Unless I’m mistaken, and I probably am, the patents on blueray should have expired by now. Software side might be covered under copyright right though. Not sure if software can be copyrighted though tbh.
Unless I’m mistaken, and I probably am, the patents on blueray should have expired by now. Software side might be covered under copyright right though. Not sure if software can be copyrighted though tbh.
Didn’t know that. Thanks!
134a is for automotive ac units. Unless something has changed recently, household hvac systems use a different type. It used to be R22 for both, but that was a long time ago. Turned out freon (R22) was bad for the environment.
Depending where you look it may still be. My wife uses hers frequently on the back of her head and neck to help with migraines.
Whether or not I am the cause of those migraines I shall neither confirm or deny.
/rant
I know both candidates and their positions. Don’t particularly like either candidate. Really dislike one of them. And I haven’t seen anyone host an actual, honest to god political debate in my life, and no, the final season of West Wing doesn’t count.
All that being true, why the blazes would I have watched this one? My entire life, debates have only ever been excuses to put the candidates up on a stage see which one looks prettier, and shout sound bites into a microphone. That’s not a debate, that’s a campaign ad. And I’m tired of them.
I would really like our nation to get back to a point where I can feel comfortable voting for the candidate whose policies I actually think are the best instead of having to vote against the candidate that I think will actually destroy the country.
/end-rant
Well, I mostly buy music nowadays. but I’m also not as broke as I was growing up and the tooling to convert media to digital is a lot better as well. Between Ebay, Amazon, and BandCamp you can find pretty much anything on either physical or digital formats.
If you were looking to sail the seas, there are Spotify downloaders that download music from Spotify playlists/albums, sourced from YouTube, and of course, alot of music is available via torrents including some rather obscure stuff. Last time I looked on Pirate Bay (about six months ago), there was still a healthy selection of music with active seeders.
For the really old and/or obscure, try the Internet Archive. It sometimes amazes me what they have in their archives. Not all that I’ve found should be there.
About 6 years ago I somehow (Safety, Maintenance, and Engineering departments never figured out how) managed to get stuck in a robot cage with 4 water jet cutting robots. I have never been more terrified in my life.
One of my coworkers said he had never seen anyone move as fast as when I yanked the safety rip line to kill the machine. Didn’t get hurt, thank god, but found out that adrenaline makes me giddy. Every thing was flipping hilarious for a few hours after they got me out of the cage.
Well, Marshall Mathers in his Slim Shady persona would be interesting. Not sure who I would pair him up with for VP though.
I figure after 4 years of Slim Shady as President, we would either have world peace or the world would be in pieces.
My house is old enough that it doesn’t have neutrals, so I’m kinda limited in what I can install. I’ve been using smart plugs by thirdreality and battery powered buttons. No problems with the smart plugs yet.
THIRDREALITY ZigBee Smart Plug 4 Pack with Real-time Energy Monitoring,15A Outlet, Zigbee Repeater,ETL Certified,ZigBee Hub Required,Work with Home Assistant,Compatible Echo Devices and SmartThings https://a.co/d/05vm2VMC
I’m currently using Mint Mobile for internet on my laptop, No issues related to the carrier. Their customer site doesn’t seem to like Firefox much though.
One heads up for anyone looking to use a Mint Mobile sim in their laptop, you will need a modem and software that can send/receive sms. Mint really likes using sms for verification.
I haven’t seen them but it might be a callback to early animation.
To keep costs down and speed up production, cartoons (pre digital animation) would often be animated at around 15 fps, sometimes going as slow as 10 or 12 fps. Each frame was then photographed 2 or 3 times to bring the frame rate up to 24 or 30 fps depending on the media. Robotech, Scooby-Doo, Mighty Max and the original Duck Tales come to mind as examples. Hanna Barbara cartoons were also known for being on the lower end of the spectrum.
I really wish that were entirely the case. The distances I quoted came from safety trainings I’ve had to take over the years. Given my personal experiences during that time, I think they were from before ABS was mandated. And I had a lot of ABS failures when I was OTR and few close calls as a result of those failures. That’s one of the reasons I chose to switch to running a yard truck 5 years ago. Far less stress.
When ABS failed on dry pavement and I needed to stop in a hurry, the affected tandem would tend to lock up and bounce along the ground. Nerve racking and scary when there’s traffic in front of you, but not near as bad as on wet or icy roads. The sheer terror of feeling one of my axles start sliding under me.
