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@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

dual_sport_dork

@[email protected]

Progenitor of the Weird Knife Wednesday feature column. Is “column” the right word? Anyway, apparently I also coined the Very Specific Object nomenclature now sporadically used in the 3D printing community. Yeah, that was me. This must be how Cory Doctorow feels all the time these days.

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dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Apple loves to do that kind of shit.

For instance, you can’t factory reset an iPhone without connecting it to either an OSX computer, or a PC running their special program. Don’t ask me what’s wrong with just holding down power and volume up, or whatever. Like every other phone on Earth can do.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I have one of each…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

To “own da libz.”

He’s pandering to the section of his base who all drive lifted coal rollin’ diesel trucks who all know that “everyone knows” electric vehicle owners are all avocado toast eating homosexuals who vote Democrat.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Mother Teresa was a super fucked up individual, though. I’m not sure she’s really suitable for use as a benchmark.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

She also took in who-knows-how-much in donations to charity claiming they would be used to help the stick and the poor, but instead just gave that money directly to the Vatican who proceeded to do fuck all to the benefit of anybody with it except themselves.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

What happens is, the alcohol component would get cooked out of it near instantly. Same as with cooking with wine.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The only bees with stingers are the female ones, though.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Silicon Valley. Silicone Valley would be something… different. You might find that in Nevada someplace, around Las Vegas.

Why do people throw out old motors, bicycles, anything metal into rivers and lakes instead of a junk yard or the trash system?

I have been watching magnet fishing and people love to toss stuff over bridges without a second thought on the environmental impact. Hiding evidence I can almost understand but not lawnmowers, car batteries, etc....

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Mostly the second point. I would wager from experience that the majority of small man-portable conveyances that wind up at the bottom of lakes and rivers are there because they were stolen and thrown there. Bikes, motorcycles, rental scooters, shopping carts, etc. The reason is hooliganism, and the contributing factors are alcohol and teenagerhood.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Even notwithstanding all of the below (several enemies and other aspects of Mario 2 showed up in later Mario games, so we can only suppose its as “real” as any), Yoshi is also a strong contender for being trans. He is consistently referred to as male but cranks out eggs at an assembly-line pace and thus might be biologically female.

But then, so does Birdo. So who the hell knows how dinosaur-things work in Mario’s world.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Mario 2 USA was released in Japan as well. Later, though, in 1992.

Pronouns and tribal affiliations are now forbidden in South Dakota public university employee emails (apnews.com)

A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes....

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.

If I get to compose emails like I’m Frog from Chrono Trigger, I am all about it.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar
  • Hop around
  • Call everybody "thou"
  • Wield a cool sword
  • Probably nail Queen Leene

Yeah, methinkest I art down.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

This guy… he’s un-fuckin-believable.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

If one of these were made for the US market it would obviously be configured to work at the US mains voltage and frequency. (Europe is 50hz, US is 60).

Your home’s power input is also 240 volts in the US, regardless of being split into two 120 volt rails at the breaker box. It would be trivial to hook up a 240 volt system if you really wanted to, albeit not through one of your regular 5-15/5-20 outlets. You’d have to do it via a dryer outlet or something.

Watts are watts. If the unit is capable of feeding 800 watts into your home’s electrical system, the voltage is irrelevant provided it can supply sufficient amps. A normal US household circuit is 15 amps, so a hypothetical US version of this thing would have to supply ~6-2/3 amps at 120v rather than ~3-1/3 amps at 240v. No big deal. It’s not even close to maxing out a single residential circuit on either continent.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

But what if I enjoy paying full MSRP for absolutely everything, but also demand – I say, demand – to be constantly told that nothing is in stock? There’s no substitute for that kind of service.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Yes. I do this to people at my workplace from time to time. Well, rarely having to remove them from the premises. This is usually over email or the phone.

As soon as a client mid-tantrum threatens to sue or call their lawyer thinking it’ll “intimidate” me into capitulating on not delivering the impossible, instead they find themselves very thoroughly stonewalled because I cannot discuss any topic that is the subject of litigation nor communicate with clients undergoing litigation in any capacity. I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

I’m sorry, all inquiries must be made to our legal department.

Etc…

It’s gold every time it happens.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Have you met the public, post COVID?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

No, GIMP does suck.

It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.

The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.

For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.

And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

“And if I do give you a solution, we’ll be sure not to share it with anyone else.”

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

See, this is exactly my point in my other comment above. I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.

