rudyharrelson
@rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio
- Comment on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C 13 hours ago:
I really like the Interactive Relationship Graph on your site. Reminds me of when I used to work with graph databases and could visualize all the information in the database as a handy graph of nodes and relationships.
- Comment on Why do people like the Punisher comics? 2 days ago:
Cause I was thinking of characters who use guns, which isn’t really Batman’s vibe (aside from his very early years)
- Comment on Why do people like the Punisher comics? 2 days ago:
It’s certainly a personal preference, but I’ll give some insight as a casual Punisher fan:
A character doesn’t need superpowers to be interesting. People can enjoy the Punisher despite him being “just a guy who shoots people with a gun” in the same way people enjoy “John Wick”, “Judge Dredd”, “Taken”, “Jason Bourne”, “Die Hard”, or any movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The archetypal “one man army with nothing left to lose” story is cliched and perhaps “basic”, but can also be written in a compelling way depending on the author. Lots of different authors have written for The Punisher over the years, some being better than others.
I personally think a fun aspect of the character is his understanding that he isn’t a good guy; he (in most continuities I’ve read) hates what he has become and only does it because it’s all he knows. He doesn’t characterize it as “justice”, either. He does what he does as a means of punishment, vengeance, and retribution (and considers it a preventative measure when the criminal is irredeemably evil).
Some of his better stories explore the consequences of this judge-jury-and-executioner approach he takes. For example, killing an undercover cop who had infiltrated a gang that was on Punisher’s hit-list. In that particular instance, he was willing to let the undercover cop’s widow execute him as penance for his mistake. The widow lets him live because she doesn’t want to be like him.
- Comment on Thoughts?? 3 weeks ago:
It is extremely common for classes to require students to learn to use proprietary software. It’s a tool of the trade.
I understand that; my position is more ideological than practical. In an ideal scenario, AutoDesk, Adobe, Microsoft, etc wouldn’t be so deeply entrenched in their respective fields such that they are the de-facto tools of the trade for every business which must be learned in order to be hired. I know a given student has to learn certain proprietary tools in the current academic and professional environment. My comment was saying I would prefer this not to be the case. I am fully aware that proprietary software domination in the academic and professional spaces is not going away any time soon.
- Comment on Thoughts?? 3 weeks ago:
I’m no academic, but it seems wrong to me that any field would require the use of a particular proprietary software in order to do one’s homework assignments.
May Excel or SPSS be the best tool for the job? In many cases, sure! But students should be allowed to use whatever other software can also get the job done, as long as the software exports the assignment in a data format that the professor can reasonably ingest (e.g.: turning in a CSV file, which can be understood by many different kinds of software, not just Excel).
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Seems like you have perfectly valid concerns regarding the logistics of making such a move. Have you brought up these concerns with him? If so, does he acknowledge them or ignore them?
- Comment on How do I use Firefox and block YouTube ads? 1 month ago:
Ah, well that’s not ideal. I’m surprised just disabling the “Quick fixes” list resulted in ads appearing again; that didn’t happen for me. Have you tried updating the filter lists after disabling the “Quick fixes” one?
- Comment on How do I use Firefox and block YouTube ads? 1 month ago:
If uBlock Origin was working fine until recently, you can try this workaround (it worked for me when YouTube suddenly started showing me “Ad blockers are against YouTube TOS” messages):
Open uBlock settings in Firefox, go to “Filter Lists” and uncheck “uBlock Filters - Quick fixes” under “Built-in”.
Restart Firefox after unchecking it and see if it helps.
- Comment on Entirely too many questions about Mastodon. So sorry. 1 month ago:
Is it as interactive as Lemmy or is everyone kinda shouting into the void?
I’d say it’s a somewhat different kind of interactivity than Lemmy. Your typical Mastodon user won’t have many followers, but that doesn’t mean you’re “shouting into the void”. Similar to Lemmy, you can comment on (reply to) others’ posts and lots of other people can join in the discussion that way.
