bltzkrg22's recent activity

  1. Comment on Touch typing learning software in ~tech

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    I second that, OP – if you already have a keyboard with replaceable keycaps. You can buy a set of cheap blank keycaps from AliExpress/equivalent website; I got one for around €10, shipping...

    I second that, OP – if you already have a keyboard with replaceable keycaps. You can buy a set of cheap blank keycaps from AliExpress/equivalent website; I got one for around €10, shipping included.

    Getting a brand new keyboard just for that is probably an overkill.

    4 votes
  2. Comment on Please post your podcast preferences in ~hobbies

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    Could you suggest a single episode (or even a few, if you can't decide) to try out first?

    Could you suggest a single episode (or even a few, if you can't decide) to try out first?

    1 vote
  3. Comment on A quick method for saving an SVG as a PNG in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link
    If you have Image Magick installed on your PC, I whipped up a quick powershell script for you. https://hastebin.com/exudamavih.php (disregard .php, no idea why hastebin would create such a link)...

    If you have Image Magick installed on your PC, I whipped up a quick powershell script for you.

    https://hastebin.com/exudamavih.php (disregard .php, no idea why hastebin would create such a link)

    It probably works. It creates a new .png file with random filename in your current working directory. -Variant is mandatory, -Size defaults to 600, and the rest should be self-explanatory I guess. Example usage:

    https://i.imgur.com/vV6f2w8.png

    3 votes
  4. Comment on 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel: The Terminator gambit (Game review) in ~games

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    +1 for Chess 960. Of course there is some level of preparation involved, and the basic chess principles apply, but it’s nowhere as deeply “solved” as the classical chess. Try it out and see if...

    +1 for Chess 960. Of course there is some level of preparation involved, and the basic chess principles apply, but it’s nowhere as deeply “solved” as the classical chess. Try it out and see if it’s more to your liking. You could always play a few games against an AI on lichess.org for free.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960

    3 votes
  5. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    I know near to nothing about the hardware aspect. From software perspective, they are very similar. Airborne software is normally made to satisfy safety criteria specified by DO-178B / DO-178C....

    I know near to nothing about the hardware aspect.

    From software perspective, they are very similar. Airborne software is normally made to satisfy safety criteria specified by DO-178B / DO-178C.

    Automotive follows a similar norm, I believe IEC 61508.


    All that said, I have some limited experience with airborne software testing, and one of my senior co-workers there had had automotive background. In his opinion, both standards were pretty similar on paper. At the same time, the methods and processes used by airborne industry were ancient and more suitable to the electrical engineering, not software development.

    4 votes
  6. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    Mass production doesn’t work like that. Shaving a few dollars on a part or a few seconds on some automation process make a difference in the long run.

    Mass production doesn’t work like that. Shaving a few dollars on a part or a few seconds on some automation process make a difference in the long run.

    2 votes
  7. Comment on Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    Thank you for taking the time to look into my issue. I guess I’ll leave this part as is, and maybe come back in a few months and see if anything improves after rebuilding. Whole idea was to deploy...

    Thank you for taking the time to look into my issue.

    I guess I’ll leave this part as is, and maybe come back in a few months and see if anything improves after rebuilding. Whole idea was to deploy this as a “static” app and make user’s browser handle all the computing, with no backing server.

    I wish I was able to see someone else’s attempt at the same problem, but all the projects I was able to find didn’t get past day 20. (There are plenty of solvers, just none specifically using Blazor WASM).

    3 votes
  8. Comment on Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    (edited )
    Link
    EDIT: Well, the app is live. There are still some edges to iron out. Some more resource-intensive parts never complete on my phone; on my PC though everything “works” (with the exception of 22B)....

    EDIT: Well, the app is live. There are still some edges to iron out. Some more resource-intensive parts never complete on my phone; on my PC though everything “works” (with the exception of 22B).


    I would appreciate a little help.

    https://gitlab.com/bltzkrg.22/advent-of-code-2020-in-blazor-wasm

    As a learning exercise, I’m currently trying to make a simple in-browser solver for last year’s Advent of Code problems, something akin to this. I didn’t publish it anywhere yet, but the repository contents should be buildable either in VS 2019 or with dotnet build/dotnet run command.

