prova_modena

Yeah absolutely. I've seen non-wiki-savvy experts do these kind of edits, get reverted, and stop editing wikipedia forever because the whole experience left a sour taste in their mouth. I recently found the essay below targeted to exactly that audience, it's super useful to helping experts who want to contribute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_editors

Sonoran desert resident here. Not to be rude, but your comment is informed by some common misconceptions about the desert and cacti that would be cleared up by reading the very good article linked here.

It's a common misconception that the desert is barren with scarce vegetation. Saguaro habitat can include areas which are almost continuously vegetated, including palo verde and mesquite trees and all manner of grasses, shrubs and smaller cacti. There's a good pic in the article of an unburned area that shows this (about 1/3 down the page). Even in less vegetated areas, seasonal rains can cause bursts of growth that then dry out and fuel fires. Certain invasive species exacerbate this issue, as mentioned in the article.

1-2 foot chunks sectioned from a saguaro trunk will quickly die. The plant's "spongy interior" mentioned in the article will dry out if cut like this. Mature cactus can be transplanted but require special care and support as it takes a long time for them to get rooted. I'm not sure if saguaro arms or larger sections can be transplanted independently as "cuttings". Even if it's technically possible its not common as the mature plants are extremely slow growing and relatively fragile. There are also some state laws around removal and destruction of saguaros that would likely restrict a plan like this.

I'm sorry that was your experience with EVE. I can totally see how joining certain types of corporation could yield the boring experience you describe. I also agree that the ability/incentive to multibox is a serious flaw in the game.

But I also want to disagree with you as EVE is (was?) enough of a sandbox that it could be enjoyed in many different ways. I've been winning (not playing) EVE for 4-5 years now, but my experiences with EVE PVP were some of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had. I owe this to avoiding grinding, large null-sec corps and sovereignty battles as much as possible. 99% of the engagements I participated in had under 50 participants total, with about 75% in the single digits. I almost always flew cheap ships so I never had to grind much- even at my most addicted I was always a casual evening player so had no time for serious grinds.

I flew a lot of frigates- small, fast, delicate ships that took a lot of manual control and quick reflexes to use effectively. I became known as a scout/interceptor pilot, who would fly ahead of the main group, quickly pass intel back to the fleet commander, then engage until the rest of the fleet arrived. I would also do a lot of less formal hunting and dueling, solo or in very small groups. To make money, I would do the "exploration" PVE activity, which involved a lot of travel through wormholes which could send you anywhere across the game's universe. You had to find your way back home through hostile territory, hunted by players for your cargo hold full of valuables.

All these activities involved constant movement, huge bursts of adrenaline and immense satisfaction when your skill and knowledge pays off. The sense of place I felt was also incredible-you really got to know systems as "good and bad neighborhoods" and the habits of various players populating them. I never really cared about progression or building wealth, so I lost a lot, but also won a fair amount and experienced a rush that no game before or since has matched. Some FPS battle royale-type games came close but ultimately were shallower and therefore less satisfying.

Only rarely did I deal with the typical large fleet experience of waiting, following orders and dealing with TIDI (server lag). When one corp I was with started primarily engaging in those kinds of fights, I left them as there were always other groups or individuals interested in the kind of small group content I liked. It's been years for me, but I hope those folks are still out there, whether docked up in Stacmon, camping plexes in Tama, forming a NPSI fleet in NPC nullsec or cloaked up waiting for a ratting super to feel safe again.

Nice. I like vintage tools, but if you need an oiler now, it's hard to beat a Goldenrod. Still made in USA, excellent quality and available in various styles. I paid about $24 from McMaster-Carr.

Pre-458 F1 transmission cars have largely turned the corner on depreciation. The current macro-scale car market correction notwithstanding, even formerly undesirable models are stable. In some cases they have appreciated- looked at F355 prices lately? F1 cars have increased, although like you mention 6 speed cars are much higher.

As far as the repairability of F1 transmissions, it's important to keep in mind that these are essentially 'automated' versions of the manual transmission, not conventional automatic transmissions. There's no torque converter, but there is a clutch like a regular manual. The parts that fail are not usually the expensive gearbox internals (which Ferrari is pretty good at), but rather the bits that automate the operation- pressure switches, hydraulic pumps and solenoids- and the clutch. These can be replaced and there are aftermarket solutions and parts-bin interchanges to fix this stuff.

