dual_sport_dork
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
- Comment on 5 hours ago:
There is (was) rather infamously a mod for Morrowind which removes the fog. Said fog was required to conceal the render distance limitations of the hardware of its time, but these days basically any random computer can render the entire Morrowind map in one go which reveals that in fact it’s smaller than Disney World. Morrowind has the smallest map out of any of the Elder Scrolls titles to my knowledge, and it’s surreal to see all the towns and landmarks all nestling practically shoulder to shoulder like that.
Skyrim does an excellent job of making its lands look vast, but the geography is similarly compressed. The climb from lush valleys to frozen windswept peaks is only something like the equivalent of a two thousand real world feet, which wouldn’t even qualify as anything more than a foothill to the Rockies here in reality. The Throat of the World which is canonically supposed to be the tallest mountain is actually only 766.5 meters or 2514 feet tall in map scale terms, which isn’t even a third of the way to breaking the treeline in most places.
- Comment on there's a Costco at the other end 5 days ago:
Neat, but this is off scale by a factor of about two thirds. Central Park is roughly half a mile wide which means at typical spacing you should be able to fit 330 parking spaces per row. Let’s call it an even 300 to be extremely charitable with the aisle down the middle and access ways down both sides. I counted 93 or so (it’s a bit muddy) spaces in the closest row that’s not clipped by the edges of the frame.
So not only did some asshole pave over Central Park, but apparently it’s being exclusively used for monster truck parking.
- Comment on 👴☝️I did that 6 days ago:
Very few of the ones around me have the built in ad players. Several stations blare ads (inevitably largely for themselves, curiously enough) over the PA system constantly, though.
The ZIP code thing is for credit card verification. I ask for that too, when you pay me by credit card. I don’t have a choice unless I’d like to enjoy zero fraud and chargeback protection.
- Comment on Accepting Cookies 2 weeks ago:
And,
- Comment on Is there an "Avoid Amazon" community for people who want to support smaller online retailers? 2 weeks ago:
You can have a good laugh at Grainger’s prices on just about everything. They exist purely to rip off other businesses with large expense accounts, in the “don’t care, it ain’t my money” tradition.
- Comment on Day 673 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 weeks ago:
That, and the leviathans become a total non-issue once you get the stasis gun. You can find the blueprint fragments in fairly safe and easy to reach places (albeit in a somewhat RNG dependent manner, I believe). A fully charged shot freezes one in place for a full 30 seconds. An uncharged shot nails it there more than long enough for you to make the next one a fully charged one. Then you can either knife them to death trivially or, if you’re a weenie, simply swim away.
- Comment on 60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market 2 weeks ago:
Sure, but I built my previous rig in 2012 and kept it in service up until I put together my latest one just at the end of last year. Even with the best will in the world I had absolutely no intention of building yet another new gaming computer any time in the next two years regardless of geopolitical fuckery.
- Comment on How is RAM size measured? Why doesn't it match the marketed size? 3 weeks ago:
Unlike hard drives and SSDs which as you have observed are incessantly manufactured in powers-of-ten mega/giga/terabytes but marketed as if they were powers-of-two mebi/gibi/tebibytes, a RAM chip’s capacity is absolutely, definitely, 100% down to the individual bit precisely the capacity at which it is rated in powers-of-two megabytes. Due to the way that memory is accessed there is no other way and it cannot be fudged. (The exception is ECC RAM which typically has an extra bit per byte to hold the parity data, but this is not accessible to the user so that’s moot.)
There is a small bite of your memory space taken out for Memtestx86 to reside in, which is necessary in order for it to run. Your BIOS probably has some portion of memory reserved as well, either for peripheral memory mapping or for use as video memory, or similar.
There is probably also some rounding going on in the total capacity that Memtestx86 reports.
- Comment on Even if we found a feasible way through physics to travel through time, wouldn't it still be impossible due to the evolution of bacteria and our immune systems? 1 month ago:
Before you even get to that, the point everyone forgets is that if you’re using the typical type of zap-and-you’re-in-dinosaur-times method of time travel as invariably imaged by fiction, the planet will be in a very different place in the universe from where you are right now if you travel to any time. Even just a few seconds, in fact.
