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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I wonder if someone could set up some form of tunneling through much more mundane traffic, perhaps even entirely over a legitimate encrypted service through a regular browser interface (like the browser interface for services like Discord or slack or MS Teams or FB Messenger or Zoom or Google Chat/Meet) where you can just literally chat with a bot you’ve set up, and instruct the bot to do things on its end, and then forward the results through file sending in that service. From the outside it should look like encrypted chat with a popular service over that https connection.




  • Ok so most monitors sold today support DDC/CI controls for at least brightness, and some support controlling color profiles over the DDC/CI interface.

    If you get some kind of external ambient light sensor and plug it into a USB port, you might be able to configure a script that controls the brightness of the monitor based on ambient light, without buying a new monitor.


  • Sometimes the identity of the messenger is important.

    Twitter was super easy to set up with the API to periodically tweet the output of some automated script: a weather forecast, a public safety alert, an air quality alert, a traffic advisory, a sports score, a news headline, etc.

    These are the types of messages that you’d want to subscribe to the actual identity, and maybe even be able to forward to others (aka retweeting) without compromising the identity verification inherent in the system.

    Twitter was an important service, and that’s why there are so many contenders trying to replace at least part of the experience.





  • Let’s not pretend like Blizz or Bethesda will see the end of this decade anyway.

    So if you’re management, you face a choice: try to dump everyone now in a reorganization on a moment’s notice, while it’s still Biden’s NLRB, or negotiate a CBA that probably bakes in substantial severance and job protections that will be expensive when they do try to reorganize for business reasons?

    If it’s true that the workers were likely to get dumped within the decade, then negotiating protections now actually protects them, or forces management to pay a high cost.





  • this seems really dangerous for anyone who might get stranded.

    I’d take a step back and say no, this isn’t actually as bad as some of the comments seem to suggest.

    The vast, vast majority of building emergencies are safe to shelter in place. Modern building codes generally prevent fires from spreading too far, and isolate smoke to a specific place in the building.

    Then, for certain types of catastrophic disasters, being able bodied doesn’t actually help, as people can still get stuck and need rescue from firefighters anyway.

    You need some kind of disaster Goldilocks zone where things are bad enough to where quick evacuation is helpful and things aren’t so bad that evacuation isn’t feasible, before it starts making a difference.

    And in those situations, many buildings do have evacuation chairs in the stairwells. And stronger people can assist carrying down the stairs, too. There are a lot of variations on two-person or single person carries that depend on exactly what mobility limitation there is. If you live or work with or around people with mobility issues, it’s worth looking them up, maybe taking a first aid/survival class or something.




  • reaching those limits requires more manpower in creating assets to populate these larger worlds

    Yeah, when a character design consisted of like 30 sprites of 32x32 pixel resolution, that could basically be done by an artist in a day. Then the “physics” of game play could be simply defined in a two dimensional space.

    Going to 3D, with different models of clothing, armor, weapons, hair, requires a lot more conscious artistic choices within a broad but consistent visual design language. Each time resolution or polygon count or frame rate or hit box number go up, the complexity of the visual design, gameplay design, etc. go up accordingly.

    Physical realism in games increases game development cost exponentially with each generation in tech. A lot of studios simply stepped off of that rat race and went towards cartoony visuals and physics that don’t even pretend to be realistic.


  • In addition to the stone/clay based works that you might be thinking of, I find certain metalworking sculptures to be interesting, too. Alexander Calder made a bunch of red steel sculptures, almost architectural art, in addition to things like dynamic mobiles. Louise Bourgeois’s “Maman” is an interesting one, too.

    There are small metal sculptures, too. From little trinkets made from wire, to welded metal parts, to elaborate chandeliers, these all involve artistic creativity in manipulating materials in a three dimensional space, and it’s a skillset that I admire and respect (and do not have any, myself).