One mistake folks make with F1 cars is driving it like an automatic. Because the F1 gearbox is fundamentally an automated manual gearbox, driving it like a conventional automatic will cause premature wear. For example, creeping along in traffic or while parking is totally fine for a car with a regular auto trans, but in a F1-equipped Ferrari it will engage the clutch over and over again, slipping and wearing it in short order. This is partially a failure of interface design, as an F1 car will 'let' you drive it like an auto with little warning until you need an expensive clutch service in a couple thousand miles. This accounts for some of the bad reputation of F1 transmissions, as people drove it like a regular auto and racked up big service bills immediately.

The second big mistake owners make is expecting a Ferrari dealer to service an older F1 transmission. First, they don't retain institutional knowledge and support of older systems, which means techs don't know them very well and official parts availability is bad. Second, dealer policy is usually to replace the entire transmission if there is a fault. They won't do the diagnostic work to figure out if it's just a switch or some other component fails. This creates a situation where the best outcome is paying an exorbitant amount for a new F1 transmission, and the worst outcome is being told the transmission is no longer available from the factory and being left with a dead car. Instead of a dealer, anyone with an older F1-equipped Ferrari needs to be working with an independent specialist that is familiar with these cars. Even if you need to transport the car a couple hundred miles away, it will likely cost less compared to the dealer. Good independents will know these older systems better than dealer techs and be able to try solutions that dealers won't consider (such as replacing/adjusting component parts or sourcing used parts to replace parts NLA from the factory). Their labor rates and parts cost will also be lower.

All that said, yeah build quality and durability have never been Ferrari's strong suits. Porsche has always been the sensible supercar choice. However, there are ways to improve the old Ferrari ownership experience and all of them start with getting the car away from the dealer.

Ferrari dealer service departments are at their best when servicing newer models, like less than 10 years old. Anything older than that, dealer expertise and factory support drops off precipitously. In that case, you are much better off going to a reputable independent Ferrari specialist. Many of these shops will be staffed by ex-dealer employees. It's still important to go to a Ferrari specialist, as a general purpose indy mechanic will probably cause issues or do things in an inefficient way.

I've taken old HDDs to a commercial shredding service. They have a special shredder for electronics and will let you watch your drives/tablets/etc being destroyed. I think it is a pretty common service, there are quite a few places that do this in my city. Does get expensive if you have a bunch, though.

Anecdotally, I've noticed an increasing number of websites where basic functionality does not work on desktop Firefox. I now have to open Chrome on a daily basis whereas just a couple years ago I was 100% FF for browsing (not counting using other browsers for front end testing etc).

For example, FedEx tracking refuses to work on Firefox. Shapeways (3D printing service) landing page was (is?) broken/non interactive on FF. Also a vBulletin based forum I regularly visit started return 400 Bad Request responses when visiting with FF. All these work fine with Chrome and used to work with Firefox.

Appropriately enough, those sturdy metal desks are known as "tanker" desks.

Yeah, Countaches are definitely not comfortable cars. As I mention later in the comment, the original intentions of Mr. Lamborghini were somewhat at odds with what Lamborghini the company became famous for after the success of the Miura and the Countach. The engineers that Lamborghini hired to make his luxe GT cars were more interested in building racing cars. Mr. Lamborghini gave them room to experiment, and they built a uncompromising, racing-inspired sports car in the Miura. This led on the the even more successful Countach. Good thing too, as the Lamborghini GT models (350 GT, 400 GT, Islero, Jarama, Espada) were never really luxurious or well constructed enough to compete with the likes of Mercedes and Jaguar. So Mr. Lamborghini's willingness to compromise and follow his engineers' vision of making radical, uncomfortable sports cars probably saved the company. They managed to limp along with the Countach design almost to the 90s. Meanwhile, the GT models that Mr. Lamborghini loved were out of production by the end of the 70s and are all fairly obscure today.

I'm not aware of any book specifically addressing the rivalry or both brands at once. My opinion is that this rivalry mostly exists in the press and in the public imagination and therefore would make poor fodder for a book. In contrast, Ferrari's dealings with Ford both on and off the racetrack are much more interesting, and have generated a lot of writing as well as the recent movie.