  1. Make a new document that’s arbitrarily large.
  2. Import both (or all 3, or all 10, or however many) images. (Images can be batch imported.)
  3. Snap the first one to the top left corner.
  4. Snap the others below it. Their corners and edges will click together if you have alignment guides enabled. 4a. Optionally resize any of the images by just typing in the value you need in pixels, in the toolbar when it’s selected. If you need to know the size of any other image, just click it and it’ll tell you. It’s not even in a menu.
  5. Crop tool (D) to knock the oversized canvas down to whatever size you need. Again, you can just type this in, in pixels, and it’s not even buried in a menu.
  6. Export, post, accumulate lulz.

Export to a flat format (.jpeg, .png, .gif, whatever) and your output will be flattened. You don’t need to think about layers or merging or layers being bigger than the canvas or not. There is no, “Be careful not to XYZ.” What you see in the preview is what the output will look like. Period. You can even apply your monitor’s color calibration to it or the color profile of any other output device (printer, a different monitor, etc.) on the fly if you are a big enough nerd.

You can do this in an even simpler dumber way in CorelDRAW!

  1. Import the images. Images can still be batch imported.
  2. Arrange them however you want, snap them together, whatever.
  3. Lasso them all and export.

That’s… literally it. You don’t have to crop, you don’t have to trim, or layer, or anything. You can specify the dimensions of the output file in the export window before you hit save if you want it to be different than the original. Your arrangement doesn’t even have to be rectangular and it will still work.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The Samsung FamilyHub fridge does indeed basically have an overgrown tablet duct taped to the door. It runs Samsung’s Tizen operating system, which you may recall was at one point going to be the Next Big Thing and a competitor to Android and iOS. Obviously that didn’t happen, so now it’s relegated to refrigerators.

Honestly, my theory is that Samsung is just pulling a sunk cost fallacy move and was desperate to put Tizen in something – anything – to justify its development.

It’s terrible. All the hardware is also located inside the upper right door, and it dumps all of its waste heat out the back of the door into the refrigerator compartment. The design is breathtakingly stupid.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

LG all the way. I have not had much in the way of positive results from GE since their acquisition by Haier. Their build quality took an immediate and noticeable nosedive. I have seen DOA, damaged, and defective units of all stripes from all brands over the years. But I have never seen any units arrive from the factory not fully assembled, but still packed up in a box and shipped in that state, except from GE. Multiple times.

I received a PFE28 refrigerator with no ice maker mechanism, just a hole in the door where it should have been installed. I also received a CGS700 range with the oven light door switch not installed, just rolling around in the bottom of the oven cavity where it was subsequently baked by the customer. I also received one CXE22 refrigerator with no face panel on the center drawer. There are other examples but those are just the recent ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Haier’s management philosophy seems to be in lockstep with the Chinese Manufacturing Way, which is to steal whatever tech you can, do a slapdash job of making it, lie about everything, and when pressed about it just lie some more.

Honestly Whirlpool is not doing great these days, either, but they’re better than Samsung or GE. Whirlpool has seemingly devolved into mostly competing with itself with all of its various sub-marquees: Amana, Maytag, KitchenAid, Gladiator, Jenn-Air, Roper, Affresh, etc. A better strategy might be to compete with their, you know, competitors. Whirlpool’s warranty service network has also essentially evaporated over the last few years, so if you don’t already know a repairman who is Whirlpool factory authorized to do warranty work you may as well just open a Youtube tab and figure that shit out yourself. Otherwise you’ll just be told “there are no servicers or service dates in your area and the system only lets us look two weeks in advance” over and over again until your warranty runs out.

The less we say about Samsung the better. At one point we were experiencing a roughly 50/50 first-week failure rate of their laundry machines and dishwashers. A coin flip. That’s worse odds than a first run XBox 360 not red ringing itself to put it into perspective. Don’t buy a Samsung appliance no matter how shiny it is or how big of a touch screen it’s got.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

You should read up on the Amico and in particular watch Pat The NES Punk’s various videos on it. The entire debacle is hilarious.

The Amico is/was basically an investor scam. Yes, it did eventually turn into an actual product (which is crap) but it was never intended to be a serious contender to anything. The intent was for Tommy Tallarico to get his face published everywhere and pocket/embezzle a significant amount of investor and Indiegogo money.

The system itself is basically an out-of-date smartphone chipset running a cut down version of Android. Most of its games, as you would expect, are basically mobile trash. Other than emulated Intellivision titles, anyway. And mobile trash you have to pay up front for a console with bullshit controls to even play it on.

What are some eras of gaming that you've stopped feeling nostalgic for? (kbin.social)

As I've gotten older as a player, I have found myself dropping some eras of gaming that I used to be nostalgic for. One of them is the 8-bit era, the NES days. I have played some of the best that system had to offer and I will never say that system didn't have any good games....

