totm nov 2023 Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?

[TheSaint]

On 4/23/2024 at 4:51 PM, Nuke said:

the lady 2 doors down is crazy, clearly bipolar. making enemies left and right. shes one of those down southers who watched all the alaska reality shows, fell in love with the fantasy alaska and is disturbed that its just another town like any other. i was sitting on my deck, playing with one of the cats and reading the local paper (a good way to blow 5 minutes), watching the 5 or 6 eagles circling around overhead. after having a fight with her neighbor's daughter over an unused parking space, and leaving in a huff, she looked up at me and said "i dont know how you like living here". not sure if she was talking about the state, the town, or the apartment. frankly its an old building and has too many floors, the appliances are trash and the place is drafty. but its better than some of the apartments ive seen/lived in around our state. and way better than some of the ones i lived in while in phoenix (5 kinds of roach motel with a pool that is safe to swim in sometimes). still the town is as close to mayberry as you can get in 2024.

We moved here thirteen years ago June. Honestly? The one thing I'm sick of are the folks who moved here after me complaining that it's nothing like the place they moved here from.

[Nuke]

11 hours ago, TheSaint said:

We moved here thirteen years ago June. Honestly? The one thing I'm sick of are the folks who moved here after me complaining that it's nothing like the place they moved here from.

my mom desperately wants to move, but that's a lot of expense and effort and i will have to throw away a third of my stuff to stand a chance of affording the logistics. its mostly junk really, parts for projects im either working on or i thought it might be useful somewhere down the line. moving would be hard on everyone, mom the cats. another small town just getting furniture will be a nightmare going without a chair for a week while amazon drags its knuckles is not my idea of fun, and mom cant even get off the floor without a call to the fire department. and i would have to deal with moving all our possessions without funds, vehicles, or the ability to make friends with strangers.

when i ask why its always something like "the people here hate me" but i dont see it. they paid for two of her mobility scooters, they always ask how she is doing. maybe if she left the house more she would interact with them more. her own sour and entitled behavior probably is part of why no one comes to visit. moving isnt going to change that. wherever you go there you are.

it goes beyond simple wanderlust. i figure the woman 2 doors down is the other side of that. running from something inescapable to something ambiguous and undefined. and my mom's own behavior is similar. we moved so many times growing up i never developed relationships. all because of some mental pathology that makes one run away from everything they know. someone ought to write a paper on this.

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, Nuke said:

my mom desperately wants to move, but that's a lot of expense and effort and i will have to throw away a third of my stuff to stand a chance of affording the logistics. its mostly junk really, parts for projects im either working on or i thought it might be useful somewhere down the line. moving would be hard on everyone, mom the cats. another small town just getting furniture will be a nightmare going without a chair for a week while amazon drags its knuckles is not my idea of fun, and mom cant even get off the floor without a call to the fire department. and i would have to deal with moving all our possessions without funds, vehicles, or the ability to make friends with strangers.

when i ask why its always something like "the people here hate me" but i dont see it. they paid for two of her mobility scooters, they always ask how she is doing. maybe if she left the house more she would interact with them more. her own sour and entitled behavior probably is part of why no one comes to visit. moving isnt going to change that. wherever you go there you are.

it goes beyond simple wanderlust. i figure the woman 2 doors down is the other side of that. running from something inescapable to something ambiguous and undefined. and my mom's own behavior is similar. we moved so many times growing up i never developed relationships. all because of some mental pathology that makes one run away from everything they know. someone ought to write a paper on this.

I don't mind moving. Like I said, we've been here thirteen years, and that's the longest I've lived anywhere since I left home at 18. Same for my wife. I'm positive that if it weren't for the kids we would have moved again. We almost did, came that close to moving to Idaho six years ago, but jobs didn't work out. In hindsight, should have gone anyway, things probably would have worked out better for us financially. But, it is what it is.

I guess we don't mind moving because we're not stuff people. I go out in my garage and look at all the stuff that's accumulating and think, "Yeah, it's time for all this to go." Moving makes it easy to be ruthless about that. I remember when I moved to South Africa, the cost to ship stuff there was $35 a pound. So I was basically looking at everything I owned and asking myself, "Is this thing worth more than $35 a pound? Can I replace it for less than that when I get there?" Almost everything went out the window when you looked at it that way.

[SunlitZelkova]

I feel like the reason the world is so divided is because no one has the modesty or backbone to conduct extended, intense debates/arguments.