My #1 book recommendation would be Luca Dal Monte's excellent recent biography on Enzo Ferrari. In a field dominated by shallow coffee table books and breathless romanticism, it's a comprehensive, scholarly history that remains very readable. Not much material on Lamborghini, though. Unfortunately like many auto books it is now out of print and prices are in "collector" territory. Still worth picking up if you can.

Small correction, the "250 GTO" was a specific racing model, while the "250 GT" was a series of models encompassing both roadgoing and racing cars. I'm assuming you are referring to the roadgoing 250 GT models, such as the 250 GT Pininfarina Coupe, 250 GT California Spyder etc.

The roadgoing 250 GT series was produced at the tail end of the "coachbuilt" era of automobiles, where the manufacturer sent the bare chassis and engine to a artisan shop specialized in the design and construction of the body. So you're correct that, from Ferrari's perspective, the design of these roadgoing models was secondary to the racing models. However, because it was not Ferrari's primary concern, it could be contracted out to coachbuilders such as Pininfarina. These firms were highly sophisticated designers and artisans and indeed produced some very beautiful work.

Ferruccio Lamborghini was primarily interested in building comfortable, quick and stylish GT cars, not high performance sports cars or racing cars. In contrast, Enzo Ferrari was interested in producing road cars to fund the racing division of the company.

From the present-day, it's easy to see why Lamborghini and Ferrari are "paired." Both are merchandising and branding behemoths, both produce thoroughly modern, refined sports cars that are often cross-shopped against each other. However, in the 1960s and 1970s these companies were definitely not two sides of the same coin, being run by idiosyncratic personalities with differing priorities. While the Miura and Countach are best remembered today, Lamborghini struggled tremendously to break in to the luxury GT market with the 350 GT, 400 GT, Islero, Jarama and Espada. They also tried and failed to compete with the Porsche 911 using the Urraco. Economic and manufacturing issues prevented Lamborghini from achieving lasting profitability in these markets. Thus, as described in the article, Lamborghini struggled through the 70s and 80s. In contrast, Ferrari was continually buoyed by positive publicity from racing and weathered the oil crisis using funding provided by Fiat.

One part of the story that is glossed over by the article is the engineering team behind the early Lamborghini cars. The legendary popularity of the Miura and Countach and their crucial role in the Lamborghini story overshadow the fact that Ferruccio was not initially supportive of these cars, or of the idea of building racing-inspired high performance sports cars at all. In particular, the Miura was an "after-hours" project of three talented engineers: Gian Paolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani and Bob Wallace. These three all had keen interest in racing cars and developed the Miura chassis without official support. After the completed chassis was shown at the 1966 Geneva Auto Show, favorable public response led Ferruccio to approve a production version. The success of the Miura allowed the small Lamborghini engineering team and body designer Gandini to have creative freedom in designing the Countach. However, if the company stayed true to Ferruccio's original goals and these engineers were not allowed to "play", these remarkable models would not exist at all.

The article's states that ATS designed and built early Lamborghinis. This is historically inaccurate. The only ATS member that had a significant relationship with Lamborghini was Giotto Bizzarrini, who designed the V12 engine used in the 350 GT and subsequently refined and updated for use in many other Lamborghini models. Bizzarrini's association with Lamborghini was very brief, most likely only consisting of providing the engine design as a deliverable. The four person team of Bizzarrini, Dallara, Stanzani, and Wallace were responsible for the engineering of the early Lamborghini cars, not ATS.

There's also an interesting story here behind the article's brief mention of the 1961 walkout/"palace revolt" where some of the leading technical talent left Ferrari and formed ATS. While this was a blow in the short term, Ferrari very quickly filled the void with a young engineer named Mauro Forghieri who became one of the most successful technical directors in the company's history. Enzo's willingness to bring in new, young talent when existing employees (and drivers!) proved unsatisfactory is a major theme in the company's history. Arguably, this tendency contributed to the company and team's ability to stay solvent and successful for so long under Enzo's management.

