derrickoswald

joined 2 years ago
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What architectural style would you like to see come back? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

There's some good Art Deco in Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley

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The Terapixel Panorama - of the Battle of Murten (terapixelpanorama.ch)
submitted 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) by derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works to c/internetisawesome@sh.itjust.works
0 comments fedilink
 

On 22 June 2025, the anniversary of the Battle of Murten fought in 1476, the EPFL releases an immersive experience terra-pixel digital twin of a 10m x 100m oil on canvas panorama, painted in 1893 ... https://terapixelpanorama.ch/

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Tails is now shit. (sh.itjust.works)
 

I just tried to install tails on a thumb drive - which I've done before - and I have to say the experience has degraded substantially. As background, I'm not a novice. Getting an image onto a thumb drive is not the issue. Booting into tails though is seriously crippled. The boot sequence is seriously broken, and I''d be surprised if any journalists can make tails work. The blue screen of nothing: Activities, Applications, Places is non-responsive with any keyboard, or any mouse (wired, bluetooth, or radio), or keyboard I tried. WTF is wrong with the latest Tails releases?

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What's the likelihood that Elon Musk is defenestrated, like Russian oligarchs, in the next few months? (sh.itjust.works)
 

The U.S. slide into dictatorship, with close ties to Russia, implies a learning curve that should align with events there. When some oligarch falls out of favor with Putin, they somehow commit suicide (see for example the fairly long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_Russia-related_deaths_since_2022), including some who shot themselves five times in the chest. Trump taking advice from Putin is likely to lead to even stranger deaths than Jeffrey Epstein's.

Any thoughts or predictions?

Is there a limit on presidential pardons in the US? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Theoretically, it seems second degree murder can be subject to a pardon... https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-two-police-officers-convicted-murder-black-man-washington-2025-01-23

From the office of the pardon attorney: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-donald-j-trump-2025-present

January 22, 2025 - 2 Pardons

NAME and WARRANT		DISTRICT		SENTENCED							OFFENSE
Terence Dale Sutton, Jr.	District of Columbia	66 months imprisonment; three years supervised release	Murder in second degree; conspiracy; obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting
Andrew Zabavsky			District of Columbia	48 months imprisonment; three years supervised release	Conspiracy; obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting
What is the smallest hill you would die on? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

You've obviously never opened a document (with tabs) where your IDE setting doesn't match what the author used. It looks like shit. Spaces are never, ever, misinterpreted. Tabs are. If your experience in viewing a document depends on a setting that the author had in their IDE, then it is a failure. This is why .PDF files are so ubiquitous, it doesn't matter if you created it in Microsoft Word with a uniform tab setting, or TEX in a console, it looks the same to the reader. If you cannot guarantee that the reader sees your source files as you see them, then you have failed. Full stop. Tabs should be cast into the dust bin as an archaic pre-optimization that failed in the real world.

What is the smallest hill you would die on? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Code indentation should never use tabs, only spaces.

Manitoba repatriating 500MW of baseload power — not renewing export contract to Minnesota expiring next month in c/news@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My concern is that this will prolong the life of fossil fuel generation in Minnesota (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Minnesota) which is twice as much as all other generation sources combined (8662MW vs. 4453.3MW). So, it's hurting the environment to assert sovereignty - which is probably not what the average Canadian wants.

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Manitoba repatriating 500MW of baseload power — not renewing export contract to Minnesota expiring next month (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works to c/news@lemmy.world
4 comments fedilink
 

Power will be used within Canada instead, with first 50MW to Nunavut, and opening negotiations for an east-west power corridor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5xxi-MqWFA

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Google Photos does OCR on handwriting (sh.itjust.works)
 

Just so you know. Maybe I'm late to the party.

I take pictures of letters that I write in longhand (yeah, I do that, I'm old, and weird) just so I don't repeat myself in subsequent letters.

Yesterday, I searched in Google Photos on a word in the text of a letter, and it worked!.

So, I surmise that Google is using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to index pictures of handwritten text and using that in it's search algorithm(s). I assume it has been going on a while since it found something I wrote months ago.

Don't assume that using an image protects your content from our tech overlords.

Image credit https://unsplash.com/@jbcalligraphy52.

