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

[AtomicTech]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

"struggle session"

What's that?

[tater]

45 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

What's that?

The wiki on that will explain it. We don't want to anger the gods here

 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tater said:

If you told me in the 1980s anyone in the 2020s would notice or care about such arbitrary distinctions between people I would have said you were insane.

1980s?

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

Quote

the country first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)

Quote

a 1965 epic

 

After the scientific, industrial, and ecological success of Wakanda had been discovered in 1966, right after the secret eco-friendly technologies of the desert freemen, it just became obvious that humanity had bet on a wrong horse.

It's just an attempt to repair the progress.

Not without using the Spice, of course.

[Nuke]

the woman behind white fragility still refuses to debate her ideas. 

"its not scientific"

"science is racist"

"but statistics show that your policies are making things worse"

"math is racist"

you just cant win with these people. best thing you can do is ignore them. don't interact with them, because they will never do so on a level playing field. and hope that they just go away and history remembers them as the sad sacks they really are. racism is a product of ignorance and fear, more ignorance and fear is not the answer. 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Nuke

[DDE]

11 hours ago, Nuke said:

you just cant win with these people

You can, but the steps required are wholly unpalatable. "These people" (the Small City as per Cochin, the Small People as per Shafarevich) absolutely despise the real world around them, and the majority who populate it, for not matching their utopian end goal, and wield the advantage of having captured the societal institutions (both public and private) that get to define what is respectable opinion and interpret public sentiment for the powers-that-be. Their ends justify any means; they outright revel in righteously transgressing against 'civil discourse', since the license to lie and slander (or, in case with their counterparts in the Middle East, plunder and torture and kill) is a sign of their superiority to you, the un-'woke' pleb/takfir. So an honest argument with them would be playing chess with a rabid pigeon.

To openly rail against them would at the very least cost you "mainstream" respectability, that is, likely make you seem a dangerous weirdo to the laymen around you. Effectively combatting them requires autocratic power and the license to use coercion. That is generally frowned upon, and not just on this forum.

Edited April 14, 2023 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

Still insisting that the discovery of Wakanda was the key.

Look: 
1964..1965 The success of MLK Jr. struggle in the US.
1965..1967 The flourishing of the hippies.
1966 Flourishing of The Beatles.
1966 The first published info about Wakanda (see above).
1965 Rhodesia proclaimes independence from UK, the Empire strikes back and brings down Rhodesia.

And now look at the map:

Spoiler

Rhodesia

Wakanda
https://urbanobserver.id/location-of-wakanda/

So, as we can see, Wakanda and Rhodesia are placed in dangerous proximity of each other.

Thus, unless we presume that the British aristocracy (at least in 1960s) are very sentimental and impressionable people, who could be impressed:

• by the speeches of the famous American preacher,
• by the crowd of love-makers-not-warriors in city parks,
• and by the plaintive music-like sounds, wafting from the Liverpool pubs,

we should acknowledge the fact that the British aristocracy (and wider, the world elite) was shaken by the technological power of Wakanda, and prudently decided to stand away from its force.

[AlamoVampire]

I just want to scream. Im real sick of updates breaking things. Pmdg updates my aircraft and small settings break, like what version of fuel cut off switches or if i have a hud. But the update that broke me just now? Navigraph/simbrief. New updates to apps and the overall system broke my download stream. I need my flight plans to download into a specific spot or my FMC will not have my flight plan. Well i had no warning their updated system were going to undo my download stream, so i just wasted 20 minutes trying to argue with my fmc and pc…. I hate updates…

222004192023

[Nuke]

so my latest gen raspi tablet design hit another roadblock. to reduce the thickness of the tablet i needed to lay my boards out flat rather than stack them up on the gpio header (important things like the entire power system not to mention the i2s breakout for my dacs, amps and speakers and the i2c for the adcs and port expanders i will be using for joysticks, buttons and other controls). the plan was to use some idc ribbon cables to connect it all together. i had some ribbon cable but not the connectors, so i ordered some connectors. they got here yesterday and this morning i want to put the two together. turns out my ribbon cable is the wrong pitch. 1.2mm vs 1.27. other than that i dont think the wire gauge is good enough to handle the power.  28 gauge can handle 1.4 amps and there are two wires for each voltage rail (5v and 3.3v), so thats enough to power the pi. the speakers can in theory draw a lot of power, but im gonna tap those off of the pi-juice module directly. the rest is low power stuff. 

i thought i had some old ide cables, but i guess they went out with spring cleaning. id have been able to use the cables since ide headers usually have a pin missing for keying.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Nuke

[razark]

I've been out on a business trip this week.