I like learning about the latest and greatest developments in these compact, fanless router boxes. But, so many are only available through seemingly random AliExpress sellers. Maybe this is being overly cautious, but I would never trust my home and small business networking duties to off-brand hardware like this. I worry about poor QC, nonexistent customer support and nonstandard/undocumented gotchas. This is not even considering outright malicious behavior by one of these storefronts.

I've used Protectli and PC Engines boxes before, which have been great. I'm definitely leaving some value/performance on the table compared to the hardware described in this article. I also know that Protectli hardware in particular is supposed to be identical to some of the Aliexpress boxes, at a higher price. But at least I have some assurance that the company behind the hardware has a reputation at stake and will hopefully stand behind their products.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to run DOSBox or DOSBox-X within a terminal. It would be awesome if I'm mistaken as that does seem to be the most elegant solution.

I've thought about trying the DOSBox in a Linux VM setup with X11 forwarding over SSH, however supporting Windows clients that way seems complex. I'd love to hear if anyone has tried that though and how robust it is in practice.

TD-3 is awesome but definitely a gateway drug purchase. I got one shortly after Roland's web-based synth recreations were posted on HN. Immediately wanted some sort of drum machine to go along with it. Now I also have an Elektron model:cycles, a mixer and an effects pedal, as well as a ton of cables slowly taking over my desk.

Again like you said, the reason not to wear is nothing specific to watches. At the high end of collectibles markets, condition grading is extremely fine and detailed. A knowledgeable person can see the difference between something that has never left the box and something that was used/worn once. Additionally, there's often a substantial value difference between a #1 condition item and a #2 condition item. As the participants in any collector market become more sophisticated, condition difference between individual items becomes both more legible (as grading methods are created) and has a greater effect on value (as the market expands).

There's also a sort of status game being described in the part you quoted. Self-identified collectors/dealers intentionally don't wear their collection in order to signal their understanding of the watches' value and therefore their own knowledge as connoisseurs.

1010music bluebox might work for you and is 1/2 the price.

Record labels have been doing similar things since the 1950s, building musical acts on-demand by combining skilled, anonymous "session musicians" with an attractive, marketable image or performers that fit the current trend. The most famous example from the 1960s is the Monkees, but this dynamic played a huge part in the development of a surprising number of famous pop bands and musical personalities. Massive public backlash against the perceived inauthenticity of this approach caused record labels to be much more cautious from the 1970s onward, but it's never gone away. Spotify's main "sin" here seems to be that they aren't as skilled as the big labels in manufacturing authenticity/buzz around their most promoted artists.

Listening to various DJs has been my primary form of music discovery for the past 10 or more years. The diversity of and access to interesting DJ sets has literally never been better than now.

AM/FM radio is mostly irrelevant to this phenomenon, except as a precedent. Like you said, some small stations may be playing interesting stuff but the vast majority is over-commercialized, repetitive and/or boring. However, the internet has opened up tons of possibilities for DJs to curate and share music. Platforms include internet radio stations, Youtube channels, Twitch channels, and purpose-built sites like soundcloud and mixcloud. There used to also be a huge DJ blogging scene but that was mostly dismantled with DMCA takedowns in the 2010s(?).

For example, one of my favorite resources is NTS radio (https://nts.live/). They are a continuously streaming internet radio station that plays a wide variety of music. Every show they stream is archived for on-demand listening and organized by DJ name and genre tags. They also brilliantly address the demand for Spotify-style "background music" with their Infinite Mixtape feature, with music chosen by resident DJs.

I have no experience with this event, but it's sort of common in amateur radio communities that events are scheduled around typical retiree hours (think "early bird special"). It can make it difficult for younger working people to attend, and given the legendary cliquishness of some of those communities it may be intentional. Again I know nothing about this specific event or the organizers so I'm not pointing fingers.

It's been used by numerous manufacturers in addition to Audi, including BMW and seemingly every FCA/Stellantis brand. I've driven a BMW 5 series fitted with one and I can confirm it's a great transmission that is smooth and capable during normal driving, but has reasonable sportiness when required.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF_8HP_transmission

Yes you should be able to, or with slightly more friendly software like gQRX or SDRSharp. It also looks like you can receive and decode the key signals using rtl_433[0] with option -R 64. Although it's a bit confusing looking at the source for the honda key rtl_433 decoder, as the author states it does not decrypt the rolling code.[1] According to the CVE there is no rolling code.

