@Feeds The many strengths of onebox

>_>

thenationalalgorithm.com

If you ever want to hide in a dutch festival in good weather

( via medium.com/@thesjef/… which you should read first if you're patient linked on Tom Scott's newsletter)

@JourneymanGeek They even remembered to block the facial recognition by putting it on a black person! :P

0_0

@Tinkeringbell wait, is it because they don't use facial recogniton on black people or because it dosen't work?

Because it doesn't work/works really bad, at least that's what they told me.

ah so same issue as my accent

? Something like 'hey google' not working for you, or?

@Tinkeringbell basically nearly every one I tried

Oof.

I never tried any :P

tho, the most amusing one was MS years ago. You'd call in and read out the product code to activate...

it tried thrice, gave up and asked me to type it in via the phone keyboard.... which made more sense to start with

O.o

Yeah.

@Tinkeringbell my accent is all over the place lol

@Catija oh, of course! :P

I think at one point it was described as "Trans Atlantic Indian Professor"

@JourneymanGeek lol, I wonder how please the Ministry of Defence will be with this

@JourneymanGeek Oh, mine is really bad too. Makes for fun times when I need to call the company IT helpdesk, which is outsourced to somewhere foreign. Those people have horrible accents, I have horrible accents, so if I tell them my employee number is onehundredandtwentythreethousand, fourhundredandfiftysix, they never understand.

@Luuklag unless they got a copyright on it....

not much they can do?

(and yes, you can copyright fabric print designs)

true, and then it is reverse engineered, so not much infringements there. You can just deviate a few percentages, perhaps even using an orange colour scheme deviates enough to bypass copyright or patents

yup

and tbh not really worth the effort

(actually the other article covers that)

also its a pretty novel approach

in 2017 ;)

Yeah but I just came across it now :D

@JNat spammer for the backlog stackexchange.com/users/26184847/cothem-college?tab=accounts

retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/q/25315/8053 In case anyone else wants to feel old today.

@Tinkeringbell Yeah, no wonder the software section at my local Micro Center (large computer store) is so tiny...

(at 3:55 - "Installation of software was very fast. Option 1 was direct install into your computer [by cartridge]. Option 2 was to put the diskette into your diskette box. [...] There you go, software installed.")

Yeah, I just watched the whole thing. He does make some convincing arguments ;)

@Tinkeringbell lets see, floppies (actual floppies 5 1/4 inch ones) stiffy floppies....

then you'd get like a giant pack of CDs with a computer purchase...

You forgot to start with punch cards/tape.

I'm not that old

Maybe @DavidPostill might be :D

And I think before that, you'd do things by hardwiring stuff, but that weren't really consumer 'computers' :P

uh, more of literally keying things in with switches

Fine ;) All I know about is would be from a book I read about it a while back, my memory is hazy and the book was in Dutch so stuff will get lost in translation too :P

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog .... now try to tell that to the "PC MASTER RACE" gang, optionally adding that you moved to console games exactly for that reason....

@SPArcheon Both consoles and PCs have benefits and downsides. But for some people, those downsides aren't really downsides or the benefits not really benefits, and that's when you get console wars.

Silly things to hate on others for what they prefer in terms of technology. But I can see some kind of future dystopia where religious wars are replaced by ones over kinds of technology. :P

@Tinkeringbell I would stop at "some people think they are right and everyone else is stupid" based on my past experiences saying that but yep, you basically got it right.

@Tinkeringbell The sacred church of "Usb3.0"

Most Modern consoles essentially are PCs

@JourneymanGeek With some restrictions. I can play Stardew Valley modded on PC, not on the Switch.

but at the end of the day - ehhh, whatever works for you, whether its using a standard platform like a console with very predictable hardware or something flexible

@Tinkeringbell I should have said most ;)

Been thinking of signing up for a steam deck, but I've got such a long wishlist at the moment, that it has to wait.

That for me would probably end up combining the best of both worlds (pc and Switch :P)

(also I've never owned a console and don't really want to spend money on something joypad based and find I can't use it ._.)

But that's me, rather than consoles

@JourneymanGeek That's where you borrow something first (or spend a tiny amount of money on getting something second-hand). Get the hang of things.

Possibly!

