dual_sport_dork

dual_sport_dork , 2 hours ago

That is patently false.

...Sometimes we also complain about Facebook or Tesla.

dual_sport_dork , 2 hours ago

finds themselves in a social circle or job environment hostile to Linux.

Ugh. Tell me about it.

I haven't tried to run the latest Corel graphics suite in Wine recently, but the last time I did it exploded in my face so spectacularly I think my eyebrows still haven't fully grown back. I really need that to work for... work. Basically everything else I already use is FOSS anyway.

dual_sport_dork , 1 day ago

I was sitting in a diner the other day and one of their TV's was apparently, for lack of a better word, tuned to that Samsung TV Plus service. I watched it play the same Kia ad four times, back to back. Not in separate commercial breaks. All in one commercial break where the same ad was played four times consecutively.

Just like you, I have to say they found no success in making me want to buy a Kia.

dual_sport_dork , 1 day ago

Carefully watch the kid's glasses.

Now you can't unsee it. You're welcome.

dual_sport_dork , 12 hours ago

His glasses are different in every scene. No consistency. It's subtle in the first few, but in the last shot they're a totally different style and shape and have a crossbar over the bridge that wasn't present in any of the previous scenes.

dual_sport_dork , 2 days ago

Oh boy. I can't wait for this to backfire in a spectacular and completely predictable manner.

dual_sport_dork , 1 day ago

Not even. We just need it to trip over the pronunciation of something, preferably the same thing more than once, and then both the news and social media will latch onto it like a pit bull and with any luck they'll never live it down.

dual_sport_dork , 5 hours ago

You're conflating the tuner with the antenna. The person you replied to, however, is correct including the comment about the digital tuner boxes (which convert to an analog signal for old TV's) being available for free during the analog to digital changeover back when.

Any piece of metal will work as an antenna, even for receiving digital broadcasts. It might not work well, but there is no magical difference between a "digital" antenna and an "analog" one, and since digital television is transmitted over pretty much the same original frequencies as analog was, old analog antennae are already quite well tuned in size and shape to pick up modern digital signals.

You just have to plug your 1940's antenna into a 2009+ or so television. The antenna itself doesn't "decode" anything. It just catches radio waves and passes the waveform along to the TV or tuner box. I still use the old 60's era rooftop antenna that cane with my house, but plugged into my modern TV and it receives digital channels just fine.

dual_sport_dork , 2 days ago

The other thing is, both towers were plane impact resistant. Both of them took dead square hits from airliners and remained resolutely standing afterwards. What it turned out they were not proof against was an ongoing raging inferno inside that was hot enough and carried on long enough to weaken their critical structural elements.

If the planes had not been laden with fuel and/or if it had not ignited for whatever reason, the towers probably would not have collapsed. They probably wouldn't have been readily repairable, though, so then the question would be what to do with two massive skyscrapers with giant holes in the middle of them. They'd probably have to be demolished eventually anyway. Said demolition would have killed far fewer people.

dual_sport_dork , 2 days ago

Well, they're MSRP'ing for $199 at the moment if you don't spring for the AMS Lite filament changer thingamadoo. To be fair that's less than several pocket knives I own are worth. I'm not a fan of Bambu at all, but I think you could wind up with far worse for not much less money...

dual_sport_dork , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

The Doctor.

We get it. You wish a dashing eccentric gentleman with an English accent will appear out of the blue and whisk you away from your situation to a life of adventure. But it's not going to happen, sweetheart.

It doesn't help that Doctor Who has always been crap sci-fi, but gets a free ride due to having such a long history stretching back to before anyone knew any better. The series as a whole is one of those I find also dragged down by a subsection of rabid insufferable fans, at least the modern incarnations, right up there with Rick and Morty and Supernatural. (I see I already kicked the beehive.)

dual_sport_dork , 6 days ago

Agreed. And Kefka was way cooler anyway.

(I firmly believe most people gush over FF7 so much only because it was their first exposure to a mainstream console RPG in non-Japanese circles. FF7 as a whole was a fairly meh entry into the series anyway, if you ask me.)

Not only did Kefka have real style, twisted though it may be, he also for all intents and purposes actually managed to win. He fractured the world, scattered the heroes, built his goddamned tower, and was lording it all over everybody with a penthouse view. He didn't have angst; he was just nuts. It was frankly a complete fluke that he got the shit whacked out of him by a little girl with a paintbrush, a 8x per round attacking Moogle with Genji gloves, a senior citizen, and a mime.

dual_sport_dork , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

"Homeopathic" does not mean organic, or good for you, natural, wholesome, effective, or inherently safe to consume.

