dual_sport_dork

dual_sport_dork , 3 days ago

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 , 3 days ago

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 , 10 days ago

Wasn't there a Lifetime original movie about that?

dual_sport_dork , 10 days ago

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

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

I was exposed to quite a few teachers and administrators throughout my public school career who clearly shouldn't be trusted with a pencil and compass, let alone a firearm.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

I had an English teacher throw a hardbound textbook at my head once because he thought I was being a "wiseass." In fairness, I probably was. But in answer to your question, no time at all. Probably immediately.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

IT support

And the mentality you've described is extra bullshit in an IT or support role, as I'm sure you're aware.

This is paraphrased in the "Doom talk" I had to have with my boss back when I was working in systems maintenance. As in, he'd come into my office and complain, "Every time I come in here you're just playing Doom. You need to justify your salary or otherwise maybe we don't need to pay you."

What MBA's and PHB's don't realize is that IT and systems maintenance is not a production-oriented operation. You're not making widgets. The metric is not how many tickets do we generate and how fast are they solved. The metric is, how can we have as few tickets as possible? Because by and large what you're doing in support and IT is fixing stuff that's broken. The ideal state for the business to be in is not to have anything that's broken at all, on a minute-to-minute basis.

Boss, you want to see me in my office playing Doom. Because that means none of your millions and millions of dollars of mission critical infrastructure which your engineers rely upon to generate billable hours is on fire. If any of it catches fire today, I am on site to put it out. If anyone has a problem or a question, I am on call to solve it. If there is maintenance to be performed or new equipment to be rolled out, I'll be doing that. But otherwise I'm not going to invent busywork just to placate middle management which, as a whole, can't reliably remember which of the two mouse buttons to click.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

Case in point: There are eight houses on my block. Pre-COVID, one was a multi-unit rental and the rest were single family.

Post COVID? Now only my house and my next door neighbor's house, and the lady's place on the far corner are privately owned. All five of the others sold and are now either short term rentals (2) or AirBNB's (3).

...In my shitty cracked out corner of America. Where there's even this bastard who runs motorcycles in his driveway all the time (i.e. me). Who the fuck is going to want to travel to and rent an AirBNB here? Nobody, that's who. There ain't nothing here but bikes, mud, guns, dirt, and fentanyl. So they're basically full-time empty. Some asshole or asshole(s) with capital decided this would be a great "passive income" opportunity and spent big bucks to squeeze out any private buyers. My only solace is that they've got to be getting raked over the coals now, because there's no way they make enough in rentals to cover the mortgages, utilities, and taxes.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

Absolutely! Those things are known to management as, variously, "wasting time," "spending all day surfing the internet," "submitting frivolous RFQ's," and heaven forbid if you want to attend training or a trade show, "accruing unnecessary travel expenses."

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

This took place in Ohio, where the front license plate requirement was actually dropped recently in 2020.

For anyone wondering, the non-front-plate states are the "rugged 21" and are:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• New Mexico
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• West Virginia

...But not regular Virginia. That's because everything is still illegal in Virginia. And luckily New Jersey drivers are also still required to have a front plate, so you can identify them coming and take evasive action.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago

Maybe it was this truck.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago

Why does it have to be ARM? You are going to have a much easier time installing whatever you want on an x86 ruggedized/waterproof tablet or Toughbook. ARM devices tend to run Android and have locked bootloaders and other challenges to installing the custom OS you want.

And does it have to be a tablet? Because if not, what you're looking for is an "industrial computer," and while these are shockingly expensive to buy new, you can often find outdated ones used on eBay and similar for not much money. They're designed for use in factories. These are generally sealed, dustproof, and waterproof.

There are two ways to go, you can get a sealed fanless PC box and attach your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Or you can get a panel mount machine which will obviously have to be mounted somewhere, but as a woodworker I'm sure you can find a way to build a stand or otherwise attach one to something. These usually have horrible rubber or membrane keyboards if they come with a keyboard at all but can be literally hosed down, vacuumed, knocked, baked, and otherwise abused. Most are touch screens, although they are usually single point resistive ones rather than multi-touch like a consumer tablet.

Fully sealed waterproof rubber membrane keyboards are not hard to find, but I will warn you that the typing experience on them is horrible.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago

That's a good idea, but I wonder if it'll be too fragile for OP. I was envisioning something like this:

https://www.kcosit.com/Industrial-PC-ultra-slim-tablet-PC-tablets-Win10-Intel-p1335425.html

This one is rated IPX67 waterproof and dustproof, but is of course from a no-name brand. You can get Panasonic Toughbooks used all day long on eBay for a few hundred bucks, though, which might be another good idea. A used one will probably need a replacement battery.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago

All of that makes sense, but I think you're selling the battery capabilities of current x86 mobile devices a bit short. I have a GPD Win Max 2 gaming laptop that if I keep it in flatland all day (i.e. don't fire up them GPU cores...) it will easily last 10-11 hours on a battery charge. The current Toughbook 40 is rated for 18 hours (!) on a single battery and a used older model with a new battery slapped into it shouldn't fall much short of that. I would definitely give the Toughbooks a second look. Handle one in person if you can -- they're smaller than they appear in pictures. I have one lying around someplace and I can dig it out to show you later. I use mine for a similar application, i.e. I leave it in my shop (automotive, or rather motorcycle) where my issues are grease and metal shavings.

