I got this game around the time it came out and I remembered dropping it, but not why. Reading your post now makes me think Blockhead was the reason why haha. I should get back around to this and perhaps skip this fight

!themusicman out here doing the Lord’s work. I would love an invite as well!

Weather prediction at point locations is extremely challenging to get right because we simply can’t observe and make predictions for every single square inch of the earth. Many weather models are run on grids with boxes about the size of a few kilometers at the smallest scale, which means that any physical process in the atmosphere that is the size of that box or smaller won’t be represented well by the model.

Specifically on your point about clouds passing over your location, cloud and precipitation formation is even more challenging. Clouds and precipitation form due to atmospheric processes ranging from hundreds of kilometers all the way down to micrometers, which practically means the weather models are making an educated guess (albeit a very good one that is informed by scientific research) about when and where clouds will form. And when a model does predict a cloud, it will cover an entire grid box.

Finally, I saw you made a comment about how machine learning should improve forecasts, and in fact it does! But the weather community is still working on data driven models (as opposed to models that solve physical atmospheric equations), and most of them are run by private companies so their output is not free. As these data driven models get better, it may be possible that they will be able to make predictions at scales less than a kilometer.

Atari 7800. I bought it from someone on craigslist about 3 years ago. The video was pretty fuzzy and audio wasn’t consistent, so I talked them down to a good price. I ended up modding it for composite video and audio, but I rarely play it. I didn’t grow up with an Atari, so I don’t have the nostalgia for the games, but I still think it’s pretty neat.

TIL that plain TeX is a thing.

Neat, lots more e-waste incoming

Oh that’s interesting. I started poking around with a Gameboy emulator guide implemented in Python that intended to emulate a Z80. Got any good resource recommendation in case I decide to pick this back up and inevitably get stuck?

Oddly enough I’ve had the most success selling things on craigslist in the past few years. When I list things on OfferUp I get some messages but everyone is super flaky. People are still flaky on craigslist but I almost always end up closing the sale there instead of OfferUp

I don’t think it’s so much a concern about violating the ToS as it is the consequences of violating it. Valve may be able to lock the account or close it if they have good reason to suspect the account has a new owner. An example of solid evidence of this may be changing the payment method for purchases, such that the name on a credit card doesn’t match the previous cardholder name on the steam account.

But if the new owner doesn’t plan on making new purchases on the account, it would probably be more difficult to confirm the account was transferred.

That’s a good point. I hadn’t factored in the processor architecture at all, whoops. I’ve already got plenty of Linux experience though, so I just need to find hardware that can support a wide variety of software. Thanks for the recommendations!

Holy fucking nope. I wasn’t planning on getting Windows 11 and this serves as a great reminder to make the transition to Linux. I’ve been thinking of picking up a raspberry pi 5 as my next desktop. Anyone want to share their experiences doing something similar?

Predictability in a chaotic system across various scales of time and space.

I like finding playlists that people on Spotify have made roughly around a particular band or genre. I find one and hit shuffle and see what happens. I’m talking an actual user made playlist, not the garbage Spotify “made for you” playlists. Those used to be solid until they started stuffing them with 90% songs I already listen to.

Sometimes playing the last song on an album that I like or one of my playlists gets some good stuff out of Spotify’s algorithm, but that is kind of hit or miss. It used to be quite a bit better.

I have been meaning to remove Marilyn Manson from my playlists and just now did. Thanks for the reminder

I clean the kitchen pretty thoroughly once per week after meal prepping. By thoroughly I mean do the dishes, wipe down the stovetop and counters, clean the sink with dish soap and a sponge, then sweep and mop. During the week I try to clean up small spills and such as I go and load the dishwasher after meals.

For the bathroom, I usually do once per month. Clean the counter, mirror, toilet top to bottom, and shower top to bottom. Sweep and mop.

Living spaces and bedroom I sweep/mop/vacuum once per month and clean tables as needed.

I hardly dust or clean windows. I maybe do that a couple times per year or if it’s particularly filthy.

The general idea for me is to clean regularly and as needed so that nothing is really nasty at any given time. Anything else gets done roughly once per year or on move out.

Not an ingredient necessarily, but I toast rice with spices before cooking it. I throw some oil and garlic in the pot I’m going to cook the rice in, then put in the rice and (for mexican-like dishes) garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, cumin, a little oregano, a little cayenne pepper, and salt. I mix that all up continuously over medium heat for a couple minutes, then I add the water and cook the rice. It makes an incredible difference in taste

Looks like a couple people mentioned this, but you will likely want/need to mod whatever system you get. I have a modded NES and Atari 7800, so I can comment on those.

There used to be a NES mod that fixed the pin connector issue, called “Blinking Light Win” https://www.arcadeworks.net/products/blw?variant=36483581116569. They’ve been sold out for at least a couple years (I’ve sporadically checked out of curiosity since I bought mine). But if you can get your hands on one I strongly recommend it. It has made my NES incredibly reliable and it’s very easy to install. No soldering, just open the console, remove the 72 pin connector, and pop in the BLW. Done.

For the Atari 7800, there’s a composite video/s-video board mod you can pick up. I’m forgetting what the name of it is, and I don’t have the manual handy at the moment, but I will try to update later with the name and link. Anyway, this one is more involved and requires some soldering. It’s not too difficult, just requires some patience, and it’s very worth it. Composite audio is a separate solution, but doesn’t require extra hardware, just a little more soldering.

I hope that helps! Feel free to reach out about these mods and I can explain further.

Natural language processing falls under AI though, and so do large language models (see chapters 23 and 24 of Russell and Norvig, 2021 http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/).

Here are a few I didn’t see already. I’ve played these all on switch.

Untitled Goose Game - casual and goofy 1/2 player puzzle game

Far Lone Sails - casual 1 player puzzle adventure game

Figment - light action adventure platformer one player game

I think the reported numbers are coming from downdetector.com, which relies on self reporting and people being aware that the website exists. I imagine many more customers were affected. Also, anything the prevents emergency services communication, which occurred during this outage, should be considered a major outage imo