zod000's recent activity

  1. Comment on Best solution to extract PDF data? in ~comp

    zod000
    Link Parent
    You can absolutely create easy to parse PDFs if you are just creating them from a text starting point and use any number of common libraries. The issue with PDFs is that they can be all over the...

    You can absolutely create easy to parse PDFs if you are just creating them from a text starting point and use any number of common libraries. The issue with PDFs is that they can be all over the place in content and functionality. Adobe kind of went nuts with all the baked in tech in PDFs. Like, is it necessary to be able to render 3D models in a document? I wouldn't have said yes to that, but Adobe sure thought so. Using OCR lets you sidestep most of this wackiness, but OCR isn't perfect and probably never will be.

    1 vote
  2. Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users in ~tech

    zod000
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    I imagine the profitability is mostly from them selling their data for AI, not because they are somehow doing better at the core of the site activities. I deleted my user and left completely after...

    I imagine the profitability is mostly from them selling their data for AI, not because they are somehow doing better at the core of the site activities. I deleted my user and left completely after API clusterfuck, but can totally see people staying for niche subreddits that have nowhere else viable to go as none of the reddit alternatives have the critical mass to support them.

    31 votes
  3. Comment on Thinking on storage in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    IIRC, there wasn't an 80MHz version of the Pentium, but there was definitely a 75MHz and 90MHz. That's cool that your school got decent PCs for students and faculty to use at least, even if they...

    IIRC, there wasn't an 80MHz version of the Pentium, but there was definitely a 75MHz and 90MHz. That's cool that your school got decent PCs for students and faculty to use at least, even if they weren't attainable at home.

  4. Comment on Thinking on storage in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    That's really interesting, especially the "PC - TV" unit, I'd love to see one of those. Ironically, we didn't have anything approaching state of the art in our schools I attended most of the time....

    That's really interesting, especially the "PC - TV" unit, I'd love to see one of those.

    Ironically, we didn't have anything approaching state of the art in our schools I attended most of the time. Our elementary schools were stuck on Apple IIe system that were 10 years old and our high school got a grant from IBM in 1981 for a classroom of IBM 8086 desktops... we were still using them in 1996. :) I ended up helping the teacher put together a few 486 PCs for the advanced programming classes that we were able to source for nearly free because they were being tossed out by businesses for being too outdated.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on Thinking on storage in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the perspective! I did see that the domain was registered in Poland, but based on what my few Polish friends have spoken about, I didn't think it was that far off. It could be that they...

    Thanks for the perspective! I did see that the domain was registered in Poland, but based on what my few Polish friends have spoken about, I didn't think it was that far off. It could be that they were more privileged than I suspected or they simply avoided talking about those subjects.

    2 votes
  6. Comment on Thinking on storage in ~tech

    zod000
    Link
    Something about this blog is weird and maybe this guy has his dates wrong. No one was buying a 386 in 1996 unless it was from a garage sale or it was for a legacy use in business that had...

    Something about this blog is weird and maybe this guy has his dates wrong. No one was buying a 386 in 1996 unless it was from a garage sale or it was for a legacy use in business that had preexisting software that needed. The 386 was released a decade before that and the Pentium was already three years old by that time. The last PC I saw that a HDD wasn't standard in was the original IBM PC and even then a 10MB or 20MB HDD was common. My family bought a PC with a 386 in 1988 with an 80MB drive, which was on the small side, and nothing on the market at the time didn't include a hard drive. This isn't to say there is anything wrong with a family's first PC being second hand or weirdly behind the times, but his point of "From a 1.44MB floppy to 60GB HDDs in ten years." is incredibly skewed.

    2 votes
  7. Comment on We spoke with the last person standing in the floppy disk business in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    They did expand their team I believe, but they didn't go on some sort of crazy hiring spree and while I'd love to have more content for the game sooner, they are doing just fine.

    They did expand their team I believe, but they didn't go on some sort of crazy hiring spree and while I'd love to have more content for the game sooner, they are doing just fine.

    6 votes
  8. Comment on The University of Michigan doubled down on D.E.I. What went wrong? (gifted link) in ~life

    zod000
    Link Parent
    While your experiences and explanation of apartheid South Africa are interesting, I do not think that is an accurate comparison and serves to paint D.E.I. add baggage that they do not share. I do;...

    While your experiences and explanation of apartheid South Africa are interesting, I do not think that is an accurate comparison and serves to paint D.E.I. add baggage that they do not share.

    I do; however, really like this statement and I think it is the main point you were trying to make in your comparison:

    Both of these initiatives fall flat because they claim to but can't possibly meet peoples most fundamental expectation. Enforcing what is fair.

    I love this, though I think there is more to D.E.I. and it isn't just trying to enforce what is fair, at least for many organizations, especially corporations.