Flight out of Virginia Friday morning was delayed due to weather in Dallas.  My coworker and I missed our connection from Dallas to Houston because of that.  So we got bumped to a different flight from Dallas, to the other airport in Houston.  Across the city from where we left our cars.  Airline's position was basically "We got you to Houston, and that's close enough."

Finally got to Houston four hours after we should have, then waited an hour for them to tell us they weren't going to be unloading baggage due to the storm (even though other airlines were feeding the baggage claim.  We could wait, or come back tomorrow to pick it up.  The large mass of angry customers seems to have finally convinced them to agree to have the bags delivered.  Then had to get a taxi from the airport to the airport so we could get our cars.

[Lisias]

People have this strange compulsion to hurt and destroy the things they care the most.

Caring is about doing what's best for the object of caring, not what you think (from your limited experience) it's best.

Caring is about recognising when something is not working for the best, and then make corrections even if this means waving control.

As well not to make corrections when things are working perfectly because you are fearing losing it if you don't have enough control about it.

Caring is not about control. Controlling is not caring.

This is not personal, professional or technical rant. It's just a general rant. God knows people are playing havoc with everything they (think they) had control nowadays.

[Nuke]

13 hours ago, razark said:

I've been out on a business trip this week.

Flight out of Virginia Friday morning was delayed due to weather in Dallas.  My coworker and I missed our connection from Dallas to Houston because of that.  So we got bumped to a different flight from Dallas, to the other airport in Houston.  Across the city from where we left our cars.  Airline's position was basically "We got you to Houston, and that's close enough."

Finally got to Houston four hours after we should have, then waited an hour for them to tell us they weren't going to be unloading baggage due to the storm (even though other airlines were feeding the baggage claim.  We could wait, or come back tomorrow to pick it up.  The large mass of angry customers seems to have finally convinced them to agree to have the bags delivered.  Then had to get a taxi from the airport to the airport so we could get our cars.

just be glad you dont live in a region where one airline has a monopoly. 

[Delay]

So, last October I bought myself a telephoto lens. Having 600 mm at your disposal is really helpful for wildlife photography!

Today, around half a month later, it all but certainly kicked the bucket. More often than not my camera doesn't recognize it anymore, shows F-- in the aperture, doesn't autofocus etc.
Now, that happened every now and then for a few months, but so far I was at least hopeful that it was either the camera's fault or the cold temperatures messing with the contacts or the mount. Well, since it was quite warm today and both of my cameras resisted working with it (other lenses work perfectly on both!) I can throw these ideas out. The lens is the problem.

Looks like I'll have to send it to Sigma and have it repaired. I hope it can be repaired. Sending in for repair is something I've never had to do before...
In any case, wildlife photography is out for now. How about I try my hand at landscape photos, then?

[AlamoVampire]

Im going to complain again about updates. Once again MSFS2020 has undergone updating. Once again it COMPLETELY UNDOES EVERYTHING!!! I cannot stand windowed mode. I have exactly 1 use for it and even then its only for 5 minutes or less. Connecting to my VPilot client when using vatsim. I need my sim running for vatsim and vpilot to link. Soon as they link i reset to full screen. These gods forsaken updates keep reverting me to windowed. STOP IT MICROSOFT!!

011605042023

[kerbiloid]

Just had seen again this thread and recalled it.

Maybe it's a last chance to download some KSP docs.

[Nuke]

i had to get up at an ungodly hour when hulu decided not to work and interrupted mom's morning news show.  i got an unspecified error where the chrome app tried to launch. some digging and it turned out to be a corrupt cookie. i had to clear those and when i went to log in, the captcha system kept demanding that i train their ai. i did 4 of them before i got mad and hit the kill switch to reboot the machine. 

then i remember a video i watched a couple months ago how captcha can detect if your mouse is behaving as if controlled by a bot. of course to simplify things for my mom such that the whole contraption only uses one remote rather than a remote and an unreliable media center mouse/kb that never works and loses connection all the time. so i put an arduino pro-micro in the case with an ir sensor to receive scan codes from unused buttons on the universal remote, and provide emulated mouse movements with the numpad and remote start. its crude but functional, and allows my disabled mother to have a modicum of independence. except when the services you pay a substantial amount of money on every month decides that you are a bot and decides to corrupt your cookies and lock you out without so much as a useful error message. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Nuke

[LHACK4142]

robotics season ended, and since i dont go to the same school as the rest of my teammates i just cant talk to my friends and stuff... i could text, but i just dont know how...