It is, in fact, a code word for no active ingredient.

dual_sport_dork , 8 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

Your yearly reminder that the original Paddington Bear stuffed toy was designed and made by Shirley Clarkson and given to her son: Jeremy Clarkson.

Yes, that Jeremy Clarkson. You know, the "Speed and Power!" guy.

(Although this was not the origin of the character himself. Michael Bond bought a generic toy bear from a toy shop and named it after nearby Paddington station. He wrote some stories using the bear as a character, and then they got published, and then he probably got very rich.)

dual_sport_dork , 9 days ago

Provided they're fine with cutting off 100% of their business coming from customers older than 50, that'd probably work great. I don't think they're quite there yet.

dual_sport_dork , 9 days ago

Apparently they don't need him because Ronald was fired... Er, "retired," in 2016.

The final vestige of the clown that I know of was his silhouette being used in the "throw this into a trash can and not on the damn ground" message on the bottom of their paper bags, but even that seems to be gone now.

dual_sport_dork , 12 days ago

undermining regional carmakers

I think the word they're looking for is in fact "outcompeting."

Yutaro-Katori-with-butterfly-meme: Is this capitalism?

dual_sport_dork , 12 days ago

Ah, I see. So it's cool when we do it (fossil fuel and ag subsidies, the auto industry bailout in 2008, etc.) but not when they do it.

Got it.

dual_sport_dork , 13 days ago

You Won't Believe This Guy's Crazy Knife Collection!

dual_sport_dork , 16 days ago

?

Every automatic transmission car sold since the 1970's and probably earlier has had a transmission cooler, right there alongside or in front of the radiator.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

Wow. The remaining 7,950,999,999 people on this planet now have something to be thankful for, because none of them are as wrong as you.

You clearly did not actually understand what your mechanic told you.

A transmission cooler is exactly what it sounds like. It is built exactly like a radiator and works the same way. It is mounted in front of or next to the radiator for the engine. On a lot of newer cars it is actually part of the main radiator. Transmission fluid flows through it and excess heat is dumped into the air. On many vehicles it's also served by the radiator fan, i.e. for situations where the vehicle is not getting airflow because it's not moving.

The torque converter is part of your automatic transmission literally operates by moving the transmission fluid. There is no separation between the transmission fluid used in the torque converter and the rest of the transmission where the hydraulic valves use it to actuate the clutch bands, etc. to shift gears. The same bath of transmission fluid is circulated through the torque converter, the rest of the transmission, and the transmission cooler.

This is not a truck thing. Even my dinkum Saturn SL I had when I was a teenager that was so pathetic it was literally made of plastic and did not crack 100 horsepower had a transmission cooler -- as designed from the factory. The vast majority of passenger vehicles made in the last half century or more with automatic transmissions have transmission coolers built in. It has nothing to do with towing, either.

Your torque converter absolutely can be locked under acceleration and in fact, nearly all vehicles equipped with a locking torque converter do so as part of their normal shifting pattern when moving up through their gears. This is observable from the driver's seat if you know what's happening. The locking and unlocking of the torque converter feels like an "extra gear" in between the gears. Some Japanese cars from the 80's have a "TC Locked" light on a dash that illuminates when the converter is locked and you can watch this happen in real time. The usual pattern is 1st gear, shift to 2nd gear, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 3rd, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 4th, etc. A traditional automatic transmission only has 4 gear ratios, but it will feel like it has seven. Guess why.

Think about it real hard for a minute. A locked torque converter is the same, mechanically, as a fully engaged clutch. If you could not lock the torque converter during acceleration, by the same logic you would not be able to fully release the clutch pedal during acceleration on a manual transmission car, either. It is glaringly obvious that this is not the case.

I am not a "random lemming." I have four decades of actual real world mechanical experience and have disassembled and rebuilt more transmissions, engines, and vehicles in general than you have probably sat in throughout your entire life.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

Tell us you didn't read what I just wrote without telling us you didn't read it.

The engine will only stall under load if it is at so low of an RPM that it is generating insufficient torque to overcome the inertia. Which if you are moving and in the correct gear for your speed is never.

Which is why your transmission has more than one gear.

