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Splognosticus

159 karma · joined May 13, 2011

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Splognosticus··on Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?
I was under anesthesia a few years back and it really opened my eyes to what death actually is. You don't dream. You don't experience anything. It's not scary. You just... stop being.

I went under and then next thing I knew they were wheeling me back to my room. No pain. No fear. I was simply transported from one instant to another.

Splognosticus··on Medusa is a device that allows connecting of old computers to modern displays
I have one of these and highly recommend it. Do note it is expressly for converting older digital signals to HDMI though. MDA and CGA are really difficult to find displays for these days, since even old CRT monitors have trouble with vsyncs lower than what VGA uses. And of those, the ones still in working order are exceptionally rare.
Splognosticus··on 17B life years could be saved if air pollution was reduced to WHO standards
Egh, right? It's kind of annoying how whenever anyone suggests trying anything to improve society someone comes out of the woodwork to cry about government overreach.

Never an argument about the merits of the proposal, just some trite hand-wringing that somewhere somehow someone might be able to use it to their political advantage. Never even an explanation of why this one thing would be so dangerous when governments already by nature have vast authority to control pretty much anything they want.

Worst of all you can't reason against it, since it's not a position of reason. Regardless of what point you make they'll just dig in and ignore them. :(

Splognosticus··on Roadrunner Blocked by U.S. Border Wall Wins Best Bird Photo of 2021
I don't really get this line of reasoning. If the Founding Fathers were in favor of immigration, but in practice their immigration policy was racist, shouldn't the conclusion be that if we want to adhere to the spirit of their policies that we ought to favor immigration but discard the outmoded racist views?
Splognosticus··on Roadrunner Blocked by U.S. Border Wall Wins Best Bird Photo of 2021
Yeah, the statement is literally just "the exact specific thing we said this project would cause happened." Lamentably the people listening already knew that, and the people who need to hear it won't listen. Honestly the wall doesn't even need to be political to be a bad idea. We could stipulate that every single reason given for needing to build it is true and it'd still only keep out roadrunners. :\
Splognosticus··on Fourth police officer who responded to Jan 6 attack dies by suicide
> I don't recall any evidence that the murder was intentional.

You're mistaken, but this is a complicated subject and it's entirely reasonable to not know this. I had to look it up at the time to learn it as well.

Chauvin was found guilty and sentenced to 22 years for second-degree unintentional murder, which would be the crime you're aware of, third-degree murder, which is a catch-all for special circumstances that does not ascribe intent, and second-degree manslaughter, which is when you act negligently in a way that you know will cause death.

Ed: oh, it occurs to me that reconciling one charge of unintentional murder and a another of intentional murder when there is only one victim is probably confusing, so just to clarify the way I understand it is that it's two different intentions that both result in death. In the former case, it's like if you were to find out your wife was cheating and you shot her in a crime of passion. In the latter it's like if you set a spring gun.

Splognosticus··on Fourth police officer who responded to Jan 6 attack dies by suicide
It's not the case as far as I can tell--the DC Metro PD reports show crime there is dropping steadily over time[1]. There's a lot of factors that go into why crime rates change, but suffice to say that if the police weren't funded properly they wouldn't be able to handle the workload.

[1] https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance

Splognosticus··on Fourth police officer who responded to Jan 6 attack dies by suicide
> No, there is nothing to indicate that.

Agreed. I'm noticing this idea floated throughout this thread and it's extremely alarming. There's nothing to suggest that any of the officers died under suspicious circumstances, nobody ever supplies any evidence supporting that theory, they're "just asking questions."

After years of watching as ostensibly reasonable people get mired in ever-increasingly insane conspiracy theories I'm incredibly worried to see them introduced to an already dangerously volatile situation. The Jan 6 riots wouldn't have even happened if not for the pervasiveness of the lie that the election was stolen. I really, really wish people would think more carefully before speaking this way.

Splognosticus··on Trump sues Twitter, Google and Facebook alleging 'censorship'
You're just describing Usenet, which still exists, and is still easily accessible, and has been around for decades on end. Honestly any action to crack down on social media for enforcing their terms of use for their own platform is a solution looking for a problem.
Splognosticus··on Trump sues Twitter, Google and Facebook alleging 'censorship'
In fairness it's reasonable to not want the sort of inevitable flame war that will come of simply mentioning that Trump did anything whatsoever. Much as I'd like to, it's nearly impossible to have a measured conversation on the merits of the case itself when people keep steering it pell-mell into the wall. :\
Splognosticus··on Trump sues Twitter, Google and Facebook alleging 'censorship'
You can't seriously be drawing parallels between Facebook and North Korea of all things. What could Facebook possibly do to prevent you from exercising your right to free speech and free assembly? If they have that power why aren't they using it to stamp out all of the various competing platforms that serve people banned from their own? This line of reasoning just doesn't make a lick of sense.
Splognosticus··on Trump sues Twitter, Google and Facebook alleging 'censorship'
Eh? Who has suggested it does? Disregard for the moment that it's Donald Trump so that we can speak without partisanism mucking things up. It doesn't take a mind reader to gauge the intent of another person based on their actions. Just basic empathic ability and critical thinking.

If you disagree with the conclusion then okay, go ahead and make an actual counterpoint. That's the whole point of discussion. Don't go accusing people of such outrageously ridiculous things as thinking that they have telepathic powers. You know perfectly well that sort of hyperbolic nonsense won't sway anyone.

