pseudolobster's recent activity

  1. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Nope, never seen that. Are you using a weird browser or using any addons that might be blocking some javascript or something like that?

    Nope, never seen that. Are you using a weird browser or using any addons that might be blocking some javascript or something like that?

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Sure, though if cfabbro's guess is right it wouldn't have gone through. I responded "IT Generalist" to occupation, which should narrow the results a fair bit.

    Sure, though if cfabbro's guess is right it wouldn't have gone through.

    I responded "IT Generalist" to occupation, which should narrow the results a fair bit.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Ah, that makes sense. I use uMatrix to disable 3rd party js, so I always have problems with captchas on sites I've never been to before.

    Ah, that makes sense. I use uMatrix to disable 3rd party js, so I always have problems with captchas on sites I've never been to before.

    8 votes

  4. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    pseudolobster
    (edited )
    Link
    Anyone else complete the survey only to get a clipart pic of a potted plant and a link to "go home" with 404 in the title of the page? I should have screenshotted it but instead went back to the...

    Anyone else complete the survey only to get a clipart pic of a potted plant and a link to "go home" with 404 in the title of the page?

    I should have screenshotted it but instead went back to the thread to see if that was normal, now I can't get it back without compromising the scientific validity of your survey.

    Oh well, I'm the [edit] same [/edit] user as the past 4 surveys so just add my results from them onto this one thx.

    PS: Great to see you back! :)

    7 votes

  5. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

  6. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

  7. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

  8. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

  9. Comment on A robot dog advertising a darknet store seized by police in Moscow in ~news

    pseudolobster
    Link
    Especially in context, this is the most cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi thing I've ever seen. I've heard of billboard videoscreen trucks driving around disseminating propaganda, but autonomous robot...

    Especially in context, this is the most cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi thing I've ever seen. I've heard of billboard videoscreen trucks driving around disseminating propaganda, but autonomous robot dogs selling drugs for cryptocurrency in a war zone honestly takes the cake. This goes beyond parody, like you couldn't even write shit like this ten years ago in fiction - it'd be too unbelievable.

    13 votes

  10. Comment on Carbon offsets and the Nebula show "Jet Lag" in ~enviro

    pseudolobster
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Funny coincidence, I just finished watching an unrelated video of theirs about California and the sponsor for that video was the company they use to buy their carbon offsets. They're called Wren,...

    Funny coincidence, I just finished watching an unrelated video of theirs about California and the sponsor for that video was the company they use to buy their carbon offsets. They're called Wren, and Sam seems to really believe in their model. He says (as of April last year anyway) he uses them to purchase all of his personal and business offsets, which I would assume extends to Jet Lag as well.

    Here's the sponsorship segment: https://youtu.be/1ngms6iRa14?t=1399

    edit: I never thought I'd be linking to a video where the sponsorship would be the focus, lol. I usually have sponsorblock installed.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on What chemicals/substances do you keep at home? And what do you do with them? in ~life.home_improvement

    pseudolobster
    (edited )
    Link
    Here's a few I have in stock but I haven't heard mentioned yet: Cleaners: TSP - (aka Trisodium Phosphate): I'm not sure how easy this is to get anymore. I think it's been discontinued at regular...

    Here's a few I have in stock but I haven't heard mentioned yet:

    Cleaners:

    • TSP - (aka Trisodium Phosphate): I'm not sure how easy this is to get anymore. I think it's been discontinued at regular grocery stores and is only available at hardware stores. Phosphate-based cleaners pose a unique environmental concern - They're fertilizers. If everyone used these as soaps (which they once did) it would cause algae blooms and other problems in our waterways. HOWEVER.... It's the best degreaser I've ever used.

    Adhesives:

    • E6000 - Basically industrial grade silicone rubber cement. Amazing holding strength but a rubber baby buggy bumper level of flex.
    • Devcon Plastic Welder - An epoxy that sticks to anything,, like 90% of plastics, and provides decent structural rigidity. Like 5 minute epoxy but you don't even need surface prep because it adheres to anything.
    • Lepage PL - I'm not sure this is available outside Canada, but it's a structural adhesive used in construction, which is machinable like JB-Weld.

    edit: In addition to the usual isopropanol, acetone, etc:

    Solvents:

    • Bestine - This is a cheap, easy-to-find source of 99.95% pure N-Heptane. In case you're looking for chemistry-grade hexane fractions over-the-counter and can't find something like pure-ish like VM&P Naphtha. It's sold in art supply stores as something used to dilute rubber cement. In case you need a nonpolar solvent similar in properties to hexane with high purity, Bestine™ is available at art stores at a fraction of the price you'd pay from Sigma Aldrich.
      This stuff is good for cleaning up oils without leaving any residue. I've mixed this with acetone in a squirt bottle to make my own brake kleen.
    5 votes

  12. Comment on Fallout's Timothy Cain talks about encumbrance in games in ~games

    pseudolobster
    Link
    Weird aside but while I was watching this I was thinking of games where I ended up in inventory hell, sorting through hundreds of worthless items I picked up for no reason, and aside from Skyrim...

    Weird aside but while I was watching this I was thinking of games where I ended up in inventory hell, sorting through hundreds of worthless items I picked up for no reason, and aside from Skyrim which is obvious, for whatever reason the other one I thought of was South Park - The Stick of Truth. I was surprised to learn Tim Cain worked as a programmer on that game.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Auto-mute mode in ALSA might be the reason you can't use your speakers with headphones plugged in in ~comp

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Not who you were asking but I recently ran into dependency hell where I was trying to install xfce on top of Pop!_OS's gnome. The details are fuzzy but as I recall gnome-desktop requires pipewire,...