    The biggest selling points of D.E.I. to the leadership most companies was the notion, supposedly shown in many studies, that organizations with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds tend to be more successful in the long term. The "fairness" that comes from this is good for publicity and if it materialized, good for the people. I just don't think that it matters much to most people "at the top". What they care about is success, usually in the form of wealth. I strongly believe this is why most D.E.I. efforts feel superficial, because the "good" part likely IS superficial in many examples.

    Even if many of these organizations don't really believe in the goals of diversity, equality, and inclusiveness, as long as they get their success it's fine. They get the goodwill and good publicity, at least from the more left-leaning public, as a bonus.

    Here's the problems with that as I see it:

    What does "more successful" look like?
    How long is long term?
    Can you force this diversity and get the same result?

    I think that reason we're seeing so many companies drop it was that their answers to #1 and #2 did not align at all with reality, again assuming the premise of the studies is correct. Most companies tried this out for a few years (their answer to #1) and didn't see profits or equivalent key metric go up (the only answer to #2 that most organizations care about).

    Now much of what I just wrote above I do not think applies to UoM. I think their leadership actually does want to help and that their middling success, at best, is probably a combination of being heavy handed and quite simply that they don't know the right way to do it and are still trying to figure it out. I don't know that anyone has truly figured out how to achieve real "fairness", but I applaud them for continuing to try. On the other hand, I know that when I was a student, I was idealistic and strong willed and I would have resented the stifling nature of parts of the program. I don't know the answer, but I wish them luck in making it better.

    I didn't touch on the states that are engaging in the anti-D.E.I. rhetoric as I believe that is typical racist politics. They made D.E.I. their new boogeyman since they wore out their previous CRT strawman.

    9 votes
  9. Comment on Xbox Cloud Gaming will let you stream your own games in November in ~games

    zod000
    Link Parent
    I get it now and I agree with your point. It IS cool tech, but my skepticism on the business case remains for now. Maybe Microsoft is simply playing the long game on this and is hoping that the...

    I get it now and I agree with your point. It IS cool tech, but my skepticism on the business case remains for now. Maybe Microsoft is simply playing the long game on this and is hoping that the future is simply that eventually everyone will have no choice but to hop on the "as a service" train.

  10. Comment on Xbox Cloud Gaming will let you stream your own games in November in ~games

    zod000
    Link Parent
    I am with you there, I have streamed games more as a novelty than anything. I was a pretty early adopter since I thought it was cool tech. I tried it early on when Valve first released their early...

    I am with you there, I have streamed games more as a novelty than anything. I was a pretty early adopter since I thought it was cool tech. I tried it early on when Valve first released their early Steam Linux distro many years ago where you could stream games from your Windows PC, I tried out Geforce Now, and I bought a Steam Link when they were 90% off, and I even tried a few internet streaming services that everyone touted as "so smooth you can't tell it is streamed". In the end, I only found it tolerable when it was all local and over ethernet. Even local wifi had too much latency for me unless I was playing a turn based game, and anything streamed over the internet was maddening.

    I think the only people playing games this way are in some Venn diagram intersection of people that are just used to low fps/high input lag, really like mobile/handheld gaming, and have no problem with the Netflix/Spotify/Gamepass "You will own nothing and like it" lifestyle.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on How do you listen to your favorite obscure music that never made it onto any streaming platforms? in ~music

    zod000
    Link
    I listen to most of my music from my PC, and plenty of the bands I like either have albums not on Spotify or equivalent or are entirely not on there. I prefer having my own music that I ripped...

    I listen to most of my music from my PC, and plenty of the bands I like either have albums not on Spotify or equivalent or are entirely not on there. I prefer having my own music that I ripped myself and have the CDs or vinyls as a backup. When I want them on the go or in the car, I just transfer them across the network from my NAS.

    3 votes
  12. Comment on Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida with 155 MPH winds in ~enviro

    zod000
    Link Parent
    I imagine it is probably a combination of both, but also that SC construction in the 80s was probably not nearly as focused on storm mitigation as it was in places like Florida. As mentioned by...

    I imagine it is probably a combination of both, but also that SC construction in the 80s was probably not nearly as focused on storm mitigation as it was in places like Florida. As mentioned by another poster, in the early 90s there was a shift to stricter building codes that were required for new construction afterwards that helped a great deal. I actually recall the codes being updated in the mid 80s in FL as well because my parents build our home then and it made our home differ significantly in construction to the rest of the neighborhood.

    8 votes
  13. Comment on Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida with 155 MPH winds in ~enviro

    zod000
    Link Parent
    It's weird that I keep seeing people saying that cinderblock homes should be safe when everything I have always been told is that frame houses actually handle high winds better than block because...

    It's weird that I keep seeing people saying that cinderblock homes should be safe when everything I have always been told is that frame houses actually handle high winds better than block because of their ability to flex. We shall see.

    I was there for over 40 years, so I have been through a bunch of bunch of hurricanes, but this looks to be worse than anything I was in. It is entirely possible that I will end up having one or more of them moving up here with me while their homes are rebuilt or we find them somewhere new to live.

    9 votes
  14. Comment on Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida with 155 MPH winds in ~enviro

    zod000
    Link Parent
    My mother lives in a condo on the intercoastal, so she 100% has to evacuate. My brother lives about half a mile inland. Generally storm surge shouldn't be an issue there, but this storm has the...

    My mother lives in a condo on the intercoastal, so she 100% has to evacuate. My brother lives about half a mile inland. Generally storm surge shouldn't be an issue there, but this storm has the potential to invalidate previous precedent. My sister is in higher ground in St Pete proper, so the surge won't affect her. All that being said, cat3+ winds will likely be catastrophic to much of the area so I am still very worried for them all.

    7 votes
  15. Comment on Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida with 155 MPH winds in ~enviro

    zod000
    Link Parent
    This storm looks to be a total disaster. I moved out of that area last year, but all of my friends and family are still there and none of them were able to evacuate far enough for my liking. The...

    This storm looks to be a total disaster. I moved out of that area last year, but all of my friends and family are still there and none of them were able to evacuate far enough for my liking. The routes going north are few and apparently at a stand still and all the gas stations are out of gas. I don't have anything constructive to add other than I feel intense dread and weirdly guilty that I alone in my family am in relative safety.

    23 votes
  16. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    zod000
    Link Parent
    Speaking as someone that needed to use a portable unit, that last sentence is spot on. I found that I was able to combine the original PVC window exhaust adapter, foam board, and DIY gasket made...

    Speaking as someone that needed to use a portable unit, that last sentence is spot on. I found that I was able to combine the original PVC window exhaust adapter, foam board, and DIY gasket made of foam rubber to create a pretty efficient seal that helped a lot. Also, use something to insulate the exhaust tubing.

    2 votes
  17. Comment on KitchenAid stand mixer meat grinder attachment in ~food

    zod000
    Link
    My wife and I have used both the cheaper models and the more expensive KitchenAid brand models of the meat grinder. The TL;DR; is that we didn't have great experiences with either, but YMMV. The...

    My wife and I have used both the cheaper models and the more expensive KitchenAid brand models of the meat grinder. The TL;DR; is that we didn't have great experiences with either, but YMMV.

    The cheaper unofficial grinder that we bought was from some home good chain (probably something like TJ Maxx or equivalent) and was all plastic. It worked "OK", but it felt cheap like it was going to break under use so we looked around to find the official attachment.

    The official attachment was all metal and felt substantial, great! Well not so much, because we found that meat that was ground with it start coming out with odd dark flakes of something in it. We had thoroughly cleaned it before use, and we did so again and tried it more with the same result. We could not figure out the how or why of this, but we never felt comfortable eating the meat that was ground with it.

    This doesn't mean that all these attachments are junk, but I wanted to share my experience here. And I'll not that this was something like eight years ago, so the selection you see now may differ substantially from we got.

    Also, I'll make a note that properly clearing these things is not fun or quick, but I stress that you should not skimp on the cleaning.

    Ok, yet another note, both grinder attachments were perfectly capable of grinding chicken and turkey, which I feel are strangely overpriced in supermarkets, so if you get your attachment working, it could save a lot of money if you buy whole turkeys on ssale at the holidays or boneless chicken in bulk at places like CostCo, Sam's Club, or Aldi (obviously these are US stores, I don't know where you live).

    8 votes
  18. Comment on OFTC IRC network loses 20,000 users overnight in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    Thanks, that first link was very informative. I guess the main channel I am in uses one of those third-party bridges mentioned in the article that was not affected.

    Thanks, that first link was very informative. I guess the main channel I am in uses one of those third-party bridges mentioned in the article that was not affected.

  19. Comment on OFTC IRC network loses 20,000 users overnight in ~tech

    zod000
    Link Parent
    Wait, what happened with libera.chat? I am still on it, but the main channel I frequent has its own matrix bridge so I haven't had any issues.

    Wait, what happened with libera.chat? I am still on it, but the main channel I frequent has its own matrix bridge so I haven't had any issues.

    1 vote
  20. Comment on What vegetable are you? in ~food

    zod000
    Link Parent
    I am also a broccoli and I am totally fine with that. I'm nutritious and delicious!

    I am also a broccoli and I am totally fine with that. I'm nutritious and delicious!

    4 votes