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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • That’s a pretty good list. I have a few differences in how I look at lists like this, though.

    I generally lump major series together, unless there’s a real standout entry or a long series. So I agree with having just Star Trek 2 in it, but think Star Wars 4 and 5 should occupy 1 spot and include ROTJ. For cases like Terminator, where there are a ton of crap movies, I’d put the original and 2 in a single slot.

    There are a bunch of classic movies missing, too. Soylent Green, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet, Metropolis, etc. Personally, I’d have Dark City, The Last Starfighter, Short Circuit, maybe Iron Man, Black Panther, or Age of Ultron (some Marvel entry). A nod to anime should also be in there, even if it’s just Akira. Others I’d might have in there if I ever sat down to rank these things in order: Total Recall, The Running Man, The Lawnmower Man, Cube, THX 1138, The Fly, MiB, Mad Max, The Thing, Close Encounters

    Probably not making the list, but noteworthy conceptually: Minority Report, Johnny Mnemonic, Contact, Children of Men, Contact, Donnie Darko, Looper,

    If they want to include movies that were great within their times or some specific context, the original animated Transformers was a crazy, but noteworthy departure from the franchise’s previous media. Galaxy Quest and Space Balls aren’t philosophical masterpieces, but definitely high on my list.

    For kid friendly stuff, Batteries Not Included, Space Camp, Flight of the Navigator, and E.T.


  • Generally, if someone’s being a total asshole so severely that they have to be yeeted with several thousand other unaware bystanders, I expect to see a bunch of examples within the first… 2, maybe 3, links.

    If someone can point me to a concise list of examples (actual data), I find it more disturbing that an admin on another server can yeet my account because they make noise on a discord server.I mean, yes, federating is a feature, but why even offer the ability to enroll users? Maybe for a group of friends, or something, but just rando users is nothing but a liability to everyone involved.




  • I almost thought I had written your comment and completely forgot about it. No, I just almost made the exact comment and want that hour of my life back.

    If there was some over the top racist rant, I sure didn’t see it. And the admin pushing for the defederation sounds so bizarre. Bizarre is the best word I could come up with because “petty” makes me think it was like high school politics. This is closer to a grade school sandbox argument.

    The worst I saw was “defedfags” and it was used in a way that was meant to highlight how they never said anything offensive. Like saying, “If you thought what I said before was offensive, let’s see how you respond to something intended to be negative.”

    The crazy thing is that the decision is being made because the admin just liked a post. It’s not even because of the post content - which has nothing controversial and appeared maybe 8 times in my Lemmy/kbin feed yesterday.

    Editing to add that this is the article: https://kbin.social/search?q=wakeup+call





  • I’m sure it’s a fine service, if you want to use it regularly, but I just wanted 1 tiny thing. If they had a $1 for an obit or a page deal, sure. Instead, there’s this whole microcosm of bullshit where some are archived, others available, some omitted from public collections, some on different 3rd party sites, etc.

    The family paid for an obit. It wasn’t in the 1800s. The paper has been digitized. I should be able to go to the paper with the name, exact date, and city and find it. They literally say it doesn’t exist. Not that it’s on our archive site or our partner site, just nothing.

    I would have thrown a couple bucks to any of the sites for access, but no, I need to sign up for a subscription, give them all my details, get spam calls for the next 100 years, just no. Super frustrating.



  • I really like the all screen infotainment idea, but the implementation is always shitty. Part is because they still won’t fully commit to the strengths of the interface, and part is cost. Well, screens are much cheaper now. No need to settle for a 5 inch shit tier TN panel. I want a big, honkin, high contrast, ambient light modulated brightness screen with a minimal set of buttons to switch the interface between tasks.

    Personally, I HATE every dial system I’ve ever used and miss my old Prius’s touch screen. It had nice, big on-screen buttons and almost all functionality duplicated through the steering wheel. Instead of hitting a button 20 times or spinning a dial 2.24123 rotations to select the option I wanted, it was 2 taps. No rubberbanding around my intended selection or trying to compensate for whatever acceleration algorithm they used.

    Right now, I have a trackpad on the center console and I hate it. The acceleration is bizarre. It snaps the some elements, but seems to not like others. It miss clicks because I bump it or something partially rests on it. Every time I use it, I have to get a feel for where I’m touching it - am I off in a corner, on the edge, in the middle.

    Simply adding some dynamic buttons like a Streamdeck (little screens on each button) would solve many of the problems. Have the function and image change with the domain you’re customizing (Audio, AC, etc.). After that, allow more customization of the elements within each domain. Maybe some of them need to step up their steering wheel buttons game.

    There’s also the subtle muscle memory advantage to screens. Screen of buttons, you have to still look at the target, reach to the target, and activate the switch. In the case of dials, you have to performs a different action to undo an error. You never get to repeat the proper initial action - turning to the right selection based on feedback of success. With touch controls, most errors either resolve by repeating the motion you intended correctly, or moving back a screen/reverting an element and repeating the intended motion.

    I think many people assume that the tactile feedback of running your fingers over the buttons matters. In reality, I don’t see many people do that. The feedback of a selection or click is nice, but by now everyone’s had gummy keyboards, cheap electronics, and a bunch of different button-covered devices. That click confirmation isn’t anywhere near as reliable as audio cues. Hell, there can be 10 different types of buttons in the car with varying resistances and actuation distances.

