blindsight

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blindsight,

I’m loving Logseq. It’s free and libre and stores all your data in local text files in standard formats, so there’s absolutely no lock in. They also have an ethical business model ($5/mo to use their fully-encrypted sync solution, but you can just sync the files using whatever other system you like.)

The forward and backwards lining of notes means I don’t need to worry too much about organization ahead of time and I can still find everything.

That said, I’ve never used Evernote, so not sure if it’s a good replacement. I was looking to build a “Second Brain” and it’s been fantastic for that.

blindsight,

My son called 911 on his tablet a couple of months ago. It doesn’t even have a SIM card and it was locked, but he was playing make believe with the emergency call screen.

My wife’s Pixel 3a called 911 on its own somehow a couple years ago. Still don’t know how that one happened.

It happens. Just stay on the line if you do so they know they don’t need to call back or investigate.

blindsight,

That’s a good one. I was thinking older history, but trickle-down economics has had a long enough run of endless disaster without any hint of trucking down for long enough now that we know it doesn’t work. If only we could keep it in the history books!

blindsight,

In general that old math theorems/ideas are named after the mathematicians who discovered them.

Pythagoras didn’t discover the Pythagorean Theorem. Pascal didn’t discover Pascal’s Triangle. Fibonacci didn’t discover the Fibonacci Sequence.

YouTube screwing itself with adblockers again

I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform....

blindsight,

Research shows it still affects you, though. You’ll have more brand awareness, whether you want to or not. Everyone in the US & Canada know what a RAV4 and Forester are. You don’t need that explained to you when your coworker tells you about their new car.

And even if you don’t drink pop at all, you still know Coke is better than Pepsi.

blindsight,

I stopped setting book completion target goals when I realized I was choosing shorter books to hit my target. I then switched to a page-count goal for the next year, but that didn’t survive January. (Too much paperwork.)

In the genres I read most (progression fantasy and LitRPG), some of the books are massive web serials, like one “book” this year was ~18K pages. I’m still only about ¾ done since I took a break to read a few shorter series.

Now, my only real goal is to read every day (4 years+ and it’s effortless, now) and to try to read at least one non-fiction book/month. (Fell behind on that one this year; life got busy/stressful, so I’ve been reading exclusively “popcorn fiction” for the last 4 months.)

Also, I read a lot (100-300 pages/day, typically), so one non-fiction/month I don’t count as a reading target; it’s just about diversifying my reading and doing some self betterment/education/professional development.

blindsight,

I initially thought you had terrible taste in music after listening to the first song… I had NewPipe set to 2.0× speed.

Whoops!

Thanks for the recs, OP and everyone else.

blindsight,

My NDP MP is having a community winter party next week. I’ll mention this to him. Something like “I really love the work you’re doing to get healthcare for all Canadians, but I’m deeply troubled that you supported a bill that depends on porn companies to secure people’s personal information. I can’t think of many companies I’d trust less to safeguard Canadians against identity theft. I thought it was below the NDP to stoop to Conservative fear mongering tactics politically.”

blindsight,

80% of Canadians get more back than they pay. It’s not a tax, it’s a redistribution.

On the margin, it adds small incentives to shift consumer behaviour. Lots of people in warmer climates in Canada are shifting to e-bikes, for instance, and heat pumps are becoming increasingly common.

Sure, some Canadians are paying more than they get in rebates… like my old neighbour who commutes to work in an F-350, but that’s the point. He shouldn’t be driving to an office job in an industrial truck!

blindsight,

I think you’re missing that you (likely) get more money back than you pay in. It’s a restriction, not a tax. It’s only the most egregiously inefficient drivers/home owners who are paying more.

As someone commuting in a reasonable car driving a reasonable distance in a reasonably efficient home, you have more money in your pocket every month. And if any of those aren’t the case, then maybe it’s time to make some changes (which is the whole point!)

blindsight,

Single Transferable Vote is perfect for Canada. It’s, essentially, proportional representation within multi-member ridings. So, a Quebec riding could get 5 seats, and get 2 Bloc, 1 Con, 1 Lib, 1 NDP (for example) giving most people in the riding a representative who more accurately reflects their views.

STV perfectly meshes with our constitutionally-protected geographic representation while also giving roughly proportional representation, and without giving seats to tiny fringe parties. It’s also been used successfully in Ireland for over a century.

blindsight,

That’s surprising to me, too. I never had an OG Deck to compare, but on paper it’s such a small difference I wouldn’t have expected it to feel significant.

I tested mine briefly when it arrived before putting it away for Christmas and I was impressed with its responsiveness and screen. I’m looking forward to putting a lot of hours on it. (Well, a lot for me. Life is busy with kids!)

blindsight,

On the last point, a better comparison would be base 6 or base 14.

10 = 2 × 5
6 = 2 × 3
14 = 2 × 7

Or maybe a better way of thinking about it is the percentage of numbers that divide nicely in the base, as a percentage.

