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captain_aggravated

@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works

Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

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“Well, whatever, never mind.” --Kurt Cobain.

captain_aggravated,
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Hell yeah give him the Ron Popeil treatment.

Are you tired of your life as an authoritarian dictator? We sure are! Introducing the Ronco laser guided AGM-114R9X Instant Ginsu. Watch as the patented steel blades cut through the roof of this SUV, and are still tomato slicing sharp. Makes your darks darker and your whites redder. Order now for your six Instant Ginsu blades and receive a 100 pound kinetic warhead absolutely free, you just pay shipping and handling. Call 1-800-382-5968. Sorry, no CODs.

How do I cope with my father hating me?

My father, who convinced me (16 m) at the time to move in with him instead of my mother when they moved. All 3 of the other siblings stayed with my mother. He then kicked me out the week I turned 18, a week into my senior year. Since then he stays in touch only to speak with his grandchildren (now going on 4 kids). I have never...

captain_aggravated,
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You are under no obligation to answer the phone.

captain_aggravated,
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Still not convinced they’re for sale in my region.

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Meanwhile I still think there’s that group of folks out there who want to decompile the game looking for lore in the code comments.

There’s a Rat Man den in Portal 2, it’s in a later section of the game after you’ve climbed out of the depths, you can get behind the scenes and there’s a niche with a big fan in it, and Rat Man has built kind of a shrine of coffee mugs. And if you listen, under the harsh electro music and the sound effect of the fan, you can hear a sort of insane jibbering, as if Rat Man is still there raving to himself.

Fans of the game hungry for any more lore or story hints, have put more thought into this sound clip than the folks who made it and put it in the game.

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In a different thread on this same topic, I posted some technical information relevant to AM and FM radio, trying to bring a bit of technical nuance to the discussion, from my background as an amateur radio hobbyist.

The short version is: People talk about AM having longer range both during the day and especially at night, when really it has more to do with the wavelength than the modulation scheme. The commerical AM broadcast band is transmitted at a wavelength of ~200 meters, which has both groundwave and skywave propagation properties, where commercial FM broadcasts at a wavelength of ~3 meters which is strictly line of sight. The real relevant detail is MF vs VHF, not AM vs FM.

The modulation scheme matters with the construction of the radio itself. AM radio predates WWI, and a functioning receiver can be improvised out of literal junk you find lying around. Consumer AM radio receivers have been in production for a hundred years, and the AM broadcast band is kept deliberately primitive to maintain compatibility with those ancient radios. VHF FM radio is about 50 years old, and though it is a bit more technically advanced also goes through some pains to remain compatible with radios made during the Ford administration. Both technologies are older than the majority of Americans today and have functionally “always” been here.

In the other thread, I didn’t get around to this part: Is MF AM broadcast radio a good technology for “emergency communication?” Maybe. Depends on the emergency, depends on the information, depends on the audience.

If we’re talking about information of interest to motorists, AM radio isn’t a terrible choice because the vast majority of cars built in the last 70 years have AM radio receivers. Same could be said of FM radio; you can reasonably expect the average car on American roads to have an FM radio. A lot of people tout the superior range of MF over VHF. For traffic, road closure and weather advisory, how much range do you really need? If the message is something like “Interstate 40 Westbound between mile marker 76 and 81 is out of service due to road construction. Follow detour marked by signs from Exit 75. Delays of up to 45 minutes expected during peak traffic times.” You might want to deliberately limit the range of that signal because it’s a waste of spectrum to broadcast that message from Tennessee all the way up to West Virginia, a state that has no I-40 in it at all. Mind you, not all motorists are able to receive either one. Some cars, and nearly all motorcycles, have no AM or FM radios. Things like road closures, detours and such should be 100% navigable by signage alone.

If we’re talking about weather alerts, the NWS maintains a network of VHF FM transmitters called the National Weather Radio or NWR that transmit on one of seven channels around 162 MHz with weather observations, forecasts and warnings. They have a technology that transmits a code that can automatically turn on radios for severe weather warnings. These transmit with a power of 5 to 1,000 watts, and there’s about 1,000 of them dotted around the country. I’ve been spending the last day saying to myself “Yeah, why don’t all car stereos have NWR receivers in them?”

