bhtooefr @bhtooefr@mastodon.social

I guess I should do an #introductions, given the influx of new people.

I'm Eric, I live in Ohio (it's approximately as bad as it sounds), I throw computers at people for a living, and I have a varied set of interests:

* #retrocomputing is a big one for me, I post about it over on @bhtooefr
* #transportation, including #cars, #bicycles, #trains, and #planes
* #sustainability, #solar, #renewables
* I have opinions on politics. Not very left by Masto standards, off-the-scale left by US standards.

Things that I'm happy to CW:

* Politics (including Fedi politics)
* Religion/spirituality
* Common traumatic events
* Discussion of bigotry
* Intoxicants
* Lewd content
* Some controversial figures/organizations

If there's something not in the list below you'd like me to CW, or I forgot to CW something, please ask.

Things that I will not CW:

* Food
* Tech (except for tech pol)
* Swearing

If you do not wish to see this in TLs, please mute or block me.

what the fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkzItBabzs

You know, I'm actually kinda annoyed how Pleroma just shows posts in the HTL that are replies to followers only posts that I can't see.

I mean, I know that some of this is a side effect of the current Fediverse permissions model being utterly broken (replies are visible to a different subset of users than the post they're replying to), but still, figure out whether I can actually see the context before putting it in timelines, maybe?

tired: solving the Y2038 bug by going to 64-bit time_t
wired: solving the Y2038 bug by declaring the end of the universe, and the creation of a new universe in which it is January 1, 1970 again

Europe Breaks Solar Records Amidst Summer Heatwave: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/18/europe-breaks-solar-records-amidst-summer-heatwave/

A choice quote: "Fortunately, solar was on hand to deliver the power that these technologies could not deliver and as such solar kept the power grid stable and delivering for Europe’s consumers."

#solar #electric #energy #sustainability #renewables

Oh, and that is also assuming square pixels. (Important, because many digitizations of 480i are explicitly not square pixels, at 720x480, for historical reasons and compatibility with varying video standards.)

You know, I wonder how much the move from 480i 4:3 to 1080p 16:9 as the "default video format" has hurt things, as far as people's ability to be independent of large media hosts like YouTube.

At the same 60 Hz field rate, that's 13.5x more data (assuming the same compression ratio), which is quite a lot!

And, for how many decades was 480i enough for everyone? But now we consider it a travesty if content is 480p...

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/makes-for-great-watching-1829104018 is where I saw the videos FWIW.

So I watched a video from a South African company that apparently is a private security company contracted to insurance companies, who straight-up will pull semi-auto (well, I hope they're semi-auto and not full-auto, they could be full-auto) rifles on suspected car thieves, to recover the car.

This... this is concerning. For as much rhetoric about "ACAB" as there is on here... police are at least supposed to be accountable to the citizens.

Reminder that IBM once experimented with dual-handed TrackPoints:

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/tp/thand.html
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/tp/2handed.html