Is there an equivalent to communities?
Not really, but you can follow hashtags for whatever topics you’re interested in. Or follow an account for something you’re interested in (e.g.: organizations, weather, hobby news, content creators, etc)
If not, how do you find stuff you care about?
Follow people/organizations/tags that you find interesting and their posts will populate your feed.
And is reblogging the equivalent to upvoting? Is it like a like and share in one?
Not necessarily. Reblogging (“boosting” on Mastodon) is just putting more eyes on someone else’s post by sharing it; it isn’t equivalent to an endorsement per se. You can favorite posts on Mastodon, but I don’t think there’s really an equivalent to a “like” or “upvote” button.
Do they have memes there or what’s the range of content?
The range of content is as wide as anywhere else, memes and all. Can vary from instance to instance, though. (e.g.: code of conduct on mastodon.social may be different from fosstodon.org’s)
How does it compare to bluesky? I have used bluesky but the tone there is kinda shallow imo, rarely any meaningful interactions.
I haven’t used bluesky, so I can’t comment on this one.
- Comment on LEGO® Island - Online Web Port 1 month ago:
That’s super neat. I still have my physical copy of this game from back in the day. I’ve booted it up in a Windows 98 VM before, but that’s way more hassle than just opening it in Firefox.
- Comment on A reboot of the X-Files but this time Scully is always right. Everything has a totally rational explanation and Mulder slowly looses his believe in the supernatural. 1 month ago:
Her science-oriented methods break down when it comes to (in the broadest sense) “supernatural” phenomena - because they are, by definition even, outside science.
I only watched the first 2 or 3 seasons of The X-Files, so I there’s lots of episodes I haven’t seen, but this seems incorrect to me. Scully and Mulder were chasing unexplained phenomena, which are entirely within the realm of science. Humans tend to call things “supernatural” when we don’t know how to explain them (ghosts, fairies, aliens, etc), but those entities (in the context of The X-Files where they are actually real), once observed, can be subjected to the scientific method the same as anything else. Aliens in The X-Files aren’t magic; it’s just extremely rare for humans to be able to observe and study them.
- Comment on Say hello if you see this more than 6 hrs from posting 1 month ago:
Howdy
- Comment on The type of southern hospitality you receive depends on your skin color. 1 month ago:
Depends on the individual. Some people will be hospitable regardless of your skin color, but will be less hospitable based on your religion, gender, sexuality, or any number of other factors.
- Comment on Ironically, people making fun of the "Gnu/Linux" copypasta is probably one of the main ways people know what Gnu is 2 months ago:
- Comment on Comment your strangest/dumbest cursed images that you find funny for no reason 2 months ago:
- Comment on Comment your strangest/dumbest cursed images that you find funny for no reason 2 months ago:
- Comment on WTF why my filament exploded? 3 months ago:
Looks like a defense response. Didn’t sneak up behind it and scare it did you?
- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 months ago:
You might enjoy Sid Meier’s Civilization games. I’m partial to Civ 6, but they’re pretty much all in the same vein of management games.
- Comment on Elevated 3 months ago:
Thanks for the link. My first question was, “What brand, what item?”
Per the FDA, the recalled item is Cabot Creamery Extra Creamy Premium Butter, Sea Salted. The butter, which is sold in 8-ounce packages, contains two sticks of butter in a cardboard box.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con may have the same stick drift problem as original Switch 3 months ago:
they make too much money off people buying replacements.
Didn’t they start offering free repairs at some point due to it being such a widespread issue? Or did they stop doing that at some point?
Between the damage to their reputation it would cause (knowingly releasing a very flawed product despite having already publicly apologized for it years ago) and the potential for more class-action lawsuits down the line, it seems like it’d be profoundly shortsighted for them to do this.
But maybe the profits from selling replacements outweighs all that in their eyes. I sure hope not. One would hope the profits from a considerably more expensive console and moderately more expensive games would be enough.
