[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the excerpt.

a so-called CNC machine

Really? Framing it "so-called" makes it sound esoteric and rare, while in fact it's an utterly common machine tool used in many industries to create ... pretty much anything (eg. casting dies for Lego bricks). I wish they'd tone down the alarmism (unless they know it's ordered by "Ivan's Shell Mfg. Co").

[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

This is such a strange phenomenon to me. In all the countries I've lived in, all but a few select stores have a dongle on each cart that takes a coin to unlock it from the chain of other carts. It's perhaps the cost of a back of toilet paper, but that seems to be sufficient for it to be exceedingly rare to see an abandoned cart. One can only imagine that any such carts are quick prey for enterprising teens looking for a quick boost to their candy fund.

[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oups, I misremembered: the game is called Core War. In it, MARS ("Memory Array Redcode Simulator") is the name of a virtual machine that executes Redcode instructions. As a player, you write small programs ("warriors") to be loaded on the virtual machine where they try to prevail while klling off (overwriting) opponent programs.

[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I thought this would be more like MARS, but turns out to be bare-metal ~~MARS~~ Core War where I'm the scheduler. I'm not saying it a terrible experience, but I am grateful that my day job in IT is more higher-level.

[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

They would likely perform worse. If ("if", ha) those fans are not in perfect sync, they're going to obstruct airflow. Also, consider that each fan introduces both audible noise and perturbations in the airflow which in turn, also will cause noise.

Incidentally, I have (almost) that very same case, an Antec P182. Mine has a super-quiet PSU fan, and a ginormous heat pipe cpu cooler (HR-1 if you're curious) with one fan ... and that is plenty.

[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

What are you reading? Here are a couple of novels that I've grown quite fond of. Common to all of them are that they are freely (and legally) available online; I am not in any way affiliated with them; and they strongly feature female lead characters.

  • Worm - An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one. [...] Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons. (Warning: this is longer than LotR and has a wi(l)der array of superpowers than Marvel.)
  • Ra - Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.
  • Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, four teenagers defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security's attacks on the Bill of Rights. (Note: This is a contemporary analogue to Orwell's 1984.)
[-] noughtnaut@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Android is, in my opinion, the "best of what's currently available." Mind you, this does not imply that it is "good".

I dearly miss PalmOS and the Tungsten and Treo product lines, as well as the Psion brand. Those terrific PDA's had features that modern phones still lack. Conversely, I think modern phones come with a plethora of features that aren't really positive. But then, I'm not really a fan of the whole style where you can barely touch a device anywhere without operating it in some way. This is just my personal opinion.

The #1 reason why I would never choose Apple's products is that, while they excel at what you're supposed to use them for, their platform is way too locked down for my taste. As a device owner, I want the ability to customise stuff and install (and remove!) whatever the hell I want (including ads!), and Android delivers that in far greater measure than Apple.

noughtnaut

joined 1 year ago