    Oh, and I’d like to se a study testing if the presence of constant, slow animations are less distracting that static images for consoles. I think a large part of the distraction is how sudden things can change on a screen. Like loading the next music track changes the time marker, the album art, etc. It you become accustomed to perceiving motion in that location, it may reduce the urge to orient to sudden changes.

    Anyhoo, I’m rambling. Sleepy time for me.


  • True. They created their own problem by trying to up each other’s lumens claims over and over to the point where decent flashlights are claimed to have 5.6 million lumens and included 25000mAh 18650s.

    Most of the $5+ flashlights are probably fine for most people’s needs. I have several and they’ve been fine for me. Different models, similar modes, similar brightness, and all fine for walking the dog or if the power goes out. Now, if I were relying on them for survival, I might think twice. All have held up fine, including the 12 year old one from dealextreme (pre-alibaba). But, since I don’t know if people are asking for recommendations where spec accuracy matters, I’m hesitant to recommend them to random people on the internet.

    (I had to check, just for fun, and there are 18650 batteries listed as 19900mAh. Pretty impressive, since Panasonic is capped out at 3500-3600.)


  • Yeah, it really caught me off guard the first time I used the site. It was during one of those special celebration discount days where they had the audacity to mark items as literally $0.01 when basically nothing was that price.

    For 3D printer filament, which is usually bought in 1kg/2.2lb spools, most places list a 2m sample or a 250g spool to game the search. And my other favorite is the whack-a-mole shipping setup where on variation might be free shipping, but choose a different color and the shipping jumps to $300+.

    With Amazon, I’m seeing a ton more overpriced items discounted to still higher priced than their competition. If you look at their deals pages, you can find things like portable monitors for $70 (down from $150), but checking that category shows the same monitor (same specs under a different name) for $60.

    Here’s as close as I can find right now, since all the lightning deals are ending for the day. There’s a USB laptop docking station that’s “discounted” from $139 to $70. There isn’t an exact match (there usually is), but similar products go for ~$60-$70 (2 HDMI, 4+ USB3 ports, 100W PD, ethernet). What’s funnier is that the specific company’s Amazon site has at least 4 identical docks at slightly different prices.


  • I just tried it again on desktop and it worked, but the reason was that I downloaded an extension a while ago and forgot about it. When I disabled the extension, it stopped working.

    There used to be a way to enable installing any extension on mobile FFx Dev, but I’m not sure if that still works. The desktop extension just changes the user agent string, so that might be another route to enabling it.



  • I use AliExpress for electrical parts (except anything with memory), 3D printer parts, and small crap I don’t mind waiting for, but never anything I would be angry about if it never arrived. Also, nothing I consume or wear or need for safety, and I’m wary of anything that’s supposed to be plugged into the wall for long periods of time unattended.

    I wouldn’t say I’ve been surprised, but my expectations are low. It’s all cheap stuff, but as long as you’re not needing the stuff you buy, it’s fine. Dollar store quality with the scent of plastic and cigarettes.

    That being said, beware of scams. The one that seems acceptable to them is to list one cheap part for the listing, along with variations of the full device. That way it looks like the lowest price in search results, but when you click it, the selected variation is the cheap part. Like, you’ll search for “pliers set” and see a listing for $1, compared to others around $15. When you select it, the product page will have a carrying case for $1 and the various pliers for twice as much as the competition. What’s better is that the case will be selected automatically, not the thing in the picture you clicked on or the picture you see first in the product pages’ gallery.

    There are also scam stores that pop up with super low prices compared to others on the site can disappear overnight and the cancellation/refund process is a super pain. Contact customer service once and just submit a claim with your CC company. Their refund process will try to keep telling you to wait for another week, and that includes the reps you get on chat. If you’re suspicious and still order, always follow the shipping info. They will estimate a reasonable delivery date, you’ll get a shipping notification, but it will sit in limbo. The shipping folks are separate from the scammers, so if you see the package actually move towards a shipping center, you’re in the clear. If it says they received shipping information for over a week, you got screwed.

    Ignore flash drives/SSDs, batteries, and assume any flashlights are 1/100th the brightness claimed (literally). Oh, and watch shipping costs. Something with free shipping can be 10x the price of the product if you add a second one to your cart.



  • Since the Snoopocalypse I’ve been using it MUCH more. I’m as surprised as anyone, but without Reddit, Google is complete hot garbage. I used to use Google 95% of the time and didn’t realize how many times I gave up and added “reddit” in the query. It’s unusable.

    Out of principle, I’ve made SearXNG my default, but I don’t shun Bing at all now. I occasionally use DDG, but anything relatively technical just doesn’t come up much there.


  • Non-prude American here. My hypothesis is that younger-ish folks are raised paranoid of their every word being recorded and played back to their parents. There’s a weird tone to the under 25s that feels like every word had to go through legal.

    Perfect example: Oh my gosh!

    Who the fuck says, “Gosh?” I think I might have heard 1 grandparent say it back in the early 90s. It’s, “Oh my god!” There’s punctuation to the word. Gosh sounds like you’re trying to whisper so your clergy doesn’t hear you being naughty.

    So, yeah, we hate those fucking cunts, too.


  • If the surface is flat enough, start with a scraper. One of those single edged replaceable blade deals. That’ll quickly take off 90%, if not all of it. If the blade gets sticky and you want to made another pass, wipe it off with some oil (basically any, even olive oil). Then go for the other suggestions, like rubbing the sticker with oil and alcohol.

    This works much quicker than just oil and alcohol, BUT the surface has to be flat. If it isn’t flat, it has to be non-razor-blade-damage-vulnerable material.