If we fail more than 2-3 times to convince someone of something, we don’t have a hard look at what we’re saying to see if it’s wrong, we accuse the opponent/target of being “brainwashed” or “lacking good faith.”

Idk, maybe I’m spending too much time with the people on this forum who are mostly old enough to remember Apollo or STS-1 and need to interact more with my own generation.

[Lisias]

I fail to see how a Game Industry professional plans to enrich its resume by violating the EULA of a competitor (or former one, who knows nowadays).

You know, their employer also has a EULA to enforce - and I really don't think such employer would be proud of their employees violating EULAs on the wild - their business model depends of EULAs being enforced!

(or to hire someone that did that)

Edited April 26 by Lisias
Tyops, as usulla...

[DDE]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

we accuse the opponent/target of being “brainwashed” or “lacking good faith.”

In my experience, that's usually the opening salvo, because...

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I feel like the reason the world is so divided is because no one has the modesty or backbone to conduct extended, intense debates/arguments.

If we fail more than 2-3 times to convince someone of something, we don’t have a hard look at what we’re saying to see if it’s wrong

...because too much of Internet "debating" is a spectator sport that involves preaching to the converted and throwing out "sick burns".

[TheSaint]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

In my experience, that's usually the opening salvo, because...

...because too much of Internet "debating" is a spectator sport that involves preaching to the converted and throwing out "sick burns".

I have a buddy here in town, one of my shooting friends. He's...opinionated. He's been thrown in Facebook jail more times than I can count. He's been banned from multiple firearms boards for arguing and personal attacks. So, last year, we're driving out to our shooting spot together, and he's complaining about the fact that he has some stuff to sell and he has to borrow another friend's logon to one of the firearms boards to post it there. And I was all, "You realize that this is entirely self-inflicted, right? Nobody forces you to go out onto the Internet and argue with people, and the only one who is injured by it is you. Nobody goes onto the Internet to change their mind." And that shut him up for two minutes, which, if you knew him, you would find remarkable.

So, a couple of weeks later, I'm on Facebook and I happen to notice one of his posts. Someone replied trying to start an argument about something he posted, and his response was, "Look, nobody came here to change their mind." I did the meme.

[SunlitZelkova]

The issue with what happened to me here over the past couple weeks is that it wasn’t an opinionated matter we argued over, it was-

1. The definition of something

2. History of something

The first time, the guy had a weird definition of something that sounded like something else, so I looked up the dictionary definition to see if I was right. It didn’t match up and I pointed that out. Then he continually changed his own definition until he accused me of not discussing in good faith.

Second time, I made stupid statements about something in history. I honestly did not know I was wrong. In fact, other people in the discussion later politely pointed out the flaws in my statements and I accepted I was incorrect and retracted my statement. But before then, this guy- the same guy as with the definition talk- simply says I’m “making walls of words” and again speaks of me “lacking good faith.”

This isn’t public policy or favorite foods we’re talking about. If we can’t correct each other when we’re wrong and accept that we’ve been wrong when it comes to facts, how are we supposed to learn anything? Isn’t that what the internet is supposed to be about? For All Mankind had a clip of Tim Berners-Lee praising the then potential value of the internet in the 80s and he spoke of a “more informed electorate.” Obviously politics is politics and it can get nasty in its own right, but what about technical discussions? Discussions about the humanities?

I think I’m getting back to my point I made in my long post about climate change. Everyone has armies of rhetoric and data on their side to defend their arguments, and criticism and differing data is “politicized” or has an ulterior motive.

If I or others can’t or don’t want to correct or be corrected on facts when we’re wrong, what’s the point of even being here? Just hop in, see if we fit in the echo chamber, hop out if we don’t and then post tweets and occasional witty jokes from time to time? Isn’t a forum all about discussion?

I’ve never expected people to change their opinions when I’m criticizing them. But if there’s a fact they’re talking about that’s incorrect, I have a hard time sitting by and letting them be wrong. I wouldn’t want someone on this forum to let me continually make inaccurate statements, and when I did that in the history discussion, I’m glad I was corrected.

Considering most of the people who regularly post in the main section of the forum I visit- the Science & Spaceflight section- are also the same people who have espoused the climate change denial arguments I listed in my climate change post in this thread, perhaps I just need to recognize the people there are not who I thought they were when I joined this forum and read about the better forum movement and rules intended to make it a more positive place.

The Lounge is cool though, so I’d still visit here. But I can get space news on Twitter and don’t really have any more technical questions to ask people over there, so if it’s just a place to report the news and make jokes from time to time- discussion, while legal, will lead to arguments if anything beyond supportive comments are made, even if someone is incorrect about something- what am I even doing there?