You know, the whole 'you own nothing but will be happy' :P

Well the PC does most of what I need :D

(and I know the ... slightly excessive amount of money I spend on it will be used)

Well that works too then. No need to spend even more money ;)

lol

Then again, my phone already does most of what I need. I still added a PC and console, just for fun :P

I do run a 3 monitor setup with a flagship processor and a nearly flagship GPU :D

If I bring things down to 'what I need', I'm probably down to e-mail, some 2fa and the banking app :P

@JourneymanGeek Nice. I've forgotten what kind of hardware mine has... I can find it. Just a sec :P

(and I might be replacing the monitors when I move, due to some minor quality of life issues... )

lol

And two monitors ;)

@Tinkeringbell ah

I'm running 2 27 inch 4ks (which are showing a bit of pink tint around the edges) and a 17 inch 1080p at the bottom

I think mine are 24 inch, and definitely not 4k. Most likely HD?

was a 10 inch pen tablet but I can't use the pen tablet feature in windows 11 with my setup and the 17 incher was something I bought for my previous job

Most likely HD

Both 27 inchers are showing some pink tint around the edges

Its not really bad in gaming or dark mode but in light mode it annoys me

that's my rig, though my vram is wrong (10gb not 2)

@JourneymanGeek Yep, I'm that old. Used punch cards at Uni

Teeeeechnically, this started off as a core 2 duo I pulled from a dumpster, ship of thesus style...

@DavidPostill I figured as much :D

@JourneymanGeek Nice :)

Might look at a few upgrades once I've gotten another job + know I can pay off the apartment ._.

I'd move first. This doesn't look bad, and even though you can pay off the apartment you will still need money for stuff when moving, and it's always going to be more than you expected.

The PC will still be there to be upgraded once all is set and done.

@Tinkeringbell yup

and its a perfectly fine PC

Its good for another 4-5 years I'd say

(not that I'd wait that long :D)

@JNat stackexchange.com/users/24108125/clients-code?tab=accounts another spammer

@Tinkeringbell I've planned for the basics and a buffer but yeah, I realise there'd be unexpected expenses

and its damned hard to plan ahead with no real idea of when I get my keys (between end of the year and next sept?) and they're raising the sales tax

@JourneymanGeek Mine turned 5 years old last April XD Still works fine, it will do for at least 2-3 more years I think.

@Tinkeringbell I like building/upgrading PCs :D

@JourneymanGeek O.o They can raise sale tax after you've signed a buyer's agreement?

@Tinkeringbell No, but it would affect furniture and such

Ooohhhh.

That kind of sales tax XD

Oh

we don't pay much income tax

our VAT equivilent is going from 7-10% (which is only mildly annoying) and they're removing the 'allowance' for overseas orders (no tax under 400. I don't mind paying, it just makes buying stuff from small places difficult)

Nah, just that sales tax for a home made me think of the Dutch 'overdrachtsbelasting' and not the general VAT type of taxes.

but that also means everything is more expensive

On the bright side, I can take advantage of a bunch of subsidies

@JourneymanGeek The Dutch VAT equivalent is 9 (for necessities) or 21 percent (for everything else). And they scrapped the 'no taxes on aliexpress stuff' a year or two ago.

@Tinkeringbell aliexpress dosen't bother me cause they're big enough to just... deal with it

and I won't be buying much from them for a new place :D

Fair enough.

Pondering a under-desk PC mount if I go with a floating desk...

which would be quite an adventure

Still, scrapping those tax-exemption for everything under 22 euros here is annoying, it makes buying from outside the EU a pain in the ass having to figure out if taxes are included or if I pay a lot for shipping and then also have to pay extra taxes again.

@Tinkeringbell yes

and sometimes they hold back stuff and you either need to pay them extra to deliver it and take the taxes, or you need to collect it

If we weren't in a period of massive inflation - I'd be like shrug

@JourneymanGeek My brother has that. It looks nice. I want something like it, but I'd prefer it if it was on the outside of my desk, not under it... because my desk isn't that wide (1.2m) and I don't want to hit my toes more than I already do :P

but its more about the effort than the money ._.

@Tinkeringbell It hangs!

@JourneymanGeek Yep. Over here if you need to pay extra taxes, you will have collect it. Effort, blegh.

@JourneymanGeek Okay, don't want to bruise any shins either.

aliexpress.com/item/1005003795019492.html

@Tinkeringbell that's about the width I am expecting to have

tho I might put the table extra high (I have this wierd thing about preferring to sit with my feet off the ground)

Baaaad posture :P

lol

But I do it too. Sit a bit higher, feet of the ground but on a pillow. It's warmer ;)

Ergonomics happens to other people

but that also depends on my 'ideal' monitor height working out

since I also like my 'main' monitors at eye level

I started programming with punch cards, on one of these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System%2f360_Model_20

Computers, and computer time, was expensive in those days (the early to mid 1970s), but the machine I used was donated by IBM to a museum, and it cost me nothing to use it.

