Posts by DropBear 4735 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013
Nonono. As long as we're talking about the personal / amateur / home / hobby / DIY / "maker" market (ie. anything that isn't industrial use) something around $200-300 is a "low cost 3D printer", $500-600 is "a 3D printer" and anything above $700 is "lighting your money on fire" a.k.a. "why aren't these clowns out of business yet well never mind they will be soon enough".
Also, being aware that (properly used, properly random) one-time pads are the strongest encryption there is, laypeople might not grasp the magnitude of their gaffe when re-using it twice, possibly thinking "well maybe it's a bit weaker this way but surely it must still be plenty strong..."
@Orv: just use the View Image script (the second one on that page) with Greasemonkey, and you'll never notice Google isn't the one putting that button where it has always been... ;)
Any kind of VR-related issue, especially if it involves Android, is a veritable dog's dinner these days. Nobody is interested in anything beyond being able to claim that their stuff supports Oculus and Vive, especially if it would involve any actual work. There is no way to convince any developer to even just simply integrate _existing_ engine support for plain side-by-side 3D support which then you could view whichever way your ersatz-cardboard allows you; absolutely nobody is interested in the tiniest of gestures if it's not about the OR or Vive. Did you know that the Unreal 4 engine includes SBS-3D support built in out of the box that can be enabled via a simple command line parameter without ever even involving the developer - and that it still displays the left and right images _reversed_ in spite of multiple several year old bug reports...? Yeah, there's VR hype for you... nurse! ...NURSE!!!
"I've never really understood why"
Because ideals only get lip service only insofar as they don't interfere too much with actual business. It is possible to wage practical war without popping nukes. It is not when you can't do any killing - and we simply can't have that, can we...
Upvoted for accurate portrayal of the kind of support any mere mortal can expect from Google, but to be fair I don't think Google's free services and "Google Cloud Platform" are quite the same thing; for one, you are getting billed for one of them...
The point that smartwatches may or may not be overly powerful does have merit, depending on what exactly one expects from a smartwatch (and frankly I can think of at least some that would warrant all the processing power possible); however insinuating that this is a _price_ problem is beyond ludicrous seeing as how the cost of the smarts itself is effectively zero dollars in anything from a five bucks bracelet all the way to a thousand pound smartphone. Whatever spondulicks you're being mugged for buying your smartwatch, the SoC inside isn't what you're paying for...
I always wondered what happens with cables whey they cross inter-tectonic rifts: do they go down all the way into the rift and emerge on the other end? Or do they just span those dangling freely over the chasm, like a high-tech rope for Spongebob to hang out his square pants to dry on...?
Sure, there's a long list of rather illicit stuff being apparently advertised as features. Not much to defend there. I could see the need to show the software has substantial legitimate uses. But specifically, being aware that your software is also getting used nefariously - what the hell, since when is that supposed to make any difference? Will we also remove then the clause of zero liability of software sellers even if they are known to be aware that their code murders kittens continuously, which has accompanied every single piece of software being sold for at least a decade now...? Yeah, right...
"sailing off the Brazilian coast"
Why on God's green earth, having lost all proper navigation aids, would you decide to sail all the way across the Atlantic instead of returning to the coast you're allegedly still close to, if you are able to tell which way is East and which way is West at all...? Being able to do it nonetheless is nice and all, but... seriously? That's the first idea you get - let's go the long way around...?
"So why not use Signal*?"
Because, off the top of my head:
- it asks for literally every single permission that exists under Android - and I don't care how open source it is or how many may or may not have scrutinized it, that is not one but lots of steps too far, and personally reviewing what the code does is not a practical option for me;
- it works attached to your phone number which is hilariously nope - my phone is supposed to be anonymous and interchangeable communications infrastructure and absolutely not my subscriber identification, which is supposed to be independently anonymous from it;
- apparently has "disappearing messages" which is an equally ludicrously giant nope: if you ever send me a message, not in a million heat-deaths of the universe do you get the right to "un-send" it, for any reason, under any circumstances. Try using your head before you type instead. Once you did, it's too late.
...and that's just the absolutely deal-breaking stuff I can think of in a hurry.