- Comment on We are so cooked 4 months ago:
I definitely don’t want to downplay a crisis, but I feel like I’ve been seeing headlines saying “all the bees are dying and we don’t know why” every year for nearly 20 years now.
I’m no bee expert. Just seems to me, based on the headlines, bees would’ve been extinct 10 years ago.
Some cursory searching led me to Colony Collapse Disorder which, apparently, has no agreed-upon cause. Apparently devastating losses to honey bee colonies started being reported around 1900. But it also mentions:
In 2024, the United States Census of Agriculture reported an all-time high in commercial honey bee hives (mostly in Texas), making them the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country.[38]
Link to the source cited there: https://archive.is/nfeb2
Apparently last year saw the largest honey bee populations in US history. Though apparently that huge boom in honey bee population is a threat to other native pollinators, so I guess that presents its own unique problems.
- Comment on Sun God 5 months ago:
It doesn’t exactly unsettle me, but pondering the mind-boggling scale of celestial bodies and the cosmos can certainly be… humbling, I guess?
I had a co-worker a while back who couldn’t talk about the great scale of the universe cause he’d get freaked out. It didn’t come up much, but when it did, he’d be like, “Please stop, it’s stressing me out” so we’d change the subject.
- Comment on blocklist for AI music on youtube. 5 months ago:
I’m a big fan of this one:
“Somebody that I used to Know” by Linking Park
I’m sad to see that the original got taken down, but someone reuploaded it here.
- Comment on If I’m mostly attracted to men, is it «wrong» to consider myself pan? 5 months ago:
Based on your description, “pan” seems appropriate. I don’t think ratios really matter when it comes to this kind of terminology. You appear to be, to varying degrees, attracted to people regardless of their sex or gender.
- Comment on Our brains remembers at random cringe and awful things we did in the past to prevent us of doing them again. 5 months ago:
Much appreciated! I’ll give it a read.
- Comment on Our brains remembers at random cringe and awful things we did in the past to prevent us of doing them again. 5 months ago:
When those memories come up, choose a different response. Laugh at yourself. Forgive yourself. Love yourself.
Any recommended reading on this topic? Choosing a different response when these memories come up is really difficult for me, personally. Even when I acknowledge that I’ve grown as a person since then, the memories themselves still just feel jarringly awful.
- Comment on It's that time of year again 7 months ago:
I resolved to get back in shape last year after sitting on my ass for a good long while. Happy to say I’ve stuck to it and am in the best shape of my life at the moment (at least strength-wise; my cardio is still trash lol).
For anyone else looking to hit the weights, I started with a simple 5x5 workout. I didn’t bother downloading any apps or anything; I just keep a simple .txt file on my PC tracking my progress. Personally I’m not a fan of how hard the Stronglifts website tries to sell users an app and spreadsheets and such, but their guides are useful.
And I love Dr. Mike’s channel. He’s been consistently helpful ever since I started hitting the weights again. Gives great advice in my experience; super knowledgeable guy.
- Comment on FBI recommends coming up with a 'secret word or phrase' to make sure your family know you're you and not some hellish AI copycat 7 months ago:
Regulations virtually always lag years behind technology, don’t they? In the interim period with absolutely no regulations, we must take it upon ourselves to protect ourselves and loved ones from being exploited.
Given just how wealthy the AI bubble is making some people, we may not see any common sense regulation for quite some time. Best to adapt to that reality imo. Gonna tell my friends and family to call me by my hacker alias, “X360N0_sc0peX” on the phone or I’ll assume they’re a bot.
- Comment on Is it possible to install my own OS on a "smart" TV? Is that a thing? 8 months ago:
It’s interesting to see some of the back-and-forth on this topic between different proponents of free software.
I listened to this talk by Linus Torvalds a while back and it relates to the GPL license used by the Linux kernel and why the kernel hasn’t changed to GPLv3. Apparently Linus doesn’t find this practice by Tivo and other hardware manufacturers to be an issue.
- Comment on Jewel Beetles 8 months ago:
