skoocda's recent activity

  1. Comment on Looking for eclectic and little-known websites that bring joy in ~health.mental

  2. Comment on An important update on Concord - "At this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024" in ~games

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    I'd like to point out the irony of a fortnight already being a unit of time (a mere 14 days), yet Fortnite has been out for 173.4 Concords with no signs of slowing!

    I'd like to point out the irony of a fortnight already being a unit of time (a mere 14 days), yet Fortnite has been out for 173.4 Concords with no signs of slowing!

    13 votes

  3. Comment on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 announced with dual ARM and RISC-V cores in ~tech

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    Porting this to Rust currently: https://inputlabs.io/alpakka Also futzing around with some LoraWan modules and trying to write a field oriented control system for a BLDC motor, but not with a...

    Porting this to Rust currently: https://inputlabs.io/alpakka

    Also futzing around with some LoraWan modules and trying to write a field oriented control system for a BLDC motor, but not with a serious plan in mind yet.

    7 votes

  4. Comment on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 announced with dual ARM and RISC-V cores in ~tech

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    For the same price ($5) you get 64MB of memory. For $15 you get 256MB. Raspberry Pi has never really been the most price competitive option, but unless you're literally eating these it shouldn't...

    For the same price ($5) you get 64MB of memory. For $15 you get 256MB.

    Raspberry Pi has never really been the most price competitive option, but unless you're literally eating these it shouldn't matter much.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 announced with dual ARM and RISC-V cores in ~tech

    skoocda
    Link
    Very welcome news. I've been using the Pico and Pico W for some projects, and it's a great ecosystem, even for using Rust which isn't an officially supported language. However, if you're willing...

    Very welcome news. I've been using the Pico and Pico W for some projects, and it's a great ecosystem, even for using Rust which isn't an officially supported language.

    However, if you're willing to work a little closer to the bleeding edge, you can get a board like the Milk V Duo 256M which can run RISC-V and ARM simultaneously, with specs that blow the Pico 2 out of the water. Same form factor, but 10x faster and 500x more memory (DRAM rather than SRAM though)

    14 votes

  6. Comment on Descenders Next | Reveal trailer in ~games

    skoocda
    Link
    I am a fan of Descenders, but still- skeptical that they'll get the feel of snowboarding right. I like raw physics in games because it raises the skill ceiling. It's why the original skate was...

    I am a fan of Descenders, but still- skeptical that they'll get the feel of snowboarding right.

    I like raw physics in games because it raises the skill ceiling. It's why the original skate was such a breath of fresh air. You could mangle a line over and over... but when you finally landed it, you actually earned it. Snowboarding games have never really hit that level of authenticity, even with Steep in 2016... it was good at snow feel, but still had a lot of rail stickiness and landing assistance that detracted from the satisfaction of landing tricks.

    Based on the fact that (at 0:29) the player does a nearly inverted cork 450 into a front board.... I'm gonna say this doesn't look like it's trying to do raw physics. Doesn't mean it won't be fun, but I doubt it'll keep me interested for long.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Mercedes EV fire causes power outage, hospitalizations, 140 cars damaged in ~transport

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    Think of it this way: if you were swapping to winter tires for a few months, would you be okay with just installing some random person's tires? If you were picking up a kid from daycare, does it...

    Think of it this way: if you were swapping to winter tires for a few months, would you be okay with just installing some random person's tires? If you were picking up a kid from daycare, does it matter if it's the same kid you dropped off?

    EV batteries can be worth almost half of the overall car's value, and they're as liable to wear & tear as any other part of the car. If you only deplete to 30% then slow charge to 70%, maybe once a week, your battery will be healthy and happy. But the Uber driver who takes it to 1% then fast charges to 99%, a few times a day, will have a battery that could be the focus of tragic Russian literature.

    You would be almost guaranteed to see the rise of arbitrage schemes where people move emaciated batteries out to high-traffic vacation routes on long weekends to snatch up well-treated batteries on the one day a year you actually need a battery swap.