I’m also now thinking about how I don’t even really follow much spaceflight news beyond what’s going on in China. I might as well just head over to Sino Defence Forum (where I’m much more conscious of what kind of people they are and how it’s important not to start arguments).

[Nuke]

On 4/26/2024 at 5:29 AM, DDE said:

In my experience, that's usually the opening salvo, because...

...because too much of Internet "debating" is a spectator sport that involves preaching to the converted and throwing out "sick burns".

youtube videos are rife with this kind of nonsense. conflating anything that ticks their confirmation bias way out of proportion. ive never seen so many people "destroyed" by some cherry picked thing some disconnected personality said. i guess its a working formula that makes excellent clickbait. and whats with all the destructive language? they make it sound like they are in a fight but its always some cowardly jab from behind the curtain of anonymity. the comment section is just as bad, usually its an echo chamber and people still get into hissing fit over their flavor of agreement. posts from the other side of the argument get deleted.

[DDE]

Now I know why they were flashing

[Nuke]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

Now I know why they were flashing

i like electronics with interesting failure modes.

[DDE]

6 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i like electronics with interesting failure modes.

I'm surprised this thing kept on trucking for a month after this much damage. I imagine the occasional flashes were the individual LEDs burning out.

Both are bad cases of overheating due to a non-LED light fixture with rubbish cooling, but in the bottom one some core component gave up first and it just died with very little melt.

[Nuke]

leds like to fail closed. which is usually the first step in a cascade failure. one led goes, the others in the chain get more current, so their lives get shortened. one fails, the others et even more current, and so on.

you could give every led a resistor (usually with a constant voltage supply) but that results in waste heat and less efficiency. so you are supposed to use constant current drivers, usually in conjunction with series strings (single leds exist with several series strings connected in parallel). you might be able to get current supplies that can detect led failures (eg by measuring voltage drop and drive current) and change their regulation parameters on the fly. but led bulbs are built to cost and such advanced features are not included. you can always leave some brightness on the table in an effort to keep the leds in spec, but then a competitor can jack up its current and claim that their bulbs are brighter. regardless a defect in one is a defect in all. that said usually the current drivers fail before than the leds (salvaged so many off of dead bulbs).

Edited April 28 by Nuke

[tater]

Last time we flew United was 15 years ago, and I said never again. We did anyway to Houston cause it was a direct flight, wife has patients this afternoon… and they’re 2 hours late. Will avoid them for at least another 15 years.

[AtomicTech]

21 hours ago, Nuke said:

leds like to fail closed. which is usually the first step in a cascade failure. one led goes, the others in the chain get more current, so their lives get shortened. one fails, the others et even more current, and so on.

you could give every led a resistor (usually with a constant voltage supply) but that results in waste heat and less efficiency. so you are supposed to use constant current drivers, usually in conjunction with series strings (single leds exist with several series strings connected in parallel). you might be able to get current supplies that can detect led failures (eg by measuring voltage drop and drive current) and change their regulation parameters on the fly. but led bulbs are built to cost and such advanced features are not included. you can always leave some brightness on the table in an effort to keep the leds in spec, but then a competitor can jack up its current and claim that their bulbs are brighter. regardless a defect in one is a defect in all. that said usually the current drivers fail before than the leds (salvaged so many off of dead bulbs).

All you really need is a good LED and a good resistor. A red LED paired with a good 220 ohm resistor will last for a good long while

[Nuke]

21 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

All you really need is a good LED and a good resistor. A red LED paired with a good 220 ohm resistor will last for a good long while

thats fine for indicators but when you have large arrays of leds that resister turns into a heater. at some point a cc driver is more efficient.

[Ryaja]

4 minutes ago, Nuke said:

thats fine for indicators but when you have large arrays of leds that resister turns into a heater. at some point a cc driver is more efficient.

Now you just have an LER(light emitting resistor)

[Nuke]

Just now, Ryaja said:

Now you just have an LER(light emitting resistor)

protip: you can use low value resistors in a pinch to light your model rocket motors.

[AtomicTech]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

thats fine for indicators but when you have large arrays of leds that resister turns into a heater. at some point a cc driver is more efficient.

Oh gotcha; I somehow missed that, embarassingly

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Ryaja said:

Now you just have an LER(light emitting resistor)

--- -- - And now for something completely different...