    I run into an issue specifically with problem 22. If I try to run the solver for part B of that day, it eats around 2.5 GiB of RAM and then crashes. The same solver runs fine as a simple console app. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, or if it’s some Blazor or WebAssembly limitation. Requesting garbage collection explicitly in C# code seems to have to effect on the app running in browser. Choosing Debug/Release also seems to have no effect on crashing.

    Is there anything I could do to reduce RAM usage?

    2 votes
  9. Comment on A live stream of an eagle's nest in ~enviro

    bltzkrg22
    Link
    In the same vein: livestream of a stork nest. Storks are a migrating species, and this particular one just came back after the last winter. https://www.youtube.com/user/di22y/videos

    In the same vein: livestream of a stork nest. Storks are a migrating species, and this particular one just came back after the last winter.

    https://www.youtube.com/user/di22y/videos

    4 votes
  10. Comment on Facebook bans Trump "indefinitely" with Mark Zuckerberg explaining that "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service... are simply too great" in ~tech

  11. Comment on LaTeX: Using a different font for glyphs used in commands like \sum in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link
    Short answer: Gentium Plus is not a full math font. \sum and \Sigma are different characters. \Sigma is a standard Greek letter, and is included in Gentium Plus, while \sum is a special...

    Short answer: Gentium Plus is not a full math font.

    \sum and \Sigma are different characters. \Sigma is a standard Greek letter, and is included in Gentium Plus, while \sum is a special mathematical character – and is not.

    To replace such symbols you will need to use a proper font with full mathematical character set, for example:


    Whenever I want to use an OpenType font X with no math range:

    1. I find a math font that looks good enough
    2. Then I overwrite a subset of characters (i.e. digits, latin alphabet, sometimes greek, some symbols) with font X.

    It will never look 100% correct, as you end up with a mix of two fonts, but usually it is passable.

    (This is not the best example, since FiraGO and Fira Math are closely related, but I hope you see what I meant. The trick here is to get a slashed zero, as Fira Math does not support it yet).

    \usepackage{fontspec}
        \setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX,Numbers=SlashedZero]{FiraGO}
        \setmonofont[Scale=0.9,Ligatures=TeX,StylisticSet={3,5}]{Fira Code}
        \setmathrm[Ligatures={NoCommon, NoDiscretionary, NoHistoric, NoRequired, NoContextual},Numbers=SlashedZero]{FiraGO}
    
    \usepackage{unicode-math}
       %Here I define a main math font, FiraMath
        \setmathfont[math-style=ISO,bold-style=ISO,Numbers=SlashedZero]{FiraMath-Regular.otf}
       %Here I overwrite FiraMath’s digits with characters from FiraGO, because I want a slashed zero
        \setmathfont[range=\mathup/{num},Numbers=SlashedZero]{FiraGO-Regular.otf}
        \setmathfont[range=\mathbfup/{num},Numbers=SlashedZero]{FiraGO-Bold.otf}
    

    More info can be found in the manuals for fontspec and unicode-math – for example how to define proper ranges like: \setmathfont[range=\mathup/{num}

    6 votes
  12. Comment on Towers | Official prototype trailer 1 in ~games

    bltzkrg22
    Link
    Remember Watch_Dogs? Remember No Man’s Sky at release? Maybe Underworld Ascendant? Cinematic trailers are neat to build up hype and all, but higher expectations may result in a more painful crash...

    Remember Watch_Dogs? Remember No Man’s Sky at release? Maybe Underworld Ascendant?

    Cinematic trailers are neat to build up hype and all, but higher expectations may result in a more painful crash with reality.

    2 votes
  13. Comment on So how did you guys like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and more importantly, do you guys think interactive TV will be the "next big thing"? in ~tv

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    It’s going to be cumbersome to rip and cut all the relevant pieces of video, and maybe reverse-engineer the choice tree, if it’s convoluted enough. Once that is done, you could use something like...

    It’s going to be cumbersome to rip and cut all the relevant pieces of video, and maybe reverse-engineer the choice tree, if it’s convoluted enough. Once that is done, you could use something like this to write a dedicated script, that would have access to your current playlist (to create the playlist on the fly), and show necessary keyboard prompts on the screen.

    It’s certainly doable on PC, I could see torrenting this episode bundled with mpv player and relevant scripts prepared in a few weeks.

