palordrolap

@palordrolap@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stick my head out a car window or a gust of wind hits my face it's like my throat closes and I can't breathe. How come motorcycle riders without helmets don't seem to have this problem?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Observation: When you stick your head out of a car window at speed, you're going from almost no wind to a lot of it very quickly, and that's bound to take your senses by surprise, regardless of whether you're consciously expecting it or not.

  Helmet-less motorcycle riders - inadvisable as their choice may be - have the advantage of being able to ease into it from standing to moving at whatever their cruising speed is over the course of a reasonable acceleration.

  ... though I note that other posters have given reasons why it's still not entirely pleasant for the motorcyclist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who makes the best chocolate sandwich cookies these days?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  That's a tricky one. I'm a big fan of Bourbons, but since they're not restricted by copyright or branding, every UK supermarket and many other confectionery companies each make their own and the quality can vary quite a bit.

  There are also two common form factors. The original is roughly 2:1 (as pictured in the above article) and the other, which is less common, is closer to 3:2 to match the common form factor of the Custard cream.

  The supermarket own-brand I usually get (2:1) has the bonus of being dairy-free, which is not always the case.

  Sometimes I catch myself involuntarily doing a little happy dance on biting into one, so the quality of that particular brand has yet to drop beyond that threshold for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can a company like Terabox give away 1TB of space for free and still stay a stable company?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Chances are that they didn't have anywhere near enough space to give everyone the full terabyte and they were gambling on not everyone needing all their allocated space.

  I mean, it's not hard to throw 64TB of drives into a server, set up RAID with some level of redundancy (let's say something that gives 16TB apparent) and get it hosted in a data centre somewhere. If you've a thousand users all taking up no more than a few gigabytes each, you might not even fill it.

  And if they bought those drives prior to the recent price hikes on all things storage, it might not even have cost them much. (I mean, the initial outlay even now wouldn't break $10k.)

  This is all catastrophically bad planning, yes, but businesses do this sort of thing all the time, even long after the start-up period where something so basic might make sense.

  (And thus we see a likely reason why they've suddenly shrunk the free tier to a slightly more sensible value.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What should I do with boxes of old photos?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Local historical societies and any locations that still exist from those photos maybe ought to be given the option to save them if you don't want to keep them.

  If you can identify people and locations all the better. Since you have scans you can provide a physical thumbnail sheet with what's going on in each one. Or do what they did in the old days and write on the back of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the weirdest thing in english?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think articles, definite or indefinite are the weirdest things about English, if only because other languages have the same features.

  There have to be weirder things that are specific to this one language, but it's hard to find something that isn't shared by any other language, especially not the closely related ones. German goes one step further with the whole capitalisation thing, for example, where all nouns are capitalised, not just those that are names.

  Perhaps we could go for how vowels all become, or at least move towards schwa in unstressed positions. That's the vowel at the end of "the" when unstressed and before a consonant. (German has some of this with final -e (and to some extent, the same with older French pronunciation), but it's not necessarily the same thing going on there.)

  Consonant aspiration might be another oddity. Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn't hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word. I think Korean is one such language. They even have different letters for the different sounds.

  If you don't know what aspiration is, it's the burst of air that follows some consonants. English speakers generally don't even know they're doing it. The often-used example is "pin" versus "spin", where the leading "p" of "pin" has far more air after it than it does in "spin".

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am someone who works out daily and sweats a lot. Just doing laundry doesn't seem to adequately clean the underarms of my shirts. What are some ways to clean these areas of my clothing better?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You may need a different detergent or a detergent booster that works harder on stains. Usually they're peroxide based, but contain other agents as well. Some come in powder form and others in sprays.

  One powder I grabbed does brighten better than detergent alone and makes things smell like an honest-to-goodness laundry. (Which I'm not going to name because this already sounds like a sales pitch. It isn't. It's just something that was on special offer on my supermarket's website and I added it to my virtual basket because I have a few blood-spotted items of clothing that regular washing wasn't getting out.)

  It worked wonders on some very greyed white t-shirts, but not so great on the blood spots on coloured clothing. I may need to soak them for longer or use more additive, risking the colour, which I may have been too cautious about up to the present.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are some Linux community so toxic?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Some people forget what it was like when they were starting out. They find it difficult to remember when they learned what they know now because it feels like they've always known it, like it was and is second nature.

  It doesn't help if they were able, either through circumstances, zeitgeist or sheer aptitude, to pick up a topic relatively easily right back when they did first learn it.

  And so it can be difficult for such people (or at the very least, some of them) to see that anyone else might, for whatever reason, be having a hard time picking up the same thing in <current year>.

