I love it. I lost access to some old Amazon books when I went with a kobo and koreader + Calibre. Not because of the reader itself, but because decrypting DRM books with a Calibre plugin requires generating a key with some Adobe software (I don't remember what it's called) and that software is Windows only. I just "pirated" those books. I figured, fuck them, I already paid once.
Also using the koreader without an account required changing a field in a sqllite db on the device. It wasn't that big a deal, and I think there is a slicker way now, but it still shouldn't be necessary.
A shame it takes some hoops to just read books on e-ink in peace.
I am friends with someone who was pretty involved in that big wave of stereo madness and 3D conversion years ago. There is huge range in quality for stereo conversion depending on how much the director cares and the studio is willing to spend.
Fun fact, Clash of the Titans (2010) was such a shitty, low budget conversion that "release the kraken" was an industry term for, "this is a shit, rushed, cheap job." There's a lot of variables unique to stereo filming and most directors don't understand it or care. For awhile many studios were just trying to cash in on the fad. Bad conversions can, at best, mean it looks like paper cutout shit and, at worst, give people headaches and make them sick.
Guillermo del Toro really cares. "Pacific Rim" is considered a very well done conversion. They even did things in the conversion that you couldn't do with a typical dual camera setup, like warping the depth offset to exaggerate the height of the robots (sort of like forced perspective, but with depth). You have to be very careful with interocular distance, convergence, depth of field, and keeping things consistent from shot-to-shot so people's eye muscles aren't screaming after 10 minutes.
I was honestly never into 3D, but I don't doubt him when he says its a good job. He was probably actually in dailies. There's as much directing that can (and should) go into stereo as any other sort of shot design.
My dad's ship had a phantom shitter too. This was a destroyer, also in the 70s. They were denied shore leave at one point and the phantom shitter shit in the skipper's bunk.
Mussolini would have definitely been obsessed with his T levels, if he knew about it.
Anecdotally, last time I had a physical the doctor was like, "Any other questions?" and I was like, "I don't know, anything else people are usually concerned with?"
She said, "Men your age? Testosterone replacement." I guess dudes in their 40s+ are hitting up the doctor for testosterone all the time now.
The whole "AI is enough" marketing that the author mentions in the conclusion is total poison. A buddy of mine works at one of the companies involved in this circlejerk and they have the same mandate. Cost is not an issue. Use it for everything.
He said he has to roll the dice all day to get good output from the AI. Its more important they USE THE AI than it is that they PRODUCE GOOD CODE. In fact "good code" is not a thing, in the traditional sense. "Good code" means AI created. His actual title ostensibly has nothing to do with AI, they are producing a totally different thing. But since he works at a company that is benefiting massively from AI investment, his bosses are mandating a worse form of developing because they are now in the business of selling AI rather than what presumably is the product.
It's like if you were a plumber and your plumbing company merged with a huge factory that makes 90 degree pipe elbows. So they mandated that all plumbing now had to be done by joining together nothing but 90 degree pipe elbows rather than any other fitting. And since its all going to be sealed up inside a wall, who cares? How dare you question this? Are you saying there AREN'T legitimate uses for 90 degree pipe elbows?
Yeah, signage used to be massively more important. Not just the intersection signs, but the mile markers, the signs that give you a general guide to a distant hospital or park, the signs on overhead bridges that tell you what that cross street is. You'd have to constantly note them.
The compass was a lot more important, to the point where people installed aftermarket compasses in their car if there wasn't one already. Also there was a lot more math with address numbers, like noting which side of the street had odd numbers, then counting how much they were incrementing to estimate how close you were. Resetting your "trip odometer" could be important.
There was just a lot more "dead reckoning" type of shit. GPS made all of this stuff so much easier. I do miss the AAA Triptiks though. My Grandma had AAA and she would get them for me. There was something really satisfying about working your way through one on a long road trip.
Me too, but with office supplies instead of pizzas. They handed me a ripped out chunk of phone book, the "map" section at the back, and let me go. It was also in the liminal period where cellphones were ubiquitous enough that most payphones had been ripped out, but a cellphone was still too expensive for me to afford, so that was fun.
Sort of depends what your resources are, there's a continuum between doing nothing and full doomsday prepper. It also depends on what sort of flood you're preparing for. Like, 6 inches of water in the house, or the house is gone? Anything that gets touched by flood water is basically coated in literal shit, so you have to prepare for everything from the water level down to be completely wrecked but (hopefully) not utterly smashed like in a tornado.
Probably wise to keep some water and food. A small power bank for electronics. If you have expensive or irreplaceable things put them on an upper floor or at least off the ground if you can. If you've got some more money you could think about a generator, not just for you but for your sump pump (if you've got one). If you plan to leave maybe scope out a place you can go so you don't end up in a shelter. Figure out a plan for your animals, if you have any.
If you have insurance, take pictures or record everything you have. You want make and model of everything when it comes time to get reimbursed. You will forget a bunch of shit, and if you specify "coffee maker" you will get a $15 coffee maker, instead of the "Miele UltraCoffee 9000, Stainless Steel, with Grinder" that you lost (for example).
My brother's first car was a 1989 Dodge Colt. He couldn't run heat, wipers, and headlights at the same time. So driving at night, in the winter, when it was raining, became this dance of running the wipers until your ass was almost frozen to the seat, then turning them off and running the heat until you were almost blind, then repeat.
There's a "great man" aspect to this conspiracy theory, just as with the HAARP conspiracy theory. They believe that one man, Bill Gates perhaps, or one facility, can cause these widespread climate effects. But they also believe that humans pumping billions of tons of CO2 can't, because that requires materialist analysis.
Obviously some of this is rooted in petrochemical propaganda but that propaganda really ties into the mental bedrock that already existed. Americans are primed to believe myths with the "correct" structure.
It's also interesting how all of the Epstein fury has stuck to Gates, while washing off Trump.
You see a mélange of all this sentiment in comment sections about ticks.
If you live in a humid climate you'll want to keep it off the floor somehow, I created a mold problem once putting a memory foam mattress right on the floor. Now I have some ikea box thing, similar to this but not quite.
I get what you mean, though. The most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, by far, was one of these things while I was staying in someone's spare room for six months. I've never slept that well before or since, even on thousand dollar mattresses.
I remember the original Diablo let you install "spawn" copies on your friends' computers. This was a limited, co-op only version of the game, and you could all play together using only one full retail version.
Gutting the VOA was a hilariously JDPON Don moment.