Below are books I’ve read over the last year, with notes about on what I thought of them. I started this list just to remind me what the books were about and if I thought they were worth reading. As the year went on, my notes became a little more substantial. The list was for me, but I thought I’d share in case it’s useful...
With David Brin’s Uplift books, I’d just start with Startide Rising. It’s not so much a sequel to Sundiver, but another standalone book set in the same universe. There’s a couple of very minor references to Sundiver, but you’re not really missing anything if you haven’t read it going into Startide Rising.
While Startide Rising is fantastic and is probably one of my favorite sci-fi books, I found Sundiver just wasn’t that good. It’s not really bad per se, but it was David Brin’s first novel and that really shows and has some issues with pacing, an unreliable narrator, and things like that (IMHO). It’s also more of a mystery/detective novel set in space whereas Startide Rising is space opera, so the whole feel of the two books is very different and can just boil down to what sort of books you like.
I actually had read Startide Rising twice without even knowing Sundiver existed before looking it up online and realizing it was the second book in a series. I’ll probably pick up Startide Rising for another re-read sometime in the future, but for Sundiver once is probably enough.
The third book The Uplift War, is also quite good, and similar to the other two it’s more of another standalone book that’s set in the same universe, with some minor references to the previous two. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the last three books - they are a trilogy more than a standalone books, and you’d probably want to have read the previous three books before tackling them (or at the very least, Startide Rising) because things aren’t going to make a lot of sense if you just jump right in. I found them a long read and they got really weird at the end. Like Sundiver I’d say once is enough for books 4-6 too.
That’s my experience with Asus going back over 25 years now. To me, Asus has always been substandard products sold at premium prices. If I wanted a substandard motherboard, I’d buy ECS and save a bunch of money. And to be fair to ECS, I’ve had some of their boards that have worked just fine, which is more than I can say about the Asus stuff.
The old Podcast app was simple, it did one thing, and it did it well. YouTube Music seems to be trying to do a dozen different things, and it does a shit job of all of them.
It certainly could. That’s the gamble you’re taking.
I usually replace drives after 5 years if they are doing anything I consider important. So those drives to me would have 1-2 years left in them. Of course, I have seen a good number of drives I have repurposed to things less important still manage to rack up impressive numbers of hours.
I have an old film scanner (was pricy back in its day) that doesn’t have drivers for 64 bit Windows, and anything newer than Vista. So I have an old XP box that can talk to it.
That’s all I use that computer for, so it’s otherwise fine with its circa 2009 configuration. Haven’t had to do any fixes or workarounds.
We actually moved from JIRA to Azure DevOps. Part of it was that Atlassian dropped the server version of JIRA and we weren’t too keen on moving to the crappier cloud version.
I’d say it’s different. Some things JIRA does better, some things Azure DevOps does better. You eliminate some pain points, and end up with some new ones.
For me, it wasn’t just the story, but also just randomly going out and exploring, checking things out, and finding cool (and sometimes scary) things.
It’s one of those games that I’m hoping in like 10 years or something I’ll have forgotten enough of it that if I go play it again it’ll be mostly all new again.
DuckDuckGo is not Bing, though they get most of their results from Bing so they end up pretty similar.
And yes, I would say it’s better. Not that Bing is particularly good and their search results have also taken a nosedive. But they are still way better than the garbage results I get out of Google.
I’ve never been a fan of dual booting myself. The computer just ends up spending all of its time in one OS or the other. Plus Microsoft doesn’t seem to like to play nice with your bootloader.
I just started using Linux on secondary computers. Once I had gotten things down so the experience was smooth on those machines, moving the main desktop from Windows to Linux was pretty seamless.
It’s not the nitrogen that kills you, it’s the lack of oxygen.
This method of suffocating someone would work just as well with a gas like helium or argon. It’s just that nitrogen is cheap and plentiful for reasons even someone as dimwitted as you can probably figure out.
How about how Garland sat on all the stuff outlined in the Mueller report and just let the statute of limitations expire while doing nothing? It’s pretty clear he intended to do the same with this stuff too, at least at first.
In 1993, computers were just starting to get CD-ROM drives and CD-Rs were pretty exotic technology. Being able to burn CD’s really didn’t really go mainstream until the very late 90’s.
