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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

I have to wonder just how many people are left who are willing to deliberately sign up to work for Tesla at this point anyway. I certainly wouldn’t.

After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year (www.billboard.com)

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not...

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I can believe it. I still have multiple libraries of physical media, and I pretty much never buy anything new that I can’t likewise physically own. I might rip and make MP3’s or transcode or emulate, or whatever, for convenience, but sometimes it’s just nice to be able to stick the disk or cartridge in the machine and have it just work without any of the associated modern ancillary bullshit.

Everything wants to be a service now. I just find that so irritating.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Or Geoff.

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 , (edited )
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The aversion to AR-15 owners was stronger than the aversion to owners of other types of firearms (pistols). When given a choice, the probability that a respondent would prefer to live near someone who owned an AR-15 plummeted by over 20 percentage points, indicating a strong societal preference against this type of gun ownership.

Which, as usual, goes a long way towards illustrating how effective propaganda and manipulation of people’s opinions can be. Not just on this specific topic either, but in this case I guess that’s what we’re talking about. Despite its scientific dressings, what this study is exploring isn’t actually any mechanical factor, it is measuring people’s perceptions which are not guaranteed to be reflected by reality. (And again, this is true of many other topics as well…)

The AR-15 platform does the same damn thing and shoots the same damn bullet in the same damn way as numerous other firearms, and yet just the name itself has a bad rap from being incessantly repeated in the news and social media.

Here’s this old chestnut. It’s still true.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4eb30272-50f2-466e-b6e6-a00d74be8372.jpeg

Why’s the one on top “scarier?”

Tl;dr: Own, store, and handle your gun responsibly. Don’t be a paranoid loon. Don’t believe in whatever boogeyman Fox News is pushing this week. Don’t hyperventilate about fictional distinctions.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Okay, so? Does that make it less bullshit somehow?

dual_sport_dork , (edited )
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t answer for “people,” only for me. But I’m pretty sure you can’t just slap an upper receiver for a different caliber on a Mini 14. The AR platform is inherently customizable and modular.

That doesn’t make it shoot bullets any harder versus another gun in the same chambering, though. (Edited).

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

How, exactly, is one deadlier than the other?

It’s not. You’re never going to get a non-disingenuous question to this answer. You can easily get a 30 round magazine for the Mini 14, too, so the notion that the Armalite platform is somehow inherently has more “rapid fire capacity” is nonsense, too.

FWIW you can get aftermarket stocks to go on an Armalite buffer tube with adjustable combs. I’ve seen them. Like, in catalogs. I’ve never actually seen anyone install one in real life, but at least they exist. You can even get a lower for a monte carlo style “sporting” stock for an Armalite upper receiver, if you really want to.

You’re ultimately correct in that it’s just cosmetics.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Or run a slickside upper.

I suppose this illustrates another point, though, in that the Armalite platform is so popular because it’s so easily customizable. And it’s easily customizable because there are a ton of parts available because it’s popular, so it’s popular because there are a ton of parts available, and there are a ton of parts available because… etc.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The flame retardant thing is baffling me, anyway. Flame retardant fabrics/plastics in a vehicle either toting around 10-20 gallons of monumentally flammable gasoline, or hundreds of kWh of lithium batteries. Sure, chief, the fabrics will keep it from catching on fire…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Like cotton/linen fabrics? Cotton is pretty naturally flame resistant. Probably can’t help you on all the plastics in a modern car interior, though.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Crap like this is why I ride a motorcycle.

Only one of my bikes even manages to have enough electronics in it to have a clock.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Playing MP3’s off of a USB stick is literally all I do with my car’s stereo, and in fact all I want it to do.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Even at the time I found the contortions they put themselves into to avoid your protagonist from either speaking or having a name to be equal parts sad and hilarious.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I have never in my life heard anyone actually call weed “dope.”

“Dope” is heroin, and its derivatives and relations.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Penguin difficulty? Just git gud, scrub.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Notwithstanding the instant privacy nightmare this would create, essentially abolishing online anonymity overnight, this is kinda-sorta what MAC addresses are already. As to why MAC addresses can be spoofed so easily without any real impact on anything, refer to my first statement.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, this definitely was not a case of “competition makes everything better.” More a case of every greedy motherfucker wanting to have their own private walled fiefdom making everything worse. Who’s going to be the first to bring up the GabeN quote?

I’m with you, I am proud to say I subscribe to precisely zero streaming services. There’s very little on any of them I actually want anyway, and anything I might actually want to see is readily available… elsewhere.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Well, only relatively.

In order to work batteries need to have a certain amount of instability built in, on a chemical level. Them electrons have to want to jump from one material to a more reactive one; there is literally no other way. There is no such thing as a truly “safe and stable” battery chemistry. Such a battery would be inert, and not able to hold a charge. Even carbon-zinc batteries are technically flammable. I think these guys are stretching the truth a little for the layman, or possibly for the investor.

