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helterskelter

1,996 karma · joined October 4, 2025

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helterskelter··on Casio S100X Japanese Lacquer Edition (JP Page Only)
This happened to me with RPN calculators. One day I realized I had way more calculators than I knew what to do with. Original HP's, re-released HP's, SwissMicros, not to mention the accompanying documentation I printed out and had spiral-bound. This all started out because I wanted a FOSS calculator to do some math for another rabbit hole I was down. Next thing I knew, I was getting excited about the life you'd get out of silver oxide batteries.
helterskelter··on GrapheneOS fixes Android VPN leak Google refused to patch
They're paid not to.
helterskelter··on Cartoon Network Flash Games
Omg thank you, this is giving me flashbacks.
helterskelter··on Cartoon Network Flash Games
Does anyone remember that Gorillaz flash game? You basically just had a dune buggy and drove around in a 3D world over some randomly scattered obstacles and terrain.

That was my entire computer class in 9th grade.

(that and harrassing teachers with netsend)

helterskelter··on The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis
> My observation living in an area that has a mix of 70+ WASPs and younger black and hispanic people is that the WASPs are the ones who are by far the most incensed by Trump. They don't just dislike his policies. They hate the way he talks.

A lot of minorities in America like the tough on crime talk because they're often the ones most affected by it.

helterskelter··on Human brain changes after first psilocybin use
It depends on the variety of mushroom. Some varieties can be 3-4 times stronger than what you'll typically run into. So I've heard anyway.
helterskelter··on Linux, Windows or macOS: Which Operating System to Use in 2026?
I think you meant to say that may not be a good reason. If so... I'd normally be inclined to agree with you but RedHat so far has taken care of their users at least (I'm not sure it will be that way forever) by giving the benefits of corporate without any real downsides. SELinux by default is a huge plus all by itself.

I love community supported distros, but I've used Linux on desktop and server since around 2000 and I can handle some issues. The proverbial non-tech spouse on the other hand doesn't care that there's a one-line fix to their problem, to them it's just broken and now they want a mac.

helterskelter··on The Car That Watches You Back: The Advertising Infrastructure of Modern Cars
Sorry, I meant ECU not ICU.
helterskelter··on Linux, Windows or macOS: Which Operating System to Use in 2026?
At this point I just point people to Silverblue or a variant. It's got SELinux, flatpaks, atomic updates and corporate sponsorship. I'm not so wild about Redhat these days, but Silverblue is honestly probably the best from the standpoint of being secure, stable, robust, generally well put-together out of the box, and very difficult for a noob to screw up. I don't love saying this, but it's true.
helterskelter··on The Car That Watches You Back: The Advertising Infrastructure of Modern Cars
I know you can yank the modem out of a SuperDuty. Say what you will about them, they're work-oriented despite the luxury packages available and don't force you into being treated like the product -- Ford will track your location if you don't pull the modem, but at least it isn't necessary for the ICU and it doesn't nag you about the anything being disconnected. Fuel prices and gas economy are another issue...

(You may be able to do this with other Ford models)

helterskelter··on Talking to strangers at the gym
For me it just required being "consciously conscious" (if that makes sense), motivated by the thought of the inevitable embarrassment if I didn't remember their name.

I started out by anticipating that somebody would tell me their name at some point and repeating it in my head a few times when I heard it in the conversation. It helps to round off the conversation with "thanks $NAME, pleasure meeting you." so the name is something that gets used and isn't a bit of stale trivia. After the exchange I'd consciously go through what their name was and what they said, trying to attach associations to it. You've got to give them some space in your head. It was kind of a ritual I'd do, like how before I go out I do the "wallet, keys, phone" thing. Now I just do it automatically because of all the repetition.

Honestly I think the biggest things are:

- remembering to make the effort - the anticipation of hearing it, and - using of the name

helterskelter··on Talking to strangers at the gym
Hah. I'm ADHD and I used to be terrible about remembering people's names -- like, their names didn't even register and I couldn't tell you what it was 30 seconds later. It wasn't that I didn't care about the person, it was just that their name would never stick. Anyway, I finally made enough people feel bad and embarrassed myself enough that I started compensating and made a point to remember basically everybody's name that I met. The change was really surprising, people notice that sort of thing and they make an effort to return the same kind of energy. My general attitude about people since then has become a lot more positive because I realized that overall, most people really don't need a whole lot of impetus to show their better side, and it's not like it costs me anything to treat somebody with a little more consideration.
helterskelter··on The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility
I dunno, pre-LLM TUI's at least tended to be okay, and keyboard navigation was a first class citizen. Besides, if you were using a TUI instead of a GUI then you basically always ended up saving memory/battery life, and TUI programs are generally more portable than trying to run some ancient GUI program.