The major issue you're going to have is that there are few to no ARM based fully integrated machines -- that is, an assembled ready-to-use tablet or clamshell laptop -- that are designed to have the user install their own OS. Certainly not that I've ever seen. They're all going to show up with some flavor of Android in the ROM, probably an outdated one at that, and they will not be "end user ready." You're going to be cracking bootloaders, hunting down proprietary SoC driver blobs, etc., and there's still no guarantee of success.

Here's a left field plan C: Consider building a Raspberry Pi based enclosure with a screen + keyboard + battery? You could probably put together something like unto the CutiePi but with a more bodacious casing. That'd probably be a DIY job, but what you wind up with would be hardware well and truly under your control and you can, of course, install your own OS on it. Making it work would be the easy part, making it durable and dustproof enough for your purposes would be where the effort goes.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Yeah I plan to have the thing sitting in the shop with a 3D CAD program on with screen dimming/suspend set to “never.”

BTW, FreeCAD is a zero (or near enough to it, see my other comment) workload for your GPU. It does not use GPU acceleration at all internally. You said you were using FreeCAD in your original post.

I'm reasonably certain most/all of the consumer Android tablets will not be able to handle your kind of workload. Certainly not any of the very few Linuxable ones. (Credit to @jesta there for posting a few that I was not aware of). Battery life is going to be your issue, there. You're looking at a 3-5 hour screen on time from one of those at best. And none of those are ruggedized. I think you've painted yourself into a corner by making your base requirements impossible for your budget. I'm not saying that to argue; I'm just saying how it is.

dual_sport_dork , 2 months ago

https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?style=4&t=65717

FreeCAD of course "uses" the GPU in the same way that any graphical application must do, in order to put pixels or polygons into the screen buffer, within the graphics driver for whatever your video card is. The Coin3D modelling engine behind the scenes technically uses OpenGL for the final render to screen but none of the model geometry calculation or tessellation uses the GPU in any capacity whatsoever. FreeCAD's workload is therefore almost entirely in software on the CPU.

dual_sport_dork , 3 months ago

Yeah, they can fuck off. When their opening salvo was threats and legal bluster, I don't see why anyone should trust an alleged olive branch now. The right thing to do was not to send this email second.

I have to work with Haier in my business now as well ever since they bought GE. They're a shitty company that goes back on their word constantly (at least within the B2B space), and nobody should be giving them one thin dime.

dual_sport_dork , 3 months ago

As if I needed yet another reason to never ever own a Tesla.

My car has this crazy technology in it: You can stick the key in the door and twist and it'll unlock. Even if the network is down or the battery is dead. Arcane, right?

dual_sport_dork , 3 months ago

...Or if there were an alternative option that didn't rely on software and electronics is my point.

Cars have had electronic remote keyless entry for decades. It's not new. Some of them even have phone apps that duplicate that functionality. No one but Tesla has been stupid enough to remove the keyhole, though.

dual_sport_dork , 4 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

The angle that leaps to mind is some property flipper saw the place listed and hired some shady workmen to tear the driveway out knowing it would fuck up any pending contracts, and he's hoping the owner will be desperate enough to take whatever lowball offer he swoops in with.

But that seems like a pretty risky scheme, unless he's also planning on not paying whoever he hired to bulldoze the driveway. And I guess before you get the driveway replaced you ought to make double damn sure you're not hiring the same motherfucker who ripped it out.

You're correct in that there's no way you're going to be able to haul away a concrete slab that big and keep it in one piece to be reused elsewhere. And even then, for what? You have an application that needs a slab the exact size and shape of this lady's driveway?

dual_sport_dork , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

This entire argument is bullshit. Meta needs to be an island from our perspective. Let them do their thing over there, we’ll do our thing over here. Their goal is to lure (probably former reddit or twitter) users to Threads and then cut off the greater Fediverse as a whole once their user base is established and much larger than ours. And they want to use our numbers to boost their for profit platform to make it appear more successful.

Separation from these kinds of corporate entities is exactly what the Fediverse is about. We can talk about “open” all we like but there is already a short list of bad actors we don’t allow here: Nazis and fascists, pedos and kiddie diddlers, etc. We can add Meta to that list as well.

We don’t want them interacting with us at all. Get out the hammer and ban them. Entirely.

I’ll add an edit to say this: I say that defederation is not extreme enough. They need to be blocked. Instances need to implement ToS and licensing that prohibits them from hoovering up and regurgitating our content. We need to start outright blocking Meta at the network level. Whatever the hell it takes. Line in the sand. No means no.

No Meta. Ever.

Think of this: In the past, we have never had any choice other than to roll over and accept whatever bullshit the major social media companies push on us. If you want to communicate, if you want to use any platform, if you want to be in, you had to deal with them and their system. Because they were big and you were little, and what are you going to do about it? You have no choice but to roll over.