Lithium in current lithium-whatever cells is very reactive. Sodium on its own is extremely reactive, even moreso than lithium. Based on the minimal lookup I just did, this company appears to be using an aqueous electrolyte which makes sodium-ion cells a little safer (albeit at the cost of lower energy density, actually) but the notion that a lithium chemistry battery will burn but a sodium chemistry one “won’t” is flat out wrong. Further, shorting a battery pack of either chemistry is not likely to result in a good day.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

It is if it’s a dry electrolyte cell.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

It is definitely that. That’s kind of the point, actually. Sodium is easier to come by than lithium and does not require mining it from unstable parts of the world, nor relying on China.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Well, metallic sodium liberates hydrogen real fast on contact with water, which I guess is tantamount to the same thing.

Yes. But not to the same level as just dropping a brick of pure sodium in a bathtub. In a battery like this there is not pure lithium/sodium/whatever just sloshing around inside. The sodium is tied up being chemically bonded with whatever the anode and cathode materials are. Only a minority of the available sodium is actually free in the form of ions carrying the charge from cathode to anode.

Just as with lithium-ion chemistry batteries, it is vital that the cells remain sealed from the outside because the materials inside will indeed react with air, water, and the water in the air. Exposing the innards will cause a rapid exothermic reaction, i.e. it will get very hot and optionally go off bang.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Post vid, please.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sure they’ll want to, but that’ll be a little better than need to, i.e. relying on them for the raw materials as well.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

There absolutely were pocket TV’s. As a kid, even, I owned two of them. They are now of course functionally useless because they predate the switch to digital television by a significant margin. Both of mine were Realistic brand ones, which was an in store label for Radio Shack. Color LCD displays, telescoping antenna, and they ran off of 4 AA batteries. They were about the size of an OG Gameboy or a large Walkman.

I might even still have one in a box of tech junk somewhere. I believe the second one was a Realistic Pocketvision 27.

You can still buy a portable digital TV. These were always a bit of a stretch for a “pocket” television, more the size of a small tablet but thicker. But they totally did, and still do, exist.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Violent crime being historically low except for idiots who shoot at people for turning around in their driveway, ringing the wrong doorbell, etc…

Sears From A Joke Being Torn Down (lemmy.world)

American comedian Ron White frequently tells a story about how his van was damaged in a comedic way by the technicians at a Sears Automotive Center in Savannah, GA. This week, that Sears Automotive Center is being torn down. While the shopping mall that former Sears location is a part of is otherwise doing well, the Sears has...

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

And the Discover card.

And being a founding partner of Prodigy…

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

This is correct. And to add to this, not only did Sears employ a “retail first” model at precisely the wrong time, they continued to cling to it well past the time the writing was already on the wall that this was a dumb idea.

Sears did, of course, eventually have an online commerce web site just like everyone else. But the problem was Retail First^tm^! so their online pricing and selection was the same as their in store selection, i.e. significantly more expensive or limited than everyone else’s, or both. They also categorically failed to add third party vendors to their web site until a literal decade after Amazon and even Walmart did.

dual_sport_dork , (edited )
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The problem for Sears, though, was the bottomless pit in the middle. Remember that Amazon famously did not turn a profit at all until 2001, operated at a complete loss by just setting investor money on fire for its first decade and a half of existence, and failed to actually generate meaningful profits and not just technical pennies on the dollar until 2004. Nobody actually expected them to succeed at first. Amazon wasn’t the company to beat, they were nobody. Walmart and Target were perceived as the “real” competition.

Throughout that entire period, a solid 20 years from 1995 to, say, 2005, Sears would have to remain profitable and solvent. And mind you that internet shopping didn’t really become a truly mainstream thing until the mid 2000’s. Sears would have had to maintain their catalog and logistics operations in perfect working order for two decades before online shopping finally took off and became truly mainstream, while managing not to go bankrupt in the process. Maybe they could have caused the online shopping revolution to happen a little sooner if they tried really hard in the 90’s, but overall it would have taken incredible planning, luck, and an amazing amount of foresight to make that happen. It would not be as simple as just not flipping the off switch in 1993.

Remember that Sears gave up on the majority of their famous catalog distribution model because it was no longer sufficiently popular or profitable. They put all their eggs in the mall basket, which to be honest coming from the perspective of the late 80’s and early 90’s probably looked like it made sense at the time.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

It’s Dickbutt, isn’t it?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/22a07bfd-206d-4b6a-ab10-be925ac1ea47.png

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

?

The NACS connector is the Tesla connector. NACS was entirely their doing; Tesla won this format war. So what’s for them to be salty about?

The only wrinkle is that older Teslas require a reflash to work with the new (or rather old, same as CCS) communication standard that would be used by NACS equipped non-Tesla charging stations.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

The Microsoft PowerToys Keyboard Manager tool should allow you to do this.

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/…/keyboard-manager

You will probably need admin access to install it, however.

Edit: Actually, apparently you don’t? I just installed it on my work PC here, and did not get any UAC prompts or anything. It can indeed reassign your caps lock key – I just tested this, and it works. (I mapped it to left ctrl.)