General emergency things, like widespread natural disasters, civil emergencies, national security emergencies etc. are perhaps a different story. If there’s a hurricane or something, the ability for one station in Tennessee to broadcast to the entire Eastern seaboard could come in handy. Temper this with the idea that they might only reach the Outer Banks or Savanna Georgia or Rhode Island at night.

Something to consider though is do 21st century people “have” AM radios? Sure, every alarm clock, boom box and walkman have AM radio tuners…but how many people these days actually have those devices? Search on Amazon for “boom box.” They’ve gone out of fashion. Especially for younger folks tend to use their cell phones as alarm clocks and music players. I bet there’s a lot of households nowadays that don’t have a working AM radio, in the same way that they probably don’t have cassette players or VCRs. I imagine a large swath of the population whose only functioning AM radio they own is in their car stereo, and I imagine they never use it. Outside of Rush Limbaughs audience, who listens to AM radio these days?

It is a bit of a problem, actually. Up until the 90’s, you had AM, FM and TV. You didn’t have to worry about congestion on these platforms, so the normal stations people listened to or watched could be redirected to emergency broadcasts. That has changed. As noted, who listens to the radio? We all have Spotify or Apple Music. Who watches “television?” We all cut the cable for streaming services delivered via the internet, who has a set of rabbit ears hooked up to their TVs anymore? We’re all used to getting information from our cell phones, which are nearly useless during a widespread power outage because everyone suddenly hits the cell towers slowing everything to a useless crawl.

Hell, winter before last there was a weather related power outage. Normal stuff, ice took down some power lines. My local FM radio station stayed up under generator power, and they were trying to broadcast a press conference with the governor…but couldn’t because their downlink from the state capitol was through Facebook and the internet wasn’t working correctly. They had no microwave relay or satellite uplink or whatever, they were trying to stream audio from the state capitol, across the internet via Facebook, then over the air via FM. This is the state of emergency communications in 21st century America.

Is mandating car stereos have AM receivers the solution to that problem? I’m not so sure; is it the Republicans just want to keep their rage bait shit on the air? Prolly. As I said it would be much wiser to mandate NWR receivers in new vehicles.

captain_aggravated,
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Things which are commodity items, such as sugar, all-purpose flour, etc. I buy store brand. The main difference is marketing.

Oh, here’s one: Power tools. Yeah I know, I know. But…

here’s a Porter-Cable branded 6-inch jointer on sale for $365 at time of writing.

Here’s a Craftsman branded jointer being sold for $299.

Here’s a Wen branded jointer for $241.

Look at the three of them. They bear a striking resemblance, don’t they? Makes sense for the Porter Cable/Craftsman ones, both brands are currently owned by Stanley, Black and Decker…but Wen has nothing to do with them, yet they’re selling the same fuggin’ jointer. Admittedly without the speed control, but what do you need a speed control on a jointer for?

It’s the same tool made in the same factory in China, the cost difference is what logo you’re willing to pay for.

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I know, right? ICQ managed to survive when MSN, Yahoo and AIM were all killed by Facebook Messenger?

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“Poor man’s ice cream from '49”

Vanilla flavor. I’ve got some apples I intend to bake, and some strawberries I’ve cut up, it’ll go great with both.

While the original publisher of the recipe called it “Poor man’s ice cream” and it is indeed quite inexpensive to make, I prefer to think of it as homemade soft serve. It comes out with a much softer smoother texture than traditionally churned ice cream; you’re in no danger of bending a tablespoon in this stuff. It also requires no churn; it can be made with more multifunctional tools like a hand or stand mixer.

captain_aggravated,
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I’m currently excited for the batch of ice cream setting up in my freezer. gonna be tasty.

captain_aggravated,
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Some of the people are robots.

captain_aggravated,
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Didn’t he cast his daughter as one?

