pseudolobster's recent activity

  1. Comment on Special tag: "Active" in ~tildes

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Velvet Fog is another beer I'm led to believe he likes.

    Velvet Fog is another beer I'm led to believe he likes.

    4 votes
  2. Comment on Which characters have the best (Archery) bows? in ~anime

    pseudolobster
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    To preempt the next thread, I'll say ahead of time Donatello has the best bō.

    To preempt the next thread, I'll say ahead of time Donatello has the best bō.

    9 votes
  3. Comment on Ethiopia becomes the first country to ban (importation of) internal combustion vehicles in ~transport

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    I think it's pretty common for bottling to be done locally. In western Canada, Pepsi is bottled by a company called "Gray Beverage" (which would be an unappealing name except we spell the shade...

    I think it's pretty common for bottling to be done locally. In western Canada, Pepsi is bottled by a company called "Gray Beverage" (which would be an unappealing name except we spell the shade "grey" here). I'm pretty sure their syrup is imported and they just add the carbonated water and can it. It's very expensive to ship bulky heavy cans of mostly water, so they just ship the syrup instead. Given the secrecy of the recipes I doubt they give an ingredient list to foreign companies and tell them to procure and mix their own ingredients.

    10 votes
  4. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    One thing I find really odd is the previous world record holder was 2ft shorter but used nearly 10x as many matches. ... (from this article)

    One thing I find really odd is the previous world record holder was 2ft shorter but used nearly 10x as many matches.

    The [previous] record is held by Toufic Daher, from Lebanon, whose matchstick Eiffel Tower reached 21.4 feet high in 2009, using 6 million matches.

    ...

    ...piecing together 706,900 matchsticks to make a 23.6-foot model of the Eiffel Tower, easily beating the existing record by 2 feet.

    (from this article)

    4 votes
  5. Comment on Advice for returning to a frozen car at long term airport parking in ~travel

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    I've never tried it but I suspect hand sanitizer would probably work as a lock deicer you could find at an airport. Looking at the MSDS for that products lists its ingredients as 85% isopropanol...

    I've never tried it but I suspect hand sanitizer would probably work as a lock deicer you could find at an airport. Looking at the MSDS for that products lists its ingredients as 85% isopropanol and 13.9% propylene glycerol, which are really similar ingredients to most hand sanitizers.

    6 votes
  6. Comment on A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for fifty years in ~science

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    It depends what you think of as significant. I've been criticizing the article in other comments based on the headline. This won't power a cellphone anytime soon; That's clickbait. However, if you...

    It depends what you think of as significant. I've been criticizing the article in other comments based on the headline. This won't power a cellphone anytime soon; That's clickbait.

    However, if you have, say, an underwater sensor that needs to take one temperature measurement per day for years, this could be a great option. For low powered microcontrollers that only need to be powered for seconds per day to take a measurement then log or transmit it, this is actually an ideal power source.

    11 votes
  7. Comment on A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for fifty years in ~science

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Ehh, I think you're thinking of alpha particles, which have a hard time getting through a piece of paper or the layer of dead cells on top of your skin. Beta particles are blocked by a couple mm...

    Beta radiation is stopped by things like clothes, paper, and the upper layers of your skin.

    Ehh, I think you're thinking of alpha particles, which have a hard time getting through a piece of paper or the layer of dead cells on top of your skin. Beta particles are blocked by a couple mm of aluminum. As I understand it they can penetrate a couple cm into the body and can mostly only cause skin cancer rather than organ cancer, which is nice, but not reassuring.

    about 8W a day

    Watts are an instantaneous measurement, which must be multiplied by time to make sense over a per-day period. 24 watts for an hour is 24watthours or 1 watt for 24h is 24Wh. So 100 microwatts is a tenth of a milliwatt or 0.0001W. Multiply that by 24 hours and you've got 0.0024Wh. A typical lithium battery for phones might be 3.7v times 3500mAh (milliamp-hours) = 12950mWh, or about 13 watt-hours.

    So yeah, if they do develop a nuclear battery that can produce 1W 24/7, and use that to charge a battery or a capacitor or something while it's not being used, it's totally feasible to run your phone indefinitely. Unfortunately they're promising the next version will be 2000x the capacity of their current device. The current one is 15x15x5mm so unless they've come up with some absurd increase in efficiency, it'll probably be much too large to fit in a cellphone.

    26 votes
  8. Comment on A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for fifty years in ~science

    pseudolobster
    Link
    So, they keep saying that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Nickel-63 is one isotope of nickel. I understand that means it has 28 protons, like all isotopes of nickel do,...

    Betavolt says that after it has decayed the 63 nuclear isotopes become copper, which would be non-radioactive and not cause any environmental threat.

    63 isotopes

    So, they keep saying that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Nickel-63 is one isotope of nickel. I understand that means it has 28 protons, like all isotopes of nickel do, plus 35 neutrons, adding up to 63.

    Anyway, the half life of Ni-63 is 100 years, so yeah it'll eventually turn into Copper 63 which is stable, but if you damage the cell before then, it's going to remain hot for quite some time. I don't see this being approved for cellphones anytime soon. Plus 100 microwatts is maybe 1/50000th of what you'd need to run a cell phone. You're going to need quite a few of these things to power anything substantial.