I'll be sure to mark in my calendar the day I see a "responsive" "web 2.0" page that uses more than the middle third or so of the width of a 16:9 monitor. Hasn't happened yet. There must be a secret conspiracy somewhere sworn not to rest as long as there is any website remaining that can't be reduced to an endless vertical list of three word wide post-it-cardletsnippetkins. #WhoNeedsMore #BiglySad
"devices to have an update feature, which can be used to automatically push patches to the firmware as soon as the device is connected to the internet"
There is no way in hell you can make me install or use another device that auto-patches - my phone does that (including the obligatory crashing as a result) basically daily and it's enough to make me want to escape that particular hell as soon as I figure out a workable alternative. Argue about normal people needing to be rapedated "or else they won't update" all you want if you're the type that believes the ends justify the means, there will never be forced updates on any computing device I own as long as I can help it.
The end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020 will come and go and absolutely nobody will notice except for the tech media. Anyone still on W7 at that point will stay on it indefinitely or until their hardware dies, but that won't be a simultaneous mass event.
Yes. Yes, it is scaremongering. If those calibration sources contained as much material as most of the commentariat (including me) seems to be expecting, then even mentioning dirty bombs is the equivalent of evacuating a building for fear of the devastating explosive device someone might build using a single match stick that went missing.
Seeing as how Mr. Dabbs left me not much to add on how a phone should be held properly in the modern world, I choose instead to signal my profound uniqueness and originality by disrupting customs tied to another device: the humble old infrared remote control. See, lots of misguided people seem to think you point these directly at your device of interest - which is just so horribly wrong. The correct way is obviously to hold them vertically in front of you, beaming your invisible rays straight up. Of course, some might argue that not only does this make seeing what button you want to press a lot easier but it also makes reception much more reliable for the IR sensor laying flat on top of my HTPC (with a splendid view of my blank ceiling more than happy to reflect all that IR goodness, especially considering my blanket would often obscure a direct view between it and my bed) - but that's not the real reason, clearly. Vertical is simply the proper way of doing that sort of thing these days...
Warehouse fulfilment is going in a very different direction (that actually works) - and yes, it includes "robots" (or "RC boxes", for anyone who isn't a silly valley hipster)...
If XiaoXiao Motors was indeed actively involved in any way, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that they had a hearty laugh if Zheng ever told them "I'll get you a copy of the stuff I normally work with", then went "No, we'll give you a list of what you'll get us a copy of - printed on a roll of toilet paper partly due to its length and partly because you'll need it once you read it..."
I do exactly this sort of thing rather a lot, while archiving my photos where my OCD compels me to get rid of the plethora of scratches dust and other stuff that seems impossible to get rid of no matter how much you clean before you scan. The thing is, the sharpen filters do an amazing job at actually making the pics strikingly sharper (and the ones I use don't even seem to induce unbearable light/dark contour shadows which are the hallmark of sharpening) - but one consequence is that a seemingly previously non-existent noise shoots up past the stratosphere in many cases.
There is another photo filter that can get that phantom noise largely under control again and yield remarkably smooth photos (quite a lot like these actually), but here's the gist of this: it also tends to noticeably alter really fine detail, like the girl's knitted clothing; not completely mangle it, mind you, but still cause noticeable loss of detail at high zoom. And this thing kinda seems to have a similar problem, although I have to admit it's rather good at it. I'm rather curious exactly how much detail is lost here.
As for removal of stuff from the image - I'd love to see how noticeable the "fudging" of data clearly not present in the image based on surrounding pixels is - as an artificial artificial intelligence, I can do that too when needed, but it's hard to do convincingly if there's any surrounding detail, and the filter tools I've seen do a remarkably shitty job of trying to "stich up" even around a simple scratch...
Ever since House we're keenly aware that everybody lies, and also that the immediate very very simple way to get around that is not bothering to _ask them_ anything but rather to observe their actions instead. Which is exactly what I would expect 99% of "gathered data" to consist of.
"it's the labelling of jars 'Kitchen Utensils' (with spatulas and whisks poking out the top) that I don't understand."
I know many of us around here are supposedly "on the spectrum" and have varying amount of trouble dealing with subtext, but come on - that's basically textbook. There are eleventy billion reasons to label something beyond the basic intent to convey apparently redundant information, of which "I told you a hundred times to put it back right here after you used it you bastard!" or "No, you can't use this jar to clean your carb jets keep your pickles in even if you see it empty!" or "Guess what yes I have OCD, do you have a problem with that?" are merely some of the simpler and more benevolent ones...
In my understanding, ATM-related usage of this technique (if it still is / ever really has been in use at all) is typically complementing a "fake" add-on incorporating a card skimmer, so you already have the card number you just need the PIN to go with it. Of course, your skimmer rig may well also incorporate a normal camera watching the mark typing the PIN directly, and chip cards are not all that skimmable anyway apparently...
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