I started out with this in the 90s :P

We had an XT clone

then a 486 (in the 90s)...

@Tinkeringbell hm. That's a strangely analog cellulose and wax based data media

For real though, the first computer I can remember at home had windows 95.

probably as old as our second computer then

I think it still only had a floppy drive, and dad later added a cd-rom drive to it.

tho we didn't upgrade often, and the upgrades felt so much bigger

the previous PC I owned probably is still usable for 'basic' stuff, and runs modern OSes :D

O.o

@Tinkeringbell its a 3rd generation intel... it can browse the web and run windows 10

and has a reasonable (actually more modern) video card

Heh. I don't think we saved any of our old PCs at home, which is a shame. I don't know what kind of specs they had.

I do know that after one big overhaul, we were amazed at how fast it turned on, and how smooth rollercoaster tycoon was suddenly running.

Oh sure, we can talk about PC ages, but have any of you played Pinball on XP as much as I have? I think not

The space pinball game?

I used to play that for hours.

I can still hear the weird tinny sound effects.

Challenge Xetpt . . . XPected . . . Xteppted.

@M.A.R. I don't know how much you played it... but I do know I played more minesweeper than pinball.

Oh, I was very little then. I didn't understand Minesweeper logic. Just made it the max number of bombs (990? Something like that) and try clicking here and there

I just discovered there's an Android version of Space Cadet. Must. Not. Install... :)

I feel like it wouldn't be the same without pushing the buttons to play.

Agreed. And it'd be difficult to avoid pressing too hard on the phone screen.

I have one version installed on my PC. It's fun to kill time with, at times.

@Tinkeringbell We didn't either

tho tbh, other than the XT I don't really care much

the previous PC I have is hitting... 8?

and I got my current PC about 3 years ago, and updated the GPU from the 980 TI that was the upgrade to the GPU I built the new PC in about a year later

@Catija omg... if I could turn back time!

That one's missing the music.

There was another fun one with 3 different stages, one was a sea theme... Might have been console, can't recall for sure

But there's other videos of people playing that have the music.

@PM2Ring I tried it out actually

its super janky

@JourneymanGeek Thanks for the warning.

Allegedly, it can run on modern desktop machines. From howtogeek.com/815285/… The game was supposedly dropped from Windows because a bug prevented a 64-bit x86 port, but Andrey notes in the readme file that the “decompiled game worked in x64 mode on the first try.”

@PM2Ring it might 'work' but not be reliable

@curious You can. archive.org/details/3DPinball have fun.

Years ago, I tried playing it on Linux, under Wine, but it was a bit laggy. But that was on a pretty slow machine.

@Tinkeringbell walks backward slowly

I do actually need to get stuff done today...

No. cannot. time. sink.

What @Cat said

@curious Epic pinball ?

also

@Catija Which includes a new high score on pinball? :P

wait, I thought I was supposed to be the bad influence

@JourneymanGeek It sort of looks like it but the music doesn't fit... I seem to recall it had a much happier vibe

NOOOO. I'm watching a youtube video with a 93 million point high score and I'll never live up to it, so I just won't try. :P

@Catija Wise words

I didn't even know what a Maelstrom was. I think getting 2-3 of the yellow dots was the farthest I ever got, let alone filling them completely.

@JourneymanGeek Some of the tables fit, I just can't recall there were that many tables

then again, it's been a loooong time ago

@Catija Luckily the high scores for this game weren't world wide, but just for you and whoever else happend to play on the same PC. :P

I'm pretty sure it's Epic Pinball though... I remember the hole with the reef and some of the ramps and the magic theme

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@curious could have been a shareware version

epic liked to give away demos with limited maps/features and you could buy the full reason later

@JourneymanGeek Seems likely! I only recall 3-ish

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@Feeds save this bitter sweet memory of an actually working onebox

Bug reports in 3... 2... 1...

What is it btw with staff camel casing their featured posts

That's Title Case. This is CamelCase.

@PM2Ring details, its just both wrong ;)

Bug reports on Saves may take a little while to appear. My Bookmarks have vanished, but the Saves haven't appeared yet.

Someone should gently point out that we don't normally title case question titles on Stack Exchange...

Why not use rEVERSE¯cAMEL¯sNAKE¯cASE?

Can someone pls ban this guy already: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/posts/236417/timeline