qupada @ qupada @fedia.io

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11 mo. ago

Just this past Friday I had a pile of boxes I had to scan barcodes on. Two barcodes per box.

The issue was the form did nothing when you pressed enter, and required tab to get from the first field to the second (a 2nd tab would start a new row, so it was at least equipped for multiple entries).

Most barcode scanners, if you're unfamiliar, insert a linefeed character (ASCII 0x0A) after each successful scan.

It took me an unbearably long time to read through the 250 page user guide / programming manual for our barcode scanner to figure out how to change this to tab (0x09). It required no fewer than SIX barcodes to be scanned; enter programming mode / modify suffix / 0 / 9 / validate / save, which were spread across three pages of the manual (fortunately it had links, because also >100 pages apart).

It was worth it in the end, but it would have taken 5 minutes for them to code it to allow enter to switch between fields. This workflow is the only thing this site does, it's unreasonable to expect people wouldn't be using a barcode scanner.

When I got my new phone recently, I asked of it what is by a wide margin my most common voice task; setting a timer for something I was cooking.

It presented a UI suggesting it had understood the assignment, but utterly failed to actually set the timer.

It was at that point I reverted to Assistant and forgot it existed.

This feels par for the course though; a bunch of effort spent on a few "hard" tasks to make it seem impressive, but zero on maintaining existing functionality that normal people actually use on a regular basis.

The scientific distinction is unlike a "bivalve" (think clams, mussels, pipi, tuatua, scallops), paua (which are gastropods, like land snails) only have one side to their shell.

They've missed a couple of times over the years.

From LTO 1 to 9, the capacities (TB) were 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.5, 2.5, 6, 12, 18. LTO 6 also rather let the side down there.

Apparently though LTO 10 is going to get things back on track? I've seen claims it will achieve 36TB, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The real problem is the environmental requirements for LTO 9 and newer have become too strict. The longevity is still (supposedly) fine, but the tapes are much more sensitive to temperature and humidity fluctuations when in use.

Brand new tapes have to be brought into the environment where they'll be written for 36-48 hours to acclimatise before being used, and then have a 60-90 minute "calibration" in the drive before they can be written to.

Honestly, it could put the use of the newer types of tapes entirely out of the reach of many.

I can't confirm or deny Ireland as the other poster says, but Iceland is a LHD country so the photo would have to be flipped if it was.

The ones in Akureyri are also more much more distinctively hearts, I would have said: https://i.imgur.com/ZHHvb3b.jpeg

The only one I got close on was I never had a chequebook of my own, but did on a couple of occasions use bank cheques for mail-ordered things.

Presuming we're counting that, big fat goose egg.

Rubbish trucks are a good example of this, often being drivable from either side (at least where I am). That allows the driver to better see their colleagues and bins on the roadside while driving in the suburbs, but switch to the regular position for driving to and from a landfill site.

Assuming you're not talking about this article's 7.68TB drive and not the mentioned 61.44TB one, actually far less than you'd think.

Solidigm's equivalent (https://www.solidigm.com/products/data-center/d7/ps1010.html) goes for between $1000 and $1500 USD for the same 7.68TB capacity: https://www.serversupply.com/SSD/NVMe/7.68TB/SOLIDIGM/SB5PH27X076T001_394195.htm

(And performs similarly, 14.5GB/s R / 10GB/s W, vs 14.6/11 for the one in the article).

Reticulated gas is charged by the kWh here in New Zealand. The meter may well be calibrated in m³ (I don't have gas at home, so I don't know for sure) but all pricing is energy, not volume.

For bonus points, if instead you buy your gas in cylinders - a pair of 45kg (~100lb) cylinders is a common installation for houses without piped gas - those are sold simply by the unit. The best conversion for that I can find is one energy retailer describing one 45kg cylinder as 2200MJ (611kWh).

I expect this is one of those things that is overall horribly inconsistent depending on where you live.

Fully committing to the bit, their cafe sells penis-shaped waffles: https://www.phallus.is/phallic-cafe

Comparing the amount of noise my laptop's CPU fans make between the two of them when doing moderately intensive tasks like screen sharing a 4K display, Zoom is measurably worse.

Possibly the one time that Microsoft's inexplicable inability to make their own software run well on their own OS has somehow not manifested.

Don't get me wrong, it is still death-by-a-thousand-cuts terrible, but the most current iteration of Teams is not the worst in its field... at this one specific thing.

As people have said, already happening:

https://www.dmarge.com/cars/tesla-owners-rebrand-backlash

And it's not fooling anyone

Or maybe?

https://i.imgur.com/dK1rp.jpeg

"Binging with Babish" makes gourmet bachelor chow (beef bourguignon):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nowFI0WRpO0

Even for devices that will stand the test of time on their own, they're still being unnecessarily modified by the addition of extra nonsense to support AI boondoggles.

I was talking to our company's account manager from one major PC manufacturer, he agreed that a generation of laptops with a likely-to-be-useless-in-future Copilot button permanently emblazoned on their keyboard will really date this era.

The computers themselves will be fine - they have some extraneous hardware but that doesn't really detract from their usability - but there's a better than even chance that logo will exist as a reminder long after memories of what it was supposedly for begin to fade.

Yes, but you shouldn't.

After a reboot, a lot of phones can only use the device's default keyboard app for entering the unlock pin/password.

If you've removed or disabled it, you can get into a situation where you have no keyboard at all, and a delightful chicken-and-egg situation of needing a keyboard you don't have until after unlocking the device to enter the code to unlock the device.

(A USB keyboard will let you escape this, for what that's worth)

You might have to consider buying used.

Even older HP printers are fine (and I know people love to shit on them, but they too used to be perfectly safe and reasonable choices). More or less the safe/unsafe divide coincides with the switch from printers with 2x16 character displays to ones with full colour screens.

I've got a 2012-designed (but mine is 2017-built) HP Colour Laserjet CP5225dn, it has none of the modern lock-in shenanigans.

Just gotta find one that's new enough that consumables are still readily available (fortunately this usually isn't too difficult), and in good physical condition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbhV0TP3jco

I made this joke to people who work for AMD. I was a bit shocked that it hadn't occurred to them :D

Funny how if you don't cram 10,000 chickens into tiny cages all stacked on top of one another...