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t see how it would be a problem unless you reassigned it while caps lock was enabled, in which case you would have to reboot (or temporarily revert your remap) to turn it off.

I can think of precious little software that actually requires caps lock for anything, and otherwise for normal typist tasks you can just use shift. I never use caps lock for anything, personally. (Ditto with num lock. My keyboard has a full number pad and a full set of arrow/insert keys. There is no reason for my number pad to ever not be a number pad.)

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I like this gem:

The FBI publishes annual data on crimes that have been reported to law enforcement, but not crimes that haven’t been reported.

“We don’t know about things we don’t know about.” Yes, that’s generally how it works.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Gigabyte (remember them?)

Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife’s computer are Gigabyte. So’s my video card. The only issue I’ve ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.

Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer – so many problems with Razer – and ASUS.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.

Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their “G” series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.

I think in my lifetime I’ve trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths – within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don’t buy their shit anymore, and I don’t recommend anyone else do, either.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I dunno, the Boomslang was pretty rad back in the day. But it was so old it was a ball mouse.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

You’re not rewarded for maintaining or finishing products.

No kidding.

It is 2024, and here is your yearly reminder that you still can’t create a new folder/label in the official Gmail Android app despite the online documentation implying that you can.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve never paid for a Windows license, ever. I sure as fuck didn’t for Win 95 when it came out, since us script kiddies figured out pretty fast you can install it with a CD key of all 1’s. And then I used Windows 2000 for a long time. So long that I still remember the (stolen, MSDN) license key I used from having installed it umpteen times.

DDTPV-TXMX7-BBGJ9-WGY8K-B9GHM

There, you can have that one gratis and for nothin’. For all the good it’ll do you now.

And I still have one of those grey and blue plastic MSDN tackle boxes full of CD’s of all the Microsoft stuff. You want a copy of Visual Studio 2003 or something? I got you.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

As your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle. Bikes and bike parts are cheaper. And then you can have more bikes than cars, and more bikes to buy parts for. Wait, where was I going with this again?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Which is probably the play. I’d doubt Microsoft really gives a flying fuck about home users buying licenses anymore, since their revenue model for consumer Windows is just ads and data harvesting now anyway.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

11 has artificial hardware requirements built in that will prevent it from installing on a lot of computers (possibly most computers deployed in the world, at this point) which is the main issue. All those non-technical home users who bought a brand name prebuilt PC in 5, 6, however many years ago that still works just fine will not be able to upgrade.

They will be left in the lurch unless M$ relents and removes those requirements (unlikely), they all learn to patch them out themselves (extremely unlikely), or they all go buy new computers with newer hardware (extremely annoying).

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing got named “Windows 9” because Microsoft feared compatibility issues with janky programs looking for the first set of characters in “Windows 95” or “Windows 98.”

Later this was changed by the marketing department to some blather about “wanting consumers to perceive a clean break from the previous version.” But then, Microsoft also claimed Windows 10 would be the Last Windows, and it would just have feature updates built on top of it forever as a service. So you sure as fuck can’t take anything they say at face value.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I actually liked the full screen Start menu from 8/8.1 for the specific use case of my living room PC. You got a big 10-foot UI by default with nice large icons you could punch from across the room.

The whole put-your-mouse-in-the-corner-and-swipe for the charms menu was baffling, though. I get that this was supposed to be a tablet UI thing, but why make it mandatory for the mouse interface as well?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Buy a motorcycle. Not technically a car!

Windows Shares Inaccessible after Network Reconfiguration

I recently encountered an error with my router that required a factory reset in order to fix. I figured since I was already resetting everything, I’d might as well reorganize my network. I switched from 192 to 10 based IPs. I got all my devices configured and everything connects to the internet fine, no hiccups anywhere,...

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Two stupid questions:

Are you accessing these shares by IP, or by name (WINS)? Edit: I can’t read.

What does your netmask look like? 255.255.255.0, or…?

Other forehead-smackers I would check:

  • Ensure both machines are in the correct time zone and have their clocks set correctly. Windows authentication will silently and mysteriously fail if either computer’s time is off too much, IIRC around 4 hours.
  • Ensure both machines are updated to the same Windows build. Some dissimilar builds of Win10/11 are incompatible with each others’ network shares for no readily identifiable reason. I’ve run into that one before.
dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Well, that shoots several of my theories.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Well, at the end of mine I handed the principal a frog instead of shaking his hand. I considered that worth the cost of admission, even taking into account having to leg it afterwards. (They did try, but failed, to withhold my diploma over it. That part was almost as hilarious as frog itself.)

I was already on the administration’s shit-list for calling out the selfsame principal earlier that week for taking credit for our star overachiever student when, in point of fact, the principal had just transferred to that school the same year as this kid’s senior year and was therefore not present for 75% of it. Pointing this out publicly, during the principal’s speech crowing over this, was apparently “not appropriate.”

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