@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

mausmalone

@mausmalone@mastodon.social

Old school jack-of-all-trades webmaster, but I mostly talk about old video games and computing.

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docpop, to random
@docpop@mastodon.social avatar

I'm sick of justifying ethical behavior in terms of profit. We use phrases like "adding alt-text brings more customers to your site" or "protected bike lanes increase revenue for local businesses."

You should add alt-text descriptions to images because it helps people.

We need to build bike lanes because it makes cities safer and more accessible.

Reduce carbon emissions because it's the right thing to do! Discussing these things in purely economic terms misses the point.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@docpop that's the same feeling that I get when we have to argue about whether school lunches and breakfasts raise test scores or not. Who cares? The result of free school lunches and breakfasts is that kids don't go hungry.

bagder, (edited ) to cisco
@bagder@mastodon.social avatar

I was reminded of the great security fix of 2019

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@cd_home @root42 @nullcolaship @foosel @bagder It is pretty funny - it's just that most of the HTML tags for content (h1-6, a, p, div) don't have the letter t, while a lot of stuff in the head (title, script, style) do.

Surely any tables on the page are ruined, though.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

My ex had this rule, or sort of a philosophy I guess:

"Never feel bad about spending money on books."

And this made a lot of sense to me, at the time,

but this was before I actually realized

just how much money I am capable of spending on books

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc maybe a better rule is "don't feel bad spending money on entertainment if you can afford it."

I grew up poor so I have to remind myself of this constantly. I feel like I'm doing something morally wrong whenever I buy stuff that isn't strictly needed.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

As you may remember from me talking about it once a week, the three things I most want out of a cell phone are

  1. RECTANGULAR screen with NO HOLES OR ROUNDED EDGES ON THE DISPLAY CANVAS

  2. Big bezel/bevel/whatever it's called so I can hold it without activating the touch screen

  3. Headphone jack

I search and search and even for high prices I usually cannot get these things

But the $35 carrier branded temp replacement phone I bought at the Wal-Mart by the airport?

All three

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc for reference, in electronics it's "bezel," a term taken from jewelry making for the metal piece that holds the glass front of a watch. "Bevel" refers specifically to a slanted surface and they get confused a lot because a bezel will grip a gem by its beveled edge.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Palm OS and the devices that ran it: An Ars retrospective

Before smartphones, we had PDAs in our pockets. Palm did them best.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/palm-os-and-the-devices-that-ran-it-an-ars-retrospective/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica One addition to the epilogue - Palm was zombified under TCL, but webOS was split off and bought by LG and it's the OS that runs their smart TVs.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Suppose you cut Wolverine in half, top to bottom. What happens:

A) Half dies, other half lives
B) Both regenerate into new Wolverine
C) Half dies, other half lives, but the regenerated Wolverine has problems related to having two right or two left hemphispheres
D) Both regenerate, but with the problem described in C.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Could go the route Heroes did with Claire where if something blocks regeneration then they stay dead until the block can be removed. In her case it was a tree branch in the base of her skull, in this case it would be distance. Reunite the two halves and he comes back to life.

TheWarOnCars, to earthquake
@TheWarOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

There's always a parking angle.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@TheWarOnCars "West of Manhattan" - anything and everything to avoid just saying "New Jersey"

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Holy shit, I thought my computer was just running really slowly, but it turns out it was entirely due to Chrome. Please Google, just close down.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith this is where every web developer on the planet swarms in to tell you you should use Firefox. (But at the very least please stop using Chrome - it's invasive to the point of being indistinguishable from spyware.)

MissingThePt, to random
@MissingThePt@mastodon.social avatar

You’ll have to pry my American paper out of my cold, dead hands.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@MissingThePt one thing I always find silly is when Europeans try to criticize our paper sizes as arbitrary and inconsistent but, like, why is there both A0 and B0? Who decided what those sizes would be and why? Why does it matter that you can do this neat fold-in-half trick? Does it matter that we do the same thing to cut broadsheet all the way down to letter-half?

mausmalone, to random
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Two interesting videos for the nerds out there like the @notjustbikes crowd.

First up - Thoughts on Car Dependency from Rural America. It's kind of thought provoking and it's a good illustration of how really truly rural small towns can (and already do) benefit from what urbanites are talking about. https://youtu.be/mKRr8ymaqBM?si=neZVjk6tohDcXvrW

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

This is a pretty basic, "and what's the deal with airline food??" kinda observation, but

It's just been brought to my attention that a Chrome tab takes up a minimum of 24 to 28 MB of RAM*, even if it's looking at about:blank or an empty HTML page. There are good engineering reasons it might work this way but I am also thinking about how my first computer-shaped computer** had 4 MB of RAM and that was like, an OS plus sophisticated full apps. Later we upgraded to 8 MB RAM and that was a big deal

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc the first computer I had /that could connect to the Internet and load web pages/ had like 16 MB I think. I made whole websites on that and posted them on geocities.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Next time someone asks what SMBC is about, I'm just posting this

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith

gulovsen, to random
@gulovsen@mastodon.social avatar

Me realizing that I need to install Microsoft Teams for a meeting tomorrow

A small child throwing a temper tantrum

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@LinuxAndYarn @gulovsen I've never had a problem with Teams in Firefox ... other than it not having any camera settings.