I typically prefer CLI myself but having a TUI to manage torrents for instance was much more ergonomic.

helterskelter··on NetHack 5.0.0
I used to play NetHack on my laptop when my then-girlfiend and I had to watch her baby sister and she'd like to sit and watch. One day we had to go to her birthday party, and because we were in our twenties and unenthused about going to a kid's costume party we got a roll of duct tape on the way there and put @ symbols on our shirts and made her a birthday card on printer paper rolled up with random letters written on the outside. She absolutely loved it but nobody else got it, and her friends parents thought we were fucking weirdos. We thought about bringing wine to quaff, probably better we didn't, lol.
helterskelter··on Ask.com has closed
Around this time you also had meta search engines, which gave you the dedup'd results of all the major search engines at the time. There was MetaCrawler and Dogpile from what I remember, both of which are oddly still around.
helterskelter··on Your phone is about to stop being yours
I've been planning my move from Google for a while but this is getting me to pull the trigger. GrapheneOS, Kagi and Fastmail it is. I'll keep the gmail account open for mail forwarding but that's about it.
helterskelter··on Drone pilot makes US rescind no-fly zones around unmarked, moving ICE vehicles
Up next, secret interpretations of laws to do things with zero accountability or public overaight. Oh wait we already have that.
helterskelter··on Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?
Too late to edit, but OpenAI certainly doesn't want ownership or liability, for the CSAM they've produced. They certainly don't want ownership/liability of code which does $ONLYAWFULTHING.
helterskelter··on Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?
I'm not sure Anthropic would appreciate the liability that ownership would imply.
helterskelter··on FCC Funding Application Notes Paramount Will Be 49.5% Foreign-Owned Post-Merger
It's almost like we're treated as a resource to be exploited instead of the foundation of a democratic republic.
helterskelter··on GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation
Just search for GoDaddy stories on old Slashdot. I've known since I had my own computer that GoDaddy=NoDaddy.

It's funny, the only time I can recall a programmer describing something as sexist (towards women) in the early/mid 2000's was somebody describing GoDaddy's booth at a convention. That really stuck with me for some reason, lol.

helterskelter··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Major Upgrades and Linux Front and Center
I own three and they all do it on occasion. Usually with a USB cable that tends to fit more snugly in the port. I mentioned it in another post in this thread but I think the button on the bottom gets pushed accidentally while being handled and the latch becomes unseated.
helterskelter··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Major Upgrades and Linux Front and Center
Yeah they are, but I've got some admittedly snug USB cables on my charger, other cables don't do it. I've looked at the latch mechanism and it seems sharp and not worn down, and it clicks when I put it in. I suspect the button on the bottom gets pressed accidentally and unseats the latch.
helterskelter··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Major Upgrades and Linux Front and Center
Yeah I watched the product videos I just want to know if there's a way to prevent accidental unlocks like the F11 has.
helterskelter··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Major Upgrades and Linux Front and Center
I love my Framework laptop. The only thing I haven't seen mentioned in detail is the expansion card bay redesign. Current F13 expansion cards will pull out sometimes when you remove a USB cable, which is a real annoyance. F11 fixed this by creating optional set screws you can install on the inside of the machine that forces the expansion cards to stay engaged.

I know F13pro has redesigned the switches for removing expansion cards, and that the design was headed by the same person who did the F11, so I'm really hoping for set screws or some sort of similar "true" locking mechanism.

If anyone from Framework is reading this, would you be able to fill in some details?

helterskelter··on Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
NGL, Claude has made this sort of thing so much easier. It used to take a very long time to get a WM just the way you wanted it, especially if you were using new tools you were unfamiliar with and weren't sure if they'd do what you wanted them to. Now it takes a few hours. There's value to learning to do it by hand...but honestly, when I've got everything set up I don't mess around with it much, and by the time I want to change something I have to relearn it all anyway. My setups aren't super complicated, just refined, so it's all pretty readily comprehensible.
helterskelter··on WebUSB Extension for Firefox
Ugh, I hate this trend. I'm using ZMK on a wireless split Corne and I have to clone the ZMK config repo, edit the config, push to GitHub, use some GH Action to compile the firmware, download it, unpack it, and then flash it. WTF happened? This is a terrible workflow, and I was not able to get this done locally after spending an entire day on it. Why can't this shit just compile on my machine? How about I edit a text file...and then compile it without all the bullshit, like installing Docker, about three or four language-specific package managers which install things not vetted by my distro's maintainers and probably run some bash scripts fetched with curl? And honestly I'm not really comfortable running firmware compiled by the Microsoft, the company known for their stellar software quality and security. Really though, I'm surprised, this was my first time being exposed to this kind of insanity. House of fucking cards.

I'm not even criticizing ZMK, btw, this is just an unbelievably obnoxious workflow. Please, nobody do this. The anger is short-circuiting my brain.

helterskelter··on The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency
It's very nearly a contradiction of terms.
helterskelter··on The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency
I'd add to that list the option to vote "no confidence". About half of Americans do not vote, and I strongly suspect that for a large chunk of them it's because they feel there's no candidate which represents their interests.
helterskelter··on All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)
At least some ISS astronauts describe smelling burnt metal after returning from EVA, if memory serves. (Others may smell ozone, I've just always remembered hearing burnt metal).
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