You’re going to have to come up with one hell of a hand-wave to cover how your location stays glued to some particular spot on the Earth’s surface even as you’re whizzing off decades or centuries into the future or past. It’s probably not even good enough to mumble about local frames of reference or what have you, because there is no such thing as a truly global frame of reference (because what would it be referenced to?) or even static spatial coordinates in the universe. If the simple Newtonian movement of the planet/solar system/galaxy/etc. doesn’t get you then the universe’s constant expansion probably will.
You might want to bring some oxygen and a very fast spacecraft with you.
- Comment on socializing 1 month ago:
You, uh, realize that’s really not the dis you think it is, right?
- Comment on socializing 1 month ago:
You’ll have to eat the insulation foam if you want to go around getting high on cyclopentane. Or maybe smoke it.
- Comment on Finally paid off my Costco hotdog in 4 easy installments! 1 month ago:
There is a small percentage surcharge imposed by whoever is providing the financing, but it’s basically the same amount as what the credit card companies charge per transaction, on the order of 1-2%, so from the store’s perspective it’s the same either way. It’s not quite correct to say that customers who are not financing hot dogs are paying for others who are, but all of the customers financing hot dogs are indeed paying for each other.
On the topic of credit cards, by the way, in some states it is legal for the merchant to pass the processing costs on to the customer and in some cases the shyster bastards actually do it.
- Comment on Finally paid off my Costco hotdog in 4 easy installments! 1 month ago:
Nearly 30%, for the scheme we have access to at my work. 28.99%. That exact number may in fact inform veterans of the industry of exactly who we use for financing.
- Comment on phonetic alphabet 1 month ago:
This is diabolical. Thanks, I hate it.
- Comment on Y'all ever have intrusive thoughts about accidentally dropping stuff in storm drains? (particulary when you have your phone out) And like if that happens, wtf is someone supposed to do? 1 month ago:
This happened to my dad once when I was a kid, but obviously not with a cell phone but rather his keys. We learned a few things that day, one of which is that cast iron storm drain grates are even heavier than they look, but the other was that if you get your hands on a big prybar you get all Archimedes in its face and not have to lift the damn thing.
If you’re e.g. an average apartment dweller and haven’t got a 7’ prybar in your shed, I don’t know what to tell you.
- Comment on "You Were Supposed to Feel Lost": Metal Gear Solid 2 and the Shock of Playing as Raiden 1 month ago:
In defense of Raiden in MGS2, though, I submit to you: But that backflip he does when you hang off of railings.
- Comment on Some things were better in the good old days 1 month ago:
The WTF here is not necessarily that some component on the circuit board failed, but that the manufacturer charges $400-$1000 for it with a straight face and gets away with it when they undoubtedly have that board made in China for about $4 per unit.
- Comment on I dare you! 1 month ago:
Nice try. I have the video ID memorized.
- Comment on Small victories. 1 month ago:
An old joke, possibly originating from somewhere in the basement of a DuPont facility:
How can you tell a chemist apart from an engineer?
…
The chemist washes his hands before he takes a leak.
- Comment on Why do some people with college degrees and an education, still act so fucking stupid? 1 month ago:
College is not a test of intelligence. It’s a test of your parents’ finances, perhaps, and your ability to conform and play the game, and in some cases one’s willingness to cheat as well. In my experience very few people come out of college any smarter than they went in, and given the preponderance of people who seem to major in beer the opposite may in fact be true.
What worries me is not the number of people who manage to stumble through college and still some out the other side stupid. Based on my personal experience with my client base, what keeps me up at night is the sheer majority of people who apparently cannot read and possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever and probably shouldn’t be trusted to tie their own shoelaces, but some asshole still saw fit to issue these people drivers’ licenses, insurance policies, mortgages, and allow them to buy giant SUVs and guns.
- Comment on I said maybe 1 month ago:
Who the hell knows, other than the fact that the original retailed for $400 and you can’t get one anymore. When there’s demand, someone will step up.
- Comment on All Social Medias Track Urls 1 month ago:
- Comment on I said maybe 1 month ago:
This roller coaster ride is basically the story of my life. “Look at this screwball knife in Aliexpress, how did they come up with that?” Then what ensues is a multi-hour dive into the rabbit hole to discover whose design they ripped it off from.