Which is good for me I guess because I can't imagine the Linux version of Teams is functional (not that I'm volunteering to try).

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

It seems to be very, very hard to go from a program which is running in GNOME in Ubuntu to the name of a package on bugs.launchpad.net. It is an impediment to filing any bugs at all.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc @voltagex firmware-updater is a snap, so "snap info firmware-updater" should give you a lot of info to start with

notjustbikes, to random
@notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com avatar

Waiting with the rest of the crowd for the spits (rush hour) to end at Utrecht Centraal, so that my train ride to Amsterdam is 40% cheaper. 😉

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@notjustbikes kinda shines a spotlight on people who think peak/off-peak pricing is just good business but then gripe about cities enacting congestion charges. EDIT: or at least that's where my mind went.

mausmalone, to retrogaming
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Beat X-Men Mutant Apocalypse on SNES today. First time with real hardware and a CRT. This seems like a game that would appeal to speed runners because memorizing and executing a very specific routine is necessary for completion. Also, to get the true ending you're required to do it in one playthrough with no deaths.

Character art for Magneto
Psylocke and Xavier speachifying in Magneto's ruined base
Logo end screen

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Just opened my ThinkPad and for the second time in three days the act of closing the laptop to sleep it, then opening it again had caused Ubuntu to hardlock. This time I got a very brief small printout about "amd ring 0 error", then it went back to a black screen and I had to hold down the power button again.

I thought getting a ThinkPad, getting AMD cpu/gpu and picking the Linux distro Lenovo lists as supported would mean I got a minimally functioning computer but I guess not.

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc I don't, but by the same token I don't allow my laptop to suspend on lid closure. I only suspend my laptop explicitly.

I've had issues with suspend on lid closure on every laptop I've ever used so I eventually just defaulted to disabling it preemptively.

mausmalone, to random
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Well I'll admit that I stayed up a little bit later than I intended but I managed to hammer it out. Some thoughts on the movement (whatever you want to call it) and, incidentally, the first update to my personal website in 6 months.

I don't know if the world needed another one of these think-pieces but for me, at least, it's a sort of statement of intent. At the very least I hope to put some more effort into my personal site.

https://mattpierce.info/smol-web

patrickklepek, to random
@patrickklepek@mastodon.social avatar

I've noticed a frustrating trend with "arcades" directed at children these days. Increasingly, there are no video games, and instead, they're filled with exploitative traps that might as well be legalized gambling for kids. My latest at @crossplayblog: https://patrickklepek.substack.com/p/kid-arcades-are-now-the-exploitation

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@patrickklepek @crossplayblog local mall has a couple of stores (Ebisu being one of them) that are just walls of gacha capsule machines and I thought that was bad enough, but at least you always get /something/.

Then one opened up (Kawaii Gifts) that's just rows of claw machines and now you get /nothing/ 99% of the time.

mausmalone, to random
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Okay @frameworkcomputer community - computer borked and is not booting with the SSD installed. While I'm waiting for Etcher to make me a boot USB does anybody know what this sequence from the power LED means:

1 white
12 green
1 orange
1 blue
5 green
1 blue
1 green

EDIT: going by a post on the forum this is post code 0x82 but I have no idea what that means.

mausmalone, to cars
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Out of curiosity - does anybody following me have any experience with replacing car stereo speakers? I'm not really worried about the wiring or the speaker itself - but I don't really know how to figure out if I can dismantle the car door with risking damaging it ...

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

Lol nevermind - just found a how-to and they're not in the door. This actually looks pretty easy. I just have to make sure I order the right parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWJNS5QSQp0

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

The 2024 Fiat 500e is a $34K EV that appeals to emotion, not logic

It fits a niche, but it won't suit everyone's needs.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/04/the-2024-fiat-500e-is-a-34k-ev-that-appeals-to-emotion-not-logic/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica What's with the headline here? Every car fits a niche but won't suit everyone's needs. That's why they make different cars.

It just seems really sus that it gets applied to like one of 3 or 4 total EV cars on the entire market, and one of the only 2 compact EVs you can buy in the US.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Biden set to levy 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs this week

Both the US and EU are deeply concerned about heavily subsidized Chinese OEMs.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/biden-set-to-levy-100-tariffs-on-chinese-evs-this-week/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica you know, there's no reason we can't heavily subsidize American EVs and compete on equal terms (except a slavish devotion to the notion of market capitalism).

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Is there a way in EITHER Firefox or Chrome to block a page (in this case, YouTube) from loading or playing video?

Chrome (though not firefox afaict) has a site/global setting for "block site from showing images", but completely inexplicably¹ blocking images does not block video

¹ Okay, I can explain this, it's probably because the setting is an artifact of the old era when Chrome tried to be useful and that maybe predates the <video> tag

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc the reason you can't do this in YouTube is that it doesn't actually load a new page on click - it just changes the source of the video tag that already exists on the current page (which let's it get around browser play-on-load restrictions).

You would have to open in a new tab to avoid that behavior.

geerlingguy, to random
@geerlingguy@mastodon.social avatar

Some fun to be had... and some people think I only like Raspberry Pi pfft!

image/jpeg

mausmalone,
@mausmalone@mastodon.social avatar

@geerlingguy Man ... maybe this summer I can find some time to play around with a Lychee Pi 4A. I've been meaning to for a while and this carrier-board config just pushed it into the forefront of my mind.

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