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370
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • What a horrible day to have genitals.

  • My work forgot to remove game mode and a bunch of the built-in advertisement stuff from the workstation images they were using a while back, and I work for state government.

  • I can't imagine that still won't violate both store policies.

  • Issues with 196 aside, those Hexbear folks sure are a contentious people.

  • Embedded as the level music for a custom Duke Nukem 3D map.

  • The last good turn-based game I played was... oh wait, D:OS2. Huh.

  • That too!

    Still beats Samsung's default keyboard on Android devices though. shudder

  • Would you accept "it's the actual devil but also it's buggy"?

  • Talk to your ISP about getting a modem only, without a built-in router, then purchase a separate router of your own. All-in-one modem/router combos are generally kind of crap anyway, and one that your ISP can control directly is obviously a problem on top of that. I get why they'd do that: most users don't know a damn thing about how to properly set up their network, and being able to change settings without walking the users through it would simplify things. Still crap, but I get why.

    Even if you have to buy your own modem, definitely go for a modem-only device and a separate router. Personally I go the extra length of having a modem, a separate wired-only router, and a separate wireless access point for wifi. Combo devices have a habit of not managing memory well and needing to be reset more often.

  • Pretty sure this is a bug. Gboard can freak out after an update and stop working. Sometimes you need to reinstall Gboard, sometimes switching your language to English makes it work again, sometimes it's the TV freaking out over some USB device that needs to be unplugged and replugged.

  • Some builds can get really tetchy about laptop hardware, but that's almost always older hardware.

    Though I will say it took entirely too long for most builds to have a "change what closing the lid" does menu option rather than making you modify a .conf file.

    And don't get me started on resolution switching when hot swapping display inputs.

  • Imagine becoming a fed because you want to uphold the law and chase down bad guys, figuring you're going to be tracking down drug dealers and human traffickers and mafia goons, and instead you get tasked with running down Karen and Cletus who decided to firebomb a house based on something they read on RealTruthPatriotNewsDaily-dot-net.

  • I think there was a brief time with algorithmic feeds were actually good, and I remember getting quite a few recommendations from news aggregators and the like which actually were of interest to me, but those days are long gone. These days... no.

    Odd example here, but bear with me: I have a separate Twitter account just for following ahem adult content. Even before Elno bought them out the "For You" section was completely nonsensical. I followed nothing but adult artists and performers showing T&A, and every 8th entry in my "For You" feed was Sports or Politics or rage-bait in general. It wasn't what I wanted, it was what Twitter wanted me to want.

  • I have half a mind to start releasing cracks just so there’s 1 cracker who isn’t a fucking bigot.

    I have had this exact thought, but that would undoubtedly eat up what little free time I have these days. I don't have as much of it as I used to.

  • HD DVD was 15/30 gig versus Blu-Ray being 25/50 gig storage, yeah. For mainstream use that was far more important, so that played a large part in why it won, though a lot of it was also Sony making the PS3 Blu-Ray-based and giving adoption rates a huge boost as a result. In terms of actual video codec support though the two were identical: H.262 MPEG-2, H.264 AVC, and VC-1.

    As for how much content you could store on a CD, there were a lot of video resolutions supported in between 240p and HD, and H.264 can compress video quite a bit while still looking decent. For the die-hard video enthusiast, not much of a draw. For someone wanting to distribute stuff on the cheap, especially in poorer areas and "emerging markets" where SVCD players were (at the time) still commonly sold? Huge draw.

    EDIT: Also of minor note was that the video (but not audio) formats from previous CD-based formats were completely compatible with the HD DVD standard, meaning in a pinch someone could just take the existing video from an SVCD/CVD release and drop it into a HD DVD. Of course why one would do that is a valid question, but nonetheless the standard was set up to allow it. For whatever reason.

  • Right now the biggest barrier for me is the interface. Too many instances favor this very spread out, low information density, optimized for mobile (but not really) look, and group information in ways that are irksome. A certain amount can be fixed by user styles, but some functionality can't, like on kbin when I click on reply notifications and am not actually taken to the context of my reply because the comments have split across multiple pages even though I've set my preferences to infinite scroll. If I'm on another instance, clicking context gives me... well, not the context of my comments, just the damn comment and a series of "load parent comment" links to click. It's, well, irksome.

    Most of my gripes aren't insurmountable, but that doesn't change the fact that right now every instance is a little janky to use.

  • Funnily enough the format war is why I know about it, since I decided to do a good long look into the pros and cons of each format, especially in terms of backwards compatibility and format support. HD DVD actually had an advantage in that regard: Blu-Ray only supports 480p and up, whereas HD DVD mandated support for damn near every resolution used by an existing disc-based format (VCD, SVCD) from 240p up. HD DVD players were also supposed to support content burned to CDs as well, meaning you could fit a fair chunk of lower resolution highly compressed HD DVD content on a CD and have it play in any HD DVD player, with subtitles and the like even.

    Not really that relevant now obviously, but at the time I was kinda bummed that HD DVD didn't win the format war.

  • I trust Oracle... to find a way to charge me an arm and a leg and a spleen for basic functionality.

  • Combs can carry a show so hard. Imagine if they'd actually gotten to that 5th season of Enterprise with Shran as a main cast member. The show might still be on the air.

  • Yeah, there were even efforts to make factory-pressed "BD9" BluRay-on-DVD discs a mass produced cheaper alternative when BluRay was being launched, though it never actually went anywhere. They kept the format though just because it made sense to give people a way to make home media without having to spend an arm and a leg on blank discs.

    That said, the "requirement" for players to support BD5/BD9 has been dropped as of a few years ago, not that all of them did in the first place. Most players still support it, but you can't count on it.