Well, we don’t have to roll over anymore. We have this one – and believe me, only this one – opportunity to unequivocally tell them NO. We are not your product. You have no value to us. You aren’t a monopoly anymore. We do not need your corporate influence, we do not need your corporate bullshit. We are free of you, and we don’t need you.

Another edit: Oh, look. What do I find right at the top of my feed first thing this morning? Why, it’s yet another example of Meta being evil. And you still want them to have influence in the Fediverse?

dual_sport_dork , 4 months ago

The notion that anyone should interact with Meta at all is enough. You lost me right after that part. Anything after that is just meaningless apologetic noise for the sake of appearing nuanced. That’s the bullshit.

No means no. Never means never. No Meta. The extremism, the “big symbolic action,” it’s all warranted. Block them. Block them forever.

P.s. You’re allowed to use cuss words on the internet. Tell your friends!

dual_sport_dork , 4 months ago

No, there isn’t. This is the clearest case of black vs. white you’re going to experience all week. Blocking Meta is not “sticking our heads in the sand.” There is literally no benefit for us allowing them to integrate with any of our explicitly non-corporate platforms. But there is a huge (and in their eyes profitable) benefit for them. If there weren’t, they wouldn’t try. So answer me this, what do we actually stand to gain?

Bots? Misinformation? Having our content redisplayed on Threads for profit? Ads? Corporate accounts spamming us incessantly? Corporate moderators, corporate instances, corporate communities where all the messaging is controlled? Having our content used to train AI’s? This is all the crap we escaped when moving here, rather than using the existing social media network products. What, is Mark Zuckerberg going to cut instance operators a check to help with their overhead expenses for all the content he’ll steal? Don’t make me laugh. You can see posts that were made on Threads? If anyone actually wanted that, they’d just use Threads to begin with.

The argument is that Meta integration will allow the Fediverse to become “mainstream.” Well, Lemmy and Mastadon are already doing just fine without Meta. They will continue to do just as fine without them in the future, barring any catastrophic reddit style administrative fuckups on any major instance(s). Meanwhile, there is enormous risk in allowing Meta to have their way with us, our platform, and our content. None of the other hot air matters one bit no matter how it’s phrased. It will be much healthier as a whole for Fediverse platforms to grow organically without corporate (and frankly, evil) influence. And if that means they remain smaller communities now or even forever that’s okay.

The openness of the “open web” stops precisely before bad actors are allowed to co-opt it for evil purposes. Companies like Meta always have as their end goal a closed walled garden for their users remain trapped in to have profit extracted from them. Well, let them have it – on their own, without us. We need to set the precedent that those of us who give enough of a shit to use Fediverse platforms in the first place cannot be bought or sold. They’ll talk about “openness” now but I guarantee you the design is for that to be a one way street.

No means no.

Never means never.

No Meta means no Meta.

Nothing else needs to be said on the subject.

dual_sport_dork , 4 months ago

Well, I agree with it anyway. So there.

This is the way.

Plus, it’s your instance so it’s your call.

dual_sport_dork , 6 months ago

Me too. I was stoked for about three seconds before I clicked on the article.

dual_sport_dork , 6 months ago

Fewer beards.

dual_sport_dork , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Mojang, at least, was not founded by two guys who gave Microsoft the finger on their way out the door at their previous job.

dual_sport_dork , 7 months ago

Tons of Windows based gaming handhelds already exist from Asus, Lenovo, Aya, GPD, etc. I’d doubt Microsoft releasing one, hypothetical Valve acquisition or not, would set the world on fire.

Knowing good old M$, though, if they tried it they’d make it some kind of Xbox product.

dual_sport_dork , 7 months ago

?

Other than the part about tons of money, basically nothing you just said is actually true.

I also think you’re conflating the person, Markus “Notch” Persson, with the company, Mojang. By the time Microsoft bought Mojang, and Minecraft, Notch had already left any kind of development role on Minecraft years before.

Notch himself has made several small indie games after Minecraft, none of which were successes. Mojang also made another game after Minecraft, Scrolls (now “Caller’s Bane,” after they got sued by Bethesda over the name). It was also not a success. So much for “not creating anything since.”

dual_sport_dork , 7 months ago

Because no matter what you do or how well you do it, punters on the internet will act like you still owe them something.

dual_sport_dork , 8 months ago

At someone who has to pound a lot of keys for a living, I’ve taken a small passing interest in these sorts of split boards, especially since they keep popping up so prevalently in the Lemmy “all” feed. (Currently I use a variety of traditional, but very nice mechanical keyswitched, 104 key boards.)

But… The apparent universal lack of a number row is turning me off of all the offerings I’m seeing on display, or built by others. Is there a reason for that? I use my number pad a lot, ergonomically terrible or not, but losing not only that but also the number row would drive me batshit. No arrows, either? Are you guys doing all that stuff with foot pedals, Fn key combos, or telepathy, or do you have a manservant off to the side holding a numeric pad for you, or what?