This question popped into my head when I was playing Void Stranger. I just got done with the game and will probably never play it again despite not finishing it. The game is genuinely amazing but it just gets so demanding as you progress through it. I ended up watching the second half of the game on YouTube....
I was thinking about that game as I was scrolling this thread. That’s one I should revisit myself. I played that game a lot when I was younger, but managed to never complete it as I always lost interest sometime during the World of Ruin.
That’s one of the reasons I lost interest as a kid, as I really didn’t know what to do and you could totally wander into an area you just weren’t ready for yet. For that reason, I liked FF2 (FF4 everywhere else) as that one pretty much guided you along on rails.
Next year should be 100% Linux for me. Steam is dropping support for Windows 7 at the end of this year, and I don’t have any other newer Windows PC to run Steam on.
It’s another one of those weird non-metric units. In the world of air conditioning (or cooling in general), a “ton” is the amount of cooling you’d get from melting a ton (a short ton - that is 2000 pounds) of ice that’s already near its melting point. Air conditioners are usually rated in tons per day, with 1-5 tons about right for a typical apartment or house, depending on things like square footage and climate.
It’ll probably end up worse than that. Turn off secure boot and Windows may still run, but it will no longer verify and all these sites will now refuse to work on your computer. So if you like to run Linux, even dual booting or running Windows in a VM for those things that absolutely require Windows won’t be good enough anymore.
For example, I only buy/use old high-end (for their day) business class laptops and put linux on them. They work for everything I need to write and surf....
The issue seems to be that the build-it-yourself market caters almost exclusively now to the gaming crowd. If you want a gaming PC then you can still get a good deal building it yourself, but if you just want an inexpensive computer it’s going to be tough to beat a prebuilt.
The last time I built a PC for myself was 2012 and I’ve been looking at replacing it. I have to say the state of the DIY market today compared to 10 years ago was a bit surprising.
Notes from a year of reading science fiction and fantasy [potentially minor spoilers]
Below are books I’ve read over the last year, with notes about on what I thought of them. I started this list just to remind me what the books were about and if I thought they were worth reading. As the year went on, my notes became a little more substantial. The list was for me, but I thought I’d share in case it’s useful...
Why people are boycotting Asus all of a sudden? Asus outrage explained (youtu.be)
If it works, kill it. (lemmy.world)
Rule of Google: if it works, kill it....
Let π = 5 (files.catbox.moe)
The Empire will do anything to save a few credits... (lemmy.world)
12TB for $80 - serverpartdeals.com (serverpartdeals.com)
Has anyone bought from here before? Looking to upgrade my NAS drives.
Any out there running Windows XP in 2024?
I’m curious what you’ve been doing with it, what workarounds and fixes you’ve had to do over the years?
In Cringe Video, OpenAI CTO Says She Doesn’t Know Where Sora’s Training Data Came From (futurism.com)
What software you consider so bad it made you happy when you left your job?
I’ve worked with some pretty rotten software, but management software is easily the most user unfriendly, so my vote goes to HPSM.
What are some good games with *zero* replayability?
I want to try and play some more games. That feels more fulfilling if you play games that you can finish and be done with....
Funniest sentence wins (lemmy.world)
Has Google’s search results drastically declined for anyone else?
And I don't plan to switch back either. Everything is just better on Linux for me (sh.itjust.works)
Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates (www.independent.co.uk)
“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”...
Attorney General Merrick Garland says there should be ‘speedy trial’ of Trump as 2024 election looms (www.cnn.com)
You had to hold it up to a candle. (startrek.website)
What's your favorite game that you will NEVER finish?
This question popped into my head when I was playing Void Stranger. I just got done with the game and will probably never play it again despite not finishing it. The game is genuinely amazing but it just gets so demanding as you progress through it. I ended up watching the second half of the game on YouTube....
"I would like to switch to Linux, but it's just not good for gaming" (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
(The “Windows” slices of the pies are entirely made up by Baldur’s Gate 3, which also runs well over Linux)
The old one also sounds like a running lawnmower, but still. (startrek.website)
Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed (httptoolkit.com)
How are you being frugal with technology?
For example, I only buy/use old high-end (for their day) business class laptops and put linux on them. They work for everything I need to write and surf....