jqubed
@jqubed@lemmy.world
- Comment on How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades) 1 day ago:
I mean I think it was basically a dictionary lookup, nothing like the negatives we see with today’s LLMs
- Comment on How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades) 1 day ago:
Just as an addendum, the letters predate touch tone phones by a lot. They were originally used for the central office prefix, which in a lot of smaller places was also just the town name. If you were within the town you could just use the 4- (or later 5-) digit phone number of the person you were calling, but if you wanted to call the next town over you would need to dial the 2 numbers corresponding to the letters or tell the operator the name and number, like “Lakewood 2697”. That’s my understanding, anyway, from talking to people who lived in that time or seeing it in movies.
- Comment on Have you done US district court jury duty? What CAN I bring with me to the courthouse? 2 days ago:
OP said it’s US District court, and I think the federal courts tend to be stricter. It might vary from district to district, not sure about that.
- Comment on How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades) 2 days ago:
Yes, 8477. And back when SMS text messaging was a new feature on cellphones, the earliest way to enter the letters was to hit the number multiple times until the right letter was on screen. So to write “cat” you would hit 222 2 8. This was time consuming, so when features like T9 Predictive Text came along it really helped improve texting in the pre-smartphone era.
- Comment on Have you done US district court jury duty? What CAN I bring with me to the courthouse? 2 days ago:
Was that US or State court?
- Comment on Even Xbox developer kits are getting a big price hike 2 days ago:
I understand it’s not just impacting US developers, as the price of these development kits is also going up across Europe and elsewhere. That’s likely because those “macroeconomic” conditions extend beyond just US tariffs, with currency fluctuations, production costs, and other elements impacting pricing.
I’m thinking they don’t sell that many dev kits so maybe the price is going up for Europe also simply because all of the kits ship from China to Redmond and get distributed to the rest of the world from there. Like, I kind of doubt they even build and sell enough in a year to fill a single shipping container.
- Comment on Just answer the question you fuckin' nerd 2 days ago:
Who’s out here deep frying crepes? American county/state fair vendors?
- Comment on Share your poops! 4 days ago:
It’s why the fancy hotels had phones next to the toilet
- Comment on Does you feel Crash Team Racing was better than Mario Kart? 4 days ago:
My experience was only playing at friends’ houses who had Play Stations, but I never felt like one was better than the other. I appreciated the mechanic of upgrading items helped to give a different element to the game instead of it being the same thing Nintendo was doing but with different characters. What we really played a lot with friends, though, was Battle Mode on Mario Kart. I don’t think CTR had that, or else no one thought it was as good. It really hasn’t been as good in Mario Kart either since the Wii version I’d say.
- Comment on Wild Seals 4 days ago:
I now plan to use “the morals of a seagull” whenever I can
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
Do you have any old yearbooks? You might recognize him in there and at least be able to remember his name
- Comment on Share your poops! 5 days ago:
We used to keep diaries like civilized people.
- Comment on What a welcoming party 5 days ago:
Set up a camera and run the video to a nearby viewing room
- Comment on The Full Story of BOOX: How a Chinese Startup Revolutionized the Global E-Reader Market 5 days ago:
I’m not sure but I’m trying to look (not very actively right now, though). Amazon seems to keep updates going for 6 years or so but I’d prefer to not be in such a closed ecosystem. There’s certainly an attraction to an Android-based system. Google has been pushing for suppliers to provide longer Android support but it doesn’t seem like many smaller suppliers have been doing that still. Of course, if you disable internet access and only load files over USB then it’s less of a concern, but then you lose out on some of the Android benefits.
- Comment on i hunger 5 days ago:
Who would win? A railroad speed champion or one grassy pile?
- Comment on Internet email for dummies 6 days ago:
How old is it?
- Comment on The Full Story of BOOX: How a Chinese Startup Revolutionized the Global E-Reader Market 1 week ago:
Thanks, that’s my concern with a lot of these interesting devices from small companies
- Comment on Full list of areas in the UK targeted in ‘dodgy’ Fire TV stick crackdown 1 week ago:
I remember a Scottish lady telling us in the ’90s about how they had vans that would drive around to find illegal TVs and the whole thing was just mind-boggling to me!
- Comment on The Full Story of BOOX: How a Chinese Startup Revolutionized the Global E-Reader Market 1 week ago:
My concern would be less about features and more security updates
- Comment on Mozilla's Firefox adds Perplexity's AI answer engine as a new search option | TechCrunch 1 week ago:
I really don’t know enough about Perplexity AI to have an opinion one way or another, which is why I’m upvoting for awareness. I can’t say whether it’s a good or bad thing, although I’m not optimistic given the general trend of shoehorning “AI” in whether it makes sense or not, but I’m sure there are actually useful applications for the product and a better search engine could be one. I want actual search results, though, not a generated slop answer.