Remember back 30 seconds ago when I told you to think? Actually try it this time. Or maybe plug some of your bullshit into Google first before continuing to make a fool of yourself in front of everybody.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

Which is why automatics have torque converters and manuals have clutches. It's almost like we've come full circle or something!

Millions and millions of vehicles are driving on the world's roads right now, happily tooling along under the sound mechanical and physical principles known as "reality," completely heedless of your apparent inability to understand it.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

And? Come on, you're almost there. Just two more neurons to put together:

That's why the transmission cooler is there.

Wrap up: Your original claim that Americans "can't" tow due to predominantly driving automatic transmission cars, in addition to being an uncreative and tired thinly veiled attempt at insulting Americans, is not only wrong but also prima facie absurd.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

And is the cooler in cars big enough to have noticeable towing capacity

Yes, it is. Do you realize that manufacturers publish a maximum towing capacity as part of their specifications for every vehicle? This is publicly available information, right there on the internet. It's not a secret. The required surface area for the cooler is designed right in by the manufacturer for the transmission to work for the vehicle's application. This not a case of something "extra" being added. It's just how cars with automatic transmissions are built to begin with.

The published towing capacity for most vehicles that are available in both automatic and stick are exactly the same. Would you care to guess why that is? You could have figured it out for yourself if you would bother to actually do some extremely minimal internet research instead of continuing to shoot your mouth off on whatever this ill-informed little crusade of yours is.

Your initial claim is false. End of discussion. Just stop. You're making a fool of yourself.

dual_sport_dork , 15 days ago

What, so now you're trying to split hairs over the regulatory differences between the US and Europe to attempt to distract from the fact that you still haven't addressed making the following demonstrably false statements?

• Your notion that automatic transmissions "need" active cooling that they "don't" have when in fact they do, and
• Your claim that torque converters "can't" be locked during acceleration when they provably regularly are, and
• Your claim that your engine "will stall" if the transmission can't "slip" even while the vehicle is already in motion. (Hint: Get your car rolling, don't touch the clutch, and take your foot off the accelerator pedal. Did it stall instantly? Did it stall when you got back on the accelerator, either? Of course it didn't, because inertia is a process that exists.)
• Bonus points for blathering about "trying to slip the lock of the converter," which also makes no sense because that's not how torque converter lockups work nor attempt to work, nor has anyone proposed they work that way.

 

For the benefit of anyone else reading this, the difference in rated tow capacities between US spec and Euro spec vehicles is, as you have almost correctly observed, down to regulations and the trailer designs and not the tow vehicles themselves. There is no difference between the cars or their transmissions mechanically (nor the laws of physics -- anywhere on the planet, I guarantee it). European regulations have two critical differences between the US, to wit:

1. Vehicles towing trailers are typically limited to ~60 MPH or the equivalent, whereas in the US they are not (at least outside of some specific state laws).
2. Tongue weight requirements are significantly lower, because nobody owns a body-on-frame truck which is necessary to support a high tongue weight.

 

This is because it is dangerous to tow a low tongue weight trailer at high speed. America has no such speed or tongue weight restriction, and we also have interstates with 85 MPH speed limits. Thus our target tongue weight is roughly 15% of the total load, largely in order to keep the trailer under control at speed and prevent it from snaking all over the place and rolling itself and the vehicle. All other things being equal this ultimately winds up in the tongue weight being the limiting factor for most unibody vehicles. If your tongue weight is limited at e.g. 200 pounds, which it is for my bog standard Subaru Crosstrek, solving for the estimated tow capacity assuming 15% of it is 200 lbs would be roughly 1333 lbs. What's the US spec rated tow capacity of a Crosstrek? Oh wow, it's 1500 pounds. Imagine that. (For both the manual and automatic/CVT versions, by the way.)

FYI, we also have trailer brakes over here, and many states require them to be used on loads exceeding 3000 pounds. Below that, the trucks most people use have adequate mass and braking capacity to handle towing trailer loads in and of themselves. It turns out, the actual reason Americans tow with trucks is because Americans tow with trucks, and our towing regulations and trailers are designed around the expectation of towing with trucks. It's a just a cultural thing. No need to try to make it complicated nor make up fictitious bullshit about automatic transmissions.

But none of this has anything to do with your original assertions re: automatic vs. manual transmissions. I'm not arguing any other points with you.

