LordOfTheChia

@LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

LordOfTheChia,

Eh, that at least goes back to the days of dial-up (at least).

56k modem connections were 7k bytes or less.

The drive thing confused and angered many cause most OSs of the time (and even now) report binary kilobytes (kiB) as kB which technically was incorrect as k is an SI prefix for 1000 (10^3) not the binary unit of 1024 (2^10).

Really they should have advertised both on the boxes.

I think Mac OS switched to reporting data in kilobibytes (kiB) vs kB since Mac OS 10.6.

I remember folks at the time thinking the new update was so efficient it had grown their drive space by 10%!

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

This video presentation on Reddit explains it best (SFW):

old.reddit.com/…/why_did_i_spend_another_whole_we…

(Sound on)

LordOfTheChia,

The surprising part is the price. Baby colognes have been in a thing in other countries (the ones I’ve seen have a lemony scent). Example:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a8d51a9a-4750-49b9-ab68-e687d859202b.jpeg

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

Info about their lobbying actions: sunlightfoundation.com/…/tax-preparers-lobby-heav…

Outside of tax preparers themselves, the industry is reinforced in its opposition to return-free filing by various trade and advocacy groups. One of these is the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights (ACTR), an organization composed of various tax preparers and makers of tax software. In addition to Intuit, H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, their membership includes TaxAct, TaxSlayer, Liberty Tax Services and more. It’s a relatively new group, but in the only two years it’s existed the ACTR has poured almost $450,000 into the tax lobby, including six mentions of opposing “simple-filing” in their disclosures.

So far from this old reddit mega-thread:

reddit.com/…/tax_filing_software_megathread_a_com…

the most recommended over the services above is FreeTaxUSA

also there’s this tip in the comments:

My tip: turbo tax only charges you at the very end when you go to actually file. So what I do is do my tax paperwork at both turbo tax and freetaxusa then compare the final return (or due) amount between the two. Every couple years, there’s a hundred or so dollar difference between the two and I dig in to find the difference before submitting and paying for ONLY freetaxusa

Edit: Credit Karma was another recommendation, but they are owned by Intuit since 2020:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Karma

Edit 2: Another article on industry lobbying

opensecrets.org/…/tax-prep-companies-lobbying-aga…

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

If the underlying concept is good and was well thought out, it’s better to build upon it instead of reinventing it.

Look at the 4 stroke engine (and engines in general) many of the design concepts date back to the 1880s!

There’s other engine designs (ex:rotary engine) but the 4 stroke has over a century of testing, improvements, and refinements. A new design can adapt some of the refinements, but would have to catch up on decades of innovation and testing just to catch up!

On the Unix side, there’s the evolution of the Posix standard (which was based on Unix).

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

I haven’t used mint in a while but did for a few years. The out of the box experience (at that time) was better.

Article from 2011:

Linux Mint 11 is a very respectable and speedy distribution and is comparatively very media friendly and easy to use out of the box for newcomers. These qualities likely have contributed to the operating system’s place on the Top 5 Linux Distribution list.

pcper.com/…/linux-mint-rising-in-popularity-and-s…

More contemporary Mint users chime in here with why they prefer Mint:

forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=383991

Take a hugely popular distro which alienates some some users with some issues or unappealing GUI choices, Mint comes along and polishes it further and you end up with a distro that is just perfect for that niche.

I think quite a few Ubuntu users migrated to KUbuntu or Mint when Canonical made Unity the default (in Ubuntu 11.04).

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Unity

LordOfTheChia,

I think of snap and flatpack as docker containers but for GUI apps.

There’s more differences of course, but I take that as the gist.

LordOfTheChia,

For decades I thought they were saying “a piece of his sandwich” and not “a Vegemite sandwich”…

LordOfTheChia,

Did you confess?

FOSS alternative to... Sending Spotify links?

This is probably a dumb question but what is a better way to send a link to a song to friends without using Spotify? I don’t use Spotify anymore so I don’t like going back to that website just to copy a song link so people could hear it. I know I could send something like a YouTube link but I’m trying to degoogle so I...

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

Don’t listen to these guys, there’s a really easy solution:

  1. Set you voice mail greeting to the song you want to share
  2. Share your phone number with your group or post it online to the folks you want to share the song with
  3. Don’t answer your phone for a few days
LordOfTheChia,

It’s an ice cream shop that caters to the lactose intolerant.

LordOfTheChia,

Same thing happened with the iPhone shuffle. People complained it wasn’t “random enough” and would often end up calling members of the same family and/or household in a row. So they rewrote that algorithm too.

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

Or thinking that if you didn’t get the drop in 9 attempts, you’re practically guaranteed it in the next attempt.

Nope, still 1 in 10 chance.

In most simple written RNG calculations, past failures do not guarantee future success.

I believe some games will keep a tally of failures and award a successful loot after x failures to avoid frustrating players.

LordOfTheChia,

GNU/Linux hornets nest.

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

In addition to the explanation others have mentioned, here it is in graph form. See the where the graph of 2^x intersects the y axis (when x=0):

people.richland.edu/james/…/exponential.html

This also has some additional verbal explanations:

scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2626

The simplest way I think of it is by the properties of exponentials:

2^3 / 2^2 = (2 * 2 * 2) / (2 * 2) = 2 = 2^(3-2)

Dividing two exponentials with the same base (in this case 2) is the same as that same base (2) to the power of the difference between the exponent in the numerator minus the exponent in the denominator (3 and 2 in this case).

Now lets make both exponents the same:

2^3 / 2^3 = 8/8 = 1

2^3 / 2^3 = 2^(3-3) = 2^0 = 1

LordOfTheChia,

Package was being delivered by GOB Bluth.

“Return from whence you came!”

LordOfTheChia, (edited )

Depends, do you have an abnormally large head and psychic powers?

LordOfTheChia,

It is water:

volcano.oregonstate.edu/collecting-sample

Though for steel forging, oil is used depending on how fast they need to cool it down between forging steps.

www.americanbladesmith.org/…/quenching-oil/

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #