Just getting a session orchestra in to riff on Holst and Wagner is boring.

Most often it’s not even a real orchestra, but Vienna Symphonic Library.

But on the contrary some games have adaptive music, and interestingly it’s a bit more like John Williams’ view on movie soundtracks : it’s made to adapt to what’s happening in real time. When it’s done right it’s everything but boring.

Elite: Dangerous does this extremely well (IMO it has some of the best sound designs out there, not only music but everything else, too, including the dynamic range). The music is never this generic bombastic horn sections, and it’s different in different environments and situations, always somberly haunting at the edge of consciousness and enhancing, not overpowering, the gameplay.

With Celsius it’s all nice and round numbers unlike the mess called fahrenheit:

0°C—black ice, snow, be careful on the road and you probably want to wear gloves and a hat
0…10°C—a bit chilly, but you can leave your hat home
10…20°C—pleasant, but not quite tee-and-shorts yet
20…30°C—nice summer weather
30…40°C—holy crap it’s hot!
40…50°C—are you fucking kidding me?
50+°C—my proteins are starting to denature…
100°C—good sauna
110°C—finns think it’s a good sauna
120+°C—finns think it’s getting a bit too hot in the sauna. Italians tend to vaporize in sauna (speaking from experience)
…
0…-10°C—a pleasant winter weather
-10…-20°C—getting a bit frosty
-20…-30°C—finns think it’s a pleasant winter weather
-40°C—vodka freezes. Russians and finns agree it’s getting a bit frosty
-50°C—getting a little hard to start your Uazik in the morning in Siberia due to engine oil solidifying
-60°C—researchers in Antarctica all agree it’s getting a bit frosty and someone should close the window

Training cats to use firearms—what could possibly go wrong?

EDIT: Obviously, I should make an obligatory “catling gun” joke here, too.

Most likely the module, if it is a separate module and not part of the SoC of the infotainment system or whatever, works over CAN bus and the car will throw errors when it doesn’t detect its presence, or doesn’t detect the SIM card. Might even refuse to start if that module is missing. Might be possible to remove the antenna so the car thinks it’s just outside of the service area, but if it’s built into the PCB and the PCB is cast into resin/silicone for waterproofing, even this might be extremely difficult. Probably the module is also serialized* so replacing it with a “dummy” module or a module from a junkyard won’t spoof the system, either.

*Manufacturers have been serializing even airbags for years, making replacing a faulty one with one from a junkyard impossible.

But this is the whole point; for a publicly traded company the people who buy their products are not the customers for whom they create value. Shareholders and investors are the real customers. People who buy the products are precisely just a resource to extract value from for these companies.

Have car companies lost all ability to design beautiful cars? Have all the designers been fired and replaced with child labor? This… thing… looks like a 6-years old drew it up😐

I cut up pizza mozzarella so that each disk of mozzarella remains uncut. Sometimes it means extremely chaotic cuts. But the rationale is that cutting through molten cheese is extremely messy, so I avoid it if I can.

Also, Brussel sprouts are the best green vegetables.

At first I had a hard time trying to figure out how they’re going to armor themselves with some sort of strong material and how exactly would it prevent them from dying at the end of the solar system.

At some point I realized they’re talking about “compound” as in a collection of buildings, not “compound” as in a material. And “the cycle of destruction” for them is simply the common folks deciding to go French, not Sol going red giant. Fuckers are afraid. Good.

Everybody gangsta until the panman logs in…

That’s what happens if you privatize your healthcare system and it inevitably goes to shit!

140 dB under water is not the same as 140 dB in air. For underwater noise reference level is 1 uPa, in air noise level reference is 20 uPa. 140 dB under water would translate to 114 dB in air. Still impressive, a trained opera singer or a typical home hifi system can achieve somewhere around 105…110 dB, but far from a gunshot.

EDIT: in another article it was mentioned that the actual sound level is 108 dB at 1 m which would translate to 82 dB at 1 m in air. 1 m distance is the standard distance to measure the SPL level of an object, eg a loudspeaker. Far less impressive and very, very far from an actual gunshot that is ~140 dB at 1 m distance. Science reporting at its “best”.

Privacy and anonymity are two very different things. Meta et al very much tie your real world ID to your online persona plus track, analyse, store and sell everything you do on their platforms (and possibly what other sites and apps you use).

Your posts on Facebook can be set to “private” (only Meta and you/your friends see them), but they’re never anonymous. Eg if you start saying unwanted stuff if you live under an oppressive government, you will have IRL trouble.

Your post on Fediverse can be public (everyone can see them), but anonymous (no-one can tie your IRL identity to your online persona). Eg you can make an account here and say things about your oppressive government and if you use basic anonymity tools (VPN-s, e-mail aliases etc) you cannot easily be tracked down.

You can also be private and anonymous, eg tipping off journalists about stuff going on under your oppressive government by using anonymous, E2E encrypted message service like Briar. That way no-one can eavesdrop on your comms and only you know your real identity.

I’ll try these fixes, thanks!

I used to self-host an Invidious instance on my home server for personal use, but at some point it stopped working and I haven’t tried it again. I might give it another try along with Piped.

But as bad as YT is, by this point I have trained “The Algorithm” well enough that the home feed suggestions are pretty good at pointing me to stuff I actually would watch (mainly tech, science and engineering topics), I think none of the alternative frontend does suggestions, right?

Florisboard with no swipe, no word predictions, no autocorrection, no nonsense.

WPM? Fast enough. It takes more time to proofread, edit and attach files than to actually type, anyway, so I don’t care about words per minute. Never have.

Every female character in The Expanse. There simply were no non-badasses in that show🙃

Is that, like, sonet but with flatulism?

Too soon:
The Expanse
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
Babylon 5: Crusade

Five minute stroll to the bus stop, 3 minute chillout there, hop on the bus, 10 minute ride to the destination and a five minute stroll to the office.