    Not who you were asking but I recently ran into dependency hell where I was trying to install xfce on top of Pop!_OS's gnome. The details are fuzzy but as I recall gnome-desktop requires pipewire, xfce-desktop requires pulseaudio. There are lots of shims and wrappers involved. It's all supposed to work seamlessly but in the end I spent several days trying everything before saying screw it and installed debian with xfce from scratch. It was weird stuff like firefox and vlc wouldn't play audio but mpv would. pavuctrl would say no pulseaudio devices found but alsamixer would say it found a pulseaudio device.

    In any case, it's normal, there's no benefit to adding extra layers, but yes, pipewire is the future, pulseaudio is deprecated. In an ideal world applications that expect pulseaudio will happily work through the shim, like programs that expect ALSA currently work seamlessly through pulseaudio.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Space-based solar power to be beamed to Iceland by 2030 in ~space

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    So for this to be a normal sized receiver site we're talking about death ray technology, yes?

    So for this to be a normal sized receiver site we're talking about death ray technology, yes?

    6 votes

  15. Comment on Space-based solar power to be beamed to Iceland by 2030 in ~space

    pseudolobster
    Link
    I'm pressing X to doubt really hard right now. The article seems to lean really hard into trying to refute the headline. In fact, the only actual news here is in the first sentence: The rest of...

    I'm pressing X to doubt really hard right now. The article seems to lean really hard into trying to refute the headline. In fact, the only actual news here is in the first sentence:

    UK startup Space Solar has signed an agreement with Reykjavik Energy that could see Iceland become the first country to receive power beamed from a space-based solar power plant. The 30-MW demonstrator is scheduled to go online by 2030.

    The rest of the article seems to be saying how impossible this all is, conceding that:

    Such challenges have not prevented the likes of Caltech from experimenting with beaming power from orbit and Space Solar seems to be confident enough to try for a demonstration plant as part of a commercial venture with Icelandic private climate initiative Transition Labs.

    So, what about all those challenges mentioned? How about the unmentioned challenge that, if successful, you have a THIRTY MEGAWATT beam of microwave energy just fuckin chilling there, nuking anything that flies into its path!?!? How can you not mention that?!?

    15 votes

  16. Comment on Hello to Reddit folks from /r/selfhosted in ~talk

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Thank you talklittle! It's been a minute since I've seen anyone tackle this. I'm really encouraged that people are picking up the torch. The site being non-profit and open source allows this, but...

    Thank you talklittle! It's been a minute since I've seen anyone tackle this. I'm really encouraged that people are picking up the torch. The site being non-profit and open source allows this, but I've never seen anyone attempt to make it more portable in all these years.

    (for anyone just tuning in, @talklittle created the redditisfun app and is currently developing the app threecheers for tildes)

    26 votes

  17. Comment on 2024 United States election megathread in ~society

  18. Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | Season 3 NYCC exclusive clip in ~tv

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    My take on this is I feel like I like Strange New Worlds so much because I've been deprived of a good Star Trek show for so long that a nu-trek / TOS mashup seems like it's great just because it...

    My take on this is I feel like I like Strange New Worlds so much because I've been deprived of a good Star Trek show for so long that a nu-trek / TOS mashup seems like it's great just because it returns to being mostly episodic with an ensemble cast instead of a main-character story arc spanning the entire season.

    In the absence of good Star Trek shows I really feel like Seth Macfarlane created The Orville to show Paramount how it's done, then dipped out as soon as Paramount started creating Trek shows that returned to form and started seeming like Roddenberry would be able to rotate in his grave at less than 1000 RPM.

    Discovery, Picard, the whole nu-trek universe misses the entire point of Star Trek, in my humble-but-not-uncommon-opinion. Out of all the new Star Trek shows that have come out, the only ones that are 1: mostly episodic, and B: espouse lofty goals for an optimistic future, (which to me really defines Trek in general) are Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.

    6 votes

  19. Comment on Freeze drying ramen noodle add ins in ~food

    pseudolobster
    Link
    Sliced mushrooms freeze dry great, and add a lot of umami to broths. Works a lot better than regular drying since it doesn't collapse the cell structures. Preserves the texture far better. There...

    Sliced mushrooms freeze dry great, and add a lot of umami to broths. Works a lot better than regular drying since it doesn't collapse the cell structures. Preserves the texture far better. There are a lot of fancy mushrooms you can add to ramen to dramatically increase its natural msg.

    I wonder if you fry an egg (maybe just the white), lightly freeze it, cut it into strips, and freeze-dry those, how well they'd reconstitute. Could work, I think.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Winamp releases source code, asks for help modernizing the player in ~comp

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    I loved Electric Sheep. Artistically it was such a cool concept. However, I was pretty bummed to realize that the animations were more or less hand-made and just farmed out to people running the...

    I loved Electric Sheep. Artistically it was such a cool concept. However, I was pretty bummed to realize that the animations were more or less hand-made and just farmed out to people running the screensaver to render it into MPEGs that the screensaver would stitch together.

    I wonder how much of that could be done on-the-fly today with modern GPUs and some sort of AI model to generate keyframes to animate between.

    3 votes