    Plus, most batteries are structurally integrated into the chassis and specific to one sub-model, so you couldn't get as much reuse out of a battery swap scheme as you'd like.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Mercedes EV fire causes power outage, hospitalizations, 140 cars damaged in ~transport

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    As someone who has engineered an entire battery pack for a vehicle with a custom BMS, I would say that my concerns are decently well calibrated. I've seen a guy arc weld a wrench to a battery...

    As someone who has engineered an entire battery pack for a vehicle with a custom BMS, I would say that my concerns are decently well calibrated. I've seen a guy arc weld a wrench to a battery terminal that was already split into a "safe" maintenance configuration. If I hadn't been a major PITA about PPE, he'd have been dead instantly. 120, 240, or 360 kW are all within the same order of magnitude, which is strictly dangerous.

    As you said- quality control, damage and repair issues are to be expected in any long-lived, high-quantity consumer product. But you can't simultaneously expect "someone to have engineered them... to prevent catastrophic failure" while recognizing that "poor quality control" can persist. Engineering is quality control. You're not buying a CAD model. You're buying what comes off the production line, bumps along in transport, sits through inclement weather for years, then, in a moment of desparation, is subjected to a bargain-bin fast charger that cut out a few capacitors and doesn't quite meet power delivery spec. Problems are to be expected.

    And yes, the industry has performed nothing short of miraculous work to even get them to this level of reliability. The safety systems are certainly enough to keep the drivers safe, and I'd say any difference in operator danger with gasoline cars is negligible. But at the same time, we don't allow thousands of gasoline-based cars to refill in the underground parking garages of high-rise apartment buildings. That is a little insane.

    11 votes

  9. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    Powershell's Hyphenated-PascalCase really freaks me out, but I will say that I'm starting to appreciate the arguments for a general bias towards verbosity more and more. I'm spending a lot of time...

    Powershell's Hyphenated-PascalCase really freaks me out, but I will say that I'm starting to appreciate the arguments for a general bias towards verbosity more and more.

    I'm spending a lot of time on Unix internals these days, and it's just annoying that everything is still incomprehensibly short... mostly because there were no GUIs or tab completions in 1970. There are so many C files that are just an obscure acronym which is never even expanded in a single comment in the file. Inconsistent concatenation also makes it impossible to to use search effectively. Is it conf or config? ctl or ctrl?

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Mercedes EV fire causes power outage, hospitalizations, 140 cars damaged in ~transport

    skoocda
    Link
    Scary stuff. Odd to see it was such a recent model. Fast charging the EQE can take it from 10% to 80% in 31 minutes. That's an average of 126 kW of power delivered while charging. At peak it can...

    Scary stuff. Odd to see it was such a recent model.

    Fast charging the EQE can take it from 10% to 80% in 31 minutes. That's an average of 126 kW of power delivered while charging. At peak it can hit 170 kW. Absolutely bonkers.

    Imagine running 170 microwaves off a single power plug. How can you not expect that to catch on fire?

    9 votes

  12. Comment on Reddit CEO says Microsoft needs to pay to search the site in ~tech

  13. Comment on Reddit CEO says Microsoft needs to pay to search the site in ~tech

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    You're right, and I appreciate the correction. I somehow misread the future plans for a "full featured API" as being already in place. The profits point was meant in jest, but of course there are...

    You're right, and I appreciate the correction. I somehow misread the future plans for a "full featured API" as being already in place.

    The profits point was meant in jest, but of course there are real profits to be had by 3rd parties who scrape sites. As a non-profit, Tildes could choose to meet operating costs by charging for LLM-scale data access... but that has second order effects. By changing the nature of the income stream, it applies pressure on future dev priorities.

    My comment was likely overly glib and inflammatory, but I've seen how revenue streams affect web businesses over long timelines, and it's certainly worth considering, as a community, how we feel about it.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Reddit CEO says Microsoft needs to pay to search the site in ~tech

    skoocda
    Link
    Does Tildes allow free access to Microsoft and other web scrapers? If not, shouldn't we, the working class bleeding our fingers dry for this content farm, be able to partake in the profits?...