[TheSaint]

Disney World is closing its Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in September

Wait...it turns out that nobody wants to spend $6,000 a night to stay in a glorified Motel 6 with no windows and cosplay Star Wars for two days?

[AtomicTech]

3 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Disney World is closing its Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in September

Wait...it turns out that nobody wants to spend $6,000 a night to stay in a glorified Motel 6 with no windows and cosplay Star Wars for two days?

God darn it; I wanted to do that lol

[DDE]

16 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Disney World is closing its Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in September

Wait...it turns out that nobody wants to spend $6,000 a night to stay in a glorified Motel 6 with no windows and cosplay Star Wars for two days?

ROFL, that Revan on the cover image dated March 2022. They thought they could just throw the old EU out, and had the talent to create a new one. Now they cannot live with your own failure. And where did it bring them? Back to me. 

(Yes, I know that they recanonized Revan via a reference in the ROTS2 fluff. Pathetic)

[Pthigrivi]

My god this might seem like the wrong thread but is anyone else watching Succession cause this is absolutely glorious. 

[Lisias]

Virgin Orbit gone belly up. Bought the farm. Kicked the bucket.

An unhappy accident or a worrisome trend?

https://gizmodo.com/bankrupt-virgin-orbit-sells-scraps-four-bidders-auction-1850468864

Edited May 24, 2023 by Lisias
Misunderstood the company name.

[kerbiloid]

A tricky plan. The Martian farming.

[Nuke]

just wasted 2 hours on the phone applying for a local streaming service. basic package with free streaming device promotion. the guy was clearly from another country, had a thick accent, could barely understand him, and he talked really slow. 

first half hour, confirming that i was who i said i was.

second half hour, communicating what i wanted. 

at the 1 hour mark, he tries to sell me a phone and preaches to me about the glories of phone ownership and how its required for everything. cell phones have serious mark of the beast vibes, and he pushed it like a mormon trying to save your soul (which is already tied up in a previous agreement with satan). no. make a phone with a 32+ inch screen and we will talk. il leave it at home, in a shed, like the amish. 

an hour thirty in and now comes the part of the deal they did not make clear in their adverts. you have to stay on the service for 24 months, an internet plan ive been on since 2013 mind you. the words legally binding contract came up. mom was tired and went to take a nap half way through. i snuck off to tuck her in while i was on hold. 

and when i thought i confirmed enough things, he asked me to confirm more things, gave me his number so he could farm commission, and asked me to fill out a servey. just agree to the servey and hang up, it saves time.  

its sad when you try to give people money and they want more.

[TheSaint]

9 minutes ago, Nuke said:

just wasted 2 hours on the phone applying for a local streaming service. basic package with free streaming device promotion. the guy was clearly from another country, had a thick accent, could barely understand him, and he talked really slow. 

first half hour, confirming that i was who i said i was.

second half hour, communicating what i wanted. 

at the 1 hour mark, he tries to sell me a phone and preaches to me about the glories of phone ownership and how its required for everything. cell phones have serious mark of the beast vibes, and he pushed it like a mormon trying to save your soul (which is already tied up in a previous agreement with satan). no. make a phone with a 32+ inch screen and we will talk. il leave it at home, in a shed, like the amish. 

an hour thirty in and now comes the part of the deal they did not make clear in their adverts. you have to stay on the service for 24 months, an internet plan ive been on since 2013 mind you. the words legally binding contract came up. mom was tired and went to take a nap half way through. i snuck off to tuck her in while i was on hold. 

and when i thought i confirmed enough things, he asked me to confirm more things, gave me his number so he could farm commission, and asked me to fill out a servey. just agree to the servey and hang up, it saves time.  

its sad when you try to give people money and they want more.

My friend's boss has a saying: "Never make it difficult for me to give you money." It's amazing how many companies don't get that these days.

[StrandedonEarth]

Oh wow. Some friends are on holidays at a wedding in Mexico. Three hours ago, the resort staff (Bahia Principe, outside Cancun; same resort we went to a few years ago) went on strike because they hadn't been paid. The restaurants shut down one by one, so there's no food being served, just booze.  They're rationing their bag of popcorn. Reports are that no one is allowed to leave, and only returning day trips are allowed in