Filament hinges. Filament hinges everywhere.

(Riffling through my Rolodex of ancient webcomics.)

Ah, here we are:

No, it’s specifically for Windows 2000. That should about tell you how useful it will be at this point, or really any point in the foreseeable future.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a meme before.

DDTPV-TXMX7-BBGJ9-WGY8K-B9GHM

I will be 100 years old and trying to remember my own social security number, and all I’ll be able to come up with is this goddamn thing. I can already see it.

The most succinct summation of this I’ve seen is a turn of phrase once again lifted from Daniel Rutter:

You are not your brain. You are something that your brain does.

Not until somebody shuts off the investor money faucet for AI. Then they’ll come crawling back — although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout.

But hey, look at the bright side. We’ve already had the cryptocurrency mining boom and bust, and “AI” boom and soon to be bust. There’s still time for some idiot to invent the next tech scam fad which will conveniently require a shitload of hardware for no recognizably useful purpose.

Is it little endian or Bag Endian?

If you register independent that prevents you from participating in the large party primaries in many (most/all?) states. You can only vote in the primary for your registered party. So that also locks you out of at least attempting to prevent the Democrats from incessantly fielding dumbass GOP-lite candidates like they’ve been doing.

Theoretically if you register as Republican that also allows you to surreptitiously torpedo their worst candidates in their primaries, but it’s unlikely we’ll get enough trolls on board to swing the needle meaningfully with that strategy.

He also imposed an import tax on motorcycles because Harley Davidson was deathly afraid that riders would rush out to purchase a Japanese bike that didn’t drip oil everywhere and reliably starts when you press the button.

Basically all life on Earth that’s not some bacteria or fungi originally developed in the oceans, and only later adapted to life on land. If you go back far enough, the common ancestor of anything that walks, crawls, or flies ultimately originally swam.

I have seen guys do it, though. I suppose in certain specific scenarios it might make sense. I’m in agreement there, though, I think I’ll give it a pass unless I absolutely have to.

I think the point he’s trying to make is that the sun technically has a finite lifetime, albeit in that case one that’s long enough to be functionally irrelevant from the perspective of human time scales.

Hey, man. I am four stars at least.

“Everything I don’t like is terrorism.”

What is this, 2001 again?

For anyone wondering what the heck this thing is, it’s called a roll chart. Usually these are loaded with turn-by-turn instructions for rally racing or similar, but as you can see you can also stick a map in one.

If you’re going to do the map thing it kind of helps for your overall route to be oriented vertically, or else otherwise you have to stick the map in it sideways.

It’s a map in a roll chart holder. These days they’re used in rally and off road racing, and sometimes motorcycle touring.

I can confirm this to at least some degree. Part of my job involves marketing and this unfortunately requires at least some minimum peripheral contact with professional marketing people.

They’re idiots, at least on the creative side. They live in a bubble of their own making and are among the worst people on Earth for predicting how regular people think, interact with products or websites, or make decisions.

However, they also get piles and piles of cash shoveled in their direction by executive types who are also idiots, in the vain hope of an ROI that is legendarily fuzzy and also extremely easy to fudge. Thus, the machine churns on.

Trains on rails have basically no traction, since the contact surfaces are steel on steel. Anything that makes them slippery becomes a no-go as soon as hills are involved, and stopping is also significantly impacted.

Having them not require tires is a solved problem, but as you can see that comes with some compromises.

Re: Focus stacking.

This is the part where I get to link my duck stacking .gif. Again!

This is far from macro, so there were only like, eight (?) relevant exposures in this stack. But you are correct in that high magnification photos taken very close to the objective can require dozens or maybe even a hundred exposures to get everything in focus.

This small ballpoint pen tip was I think around 40:

And this top-down view of the edge of a strange knife (of course) I think was pushing 100:

The texture in the backdrop there is that of an ordinary sheet of printer paper, lit obliquely with a small flashlight.