As a matter of fact, I'm not arguing any more points with you at all. You have no idea how cars work. Go away.

dual_sport_dork OP , 19 days ago

Has anyone else found a use for their 3D printer that wasn't exactly listed on the label?

dual_sport_dork OP , 19 days ago

No. It's a Moto Z4, which is compatible with Motorola's "Mods" ecosystem which are a variety of accessories you can stick to the back. For data transfer they connect to those pads via pogo pins.

There are battery extender backs (which I have), a full-on gamepad case (which I also have) and also a 360 degree camera, a backplate that adds wireless charging, a mini projector, a beefed up speaker back, and an entire replacement Hasselblad camera you can stick on it as well. There was going to be a slide out physical keyboard module, too, which unfortunately turned out to be vaporware.

dual_sport_dork OP , 19 days ago

And, I don't own a hairdryer. (Or much in the way of hair, these days.) But I do own a 3D printer...

dual_sport_dork OP , 19 days ago

90 degrees was the spec for this job. 240 is way too high.

dual_sport_dork , 20 days ago

Even if they did, they'd never sell. Everyone in America is so batshit insane with the expectation of everything NOW-NOW-NOW that practically no one would tolerate a "truck" that can't do 120 MPH or 0-60 in 4 seconds.

On the more prosaic side, there is no way in hell these things would pass American crash safety tests nor comply with vehicle equipment and safety regulations without a significant redesign that would add a lot of complexity and cost. Maybe you could get them rammed through as "motorcycles." They would have the same stigma as motorcycles among the general populace. These things would be absolute litigation machines in the US.

dual_sport_dork , 20 days ago

The thing is, during the 95/98/ME/XP/Vista days Microsoft had less competition in the consumer computing space, smart phones weren't really a thing, and a PC was "the" way to get online. Nowadays everyone and their dog has an iPhone or Android device instead, and ever dwindling numbers of people even bother to have a PC anymore. So in modern times, there is a nonzero possibility that on a consumer level at least, Microsoft might finally slide into irrelevance. That's not to say they'll go out of business anytime soon, but they might not be able to remain the Microsoft we've known so far for too many more years.

Nerds use Linux. A lot of people who want to buy an off the shelf computer that "just works" buys a Mac. And everyone else just uses their phone for everything.

Microsoft doesn't actually do anything (except make the XBox, I guess) that non-corporate users give a shit about except "make computer machine go" and "stupid subscription ribbon bar program I need to use to open files work sends me."

This is why M$ has been so gung-ho about their path to enshittification in recent years, I'm sure. This is a profitability thing. They see the writing on the wall that just selling operating system and office suite licenses to rubes is not going to remain a profitable business model much longer. Instead, they have to scrape and datamine and sell adds and push subscriptions and all the rest of it for alternative recurring revenue, because no member of the public will willingly pay for a Windows license anymore. I sure as hell won't... If I need Windows, I'll pirate it. And there's no way they are shifting as many OEM licenses as they were in the early 2000's. People aren't buying computers like that anymore.

dual_sport_dork , 21 days ago

Say it with me again now:

For fact-based applications, the amount of work required to develop and subsequently babysit the LLM to ensure it is always producing accurate output is exactly the same as doing the work yourself in the first place.

Always, always, always. This is a mathematical law. It doesn't matter how much you whine or argue, or cite anecdotes about how you totally got ChatGPT or Copilot to generate you some working code that one time. The LLM does not actually have comprehension of its input or output. It doesn't have comprehension, period. It cannot know when it is wrong. It can't actually know anything.

Sure, very sophisticated LLM's might get it right some of the time, or even a lot of the time in the cases of very specific topics with very good training data. But its accuracy cannot be guaranteed unless you fact-check 100% of its output.

Underpaid employees were asked to feed published articles from other news services into generative AI tools and spit out paraphrased versions. The team was soon using AI to churn out thousands of articles a day, most of which were never fact-checked by a person. Eventually, per the NYT, the website's AI tools randomly started assigning employees' names to AI-generated articles they never touched.

Yep, that right there. I could have called that before they even started. The shit really hits the fan when the computer is inevitably capable of spouting bullshit far faster than humans are able to review and debunk its output, and that's only if anyone is actually watching and has their hand on the off switch. Of course, the end goal of these schemes is to be able to fire as much of the human staff as possible, so it ultimately winds up that there is nobody left to actually do the review. And whatever emaciated remains of management are left don't actually understand how the machine works nor how its output is generated.

