (and play) more when they are young and in school etc.
2. Get used to their ability to work as much and subconsciously set a mental bar.
3. Get into office space full of secondary smoke / start smoking
4. Smoke reduces their ability
5. They don’t realise their reduced ability and keep on working as much as previously set bar.
6. dedz

Just a hypothesis. No scientific backing.

… other than first hand exp with reducing ability to work after long term exposure in a heavily contaminated environment.

ulterno, 4 months ago

nicotine

I won’t act like I know what comes out of people’s exhalation after they come into an unventilated room after smoking in the stairway just next to it (with the only door blocking anything, being always kept open), but I can say for sure that:

1. Cigarettes give out much more than just nicotine vapour.
2. The smokers in question have proven to be neither more competent, nor more productive. On the contrary, they sit around, asking other ppl to do their work (in the name of help) and as the other people waste their own time explaining their work as they do it, the smokers don’t even learn from what is being taught to them.

If it is a stimulant that comes out of that smoke, it’s definitely stimulating unwanted attributes of the brain.

ulterno, 4 months ago

Scientists do not question the concept of science

Questioning the validity of science is precisely how science is done These are 2 different statements, pertaining to 2 different actions.

Both the statements are true… err… alright, maybe not the first one as much. You can question the concept of science (which, in a way, boils down to “Question everything”) and still be a scientist.

Questioning the validity of (other’s and your own previous) science is a part of the concept of science.

Questioning the concept of science is more of a philosophical matter and would be valid in a quest for better concepts.

The above two statements are not actually denying each other.

ulterno, 4 months ago

1. It’s fine to disagree with scientific consensus. Even more so when there is not a real consensus.

   1. Going by a recent example where in some cases, it was being mandated for everyone to be vaccinated when possible; later, it was noted that vaccinations weren’t significantly useful for people who had recently had COVID (sorry, too lazy too link. It was just a news anyway and not a res paper). But this pertains to a condition that is currently undergoing change, with new strains coming out every now and then.
   2. An older example. Old enough to get into our school textbooks. “different tastes on different parts of the tongue”. The text used a kind of language that made readers think that given specific tastes can only be detected at those places, whereas the results from actual science were much more nuanced. Furthermore, the textbooks encouraged the students to “verify” this by trying different tasting objects on their corresponding taste locations, while not hinting them to try any of those in places other than those, which would have easily disproven the statement in the way it was written in the text.
   • The point here is that you are free to believe what you may, but when your actions significantly and maybe adversely affect others, you have to be careful about what others believe and whether your belief has any concrete proof. e.g. It’s fine if you don’t want to live in the same room with a vaxxer (just live in some other room, or don’t rent a multi-tenant room in the first place), but that doesn’t give you the license to harass that person or their family.

2. meh

3. It’s stealing both ways. Whether it’s legal or moral or not, is another discussion. WB stole from the customer. It was legal (they probably had it somewhere in their EULA) and probably immoral (because they knew most customers would not really read it well and those who did, would still probably give them money because they have no other option if they wanted to watch the exclusive). Pirates then stole from WB (in this case it was illegal), but the moral implications change upon perspective. Neither side of the argument is even close to ideal, but sometimes you can’t really condemn yourself for saying “It is what it is” and picking a side.

Lookie here! This thread has 8 parallel lines.

ulterno, 4 months ago

color or contrast

Then the AI will be called contrastist.

ulterno, 4 months ago

Yeah, the point is, do it now and change the status quo, because later, it will be too late.

ulterno, 4 months ago

I agree with that. And my point being “Start the movement (of buying older cars instead of new ones) now and change the status quo (of high demand for new cars) while also being able to get older cars that cannot be subscriptionified, because later, even the older cars will be such, that they will have a subsciption, making even 2nd handers to pay the OEM”.

ulterno, 4 months ago

It seems already too late for that movement - at least in places like the more “developed” states in the US.

I use a bicycle for commute btw.

ulterno, 4 months ago

Hmm. I remember steam saying it can’t run a game because the same account was using a game on another PC. Maybe something changed since then. I’ll check it out again. Thanks for the info.

ulterno, 4 months ago

Interesting. Perhaps I’ll try doing the single computer thingy.

ulterno, 4 months ago

This seems to be one way of them trying to prevent piracy.

The situation here is that the game soundtracks I bought on are not prevented from download and I am able to use it on any device I want. Despite that, it never came to my mind to pirate it. Same for the GoG games. But there still exist enough pirated steam games out there.

It can be simply concluded that the people who don’t want to pirate, will buy the stuff and not pirate it no matter how easy you make it, whereas those who want to pirate it will actually be more zealous in pirating stuff that makes it harder to do so.

ulterno, 4 months ago

it’s weed, not LSD.

And what do you smoke it for ?

ulterno, 4 months ago

Evening weather report: 14 degrees C, Smoke (Yes, smoke, not smog) Average AQI of over 400 and I’m pretty sure the sensors are in a better area than the residential one I live in. People filling the already crowded area with all kinds of smoke ranging from tobacco to whatever weeds they find to wet pieces of wood. There’s problematic gasses seeping into my room at ~0100 right when I’m getting comfortable while sleeping, makes me wake up with a headache. Result: Increased overall fatigue; Reduced ability to work; Reduced QOL.

I have a pretty good reason to have a problem with smokers. Automotive pollution stopped being a direct health hazard ever since laws for keeping the Catalytic Converters in working condition started being enforced.

P.S.: Forgot to say: Guess my location with this.