  Combine that with toxic personality traits and you can end up with an embittered person unloading on you for not being able to do what they consider to be a simple thing.

  These people are a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of everyone relevant, but they do make a heck of a lot of noise when they're unloading, and they often gravitate towards each other, so they seem like they make up more of a group than they really do when you finally run across them.

  Note that at no point yet have I mentioned Linux. This is a human problem that affects all topics and activities.

  If you want to get into the peculiarities of why it seems to be more common with technical communities, it might have something to do with the fact that people who don't feel particularly confident dealing with other people often chose to deal with something else instead.

  Computers and other mechanical things offer stimulating complexity without any of that human nonsense.

  This can lead to poor interpersonal skills perpetuating themselves or festering. And so you end up with a few of the aforementioned misanthropes trying to control what they know how to control and lashing out at everything, or everyone, else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  All things considered, "rosbif" is almost endearing as an insult. I'm kind of surprised that it's still the default.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The truth* is that the French are excellent at English, but they find it beneath them to speak it.

  Therefore, I suspect that "talkie-walkie" is a deliberate attempt to annoy the English. A trap you have fallen straight into (even if you're not English).

  *\ for some interpretation of that word

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't I apply SPF50 sunscreen twice to get SPF100 protection?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Light clothing

  You still need to pay attention to the weave density and thickness. That "infinity" falls somewhat if you're wearing the clothing equivalent cheesecloth.

  Source: Once got a severe sunburn on a relatively overcast day through a t-shirt that I soon learned hadn't been thick enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure if arXiv counts among "and the likes" from the first bullet point. No guarantees, but maybe worth a look?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What hot af take do you have that you think you will be HORRIBLY executed and shunned from society for?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It's not about any one crime, although the one you mention is a pretty hot topic. The real problem is that all crimes are null and void if you have enough money. Sometimes that money is from someone who thinks it's beneficial to them to save your bacon, but nonetheless, it's legalised bribery that nullifies the crime.

  Sure it's not "bribe a cop on the street" levels of corruption that you (allegedly) get in some other countries, but it's corruption all the same.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to install a distro directly from online ?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm going to guess that users lost their files and complained, so Canonical stopped trying to make it easy enough for those users to try.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did we get "bike" from "bicycle"?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Words often abbreviate to their stressed syllables, and occasionally any hard sounds that aren't strictly stressed also follow through. In bicycle these are the "bi" and the hard second c.

  Bi(cy)c(le)

  The spelling "bike" is unambiguous* for those sounds, so it's the one that stuck.

  * Well, relatively. If you're confusedly expecting, say, Greek, you might pronounce those vowels differently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a weird or baffling social event you experienced?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have social anxiety and some kind of high-functioning AuDHD going on with me. That makes most social events weird and baffling to me to be fair.

  But since you want stories here's a couple that are short and sweet if a bit loosey goosey on the social element:

  ---

  One time on a bus, late at night, a very drunk individual was encouraging conversation (if only because most of the other passengers weren't sure what he would do if we didn't respond). He was drinking something simultaneously black and cloudy out of a plastic bottle and offering people swigs. People didn't go that far into joining in, hence weird rather than actually scary. I may have said "no thanks I'm not sure what that is", and thankfully he took it well.

  ---

  Another time, as a kid with family on holiday somewhere. I forget exactly where. A shop in a high street with windows all covered with special offers and an opening time that was pretty soon. We think: "Why not?". A crowd had gathered by the opening time. The doors opened. The crowd flooded in with us fairly near the front.

  The shop was completely empty save for a few guys in suits in formation at the back, and one by the door who'd opened them. Sleazy sales types, maybe religious types. It was hard to be sure, but clearly some kind of bait and switch. Thus began a wave of people trying to get out as the back of the crowd was still trying to get in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What was the internet like before Y2K happened ?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  FTP was in its heyday for obtaining files. Usenet was the place to be for grouped content.

  Old Gopher information services were mostly dead by '99 but there were still a few holdouts.

  E-mail in actual mail clients reigned supreme.

  Also, depending of what you think of as "web" these days, most old web stuff was basically just nice-looking text with graphics thrown in and maybe a little JavaScript here and there, not full blown interactive experiences and applications like we have now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any free game like net hack ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure, but we may be talking about different programs. BSDgames' hack doesn't seem to have a version number that I can find. There's nothing in the changelog, and the command doesn't have anything like a -v/--version command line switch

  In fact, the closest to any kind of versioning that I can find are dates in the year 1985, both in the man page as well as in the strings in the executable itself.

  The bsdgames package itself has a version number, but that doesn't strictly apply to the games themselves. (Especially since that's 2.17-35 for me, which is nothing like the numbers you gave.)