I spent the last month bashing my cheeks, burning the midnight oil, to propagate preemptively a change in our infra that would interrupt our services to any client that would not apply a simple update.

I tracked down every single client, entered in contact when we detected that the change weren't made, provided the needed information 2 or 3 times for some clients as the information got lost as the task escalated to the infra team. I built a secondary server still keeping the old configuration for some late ones until the bitter end, when the old certificates finally expired on the early hours of this Monday.

No one single client was left behind. Except by one.

Their production is stalled, they can't operate - and all they need is to push a kraken damned button to apply the new certificate. But the dude can't do it without someone in India approving the change - a change that is late, is more than already due, is approved and was already applied in QAS. But, yet, that freaking button wasn't pressed and this client's production is on halt until this happen.

Seriously - I understand the need of a quality process to prevent tragedies. But who process the processes? Who respond when the process itself if the cause of the tragedy?

What's preventing that freaking dude in the other side of the World to say "ok, push that button"?

(sigh)

 

Edited April 29 by Lisias
Pushed "Save" too soon - ironic as some buttons are pressed in a rush, while others are not...

[Nuke]

im very resistant to pushed updates. cable company has been bugging me for 2 months to replace my cable modem with their new wifi router. except i already own an expensive router with some high throughput, well tuned security settings, and about half a dozen server apps running in the background. meanwhile the cable company wont pony up the specs of the new device. i dont even know if the damn thing has ethernet. frankly its not their job to manage my network, just to provide internet access, and the existing modem gives me more speed than i need.

as for software id be more ok with updates if they didnt also push a bunch of features i dont need and which hog resources from the stuff i do. sometimes i feel like updates are pushed more to install more surveillance crap than to update the actual security. you know how many devices are bricked due to old certificates? yet they will update the os until the cows come home. you cant claim to upgrade my security while simultaneously poking more holes in my security.

[Lisias]

59 minutes ago, Nuke said:

im very resistant to pushed updates. cable company has been bugging me for 2 months to replace my cable modem with their new wifi router.

So do I. I'm exactly on the same boat, my cable company is also pesking me to do the same, they want to replace my old and faithful Motorola cable modem (yep, it is that old) for a new WiFi one made by Kraken knows whom. And exactly the same response - until the day the damned thing just stop working, I'm not going to replace it - I will not wave OpenWRT no matter what they want me to do.

But once it stops working, it will be replaced ASAP (perhaps even the provider).

[TheSaint]

10 hours ago, Nuke said:

im very resistant to pushed updates. cable company has been bugging me for 2 months to replace my cable modem with their new wifi router. except i already own an expensive router with some high throughput, well tuned security settings, and about half a dozen server apps running in the background. meanwhile the cable company wont pony up the specs of the new device. i dont even know if the damn thing has ethernet. frankly its not their job to manage my network, just to provide internet access, and the existing modem gives me more speed than i need.

as for software id be more ok with updates if they didnt also push a bunch of features i dont need and which hog resources from the stuff i do. sometimes i feel like updates are pushed more to install more surveillance crap than to update the actual security. you know how many devices are bricked due to old certificates? yet they will update the os until the cows come home. you cant claim to upgrade my security while simultaneously poking more holes in my security.

 

9 hours ago, Lisias said:

So do I. I'm exactly on the same boat, my cable company is also pesking me to do the same, they want to replace my old and faithful Motorola cable modem (yep, it is that old) for a new WiFi one made by Kraken knows whom. And exactly the same response - until the day the damned thing just stop working, I'm not going to replace it - I will not wave OpenWRT no matter what they want me to do.

But once it stops working, it will be replaced ASAP (perhaps even the provider).

Really? I own all my equipment, cable modem and router, and my cable company has never said anything to me. And if they did, I would tell them to go to Hell.

[Lisias]

32 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Really? I own all my equipment, cable modem and router, and my cable company has never said anything to me. And if they did, I would tell them to go to Hell.

And a Hip hip hooray to competition. We had a lot of buyouts around here. Essentially, a big mobile carrier bought the Cable Company some time ago, and a bigger mobile carrier bough that other carrier recently. Right now, there's only 3 possible options for where I live, all of them subsidiaries of one of the 3 remaining Mobile carriers in the country.

Welcome to hell.

If I ditch my current provider I will be in deep sheets - unless I buy a Starlink. What's, frankly, in the short term plans.

[Nuke]

i saw a starlink terminal at a local residence,. as i understood it there would be no starlink north of 60 degrees. upon looking it up, we are only at 56 degrees. so at least i have that option.