    22 votes
  9. Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS in ~games

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Not to mention all that they've contributed back to open source. They've submitted patches to the linux kernel, mesa, dxvk, wine, etc. Apparently they're paying over 100 open-source developers to...

    Not to mention all that they've contributed back to open source. They've submitted patches to the linux kernel, mesa, dxvk, wine, etc. Apparently they're paying over 100 open-source developers to work on steamos and all those contributions are being pushed upstream so every distro can benefit.

    Griffais says the company is also directly paying more than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton compatibility layer, the Mesa graphics driver, and Vulkan, among other tasks like Steam for Linux and Chromebooks.
    - via The Verge

    Even if Valve drops off the face of the earth right now, everything they've done so far to improve gaming on Linux is permanent and benefits the entire Linux gaming ecosystem in general.

    16 votes
  10. Comment on Lighthearted movie about someone finding a new direction? in ~movies

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Heh, OP put Chef in their original post. Great minds think alike and all that. I originally came to this post to recommend The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but OP beat me to it.

    Heh, OP put Chef in their original post. Great minds think alike and all that.

    I originally came to this post to recommend The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but OP beat me to it.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Truffle chips suggestions? in ~food

    pseudolobster
    Link
    If you want to do it for real, get a mandolin. Slice the potatoes super thin, put them in a bath of water to blanch them. Ideally you'd add a tablespoon of vinegar and boil them for 30 seconds or...

    If you want to do it for real, get a mandolin. Slice the potatoes super thin, put them in a bath of water to blanch them. Ideally you'd add a tablespoon of vinegar and boil them for 30 seconds or so to thoroughly blanch them, but that's optional. Strain and dry. Heat some oil to 350F, fry until lightly golden (without the thorough blanch they'll be darker because of the excess starch turning to sugar and caramelizing). Once you take them out of the oil and let the oil drain, there's a 30-second window where the chips will pull any flavoured oil into them. This is when you want to season them with truffle salt/oil.

    13 votes
  12. Comment on Lighthearted movie about someone finding a new direction? in ~movies

    pseudolobster
    Link
    Amélie is an absolutely adorable French movie about a shy girl finding purpose by solving a minor mystery and performing random acts of kindness along the way.

    Amélie is an absolutely adorable French movie about a shy girl finding purpose by solving a minor mystery and performing random acts of kindness along the way.

    20 votes
  13. Comment on Looking for games that can be played with only the mouse in ~games

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    It's already bound to middle-click by default.

    It's already bound to middle-click by default.

    1 vote
  14. Comment on Looking to "compile" some of my phone's videos into an .iso to send to family; I use Linux in ~tech

    pseudolobster
    Link
    I'm really not sure what you're talking about. It seems like you want to put some videos into like a disk image? To be played back on what? A VCD player? DVD player with RealVideo .rm support?

    I'm really not sure what you're talking about. It seems like you want to put some videos into like a disk image? To be played back on what? A VCD player? DVD player with RealVideo .rm support?

    5 votes
  15. Comment on Visiting the king of Ant Island in ~travel

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    Thank you for posting this! I hadn't seen it. I haven't actually watched the channel in a while and this provides a huge amount of backstory about this island.

    Thank you for posting this! I hadn't seen it. I haven't actually watched the channel in a while and this provides a huge amount of backstory about this island.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on Visiting the king of Ant Island in ~travel

    pseudolobster
    Link
    Full disclosure: The Hadfield family has been a client of my business in the past and I've spoken to Evan many times. I haven't been encouraged to post this in any way, I just think his videos are...

    Full disclosure: The Hadfield family has been a client of my business in the past and I've spoken to Evan many times. I haven't been encouraged to post this in any way, I just think his videos are good and deserve sharing.

    6 votes
  17. Comment on Tildes Game Giveaway: Holiday 2023 in ~games

    pseudolobster
    Link Parent
    I'd love to try Civ 6... Huge thankyou if you've got an extra key..

    I'd love to try Civ 6... Huge thankyou if you've got an extra key..

    3 votes
  18. Comment on swapping my motherboard and processor resulted in losing my Win 10 Pro license? in ~comp

    pseudolobster
    Link
    This is a recent change. Microsoft announced a few months ago they'd stop honoring Win7 keys for Win10/11, so if you change any hardware you'll lose your license. I think the original deal was...

    This is a recent change. Microsoft announced a few months ago they'd stop honoring Win7 keys for Win10/11, so if you change any hardware you'll lose your license. I think the original deal was they were only going to allow that for a year, but it continued working for several years. About a month ago they pulled the trigger and Win7/8 keys no longer work on 10/11.

    https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23958751/microsoft-windows-activation-issues-windows-7-8-upgrade-keys

    As others have said, keys can be had for $10-$20 online, but those are varying degrees of sketchy. If they don't mail you a sticker there's a high chance they're selling the same keys more than once. If that's the case they may or may not activate. When that happens they may or may not send you another, and Microsoft won't help you.

    Other times they're a volume license key that's only supposed to be used inside their business, and Microsoft may or may not revoke it in the future. I have found one source recommended by HN who's a Microsoft partner and their keys are completely legit:

    https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-windows-11-pro

    7 votes