Hey, Kids! Do you know what time it is? It's War Story Time! The discussion over yonder reminded me of the time I bought The Silmarillion. So pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and listen. Must've been 1991, or so, when I saw on the telly that there was a new edition of The Silmarillion coming out in Poland. The previous one came out in the Seventies and was long out of print, so you can see why I was excited. The year 1991 was a strange one in Poland, what with Communism just recently collapsed and the nation desperately scrabbling to eke out some manner of existence whilst doing a speed run of the Stages of Capitalism, in order to catch up with the West. The economy was shit, inflation was rampant, the old social order had broken down, with the new yet to be established. Fun times! In the prevailing climate, expecting to simply trot down to the local book store and pick up a copy was wildly optimistic. However, living in Warsaw and being an enterprising young lad, I had the brilliant thought: the publisher has a company book store at their headquarters. I'll simply buy direct from them. Turned out the book store was actually a stand in the company cafeteria; open to the public, but during office hours only. Arriving after school, I found the doors shut for the day. As fate would have it, shortly after my first failed attempt to procure the work, school let out early, so I got straight on the bus and headed into town. This time, I managed to get in and secure the coveted book. Having got my hands on it, I did what any avid reader would do in the situation: I started reading it immediately, deciding to take a leisurely stroll back towards home along a slightly different path than the one I arrived by. It will be important to note, at this point, that the publisher was located on ul. Wiejska, which is also the location of our national circusParliament. My chosen route back would lead right past the legislative assembly. Fully engrossed in my reading, I didn't realize I'd walked straight into a major protest taking place in front of it until I was right smack in the centre. Can't remember what was being protested - there were so many things in those days - but it could be described as peaceful only with some effort. Naturally, getting the hell out of there became my first priority. Needless to say, subsequent ventures into the general vicinity of Parliament were preceded by a scan of the papers to see if protests were expected.

@topspin said in Kidnap Me: Free diabetes So. Which one is it? 3 ((peanut butter) cups) (3 (peanut butter)) cups ((3 peanut) butter) cups 3 (peanut (butter cups)) (3 peanut) (butter cups)

@Byte9 Constructive Criticism: The video needs to be re-recorded with a better microphone.

@HardwareGeek on the other hand I had a lengthy post about local media and their rewriting of history on a justified police shooting. Citations, research, finding archives on how stories were edited after the fact. A few hours of work that I was going to finish up. It was wiped out in the banning. No fucking way that I'm going to redo it. I might rewrite a small part of it but I'm not fucking doing that all over again.

@error to my utmost surprise, it works in other languages too!

@dkf Yeah, of course. Could be worth doing to have freezer stable meats though. People do nitrogen for beer taps at home -- and a kit costs about $100.

@hungrier said in God’s own OS: @pie_flavor Biblethumppat   FTFY

@Mason_Wheeler said in pie_flavor goes to a lot of effort for no reason: Only files are considered "real". I believe there's a way to tell the github UI to not do that (or there used to be) but you don't usually want it. You particularly don't want it when you have deep directory hierarchies, such as is common in some languages/systems. (A big shout-out to Java and Maven, here!)

@pie_flavor said in NodeBB or something: @boomzilla I asked you to move the thread Oh, come on, you should know better than this. Filed under: never attribute to what is adequately explained by , but I’m still not sure

@kazitor I feel like I should say something about this

Conditionals work! And the jump-to-return optimization didn't break anything! Yay! See how instructions 3 and 7 do early return instead of jumping after if? That's optimization! But instruction 12 should've been elided too... I'll look into it after work.Wait, the instruction shouldn't be elided, it just has the wrong address (should be 1 farther). I'll look into it after work.

@Luhmann said in I was **that** bored...: Hieronymus Bosch - Wikipedia Bob Hieronimus is also kind of cool, IMHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Richard_Hieronimus

@Mason_Wheeler said in Gunpla projects: @Tsaukpaetra As opposed to a non-magnetic railgun? Yes. The smaller, non-magnetic ones use magic!

@Zecc said in My apologies: Having said that, today's morning poop had juust the right consistency. This evening's has white stuff all over it. That happens sometimes. Still not sure what it is or why it happens.

@Applied-Mediocrity

Lorraine W.  /  Dec 30, 2019 Syd Mead, Visionary ‘Blade Runner’ Artist and Futurist, Dies at 86 Visual artist Syd Mead, best known for his contributions to "Blade Runner," "Tron" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," has died. He was 86.

https://reddit.com/r/restofthefuckingowl

@mott555 said in Thread: Complaint about Windows 10 update process. The Windows 10 and nothing else thread is

@Luhmann said in Untappd: @loopback0 For normal people ... @Tsaukpaetra can have the bottled piss Wouldn't drink it either way, so the effect result is the same.

@robo2 It confused me too because I returned here to report on my latest PCB. It initially didn't work because the footprint for the two voltage-follower BJT's was wrong, it had the base and emitter swapped. I removed the BJT's and awkwardly soldered them down backwards, and now the device passes sound. Don't trust EasyEDA's footprints! However, it has no distortion. Same exact problem as the previous PCB. I think I need to revisit some things with a breadboard because this isn't a layout problem (not on two independent PCB's of radically different design). I have picked up a schematic flaw or a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the clipping circuit in the opamp, that didn't exist in the earlier PCB's that worked.