Splognosticus··on Ask HN: Are impressive new programs being written for CP/M?
Probably not if he's wanting CP/M. Time travelers prefer APL.
Splognosticus··on How Government Wrecked the Gas Can
Yeah, I've heard people complain before about how gas cans suck now because California, but never cared enough to bother looking into it.

It makes sense though that the regulations would be about air quality, since that's a significant issue in a state with such densely-populated areas.

Splognosticus··on How Government Wrecked the Gas Can
Took me a while to find a source that doesn't have such a blatant axe to grind, since they're evidently spamming this article everywhere. Turns out the spillage they're referring to isn't what we think of as spillage, but the fumes from the vents, which is why they're gone.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140816134507/http://www.turfma...

I rather suspect the real reason gas cans suck now is that this is the cheapest design that satisfies the requirements and nobody cares enough about gas cans to bother ordering one that works better.

Splognosticus··on Dos.Zone – interactive database of DOS games
There was an exemption made in the DMCA for archive.org's software library back in 2006, so their use is legal.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/06/11/29/1917234/internet-arc...

Splognosticus··on Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
I use it whenever I expect a directory to be empty and want an error if for whatever reason it isn't. It's a bit niche, but good to have in your toolbelt.
Splognosticus··on Commodore History Part 1: The Commodore Pet
I recently picked up a C128 for nostalgia's sake and find that if anything these 8-bit micros are even more interesting today than when I was a kid. These days you have all the resources the Internet provides, cross-compilers and emulators to develop homebrew software, effectively unlimited storage, access to pretty much any app ever written for the machine.

Still there are resource constraints you have to account for when you're using these things, plus getting them to interface with modern infrastructure and devices is its own challenge. Maintenance and refurbishment is also a factor, since components fail no matter how lovingly cared for the machine has been in its life.

All in all, it's not precisely a better or worse experience than you remember, just a somewhat different experience.

Splognosticus··on The Pretty JSON Revolution
Well, by definition "unordered" means you can't count on any particular order. So while parsers may indeed preserve order, anything that relies on it is in violation of the standard.

That said, I agree that being aware of this is important if you're emitting JSON. You'd think nobody would ever address a JSON object by its ordinal position, but programmers are lazy and worse, think they're clever. :)

Splognosticus··on The Pretty JSON Revolution
Also in violation of the spec:

> An object is an unordered collection of zero or more name/value pairs, where a name is a string and a value is a string, number, boolean, null, object, or array.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-1

Splognosticus··on Aya Neo: A New Challenger for Handheld PC Gaming
Man, if my Switch supported Steam Link it'd be hands down my favorite portable ever. I've got a ton of games that would play just fine with the Switch's controls, but simply don't have Switch ports, plus plenty I'm just not going to buy a second copy of just for playing on the Switch.
Splognosticus··on Aya Neo: A New Challenger for Handheld PC Gaming
Another good resource if you're interested in handheld or SFF computers for gaming is ETA PRIME's channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETAPRIME

He goes pretty in depth on the products he reviews, and periodically does videos where he compares several competing products and suggests which he recommends depending on your budget and other priorities.

Splognosticus··on Parler is back online after a month of downtime
I sorta get it, from the standpoint of just allowing folks to speak their mind without repercussions. Unfortunately in practice that invariably drifts to being somewhere that the worst dregs of society congregate because they aren't welcome anywhere else, and then, well, your site becomes the cesspool that Parler was. :\
Splognosticus··on Instacart is firing every employee who voted to unionize
The article mentions they joined United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546, who according to their website are 1.3 million strong. With those numbers they could conceivably make Instacart address the issue.
Splognosticus··on Odroid-Go Super: $80 Games Console That Looks Like a Switch, but Runs Ubuntu
It certainly could be. Pair a bluetooth controller and hook it up to HDMI, and play Retroarch to your heart's content.
Splognosticus··on Odroid-Go Super: $80 Games Console That Looks Like a Switch, but Runs Ubuntu
Eh, it's splitting hairs. Is the Pippin a game console? Is the CD-I? Is the OUYA? Is a PS2 still a game console if you boot Linux? Is a Gameboy with the Workboy keyboard still a game console?

All consoles are at the end of the day general-purpose computers. You're just arbitrarily locked out of using the machine you bought and paid for to run whatever you like.

Splognosticus··on Odroid-Go Super: $80 Games Console That Looks Like a Switch, but Runs Ubuntu
That guy's channel is great if you're in the market for a handheld or SFF PC for emulation or PC gaming. He does in-depth reviews like this of pretty much all of them that come out.
Splognosticus··on Deprecating SHA1
We're remarkably close--ENIAC was first powered up in 1946. Kinda cool when you think about it--electronic computers are WWII-era technology and a lot of us reading this now will see their 100-year anniversary.
Splognosticus··on Four features that justify a new Unix shell
> - splitting pipes to separate flows (e.g one flow for stderr, one for stdout). Think of it as a graph.

Could you elaborate a little on what you mean by this? bash already has the ability to redirect STDERR and STDOUT independently, and when you introduce named pipes into the mix things can get really fancy (probably too fancy, this is about where your script stops being a script and starts being a program written in perhaps the most inconvenient language available.)

Splognosticus··on Four features that justify a new Unix shell
I haven't tried it personally, but there is a notebook-style terminal that might interest you, aptly-named Shell Notebook.

https://shellnotebook.com/

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