- Comment on Mozilla's Firefox adds Perplexity's AI answer engine as a new search option | TechCrunch 1 week ago:
I’m not upvoting out of support for this move but to spread awareness
- Comment on The Full Story of BOOX: How a Chinese Startup Revolutionized the Global E-Reader Market 1 week ago:
Adding to this, how are they at keeping Android updated, especially on older devices?
- Comment on Self Supporting Antenna Tower Maintenance 1 week ago:
At the high end, the professionals who do this for a living are typically called tower climbers. They’re highly paid because it is dangerous work when you’re climbing hundreds or even thousands of feet up a tower, especially considering the radiation output on a broadcast antenna (at my last station I once met the tower guys doing a regular inspection and he mentioned years earlier his brother had gone up the same tower but hadn’t coordinated with the station engineer and I guess hadn’t followed a proper lockout/tagout. As he climbed down the engineer was in a panic yelling at him that he hadn’t cut the transmitter. Fortunately I think they were already digital at that point and had already switched to half power for the work, although at the antenna that still would’ve been 12,000 watts IIRC. The climber spent the night puking a bunch but seemed “okay” after a few days). They have climbing equipment and special insurance coverage.
It’s a dying industry, but you might check to see if any TV antenna installers could work on it. Sometimes older VHF/UHF TV antennas would get mounted on a mast or small tower for better reception. It was more important in the analog days.
Going more amateur, you could reach out to a local Ham radio club to see if any of their members can help. They probably have people familiar with this type of tower. If there’s a local rock climbing club some of their members might be interested in climbing since towers are usually off-limits (we would sometimes find evidence of people trying to access our broadcast tower or hotwire control of the elevator, which was exactly why we would physically disable the elevator when not in use). You might want to review your insurance coverage in case anyone is injured working on it, though.
Another option might be to rent a cherry picker. At 40 feet that is probably within reach and someone could just ride a bucket up, although I don’t know what that costs or if any training is required to operate it.
- Comment on What time is it? 1 week ago:
Wouldn’t that have been easier on grid paper? Why use ruled paper?
- Comment on Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.” 3 weeks ago:
Can you have your job pay for an iPhone while you have a different personal phone? I’m a big fan of keeping a work device that’s separate from a personal device.
- Comment on In which ways the dot com craze of the late 90s and the current AI market differ? In which ways are the same phenomena? 3 weeks ago:
Tying into this, I feel like in the late-’90s/early-’00s there were a lot of people using the internet every day and some of the benefits and potential were already obvious. Office jobs were extensively starting to use email already and many people at home were checking email at least once a day and looking at online news. E-commerce was basically an improved mail-order catalog, but the improved selection, availability, and prices really were an improvement. Instant communication was an immediate benefit and digital media was showing obvious promise.
I don’t feel like I see nearly the same widespread use of “AI” today. Some of the things that are getting big money don’t really seem like they have a lot of practical application. I don’t think many people have a daily need to generate images or videos. A lot of the things that seem more promising, like improved translation or voice to text, also might not be very profitable, as in people probably won’t want to pay much for them, and they definitely won’t be unless the astronomical resource costs currently projected come way down.
I think where they’re very similar is there are a lot of companies rushing to slap the craze into their business, transform the business for the craze, or create a new business capitalizing on the craze, whether or not it actually makes sense to do so and whether or not the technology is actually useful for the stated purpose yet.
- Comment on FlatEarthers will work around it 3 weeks ago:
On a globe, yes. If the earth were flat as depicted in the above map with Antarctica as the edge then no. This simply points out one of the many illogical points to flat earth conspiracies.
- Comment on whatever happened to in-store coffee grinders? 3 weeks ago:
The only place I ever saw it was at Costco or a little specialty health food store mom used to go to when I was little. I haven’t been to the latter in decades, and Costco got rid of theirs a couple years ago. I think Costco’s reasoning was mostly about them being underutilized compared to the cost. My parents were never coffee drinkers, though, and I started trying when I was dating my wife but also started getting ulcers soon after, so coffee hasn’t been something I’ve really paid attention to.
- Comment on Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say 3 weeks ago:
No, I think that was always pretty obvious. There are other times (like this with Cracker Barrel) where it’s more up for debate
- Comment on Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say 3 weeks ago:
Cleaner, not cheaper. Waffle House has always been cheaper. If you’re on a road trip with kids it’s nicer to feel reasonably confident you’re taking them into clean restrooms.