If I had one word of advice for drivers new to the industry, it would be to drive as if none of the safety systems on the truck and trailer exist because in my experience they will fail exactly when you need them.
But when they do work they are f-ing magical.
Some probably do, tech has advanced quite a bit since I started driving in 2008, but the newer tech tends not to be installed widely when it first comes out due to how unreliable tech becomes under the working conditions that are normal in the trucking industry. Fleet owners want their equipment on the road making money, not in the shop costing money, so they tend to wait till a tech proves itself to be reliable. Plus upgrades costs money, so they tend not to happen till a unit is replaced with a newer model, which can take a while.
Most large companies in the US have an experimental fleet where they try out new tech first, before they roll it out to the rest of their fleets. They are looking for cost effectiveness, reliability and driver response. The smaller owner operators, which make up the bulk of the trucking industry, tend to follow (slowly) after them. And as old as the trucks are, the trailers are often even older. While most trailers in my company’s fleet are less than 3 years old right now, the oldest trailer (now mostly used for hauling pallets back to Chep) was built in 1992 according to it’s data plate. If it’s ABS system is newer then 2008, when it was last active in the fleet I’m a monkey’s uncle, and I’d pay long odds it’s still the original system from 92.
Most of a tractor-trailer’s stopping power is split between the trailer brakes and the tractor’s drive tandems. If there is not enough weight on those axles, the tires can’t grip the pavement properly. If I apply too much power to the brakes the wheels can start bouncing or just lock up and start skidding if the ABS system is acting up.
Most tractor-trailers you see on the road in the US are designed to weigh 60,000 to 80,000 lbs (~ 27,000 - 36,000 kg). For comparison, a Honda Civic weighs roughly 3,000 lbs (1360 kg). Every system on the truck is designed around moving that amount of mass safely. With an empty dry van trailer your looking at closer to 30,000 lbs (~ 13,000 kg). Makes a difference in performance. Ride is rougher, takes longer to stop.
I’m a truck driver.
I’ve still got a few vintage Napster MP3s from the 56k days.
Damn, I envy you. I lost all my digital music from those days to disk rot and a hard drive failure. Wish someone told me back then that CD-R was not a good backup medium. Or that I had checked on the disks before I needed them. Live and learn.
I use Jellyfin to stream both video as well as audio. Media is stored on my NAS via a samba share.
Much like yourself, I’m more frequently streaming music. The default apps aren’t great for music (and horrid for audio books) but there are music specific apps for most iOS, Android, and most PC OSs. Can’t remember what app I use on Linux (don’t use it much) but I use FinAmp on iOS a lot.
Navidrome is probably a better self hosted music service , but I didn’t see the point when Jellyfin plus FinAmp and met my streaming audio needs.
As for where I got my music collection, I’m an old fart whose music collection predates digital music. Early stuff was ripped from whatever format it was on to digital a while ago. Nowadays I tend to buy CDs and rip them to flac or buy digital from Band Camp or Amazon.
I haven’t seen the need since iTunes and Amazon Music came around, but if you wanted to go sailing you can find popular releases and discographies of popular artists on public torrent sites easily enough. There are also several programs available that can take a Spotify playlist and automatically download the music from YouTube.
While you didn’t ask about audio books, it might help someone else. While I can access my audiobook collection from Jellyfin, it is so bad at audiobooks that that I don’t bother. For audiobooks I use a service called AudioBookshelf. Great for podcasts as well. The audiobooks themselves I generally buy from Audible and then use Libation to strip the DRM.
First OS was DOS (I think) on an Apple IIE at school. I think there were a few Commodore 64’s there as well. A couple years later we got our first home computer running Windows 95. Good times playing Doom, Jane’s Apache, an MS Flight Simulator.
My first personal computer was running Windows XP and I switched to Ubuntu sometime in 2004. Ran Ubuntu for the most part till a few months ago when I switched my desktop and laptop to NixOS.
Started self hosting services in 2012 and started with Ubuntu as base OS. Now though most of my servers are Proxmox with the VMs usually running Ubuntu LTS, though NixOS is starting to creep in there as well.
Of course they are a waste of money, and the plastic packaging is incredibly bad for the environment. And they are fun and I will buy them again next year.