Yeah, according to Wookiepedia, Katie Lucas has actually had a few small roles and cameos in the prequel trilogy as well as several writing credits in The Clone Wars. In Episode 2, you know that sports bar scene? “I don’t want to sell you death sticks/Jedi business go back to your drinks” as they’re walking around a Twi’lek extra in the background turns and checks out Anakin, that’s her.

captain_aggravated,
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The original meme I was referencing:
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/180fdb6a-8fcf-4ee9-98c0-ffd72b80bde2.png

Which I think conveys the same idea much more concisely.

captain_aggravated,
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This is just a more verbose way of saying the

Old person: Why don’t kids want to go outside these days?

The outside they built:

meme.

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Wizardry was ground breaking in 1981. I’m not sure how well it has aged. I bet a lot of modern gamers would enjoy a youtube video essay about it more than actually playing it.

captain_aggravated,
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SG-1 was made at a time when TV shows could have a range of tones and still make it work.

captain_aggravated,
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Bringing up the topic of nostalgia, I think there are two audiences to talk to here: Those who had those old systems at the time they were relevant and those who weren’t.

I mentioned the game Extreme-G. That was a personal favorite of mine. I occasionally set up an old CRT and my old N64 and during my nostalgia trip Extreme-G and Extreme-G 2 both spend some time running. Just hearing the British cyberpunk announcer chick say “mull tee pull miss aisle” makes 25 year old neurons fire. And I also fully acknowledge that it was an above average 8.1/10 game, that it’s basically Mario Kart hosed down with Axe body spray, the Forsaken brand of 90’s drum & bass cyberpunk is a bit passe these days, and despite the very fast graphics kids these days are going to look at it and go “…okay. Pretty low resolution, isn’t it?”

And from that perspective, I don’t think the N64 aged well at all. Even Ocarina of Time, hailed for over a decade as the greatest video game ever made…is aging like a potato. It kept for a long time but it’s starting to show wrinkles and is distressingly wet on the bottom.

On c/games@sh.itjust.works or however you do that on Lemmy I answered the question “Was Wizardry a good series?” with “Was. Yes.” Because Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was phenomenal…in 1981. You just couldn’t get computer entertainment like that in the Carter administration. Not sure how well it holds up 43 years on.

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I’m pretty sure I couldn’t with Sony because I don’t think I could name a single first-party game from Sony.

Microsoft is a tricky one because of how many studios they’ve bought, and I’m not sure how many platforms the PC counts as (at least three: DOS, the DOS-based Windows era and the Windows NT era.

I cannot for the Steam Deck because I’m not sure Valve has made a total of 25 games.

I’m not as familiar with Sega as I am Nintendo but they were and still are a developer in addition to the platform owner.

Atari is not impossible; it’s probably possible to come up with a list of 25 first party titles that were considered great that were published for the 2600 or for their 8-bit computers.

If I’m going to give it a go, I think I’d go for Nintendo on either the NES or SNES, though for the SNES I think I would have to ask if I’m allowed to count titles made by Rare and I bet someone would clap back if I included Super Mario All Stars.

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I didn’t add a power switch to my 3D printer for nearly three years. Wasn’t that bad, I had it plugged into a power strip and would use the switch for that to turn the printer on and off.

I’m not sure my laptop’s discrete GPU works anymore. which is fine for the away mission web browser machine it currently is, hell if I need to do graphical work or something I can ssh tunnel to my desktop.

I used an old Dell monitor with a column of dead pixels for a shockingly long time. Thing just had a line of red down it about 1/3 of the way from the right edge. Ghosting and other artifacts have started to show. I still use it as a backup-to-a-backup on an old machine but it is out of main desktop service now.

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In the movie, I think it is established that humans enslaved by Ra built the pyramids both on Earth and on Abydos. SG-1 probably leaves it there but opens the possibility to Unas or Jaffa as well.

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Yeah, my hypothesis is that most of the folks who will object to Windows 11’s bullshit enough to switch to Linux already have by now. There likely will be another bump in transitions at Win 10’s EoL but not as many as who have switched since the rollout of Win 11 already.

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