mindbleach

@mindbleach@sh.itjust.works

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mindbleach ,

Twitter's trying pretty hard on its own.

Even the people sticking around because they have followers keep getting banned. Guys: if you have to start a new account, do it somewhere better.

mindbleach ,

Just use Mint.

I'm on Mint 20 and had an unreasonable number of monitor configurations. Initially tallscreen + square, then tallscreen + square + 32-inch HDTV, then tallscreen + widescreen + TV, then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV (because I ran out of desk), then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV + widescreen on the floor as a dedicated AGDQ window, and now I'm only using an enormous 4K TV.

I've had issues, but never "it can't handle it" issues. My little RX 580 occasionally produced a black frame on one monitor or other - I assume because none of them ever had identical refresh rates. The larger issue was instantly forgetting my monitor configuration every time one of them was unplugged or lost power. As if losing the square monitor caused the rotated screen to fall over.

mindbleach ,

Ubuntu for those used to Macintosh

Still sour about one fucking guy deciding to flip the interface to left-handed the day before a long-term feature freeze.

mindbleach ,

GNU/Nice.

I don't know anything about Linux and the idea of installing it frightens me. Where do I start?

I bought a laptop yesterday, it came pre-installed with Windows 11. I hate win 11 so I switched it down to Windows 10, but then started considering using Linux for total control over the laptop, but here's the thing: I keep seeing memes about how complicated or fucky wucky Linux is to install and run. I love the idea of open...

mindbleach ,

Step one is back up your data.

Step one is always back up your data.

mindbleach ,

Just use Mint.

mindbleach ,

To pick one example: Shift + Middle-click used to be free zoom, but is now rotation. This is not just frustrating - it's nauseating. I have a very strong stomach. I don't get seasick, I don't get VR-sick, I don't get regular sick. The last time I threw up involved food poisoning on another continent. But god damn, is it unpleasant having your whole perspective spin while trying to get a little closer to an image.

I asked one of the GIMP devs about this on reddit and was told it was impossible to make optional. Got some genuine ass-ache for pushing against the idea that anything was impossible, in software, especially when the desired functionality could just be... not. A checkbox would suffice instead of arbitrary reconfiguration. I'd be okay with the mess of arbitrary changes since GIMP 1.6 or whatever I'd been rocking, if one of the central adjustments hadn't been reconfigured to make me physically ill.

mindbleach ,

Eugh.

Bravo.

mindbleach ,

Not on your instance.

mindbleach ,

Doing the pointless thing is whatever.

Mocking people who point out it's pointless is toxic, abusive, and deeply revealing. You think AI harvesters give a shit what you've told them not to harvest?

mindbleach ,

See also hobgoblin mafia existing solely to be referred to as the hob-gob mob. And when players are sent to infiltrate them, it's called the hob-gob mob job.

If you lean into it you can break people's brains. "Here's the key for their fat-cat leader's ramshackle safehouse, so you can plant this explosive clay in his stove. It's the Hob-Gob mob job's hovel hob blob fob."

mindbleach ,

Ooh, a pre-heist. Getting close to the mafia leader's fat ass is easy; be a waiter. But he only trusts his bloodthirsty wife. Anyone short could shapechange, but he has refined senses; even the scent of her lipstick has to be exact. You'd need a sample. Maybe from food where part comes back with the cutlery. A roasted vegetable with a rind or a core. Wipe that down to duplicate it, and a smoky room might disguise any other tells. Then a player can feed him some sedative-laced shrimp.

But that hob gob mob don prawn con obligates the kebab snob's wackjob hearthrob cob swab.

mindbleach ,

From the other site's dndmemes:

A red rogue with a rouge rogue cloak?

He wears a brooch on his rouge rogue cloak. It's a conversation-starter, when people broach the subject. A real confidence boost to boast about a rouge rogue cloak brooch broach. He worries that the brooch he bought ought not look tough enough, though. The thought thoroughly rubs this rouge rogue wrong, through and through.

I think I'm having a stroke

mindbleach ,

That is a name only an open-source project could have.

mindbleach ,

Advertising is a goddamn disease.

mindbleach ,

That's adorable. Video you can maybe fight. Megabytes of JPGs? It is to laugh.

mindbleach ,

Never give Nintendo money.

mindbleach ,

You can't retain extra rights by slapping "NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED" on your own comments.

This camera captures 156.3 trillion frames per second ( www.engadget.com )

Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying...

mindbleach ,

Citation needed.

mindbleach ,

“If Elon’s idea of a ‘free speech’ website is one where people can be intimidated into silence, the outcome will be a site where the Stasi will drive out all dissent,” Stonetoss wrote.

“And I want to be that boot, not that face.”

mindbleach ,

And on that argument: being queer is normal. Queer happens. Bigotry is what's specific to a culture.

mindbleach ,

See also The Website Obesity Crisis, nearly a decade ago.

Here’s an article on GigaOm from 2012 titled "The Growing Epidemic of Page Bloat". It warns that the average web page is over a megabyte in size.

The article itself is 1.8 megabytes long.

The problem with picking any particular size as a threshold is that it encourages us to define deviancy down. Today’s egregiously bloated site becomes tomorrow’s typical page, and next year’s elegantly slim design.