  The program shouldn't be any more than internal logic and terminal calls anyway, so I can't imagine it would be difficult to patch, so either we are talking about different programs, or it's not considered important enough to repair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any free game like net hack ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a hint for where to get the first one, hack is available in the bsdgames package on Debian and derived Linuxes, so I assume versions can be had for most distros. It might even be available for Windows and Mac too what with WSL, and the fact that MacOS is a BSD derivative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the deal with IPv6?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  2038 problems have already started happening in niche cases. I expect things will pick up in pace in a couple of years because 10 years is that sort of period of time that people like to post-date future events by.

  That might be enough to scare a few of the hold-outs. Then 2033 will be the next scare and reminder, because five years, etc.

  Then probably every year after that until the deadline hits. By that point, the remaining few will be using faketime or something like it to eke out a few more years from whatever ancient hardware they're still running that is too expensive to replace.

  Fun fact, and possible hint: Setting the date back 28 years on such hardware could work in a pinch, since the calendar from 2010 to 2037 is identical to that from 2038 to 2065. All weekdays and leap days fall on the same dates. (Easter and other moveable feasts don't, however.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think goes through an animal’s mind and POV?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Because that is easy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think goes through an animal’s mind and POV?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It's possible to get your own inner monologue to "shut up" for a bit

  The only way I know how to do this is to go to sleep. This is somewhat impractical except at one specific time, and I need to be tired to do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is chess the most frustrating game to lose in?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not fast enough. Horses take a while to die in lava and they don't make pleasant noises while it's happening.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is chess the most frustrating game to lose in?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Coordinates are the least cheaty way of trying to combat that. Whenever I play I always have the coordinates on screen somewhere, whether through the newer Java debug info, a local resource pack or, in the case of servers, a client-side mod. Bedrock has a coords option somewhere too.

  Knowing the coords of where you died doesn't 100% guarantee getting back to your stuff in a timely manner, but it does give you a slightly better chance.

  Half the trick is knowing that as long as those chunks aren't loaded, the despawn timer isn't ticking, so you have all the time in the world to gear up to go back. And you might need to gear up for a fight if mobs steal your old gear.

  ... but none of this is a cure for lava. I lost a horse to lava once. That was horrible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What character is the king of plot armor?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  James Bond.

  The Doctor (Doctor Who) and maybe a couple of his nemeses from his home world. Sure, he dies every few years, but regeneration into a new body is literally written into the lore. But then occasionally the Doctor is literally female, so at that point I assume she's the queen of plot armour instead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anybody actually work from 09:00 to 17:00⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the jobs I had was 9am to 5pm for about a year. For me, that was practically heaven because prior to that it had been 9am to 6pm for a few years, and the shorter hours didn't come with a pay cut.

  It got weird later because I took on a rotating shift pattern and more responsibility, but some of the day shifts were still 9 till 5.

  Then I jumped ship to a different company that had 9am to 6pm again, but that turned out to be preferable to the hell of not being able to sleep properly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Back in my day it was ok to receive a paddlin (simpson ref there) at school as a kid. But on the flip side it was against the law to beat a paddle a prisoner by a guard, why the rule difference?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If I were to guess, the teachers would have had many good reasons to not to too far, whereas the prison guards would have had less incentive to hold back.

  Also, a prisoner's crimes are probably more serious. Probably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you pronounce 'Niche'?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The follow-up question is basically "Are you a non-American English speaker?", however you choose to parse that.

  So, it's "neesh" for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it weird that I cringe whenever someone calls my name and I avoid using peoples names when talking to them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I too had a decent upbringing, but, after a bit of introspection about why I'm so wary of my own name, it came down to this:

  I have two names. One is my given name and the other is "son".

  My parents have always tended to use my given name in negative and neutral contexts and "son" in more positive ones. It's not intentional on their part, and I expect my father got the same, but I think it's at the root of it all.

  Good upbringing or not, how many of us are still terrified of being addressed by our full name in an irate tone? I'm convinced it's related.

  The only wrinkle that bothers me is when a sonless aunt once called me "son" and it made me very uncomfortable. But, I figure there are other reasons for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it weird that I cringe whenever someone calls my name and I avoid using peoples names when talking to them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Identifying this as egg behaviour might be egg behaviour.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do a majority of nation's flags use the rectangular shape except Nepal?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Round coins are less likely to damage coin purses and pockets. No more complicated than that.

  Then as technology has moved on, it has proven advantageous for coins to have constant radius so that coin-accepting machines don't jam on an unfortunate rotation of points.

  This is why even when coins aren't round - thinking specifically of the British 50 pence and 20 pence coins, but there are others - they still have curved sides.