    3 votes
  14. Comment on Recommendations for old school style RPG games? in ~games

    bltzkrg22
    Link
    Definitely Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis. There’s a decent port of Underworld to Unity Engine, that adds mouselook and modern control scheme to the game:...

    Definitely Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis.

    There’s a decent port of Underworld to Unity Engine, that adds mouselook and modern control scheme to the game:

    https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter/releases

    2 votes
  15. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~movies

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    But Metro is primarily a novel-based universe. While only the game has really broken into the anglo-speaking West, the books are huge (in quantity, not always quality) in Russia and central...

    If they wanted to adapt a video game

    But Metro is primarily a novel-based universe. While only the game has really broken into the anglo-speaking West, the books are huge (in quantity, not always quality) in Russia and central Europe. The game already makes a lot of compromises compared to source material.

    It would probably be a shame to make this story USA-based. Maybe the script would be good, who knows.

    12 votes
  16. Comment on Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection? in ~tech

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    I would happily take on the bet, if you would allow for periodic maintenance of digital copies.

    I would happily take on the bet, if you would allow for periodic maintenance of digital copies.

  17. Comment on Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection? in ~tech

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    It’s completely true. But the digital data has a beautiful property – it can be copied ad infinitum (well, there’s the danger of making corrupted copies, but that’s a different story). If you...

    If you destroy the hard drive the data is stored on, the data will cease to exist.

    It’s completely true. But the digital data has a beautiful property – it can be copied ad infinitum (well, there’s the danger of making corrupted copies, but that’s a different story). If you loose a book, you loose it. If you loose a single digital copy, you restore it from a backup, and maintain the number of backups at desired number n.

    In 100 hundred years the tech will be different, sure. But if we don’t have a global catastrophe, a solar flare or something else that wipes the hardware or energy grid – i.e., if the continuity of maintenance is not broken, I would not fear about not being able to access old content. If there’s a new format, there will be a transitional period, and there will be conversion tools – as long as the old format is open and documented, and unfortunately not every format is.

    Books are much more robust. If you were to bury a vacuum-sealed capsule with a book and a SD card or a magnetic tape, I think that in 100 years there won’t be any equipment to decode and read the stored data, and the book would be perfectly readable. That’s valuable in itself.

    5 votes
  18. Comment on Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection? in ~tech

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    I think you misunderstood me. I do agree that if you rent a thing in Something-as-a-Service model – a game on Steam, a movie on Netflix – you don’t control it. But if a digital store stops selling...

    I think you misunderstood me. I do agree that if you rent a thing in Something-as-a-Service model – a game on Steam, a movie on Netflix – you don’t control it.

    But if a digital store stops selling an ebook, or goes under? I already got my stuff downloaded. Non-DRM digital (watermarks excluded, they’re best kind of DRM) is still safer than physical – in my opinion at least.

    1 vote
  19. Comment on Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection? in ~tech

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    That’s not as true as you present it. Physical still can get destroyed by a fire, a flood, burglars, whatever. On the other hand, DRM-free digital can be easily backed up. So for example, if you...

    Digital is temporary, and physical is permanent.

    That’s not as true as you present it. Physical still can get destroyed by a fire, a flood, burglars, whatever. On the other hand, DRM-free digital can be easily backed up. So for example, if you could afford to keep:

    • a working directory,
    • a locally stored backup (eg. external drive),
    • a cloud backup (preferably encrypted),

    then if I was concerned about content preservation, at least for myself and my use, I would take digital over physical. While digital copies can be destroyed as easily, nothing stops you from making another one.

    I wholeheartedly agree about renting digital stuff.

    4 votes
  20. Comment on Programming Challenge: Polygon analysis. in ~comp

    bltzkrg22
    Link Parent
    While you say that math is not your strong suit, you have unconsciously done exactly what is required to check if the angle is greater than 180 degrees. If a and b are vectors which lie on the xy...

    While you say that math is not your strong suit, you have unconsciously done exactly what is required to check if the angle is greater than 180 degrees. If a and b are vectors which lie on the xy plane, then their cross product is equal to this:

    figure
    equation

    The sign of the right side depends only on the sign of sin, and:

    equation

    (this is a simplification, but you get the idea). And since phi is counted counter-clockwise from a to b, either every cross you calculate must be positive (when the vertices are oriented counter-clockwise) , or negative (when the vertices are clockwise).

    2 votes