I just pushed out an update to my iPad app -- Coder's Stone. It now includes code samples in COBOL!! Coder’s Stone is a programming language quick-reference.

@PJH said in Lies, Damn Lies, and Forum Statistics: @JBert said in Lies, Damn Lies, and Forum Statistics: @Vixen You could try asking administrators @PJH or @ben_lubar to run that query? I'm not an admin (or mod for that matter.) Haven't been for quite some time. Couldn't handle being constantly blue balled?

@jinpa said in Thinking like a real <X>: no detrimental effect on UI's if psychologists were never consulted In many cases that is correct... they are so bad that making them worse would be quite hard.

@kazitor said in obfusating the "clear" in "nuclear": That's about as much feedback I've been able to muster so far... "I don't really understand it, but it certainly looks good!" "As such, this process also accelerates the entropic death of the universe." Scoundrels, all of you.

@error wrong color scheme ... anyway we'll see in about 15 years or so

Discobot now does everything through dynamically loadable and unloadable plugins. So now there does not even have to be two seconds interruption of service when I twiddle things. Also: TIL you can dynamically unload things in C#.

  It's not gay if the penis belongs to a woman.

@mott555 said in Stupid 4D space game thing: being miles away from anything electronic In my professional opinion as an Electronic Engineer, that is the right place to be.

@Mason_Wheeler said in The Affirmation Thread : @jinpa This makes me think of someone wearing a mocap suit... You're harshing my self-affirmation, man.

You want lots of pictures? Sure, can do. Wait, what do you mean nobody asked for this? Oh well. Times Square Also has a good high-up spot for selfies: Sunset over Midtown This one turned out really nice. At the pier 1 World Trade Center From below: View of the Hudson: Downtown: Wall Street The street name is kind of famous: Federal Hall monument: Central Park Downtown as seen from the Park: There's many smaller areas like "Strawberry Fields" dedicated to the Beatles, or this for Alice in Wonderland. And more nice places to take selfies. Also a lot of other things to ... oh look, a squirrel Empire State Building, again at sunset Skyline of Manhattan This one is pretty good again: The Statue of Liberty As mentioned up-thread, going there would take forever (going up is booked for the next 5 months), so the boat is much easier. Washington Square Park Stonewall park Highline Park The Intrepid, this time during the day Didn't find the time to go on board though: American Museum of Natural History This thing isn't exactly small. You can spend quite some time there. and his buddy Roosevelt. Neanderthal: Aztecs (iirc) Assorted Dinosaurs: USA! USA!! Down at Battery Park: I have a few more, but no time right now.

Shhhh, we're hunting carrots

@Tsaukpaetra

As I said in the status thread, I just got married and I promised I'd post pics of the venue. So, in the interest of reuse, this thread. Post vacation pics, descriptions, locations, etc and nothing else. Obviously, don't post anything you wouldn't feel comfortable being semi-public. Have fun! This is the Steamboat Inn, in Idleyd State Park, about 40 miles outside Roseburg, OR. Really cool place, and now I'm kicking myself for not taking more pictures of the scenery. We got married under this tree: Steamboat Inn

@pie_flavor said in Re: WTF Bites (Tart_Savor is a douche who wants to give blow-jobs to Rust): @DogsB Only if it gets garaged.

@pie_flavor said in Re: Re: WTF Bites (Tart_Savor is a douche who wants to give blow-jobs to Rust): @Tsaukpaetra said in Re: Re: WTF Bites (Tart_Savor is a douche who wants to give blow-jobs to Rust): You're Just spotted yesterday: Not pictured: A later frame in which "you're" and "your" were on the screen at the same time, the former being correct and the latter being incorrect.

@Jaloopa said in Re: Re: WTF Bites (Tart_Savor is a douche who wants to give blow-jobs to Rust): @hungrier said in Re: WTF Bites (Tart_Savor is a douche who wants to give blow-jobs to Rust): @Jaloopa Posting in this topic is probably a good start Reply as topic will also increase the cross links. Is that still part of the pagerank algorithm? For science!

@Gąska It can also get you free room and board from the government.

@MZH That trick with running rapidly into the weeds in a short timed game is how I've been trouncing chess algorithms for years.

@Gąska said in Interpreting screenshot backgrounds: @kazitor I always have this problem when I want to make screenshot but instead soft-core porn

@morbiuswilters but you're probably old and boring by now

@loopback0 said in So the head of a large social network just posted this: This guy is the head of a decentralised network? Every proper anarchy needs a strong anarch at the helm.

@LaoC https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/

@Lorne-Kates mouthwatering

@remi drilling holes is an easy way to stop crack propagation, after all

Godfrey of War Titaniafall

@Keith They would just go under CodeSOD.

6, 7 if drunk

@boomzilla can it really be called a refusal to post if he still tries to post? At least with his refusal to ever upboat, he's also never acted as though he approved of any post. But this is just virtue signaling.

@Gribnit This differential piece is a technic piece dating from 2009 (based on the article date above). I've seen many variants of this diff lock solution, but always based on either locking the axles at the same speed, or (with the in-line differential) locking the differential itself to one of the axles. This exact solution isn't current anymore because the gray clutch piece used here has been replaced by a newer design which is 3 studs long, and won't fit next to the differential anymore in this way. But it illustrates the idea well.

@stillwater That's my usual reaction to most celebrity deaths. It's almost as if people dying in their eighties/nineties have been retiredout of public life for the last 20-30 years or more. How surprising, not.