What scientific fact blows your mind the most? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

OK, it's really a mathematics equivalence, rather than a scientific fact, but Euler's Identity:

e^iπ^ + 1 = 0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity

it shows a profound connection between the most fundamental numbers in mathematics.

Texas porn site age verification law goes before the Supreme Court. Here’s what’s at stake in c/politics@sh.itjust.works
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ha, ha, ha.

The shit hits the fan when identity needs to be tied to internet access.

Actually, who does keep the data that Joe Smith (birthday 4.4.2004, social insurance #677-63663-6663, currently residing at 24 Melgrath Court, Austin, Texas) accessed Pornhub on January 15, 2025 for three hours?

How is it possible that teenagers with lots of time on their hands won't find a way to bypass this censorship?

Is it not a possibility that people seeking a VPN to bypass this porn-wall will download a sketchy .EXE and compromise their whole system and give up their bank account details to some schmuck in China?

Who never thought this through (Ken Paxton)?

SEC sues Elon Musk, alleging failure to properly disclose Twitter ownership in c/politics@sh.itjust.works
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

These disclosure rules are pretty much iron-clad. If Musk didn't disclose a 5% stake in Twitter for more than 10 days after the reporting period threshold, that's illegal. Again, it seems one law applies to the billionaires and another law applies to everyone else. If he gets out of jail free, like Trump did with the felony convictions, the US legal system will be the laughing stock of the free world and nobody will take US law seriously.

GNU Radio LoRa PHY level receiver & transmitter in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Here is a relatively short presentation: https://www.youtube.com/live/3us83qvzopM and the slides.

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GNU Radio LoRa PHY level receiver & transmitter (sh.itjust.works)
 

Research results on reverse engineering of the LoRa protocol and an implementation in GNU Radio. An open source LoRa PHY layer project provides access to the LoRa protocol for researchers and hobbyists.

What do you secretly judge people for? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Disheveled hair. If you have long(ish) hair and you're going out in public, at least drag a comb through it so you don't look like a bed-head.

Swiss Money in c/switzerland@lemmy.ml
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Swiss Money (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works to c/switzerland@lemmy.ml
2 comments fedilink
 

Interesting video on Swiss cash. Well done technically, and educationally. https://youtu.be/PdW63lP-yI8

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snap rant (snapcraft.io)
 

Is it just me, or are most snap packages broken?

A lot of problems have to do with developers using some command to start or run a process, for example:

  • dropbox “Launch Dropbox Website” fails badly for Firefox as a snap
  • gimp as a snap, preferences-folders--Show file location in the file manager, doesn’t work

Another type of problem is the location for local files, e.g.:

  • a snap zoom upgrade uses the same location for recordings as the prior version, which doesn’t work because the old snap version directory is inaccessible

Another type of problem is the integration with Ubuntu (ostensibly the owner of the snap format), for example:

  • superkey (Windows logo) search for a snap and click or double-click on the icon just shows a wait cursor and finally times out (you have to right click and choose New Window)
  • update fails to update snaps - you need to manually sudo snap refresh, and even then the Software Updater thinks it need to update something until you reboot
  • snap-store has no search function - but if you start typing it will search (what kind of sadistic user experience designer thought that one up?)
  • snap-store Updates - Update All can fail and display a failure message from weeks ago
  • don’t even get me on about disk usage, like /var/lib/snapd/snaps or your ~/snap directory, that likely have more gigabytes than you’ve needed in a long time

Should I just give up on snaps and use Flatpack or Appimage?

Caption this. in c/science_memes@mander.xyz
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

By the time Sergei had assembled a plywood board and a broom with a wooden handle, Dmitriy was turned into a human Melba Toast.

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I'm curious how many collectors-item level baseball cards were wrapped around bicycle forks with clothes-pegs in childhood to make a flappity-flap motor sound in the spokes. (sh.itjust.works)
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Raspberry Pi is 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1 was in 1978 (www.roylongbottom.org.uk)
 

From an evaluation by Roy Longbottom, this interesting observation:

In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1.

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Sinopec says gasoline demand will peak this year (www.bloomberg.com)
 

BNEF journalist Colin McKerracher summarizes trends in China predicting a peak in fossil transport fuel: electric vehicle car sales, two and three wheeled electric kilometers traveled, electric trucks reaching the tipping point and ride hailing legislation.

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