    Does Tildes allow free access to Microsoft and other web scrapers? If not, shouldn't we, the working class bleeding our fingers dry for this content farm, be able to partake in the profits?

    Spoiler: yes, Tildes offers "No limits to logged-out browsing", and a "Fully featured API", with some specific, non-enforceable ideas in the robots.txt

    In general, scrapers are welcome if they are collecting data for informational uses
    (such as search engines) and maintain a reasonable rate of scraping.

    Scrapers from SEO/marketing-type services will be blocked. Tildes data is not a
    resource to be mined and sold.

    OpenAI's GPT bot is specifically blocked, but that's just a drop in the pond, isn't it?

    Also, ironically, this post has the Link information disclaimer "This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect." Does The Verge allow free access to Tildes' scraping needs? Seems it's turtles all the way down.

    14 votes

  15. Comment on Olympic medals per capita in ~sports

    skoocda
    Link
    Very cool that this has historical records. Per capita, Norway is unbelievably dominant in the winter Olympics - although their number might be considered inflated by the huge number of...

    Very cool that this has historical records. Per capita, Norway is unbelievably dominant in the winter Olympics - although their number might be considered inflated by the huge number of cross-country ski categories.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on Let's build a playlist! in ~music

  17. Comment on Let's build a playlist! in ~music

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    I'll tack this on just in case anyone wants to start a second playlist honoring Toyota's unwavering commitment to reliability: Proud True Toyota - Mac Demarco

    I'll tack this on just in case anyone wants to start a second playlist honoring Toyota's unwavering commitment to reliability:
    Proud True Toyota - Mac Demarco

    1 vote

  18. Comment on The best games of 2024 so far, picked by the NPR staff in ~games

    skoocda
    Link Parent
    Wyrmspan is a bit more difficult to pick up on your first playthrough. I'd recommend at least trying Wingspan once or twice prior.

    Wyrmspan is a bit more difficult to pick up on your first playthrough. I'd recommend at least trying Wingspan once or twice prior.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on Co-op game recommendations in ~games

    skoocda
    Link
    If you liked Risk of Rain 2, you'll like these rogue-likes: Roboquest - Tighter arenas, harder difficulty scaling, Borderlands-style cell shaded art style. 2 player max. Crab Champions - Fast...

    If you liked Risk of Rain 2, you'll like these rogue-likes:

    Roboquest - Tighter arenas, harder difficulty scaling, Borderlands-style cell shaded art style. 2 player max.
    Crab Champions - Fast paced roguelike FPS where carcinization reigns. Awesome movement and music.
    Voidigo - 2D top down. Chaotic. Awesome. Like Binding of Isaac meets Rio Carnival.
    Broforce - 2D side scroller. Even more chaotic. Easy to jump into, gets pretty tricky later on.

    Other options that are good and easy for any PC to run: Demeo, Streets of Rogue, Children of Morta, Don't Starve Together, Battleblock Theater, Barotrauma, BattleBit, Mindustry.

    Depending on the PC hardware, you might be able to run Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dying Light 1, theHunter, or even Elden Ring with the seamless co-op mod. These are all fun even at the lowest visual quality.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Recommend a nonfiction book accessible to outsiders that makes your interest seem awesome in ~books

    skoocda
    Link
    I've been enjoying many "history of X" books and am always looking for more; in particular, I'd like to find a culinary, musical or a linguistic world history next. My faves, from most general to...

    I've been enjoying many "history of X" books and am always looking for more; in particular, I'd like to find a culinary, musical or a linguistic world history next.

    My faves, from most general to most specific:

    • A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
    • The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant
    • The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson
    • The Perfectionists, Simon Winchester

    The Perfectionists only looks at the world from the lens of increasingly precise machining- every chapter is labeled with the tightest tolerance of that era. A fascinating slice of the world of engineering.

    2 votes