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I agree on the N64, and the problem with it is that everyone is nostalgic for “the system,” but in reality they’re only nostalgic for Mario 64, Goldeneye, Conker, Mario Kart, Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Smash Bros., and Perfect Dark. It’s not that the N64 has a top ten, it’s that it basically only had ten good games total. And bangers though they may have been, everything else on it was crap.

I’m sure two or three people will pop out of the woodwork now to argue with me and insist that no, back in the day they really did love WCW Mayhem or 1080 Snowboarding or the butchered piece of shit version of THPS or Chef’s Luv Shack or whatever the fuck, but that’s the thing: It’s always back in the day, when you were a kid and only owned four cartridges, and you didn’t know any better because that’s all you had. Nobody goes back to play any of the remaining 378 games now.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, that and new vehicles are bullshit.

My current car doesn’t have a touch screen or an app, my climate controls aren’t buried three submenus deep, nothing in it is a subscription, and it doesn’t spy on me. I don’t want a new car with the way they’re making them now.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

He also said they were ready to manufacture the 2nd generation Tesla Roaster “now,” which was back in 2014. No points for guessing that as of yet (despite taking in millions of dollars in preorders) they have not produced a single one.

Given this very early and still quite relevant warning, I’m astounded that anyone is dumb enough to believe any promise Elon makes about anything.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

For anyone wondering, belay carbiners typically lock in some manner but those used on quickdraws for anchors and removable protection (nuts, cams, etc.) typically don’t.

A carbiner is strongest when its gate is closed, which is why load rated ones will have not only a gate closed rating (the highest, usually 20-22 kN or even more for steelies), a gate open, and also a lateral load rating. Your belay carbiner, that is the one clipped to your harness and is keeping you affixed to the rope so you don’t hit the deck, is typically not redundant. It absolutely, positively, cannot fail. This is typically the biggest, meanest, strongest 'biner you own and will also be a locking one. You do not want brushing up against things, knocking against it, etc. to cause it to come open. You don’t want it to be open if it suddenly experiences a shock load, i.e. you fall off the wall, or conversely on your belayer’s end if it needs to bear the load of you falling off the wall. And you don’t want it coming unclipped and lost when you’re halfway up, because that’s how you die.

Meanwhile, the 'biners on your anchors and protection theoretically have some redundancy, i.e. you should be clipped to more than one point along your route with more than one anchor and carbiner. But you need to be able to clip and unclip these readily, because you may well be doing so with one hand while you’re dangling from your fingernails with the other. Thus they do not lock, and you can clip them to something by just slapping the gate against it.

Your keychain says “not for climbing use” on it. My keychain says Desert Eagle .50 Petzl Angie S, 20 kN gate closed, 9 kN gate open, and 7 kN laterally.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

This is why the Republicans were so against the goverment-payer option for Obamacare. Not “because socialism,” but because about 30 percent of the cost of healthcare in the US is actually the result of the middlemen, i.e. the private insurance companies in control of the entire system and their bureaucratic clusterfucks specifically designed to extract as much money as possible from both the patient and provider. A single payer or government option would reduce or eliminate that.

30 percent.

The entire private insurance industry at this point is just a make-work operation to increase the cost and complexity of health care for the sole purpose of benefiting… the private insurance industry.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

And it’s an equally amusing parallel that there are, depending on how you count, 17 or 18 commandments in the bible but everyone goes around acting like there are only 10. And then, there are 27 constitutional amendments but people go around acting like there are only 10…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Me, I’m all about the 3rd.

I better not catch the king trying to quarter troops in my house. Whoop his ass, is what I’ll do…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Fuck it, we’re going to six skins.

Did the premise of an entity approaching you only when it's not being viewed originate with Doctor Who's Weeping Angels?

The Weeping Angels apparently originated with Steven Moffat seeing a statue of a weeping angel in a structure in a cemetery and returning later to find out it was gone. At least according to this RadioTimes article. They first appeared in 2007 in the episode Blink....

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Released October 23, 1988… In Japan.

Us gaijin did not get it until 1990.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Presumably the manufacturers of these things would have to set up a dealer network in the US of some sort in order to be competitive at all. Otherwise, these will be completely dead in the water with US buyers. Plastic crap from Temu and AliExpress is one thing, but I can tell you nobody will buy something as expensive as a car knowing it’s completely unsupported.

Historically, importing Chinese vehicles has been a totally buyer-beware operation. You might get a short replacement parts only warranty from whoever the importer is if you’re very lucky. Otherwise, you’re on your own. Both finding the parts and doing the labor. I say this as an owner of three (3) Chinese motorcycles which have been fine enough machines for what they are, but never mind a warranty – no mechanic’s shop will touch them even if you’re willing to pay. So I do my own work on them.