[0] https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433

[1] https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433/blob/master/src/devices/...

Carfax has effectively marketed itself as a single source of truth for vehicle history. However, Carfax reports may have omissions and errors, especially as vehicles age out of the manufacturer's warranty. It's best when used to inform and supplement other forms of research, such as a pre-purchase inspection or review of paper records.

Certain situations in solidworks can cause similar behavior. For example, tangent arcs inverting themselves. My uneducated suspicion is that there are geometric conditions that cause these sorts of "gimbal lock" type problems in all CAD solvers. Although I don't have enough hours in F360 to say if you are describing something qualitatively different.

here's the code: https://github.com/rouyng/tpms-helper

so far I have only tested it with Toyota sensors, so YMMV when used with other sensor types as I'm not sure if the rtl_433 output will be the same.

I also wrote a blog post when I first figured out how to test the sensors with rtl_433, before I wrote the script. probably useful for background information: https://www.r-c-y.net/posts/tpms/

I wrote a tiny program to help test the tire pressure sensors on my car. You can receive signals from these sensors using a cheap SDR dongle and a program called rtl_433. However, out of the box the process is bit messy and requires tweaking and interpretation. So I wrote a bash script that wraps rtl_433, guides you through the process in an easy-to-understand way and summarizes the results.

A program like this is not full automation, but it greatly reduces the cognitive overhead of doing this task. Now when I suspect a sensor is bad, I can just pull out the script without having to get back up to speed on how to orchestrate the component programs and interpret the results. It's like having a well-designed jig for a woodworking task, hanging on the wall for later use.

Writing tiny programs like this is really satisfying because the scope is small enough that I can carefully consider all decisions. I spent a lot of time reading through guides and code samples, considering dependencies vs pure bash, understanding shellcheck warnings, and making the code conform to a style guide. All not strictly necessary to achieve the goal, but I learned a lot and take satisfaction in a small, but refined result.

You are right, FiveM is absolutely worth mentioning separately as it seems to underpin most modded servers. I'm aware of the distinction and I wasn't attempting to downplay the work people put into the FiveM framework or non-Nopixel servers. My apologies to any FiveM devs if my comment came off that way.

The reason I call out Nopixel specifically is that server' recent prominence and popularity may affect Rockstar's plan for GTA6. For better or for worse, the Nopixel brand has moved GTAV modding towards the mainstream and that has the potential to affect all future modding.

I'm pretty much in agreement with your predictions and concerns about RP in GTA6, I think this is a widely shared view. In addition to your concern about mechanics overriding RP, I would also say that (from my view) RP seems to be most successful when mod devs and admins are closely integrated with the community and able to tweak/add content to prevent things getting stale. It's very hard to see how that could happen with Rockstar administering RP servers.

One of the big open questions now is the ability to mod GTA6 (or whatever the next major installment is called).

Nopixel[0], a roleplay-focused modded GTAV server built on the FiveM framework[1], has absolutely exploded in popularity during the past year. Many of the most popular streamers on Twitch are active on this server. Cumulative live viewership of these streamers is in the tens or hundreds of thousands at any one time. Looking at the top live GTAV streamers[2], almost all are playing on Nopixel or some similar GTARP server.

Rockstar is notorious for being hostile to modders. Since Nopixel has become such a phenomenon recently (and a huge cash cow for streamers and streaming platforms) there is a lot of talk among the GTARP community about GTA6. There's speculation about whether Rockstar will continue to turn a blind eye to modders, lock down their software even more, try to go after modders legally, release their own competing RP platform or something else.

As an aside, I'm somewhat surprised I've never read any discussion about Nopixel on HN before. I started by watching one popular streamer try it a year ago and gradually began watching several Nopixel-only streamers when I get the chance. It's goofy and rough around the edges, but there are wildly creative and entertaining people involved. It feels like I've been watching a novel form of entertainment emerge in the course of a year. In a certain sense, it feels more like the "metaverse" than any thing I've seen recently advertised as such.

[0] https://nopixel.fandom.com/wiki/NoPixel_Community

[1] https://fivem.net/

[2] https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Grand%20Theft%20Auto%20...

edit: clarified that Nopixel is a server built on the FiveM framework

The article says it is a melamine polymer.