Yeah, I see no flaws in this plan... Carry the fuck on, idiots.

dual_sport_dork , 21 days ago

To err is human. But to really fuck up, you need a computer.

dual_sport_dork , 21 days ago

That, and I think they trace a direct lineage back to the original Harvey Ross Ball smiley face, which was also yellow.

Me, I don't particularly care about matching emoji skintones to myself. Rather, I'm much more annoyed that I can't tune the 🏍️ emoji to match the color of my motorcycle. What a rip off.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

Mostly the second point. I would wager from experience that the majority of small man-portable conveyances that wind up at the bottom of lakes and rivers are there because they were stolen and thrown there. Bikes, motorcycles, rental scooters, shopping carts, etc. The reason is hooliganism, and the contributing factors are alcohol and teenagerhood.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

If one of these were made for the US market it would obviously be configured to work at the US mains voltage and frequency. (Europe is 50hz, US is 60).

Your home's power input is also 240 volts in the US, regardless of being split into two 120 volt rails at the breaker box. It would be trivial to hook up a 240 volt system if you really wanted to, albeit not through one of your regular 5-15/5-20 outlets. You'd have to do it via a dryer outlet or something.

Watts are watts. If the unit is capable of feeding 800 watts into your home's electrical system, the voltage is irrelevant provided it can supply sufficient amps. A normal US household circuit is 15 amps, so a hypothetical US version of this thing would have to supply ~6-2/3 amps at 120v rather than ~3-1/3 amps at 240v. No big deal. It's not even close to maxing out a single residential circuit on either continent.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

You should read up on the Amico and in particular watch Pat The NES Punk's various videos on it. The entire debacle is hilarious.

The Amico is/was basically an investor scam. Yes, it did eventually turn into an actual product (which is crap) but it was never intended to be a serious contender to anything. The intent was for Tommy Tallarico to get his face published everywhere and pocket/embezzle a significant amount of investor and Indiegogo money.

The system itself is basically an out-of-date smartphone chipset running a cut down version of Android. Most of its games, as you would expect, are basically mobile trash. Other than emulated Intellivision titles, anyway. And mobile trash you have to pay up front for a console with bullshit controls to even play it on.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

I agree on the N64, and the problem with it is that everyone is nostalgic for "the system," but in reality they're only nostalgic for Mario 64, Goldeneye, Conker, Mario Kart, Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Smash Bros., and Perfect Dark. It's not that the N64 has a top ten, it's that it basically only had ten good games total. And bangers though they may have been, everything else on it was crap.

I'm sure two or three people will pop out of the woodwork now to argue with me and insist that no, back in the day they really did love WCW Mayhem or 1080 Snowboarding or the butchered piece of shit version of THPS or Chef's Luv Shack or whatever the fuck, but that's the thing: It's always back in the day, when you were a kid and only owned four cartridges, and you didn't know any better because that's all you had. Nobody goes back to play any of the remaining 378 games now.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

He also said they were ready to manufacture the 2nd generation Tesla Roaster "now," which was back in 2014. No points for guessing that as of yet (despite taking in millions of dollars in preorders) they have not produced a single one.

Given this very early and still quite relevant warning, I'm astounded that anyone is dumb enough to believe any promise Elon makes about anything.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

I bought my Giant Warp DS2 in 2004. I still have it. There it shall remain.

There isn't a damn thing wrong with it (and it's motorized now). 26" wheels were good enough for our forefathers, so they're good enough for me.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

And it's an equally amusing parallel that there are, depending on how you count, 17 or 18 commandments in the bible but everyone goes around acting like there are only 10. And then, there are 27 constitutional amendments but people go around acting like there are only 10...

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

Me, I'm all about the 3rd.

I better not catch the king trying to quarter troops in my house. Whoop his ass, is what I'll do...

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

TL;DR: No one knows yet.

Saved you a click.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

I think the chamber heater will go as high as 90, although for ABS the slicer warns me not to go higher than 60. It is PID controlled so you can set a specific temperature setpoint. And if my thermal camera is to believed it's pretty consistent. The good news is also that it can heat the chamber to 55 or 60 in just about ten minutes.

dual_sport_dork , 1 month ago

There are various tricks I could think of, but in Slic3r/Prusa/Orca/etc. I think I would just do an auto arrange on them with the spacing set to zero.