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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NI
Posts
6
Comments
35
Joined
2 yr. ago
  • Yesterday, for the first time, I got google search results that were entirely useless. I don't remember what I searched, but it was a relatively simple question and I was kind of in a hurry. The only results I got were video thumbnails and sponsored products... Also presented as thumbnails. Barely any text anywhere to tell me what the thumbnails were supposed to be. They even removed the choices across the top so I couldn't select "all".

    It's been getting worse for years, but that was the last straw for me. I don't want to search the web on "large thumbnails", I want "detail view". Sometimes I'm searching for a product, but mostly I need information in the form of text written by a real human. If a search engine can't give me that, then it's not useful anymore.

    Really frustrating. I guess I better get around to using duckduckgo everywhere.

  • Frisbee golf. It's cheap, fun but challenging, and outdoors. Worst case scenario, you go on a long walk and bump into some interesting people. If you're in a medium sized city or larger, there is probably a course and league near you.

    The culture is generally very polite and fun to be around. Lots of harmless stoners and 30yo bearded people with beers in hand. In the south there is starting to be some influence from megachurches using it as an enticement, so I'm not sure if it's "cleaned up" a little more down there.

  • Thanks for the suggestion. I tried spacerpg4 but it hasn't held my attention as much as I hoped.

    I did find an android port of star control 2, and that is some good stuff. Really scratched the 90 gaming itch too.

  • No shade on "how it's made", it's one of my favorite shows. But I think a LLM could probably write most of the narration. They primarily describe what is happening on screen. You might have to train one special to have information on industrial and manufacturing processes.

  • Oh this one is good. I have like 12 hours stuck in an empty community college lounge today. I found an APK for Android and I've been playing for a solid 4 hours. It's a lot of fun even just gathering resources and upgrading the flagship.

    How do I find tech upgrades? My lander needs some environmental resistance for sure.

  • I think certain places (reddit?) Have been using algorithms to find and stamp out bots/vote manipulation for quite a while. I remember at least one major wave of bans for smurfed accounts participating in manipulation.

  • You ever used a Deutsch Weatherpak connector? We use them on mobile equipment. They have a spring loaded face seal then a solid lever lock that is plastic but substantial enough that it's usable. They're pretty good wire to wire connectors. I'll take anything with a twist lock though, BNC etc.

  • Agreed. I have more hours in DCSS than any other game.

    I don't think it's totally fair to call it ugly either. It's a masterpiece of efficiency. The ASCII looks messy to some people, but after a while you just see right through it; purple Y = catlobe gtfo etc. Plus the upside is that it's extremely clear at a glance what is going on because you don't have complicated sprites everywhere. And the handmade vaults that get rolled into the procgen are often really nice looking and give the world a lot of character.

  • Totally get it. My SD card got corrupted in a power outage almost a year ago and I never got around to reflashing it. To many other irons in the fire.

    I must say, it was an impressively reliable setup, uptime was effectively limited by power outages. Their image is basically Raspbian which is basically debian, but I was still impressed that the service was so stable.

  • The only problem there is that the count also determines how federal money is distributed. Undocumented/illegal immigrants still use interstates and water mains and disaster money and national parks and federal buildings. Unless we want funding cut, we still have to count them.

    *Edit: I'm embarrassed that I got all that written before 3/5 hit me. "The only problem" 😬

  • Oh shit, I never even thought about that. It's another level of insidious. 1. Be republican 2. Get a huge prison in your district "for the jobs", 3. Get more positions guaranteed to be republican, since the voters in your district still are. Would work for a democrat too, they don't care about criminal justice reform either :(

    Might work slightly better for republicans because they can work the identity politics angle more easily.

  • OldWeb @lemmy.ml
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    Falstad physic simulation applets

    This site is a huge collection of simulation applets for analog circuit, filters, acoustics, general harmonic stuff, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, linear algebra, and so on.

    The analog circuit simulator in particular is very feature rich. I have used it to design some synth circuits in lieu of/addition to breadboarding.