Base 10 has 2, 5, 10 = 30%

So maybe base 3 is the closest, at 33% of numbers being easily divisible.

Either way, 7 is a significantly worse base than 10.

blindsight,

It’s nice to see people talking about it. I caught a streamer I follow playing it like a month ago and it looked like a lot of fun.

I don’t have enough time to game to justify buying it at its most recent sale price, but I have my eye on it for the first time it gets a deeper discount or gets bundled.

blindsight,

Same. I have an 08 sedan with 220K km. I’m not going to pay for a new car so long as my old car is still working reasonably reliably. It’s at the point that I won’t pay for a big repair, so it’s just a matter of time.

That said, if electric cars aren’t available to buy reasonably quickly, then I might not have much of a choice. I’m lucky that I don’t need to drive much for work, but I do need to often enough to need a car.

And fuck Tesla. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about their lack of quality control that I’ll never even look at buying one

blindsight,

Capital gains should be treated the same as income, full stop. Why does capital get extra status over labour?

blindsight,

And look toward the Gemini constellation which is about halfway between Orion and The Big Dipper.

I’ll miss it, as usual… It’s grey-sky season here. Maybe one year I’ll get lucky!

blindsight,

Back when you had to manually configure your gamepad…
Uniquely for each game…
By looking up specific numbers in your gamepad manual.

Kids have no idea how easy they have it these days.

blindsight,

It’s not a flagship, but I’m really liking my Sony Xperia 10V. It’s lightweight, narrow, has amazing battery life (I’m at 80% after a full day of light use, 1h37m SoT), has lots of RAM, microSD, and 3.5mm. Its processor is weak, apparently, but I haven’t noticed; I don’t do heavy gaming on mobile and it’s snappy enough for web browsing and has enough RAM to keep lots of apps running.

So, there are good compact phone options. Hopefully other people keep buying them to keep them profitable for companies to support!

blindsight,

lol, agreed. This is one I think I’ll actually play!

blindsight,

public static void main string args

blindsight,

I didn’t see anyone pointing out explicitly that this was not in native Linux games, but in Windows-native games running Proton.

When I read the headline, I thought that of course Linux will outperform Windows on native apps. It’s more surprising that Linux outperforms while running the overhead of a compatibility layer.

blindsight,

You monster.

I literally can’t believe that someone authentically believes that. My mind jumps to you trolling.

blindsight,

I like base 12 a lot, but Reverse Polish Notation is a mess when you get up to working with polynomials.

With polynomials, you’re moving around terms on either side of an equation, and you combine positive terms and negative terms. In essence, there’s no such thing as subtraction. (Similarly, division is a lie; you’re actually just working with numerators and denominators.)

Reverse Polish Notation makes that a mess since it separates the sign from its term.

Also, RPN draws a distinction between negative values and subtraction, but conceptually there is no subtraction with polynomials, it’s all just negative terms. (Or negating a polynomial to get its additive inverse.)

But, yeah. It’s a shame we don’t use base 12 more.

blindsight,

I agree. I wish the voting age was 16. (Or even younger, but 16 would be a big step in the right direction.)

At 16, students could take half the day off to go vote. Hell, it should be a grade-level field trip. Research shows that those who vote in their first eligible election are likely to continue voting, and democracies are dying from a lack of political engagement.

blindsight,

$2.49 is a really reasonable price point for DLC. I haven’t played Vampire Survivors since I got to the point I could get 1000+ golden eggs per run, but it sounds like the Adventure update is specifically designed to create novel content for endgame players.

I’m looking forward to the update and it would be silly not to get the DLC at that price. Good timing for me, too, since my wife is getting me a Steam Deck for Christmas.

blindsight,

Alt text:

The full analysis is of course much more complicated, but I can’t stay to talk about it because I have a date.

blindsight, (edited )

It’s a legal loophole to get around our gambling regulations. Raffles are regulated, but tests of skill can be rewarded.

So now it’s a raffle followed by a “skill testing” arithmetic question.

blindsight,

Context article explaining what this all is about.

blindsight, (edited )

The idea is also that a compromised system will remains compromised after all storage drives are removed.

blindsight,

“In Canadian law, store employees or staff are not allowed to physically stop you from leaving or search your belongings unless they actually witness you commit an offence,” she said. “You are free to walk past a receipt check, out the store.”

She said the exception is when shoppers exit a retailer such as Costco, which can enforce receipt checks because people agree to them when they sign up for the required store membership.

Source

Edit: Unless you mean source for everything is a potato. That statement is self evident.

Why does Gboard replace spaces with characters I add between words?

For example, if I type out a sentence and decide I want to add asterisks around a word for emphasis, why does Gboard replace the space between the previous word and the emphasized word instead of just adding the new character? Is this added functionality for something I just don’t understand?...

blindsight,

To clarify, only if you decide to go back and add the asterisks later. To add an asterisk inline, you need to add a space manually before already.