But cheap motorcycles are way less complex than a full sized electric car.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Parts, sure. So, after a 3 month shipping wait from China you get a replacement battery or drive unit dropped at the end of your driveway on a pallet. Now what?

I don’t think any buyers other than maybe the guy who runs the Aging Wheels channel are going to be willing to take apart their own Chinese EV and do major repairs to it. If no one works on it, or if they open a perfunctory couple of service centers that are all conveniently thousands of miles away from where you live, that’s not going to do you much good.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The same government can’t even be trusted to reliably fix a pothole.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Wasn’t there a Lifetime original movie about that?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, that seems like the obvious response to me. Want to pretend like we’re armed? Okay, now we’re armed.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Correct, and Squatter’s Rights are meant to apply to properties abandoned by their owners, i.e. they’re meant to prevent absentee landowners from just hoarding buildings wherever and never visiting or maintaining them. Or traditionally, if a property owner has died with no next of kin, or someone believed they inherited a property from a dead relative and this was not contested. Somebody simply hiding in a thoroughly used and very much frequented and maintained building in such a way that they’ve managed to escape notice for some amount of time doesn’t allow them to magically put the deed in their name.

To make a successful claim this woman would have had to occupy the premises for 15 years, or do so for 10 years while also paying the property taxes on it. Further, their occupation has to be “open and notorious,” i.e. it cannot be in secret (she failed that requirement right off the bat) and occupation must be exclusive, i.e. others don’t have access to the property. That requirement was obviously failed as well.

Relevant statute:

www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-60…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The threshold in Michigan is 15 years of conspicuous, uncontested, and exclusive occupancy. So, no.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

“Common law” has no relevance to state law matters in the US (nor Federal, for that matter). Here is the relevant statute in this case:

www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-75…

The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been “forbidden” from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A “keep out” or “no trespassing” sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren’t some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.

The intent of this is clear, it’s so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn’t realize they’d left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don’t, then they can be arrested.

Study reveals "widespread, bipartisan aversion" to neighbors owning AR-15 rifles (www.psypost.org)

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

active gunfight

I’ve always wondered this. What’s the fixation with adding “active” all the time? Is a “passive” gunfight an overweight Floridian on an oxygen tank, draped across a mobility scooter waiting for the targets to come to him?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Changing calibers absolutely does make a difference. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have so many. My comment about not shooting bullets harder has the implicit clarification that this is if it’s chambered in the same caliber as another gun.

In their default factory configurations, the vast majority of AR-15’s as well as the Mini 14 (the other gun pictured there) fire the same cartridge in the same caliber with approximately the same amount of energy, to no appreciable difference whatsoever from the point of view of whatever was shot with them. That is .223 Remington.

If you convert your gun to a different caliber, obviously the comparison no longer applies unless you compare it to other guns of the same caliber. But the Armalite platform is very modular, so making that conversion is super easy. This allows you to, just as an example, buy a bog standard model chambered in .223 and leave it that way for self defense or whatever, but then get an inexpensive .22LR upper to fire cheap .22LR ammo for target practice or plinking without having to spend the entire GDP of a third world country on ammunition, and/or keep a larger caliber receiver on hand in .300 Blackout or .450 Bushmaster or similar for hunting.

This saves you from having to buy and secure three separate guns for three separate tasks, especially considering you’re unlikely to be needing all three at the same time. (I don’t know about you, but I only have two hands.)

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

There’s nothing physically preventing anyone from putting a readily available 30+ round magazine into a Mini 14.

It even says “same capacity” right there in the picture. Although to be fair, the Mini 14 in that picture either has a flush fit low capacity magazine installed in it or is unloaded.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Sign me up! Can I get one that’s sized to work on starlings? Or maybe a little tiny one that’ll do mosquitos…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I see you’ve never met the Ruger 10/22 grandpas. You want to talk about a bunch of guys who spend thousands of dollars buying, building, and ricing out rifles for “competition” or “varmint control” and inevitably have one or more builds they’ve never even fired nor do they ever intend to.

But it’s got a rainbow-stained burl walnut thumbhole stock, magazine release lever conversion, 2" thick carbon fiber bull barrel, all stainless hardware, a $900 trigger group, 50 round aftermarket banana mag, a bipod, and a 10-32x240mm illuminated reticle night vision scope! You don’t understand, I had to spend $8000 on building it because .22 ammo is just so cheap!

Some weirdos are just like that.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

[Whistling “farmer in the dell.”]

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