    Also try the acoustics ones, especially the ripple tank. The examples drop down has a bunch of cool setups like speaker designs, mirrors, lenses, mechanical filters(!), and can even simulate temperature (impedance) gradients.

    OldWeb @lemmy.ml
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    Music From Outer Space

    This one is Ray Wilson's DIY synthesizer website.

    I first saw him on youtube, screwing around with an echo rockit noise box. I was hypnotized.

    I found his site and was hooked. I spent the next couple years making synthesizer modules at a manic pace.

    The magical thing about Ray's site is is his teaching style. He gives the circuit schematics, but also explanations of how/why they work in language that is pretty easy to understand. He really approaches electronics from a practical standpoint rather than what you'd get in an intro class somewhere. This website was my introduction to electronics, and it can get you far when it comes to understanding analog design and signal processing.

    You can really get a feel for Ray's personality from his writing on the site. He died in 2016, and I weirdly get a little choked up when I look at that e

    OldWeb @lemmy.ml
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    Gene Slover's Navy page

    This is the website of Gene Slover (now deceased). He was a firecontrolman in the navy back in the day. Now I don't care about the navy, nor do I really care about Gene. What I do care about is mechanical computers.

    Firecontrolman in this context is the dude who operated the Mk 1 fire control computer on navy ships. Gene's website is significant to me because it has a massive amount of information on the design and operation of that computer.

    It's wild to me that information this detailed is out there, cataloged by someone who actually operated the system.

    Here's a short writeup that I posted elsewhere to explain why I think the computer is so cool:

    The mark 1 fire control computer is an entirely mechanical computer that reads in the speed of the ship in water, the wind direction and speed, the pitch and roll from waves, the ballistic characteristics of the guns all the way down to how worn in the barrels were, and so on. Then a gun director feeds it the bearing, elevation,

    OldWeb @lemmy.ml
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    Project Rho's Nomography page

    This section of the Project Rho site is one that I have actually used for real projects in the past. The section gives guidelines for creating nomograms, or alignment charts.

    Nomograms are graphical representations of a math equation. For a basic 3 variable equation, given 2 of the variables, you simply lay a straight edge across the chart to read the answer from the 3rd scale.

    The specific page I linked is a cheatsheet of "standard forms". If you can manipulate your equation into one of these forms, then making it into a nomogram is trivial.

    This page is one of very few resources online that will take you step by step through building a nomogram. The intended purpose of the page is to be a resource for board game designers, but I have found it useful in creating time/distance/speed nomograms, various engineering calculations, and calculators for film photography and darkroom printing.

    Even if you aren't a math nerd, I hope you find the

    What is this thing? @lemmy.ml
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    Metal tag buried in my garden?

    I found this buried in my garden. It’s steel, with some flecks of galvanization still visible here and there. Definitely stamped from sheet stock originally, the ring is welded, and it’s especially interesting to me that the right “foot” of the little “table” cutout is narrower than the left one, as if it’s keyed to connect to something in a single direction.

    Ideas so far:

    • livestock tag (we live near ooold stockyards)
    • cremains tag (spooky)
    • key fob/id (but why the welded ring?)

    Does anyone know what it really is?

    Arachnology @mander.xyz
    nickajeglin @lemmy.one

    What's the best food for an audacious jumping spider?

    I have a large terrarium where I grow various types of moss. I keep springtails in there to handle any mold that pops up, but some creature (fungus gnat larvae?) was killing off the springtails. So I captured a jumping spider, thinking it would gobble up the fruit flies/larvae. The fungus gnats have disappeared, so it seems like the spider might have done the job, but now I'm worried about it getting hungry.

    I gave it a mayfly a couple days ago, and that evening it was sitting in the corner of the terrarium like a toddler with a juice box, so it obviously likes those. Are there any specific things that are good to feed it, or can I give it anything that I catch that isn't predatory? For example, would a "regular" sized moth be dangerous? It'd be like 2-3x the size of the spider.