This is a feature of “smart compose”, apparently, and I’m now going to turn it off…

blindsight,

I’m not parent poster, but I didn’t read that at all. International propaganda works, and has the potential to destroy democracy in America (and lots of other countries, too.)

What am I missing?

blindsight,

Do you play vanilla or modded? I’ve heard mods add a lot of extra life to the game.

blindsight,

Thanks for posting. I just watched review videos for all 5, and they all seem skippable, with better options available in their genres, all with some klunky mechanic or grindy/repetitive gameplay loop that frustrates.

Looks like I’ll likely skip this month, depending what the remaining 3 games are.

blindsight,

ngl, I had to read the article before I could parse it.

This makes more sense to my brain:

“Reddit updates branding 6 months after mass user protests ahead of rumoured IPO”

How to get cigarette smell out of my apartment?

So my roommate is a habitual cigarette smoker. He doesn’t smoke indoors (thankfully) but he does smoke about every other night outdoors. I don’t think he realizes that when he’s done smoking the smell sort of… lingers on him and his clothes. Last night after he was done he was in the kitchen for a bit cooking. I came in...

blindsight,

Smoking jackets are usually leather, aren’t they? To “look cool” and it’s mostly non-porous.

My history teacher in high school had one. He never smelled like cigarettes.

blindsight,

I still don’t understand why creating rumours about your character would be triggering for anyone.

How would a made up stories like “Borun caught a cheater at dice and string him up upside down hanging from the flag pole” or “Borun’s horse went lame, but instead of putting him down, he paid a farmer to take care of him for life” bring up trauma? Especially since you’re writing these yourself…

Or is the existence of rumours triggering somehow? In which case, maybe P&P RPGs aren’t an appropriate activity since a lot of adventures rely on piecing together rumours to identify what’s really going on.

blindsight,

That’s brilliant. And it only needs 6GB of video memory. I can actually run it with my low-mid end gaming build!

blindsight, (edited )

I didn’t notice any on mine, either, but I should try some dead pixel test images to be sure while it’s still in warranty.

Hopefully, I’m in the clear. I’ve only played a bit to run updates and test it works after unpacking since it’s going away until Christmas.

Edit: None on mine. I used a dead pixel test video to check. The black test was so black I thought it turned off… Obviously, in retrospect, lol.

blindsight,

I would assume it’s the last point; less sickness from airborne illnesses means more time and energy for learning.

blindsight,

Well, big flathead screwdrivers aren’t for screwing things in. Small ones have a place for decorative screws, like on light switch covers, but big flathead screws should never be used.

So big flathead screwdrivers are better as pry bars than as screwdrivers.

blindsight,

LitRPGs are like that, too.

Swing sword. Cast spell. Numbers go up. Defeat dragon. Complete quest. Numbers go up. Dungeon dive. Cool loot. Numbers go up.

I love them. I’ve read four this week.

blindsight, (edited )

Fuck phone cases and bad search. I just got the Sony Xperia 10 V. The whole Sony Line is just changing the number to 1, 5, or 10, and the Roman numeral from I to V (and growing).

Good luck finding anything. It literally took me hours (including advanced Google Fu) to find out that the style of case I want doesn’t exist for my model. (But the 10 IV has it.)

Is there a site that categorizes cases by exact model? I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard.

Finding room for carry-on baggage has become 'the Hunger Games' of air travel, analyst says (www.cbc.ca)

Airline industry insiders say passengers have become carried away with carry-on baggage, leading to costly delays. That’s prompting calls for changes to how airplanes charge for baggage, with some discount airlines like Sunwing and Spirit already beginning to flip the fee structure so passengers pay for the privilege of...

blindsight,

Right, but the point is to move the needle on the margin. There are a lot of people who always do carry on only just to avoid the fees. If, say, 20% of people are just avoiding fees, then that would likely solve the problem. It’s not like there are dozens of bags unable to be housed in overhead bins. On most flights, it’s none or just a few.

The point is also that there needs to be some excess unused capacity for efficiency to make it faster to embark and disembark. If people need to take a minute to hunt for a bin, it can hold up the entire process.

blindsight,

This one is a bit out there, but I feel like Backpack Battles is a series of self-generated puzzles.

It’s an autobattler where you shop between each round to buy items and bags, and items affect other items in specific positions around them. So, you’re constantly trying to react to what the shop is offering you to build a combo (and get balanced defenses), then rearrange your bag to try to maximize your item synergies.

It’s completely free to play in early access until its full release in April. And the global leaderboards are very active. Good luck getting to Master Rank, let alone Grandmaster! (I’ve plateaued in Diamond… I need to work on my early game.)

blindsight,

I need an old Kindle. It’s the only way to strip DRM from books so I can use a good TTS app instead of the Kindle app.

blindsight, (edited )

The Alldocube iPlay 50 Pro is the best tablet I could find for under $250CAD with 8GB ram, 128GB storage, microSD, and a good processor.

Edit: For software updates to the latest Android version, you can install LineageOS or any other GSI ROM.

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