For instance you can’t buy a HOM Chimera for love nor money nowadays, but the Chinese will sell you one or at least something shaped just like it for $60…
- Comment on New mods for !comicstrips@lemmy.world 1 month ago:
I really want to know why anyone is resorting to AI of all things to accomplish this rather than just, like, MS Paint. Other than specifically as some manner of specialty trolling.
Anyway, I’m in agreement with all of the above.
- Comment on SlopOS 11 2 months ago:
That IoT Enterprise watermark just gave a thousand nerds a heart attack.
- Comment on What was the first game you ever bought ? 2 months ago:
Ha. I still have my Pokéwalker in my box of random Game Boy shit that’s on the shelf over there. Its battery is very, very dead. I imagine I left somebody in it before losing interest but I have no idea who.
I see these things sell for $50 to $80 on eBay now? Damn.
- Comment on WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CURSOR? 2 months ago:
Meanwhile, I’m fascinated by the type of dweebus that would waste construction time and budget, not to mention taking up precious squares in their base, sandbagging the edges of a cliff.
(I’m assuming this is a prefab computer opponent base in some damn fool mission or another, but I’ll be damned if I can remember which one after 30 years.)
- Comment on Would submitting a criminal complaint against Trump and his administration too the ICC for war crimes be a waste of time? 2 months ago:
*Asterisk.
^I’vebeenwaitingmyentirelifetomakethissnidecomment.^
- Comment on What should we actually turn our aggression towards? 2 months ago:
Teflon. Goddamned Teflon. Did your podcast mention Dr. Kenneth Berry? (No, not the nutrition quack. The other one.)
Dr. Roy J. Plunkett gets all the credit for the discovery of Teflon and it’s true that his name appears on the patent for the process for creating the actual material. As it was the dry powered precipitate wasn’t terribly useful as a consumer product and mostly only saw use being pressed into solid forms for making highly corrosion resistant gaskets and seals for e.g. nuclear equipment.
Dr. Kenneth Berry’s picture is not hanging in the hallways in DuPont’s offices. His name appears on no plaque. He’s not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Teflon. When it comes to DuPont’s puff pieces and their official history, you’ll notice that in the gap between the accidental discovery of that weird slippery white powder and its advent as a consumer product there is inevitably some dismissive handwaving and use of the passive voice. Oh, “it was discovered that…” and “DuPont engineers determined that…”
They don’t mention that Dr. Kenneth Berry was the inventor of the solution form of Teflon. He figured out how to dissolve and suspend it in liquid, and by extension how to actually apply it to surfaces in a useful manner. He did not invent the pan, but he was instrumental in figuring out how it could be done. And it was Dr. Berry who ate the first fried egg cooked on a Teflon surface — not Marc Grégoire. Dr. Berry’s patent, applied and granted in 1951. Grégoire’s, 1954.
DuPont doesn’t mention this because Dr. Berry also knew damn well what nasty chemicals DuPont was using to produce Teflon, and to some degree he knew where and how they were dumping them. He documented all of this he could, stored it in a bank deposit box, and wrote it into his will that these documents were to be released to the public when he died in 2008. In retaliation for this, DuPont memory holed him. He is persona non grata there, even in death.
I know this because he told me so. Dr. Berry lived in the town I grew up in. It’s not in whole thanks to him that we know the full story of the deeply evil things DuPont has done, but it is certainly in part. I was knee high to a grasshopper at the time so the significance of this was surely lost on me. I know, however, why my mother was so insistent that we never owned any Teflon pans.
Dr. Kenneth Berry: Lived, invented, developed a conscience, once shot my stuck kite out of a tree with his shotgun, tattled on DuPont, died.
- Comment on i guess lunar eclipse got an update too.. 2 months ago:
Yes, the Omnians. They’re a scathing critique of dogmatic hierarchical religions in general and Christianity in particular. The zenith of their folly is depicted in Small Gods, where it’s revealed that not a single one among them except for one lowly initiate actually believes in their god anymore, having replaced him instead with blind obedience to their rituals and the bureaucracy of the church itself. The Discworld being what it is, their god is very much real but has been diminished to inhabiting the body of an ordinary tortise and is unable to communicate with anyone except his sole remaining believer.
One of their ironclad declarations is that the Disc is spherical, a notion that they are quite willing to torture people to death over questioning. Of course as we all know, the truth is the opposite.
And yet, the turtle moves.