The author links their tweet saying "your website should not exceed in file size the major works of Russian literature." At the time, that page on Twitter was 900 KB. Today it is 11 MB.

mindbleach ,

A UserScript or UserStyle could fix it up.

And make some clueless Facebook addict with seventeen toolbars scream "You haCKED OUR WEBSITE?!"

mindbleach ,

Modern Firefox has "Reader View" that does a similar thing. It's just less customizable... because it's modern Firefox.

Does a disservice to the color-coded table on this article, though.

mindbleach ,

"Full rich webpages" on a 2007 iPhone meant bare HTML and a kilobyte of Javascript. Anything fancy would be in Flash because JS was slow as balls, and the iPhone never ran Flash.

mindbleach ,

Shit, I might use that on a desktop with broadband.

mindbleach ,

And a lot of that is tracking nonsense.

That's in the slides. It's one of my favorites:

https://static.pinboard.in/ob/thumbs/ob.041.thumb.png

mindbleach ,

If we're counting now and into the future, the EU has coerced them to finally tolerate other browsers.

... not that I'm aware of any current browser with Flash support.

mindbleach ,

Oh I know, I was just suggesting more-direct support was possible. Genuine stupid coverage for a long-dead plugin.

Maybe someone could coerce Dolphin browser from Android to iOS.

I do have to say, Ruffle is the most boringly-named of the "let's do Flash in JS" projects. The first big one was named Gordon, in an obvious pun. The follow-up was named Shumway, in a less-obvious pun. About ALF.

mindbleach ,

That is dedication I absolutely would not match. I bought Android for software freedom and mmmight have watched some pivotal Homestuck animations on a Droid 2 Global.

Even now, please don't give Apple money.

mindbleach ,

That is an experience I do not want on my phone and computer.

Instead, a total absence of control. If something borks up you're just hosed. Possibly no way to do a thing in the first place, to later get borked.

As I've told many defenders of Apple's downright criminal restrictions - Android works the same way, if you don't fuck with it. My first phone? Absolutely I ran custom ROMs and installed whatever from wherever. My current phone is stock. Most people's are.

The ability to fuck with things is crucial. Actually fucking with things is optional.

mindbleach ,

Stop fucking asking people to justify their use case, when they want something that clearly exists elsewhere.

mindbleach ,

It's a horrible kludge of a feature that fixes weird problems. That's gonna be true regardless of OS, and regardless of which exact problems OP has.

mindbleach ,

Then OP will find out this isn't something they need.

You should still answer the question, instead of questioning the question.

It is infuriating how every technical question has to be justified, as if 'why do you want that?' is always a relevant and wise question. Even though it's omnipresent, effortless, and adds literally nothing by itself.

mindbleach ,

Making up a stupid analogy totally excuses the million derailed threads where someone genuinely just needs something you don't.

Stop letting your ignorance prevent them from solving their ignorance. Answer the goddamn question, first. Feel free to snit at them - after.

mindbleach ,

A conversation is not harassment. You are choosing to continue having it.

I know OP was trying to kludge some weird problem - that is why I said as much, yesterday. People don't ask how to restart their graphics driver for fun.

They need help. "But why do you want that?" almost never helps. It is help prevention. It is where tech support threads end bitterly. Try 'here's the answer, please don't,' then doing the thing you did.

mindbleach ,

But asking it often results in neither answer.

Third time: by all means, ask the question AFTER a direct answer. A direct answer absolves any too-clever "X/Y problem" philosophizing. And obviously people would love to just not have the problems they're trying to kludge.

But that's not what they came here to ask for.

mindbleach ,

What a dishonest reading of the chronology of this conversation.

And a hypocritical effort to make about us, instead of about the subject.

mindbleach ,

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

mindbleach ,

I have no idea.

mindbleach ,

CUDA was always nakedly anti-competitive posturing - like literally everything else Nvidia chucked into their GPUs - and now they're saying the quiet part real fuckin' loud.

Hey, assholes! Turing completeness doesn't give a shit about hardware. Computing is computing! You literally cannot tell people how to run your code. Congratulations on making your proprietary horseshit the de facto standard. By all means, enjoy the mountains of cash you've extracted via that abuse. But the rest of us have shit to do, and we don't remember asking your permission.

mindbleach ,

... and in addition to the specifics of this abuse, fuck EULAs in general.

mindbleach ,

Yeah? Such a dick about it, Nintendo. Your platform is not special and people will run software however they please.

Emulation is legal. Emulation will remain legal. If you can't deal with it except through courtroom bullying, may devs should look into SLAPP defenses.

mindbleach ,

console manufacturers might start slapping DRM into their consoles

... start?

mindbleach ,

Nintendo is a toy company. They sell plastic. For the last thirty-odd years, video games have been their primary means of doing so.

What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it?

As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren't as familiar with it. It doesn't happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do....

mindbleach ,

I've lost all faith in tutorials as sources of relevant knowledge. If I'm searching about a specific problem, any from-the-top how-to might as well be Ben Stein reading it aloud at 50% speed, and then a year of my life later, it skips right over the place where something fucked up.

mindbleach ,

Doomed.

mindbleach ,

Firefox.

You go to a website and click "save as."

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