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ridgered4

834 karma · joined February 1, 2022

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ridgered4··on Vasectomies rose after the end of Roe
My vasectomy left me with life long pain and discomfort, particularly when sitting. This is after a long period of (essentially) torture that had me seriously considering how to commit suicide. The only treatment offered involves cutting holes in my abdomen to draw out and skeletonize the stalks connecting my testicles hopefully killing all nerves. It probably won't cause the testicle to die although there is a small chance the blood supply will fail. Just like there was a small chance of lightning bolts of pain shooting through to my back, warmth spreads and pins and needles down my legs and pain in my hips and lower abdomen so there was no need to impress these possibility onto me. Just the casual mention of the possibility of pain, which I figured would be occasional aching of the testicles.

It remains the worst decision I've made in my entire life.

ridgered4··on Stop dumping your cast-offs on us, Ghanaian clothes traders tell EU
I was aware the reduce and renew had been reduced to a whisper and largely forgotten (they reduce consumption after all, recycling is the only acceptable one in are consumption driven world) but I didn't realize some one had actually tried to twist things so they could vilify them.
ridgered4··on Systemshock: Shockolate – A minimalist and cross platform System Shock source p
I remember finding the transition from keyboard only duke3d (with ALT as a strafe toggle) to mouselook pretty painful initially. The flexibility was there but I had to relearn a skill which was kind of grating.
ridgered4··on The XY Problem (2014)
Frylock: Have you seen my towel?

Master Shake: Just use a paper towel.

Frylock: I'm taking a bath.

Master Shake: They're right in the kitchen, just go get 'em!

ridgered4··on Salt Lake 2002 – not enough memory/crashes to desktop after starting error
They also have a collection of old drivers that have become hard to find with time.
ridgered4··on Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)
I remember Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals usually featured her pulling some ingredients she'd already chopped up or soaked in something the night before out from the fridge. Apparently the time spend yesterday didn't count against the clock.
ridgered4··on Visa and Mastercard agree to lower average credit card interchange fee below 1%
Only places I've ever seen do this are gas stations. And I've calculated the discount, I've never seen it be more than the cashback I get on gas purchases from my card. Usually, it is way less. And that is without getting into losing the time saving/convenience of paying at the pump.
ridgered4··on Windows XP Activation: Game Over
There was an update, Windows Genuine Advantage, that was not part of the original XP installers that did the nagging about you using a shady key IIRC. The trick was to not install it, which was easy enough since you had total control of updates back then.
ridgered4··on Windows XP Activation: Game Over
Is it even possible to passthrough ISA to a VM? Legacy PCI is (well-ish) supported with its own quirks but I've never heard of ISA passthrough even mentioned before.
ridgered4··on Here’s Why That Rivian R1T Repair Cost $42,000 After Just a Minor Fender-Bender
My experience with old cars and full insurance coverage is if the car repairs cost more than the value of the car they just total it and pay out the estimated sale value of the car. Which isn't great if you were happy with the car.

I remember my boss 15 years ago having an accident that totaled his old but reliable car because the trunk and read bumper were damaged. He bought the totaled car from the insurance company for $500 and just kept driving it. But it was a lot easier to get junker cars inspected back then.

ridgered4··on Google will soon let Pixel phones double as dashcams
Seems like it would be pretty heavy data usage pushing all that video up over the mobile network.
ridgered4··on Google will soon let Pixel phones double as dashcams
I'd prefer cars just add standardized mount points with power and maybe data lines. Then I could install different cheap products I selected, or none at all.
ridgered4··on US Secret Service: “blockchain is an opportunity to track money”
Maybe I'm missing something but since bitcoin is a public ledger and exchanges all have KYC features it seems worse than buying visa gift cards with cash from a privacy perspective. I don't know that much about the crypto space honestly, but it didn't seem to make sense to me it was the go-to currency for criminal transactions.
ridgered4··on Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP
Next lets use it to prevent crime or approve loans. Computer says no.
ridgered4··on How much is a smidgen?
My physics text book had metric to imperial conversions and I was surprised to see "mouthful" as the smallest volume measurement.
ridgered4··on Google Pixel Fold
True, but diagonal measurements were broadly comparable since for most of TVs existence non 4:3 aspect ratios were really uncommon. It wasn't until HDTV and the broad adoption of LCD monitors that this became really deceptive.
ridgered4··on Pure: No more hard drives will be sold after 2028
It is also not at all clear what is needed to "top up" an offline SSD to assure the data is maintained. Some people say that merely connecting the drive to power for a few minutes to hours lets it restore the fading bits but others think nothing but a full rewrite of the data will. I haven't seen any official information or testing on this either so the conservative rewrite assumption seems the most reasonable.
ridgered4··on YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
You can still sell those users' more valuable usage data and they've even coughed up a bunch of personal information to setup payment and have signaled that they have money and are willing to pay for things. So in return for paying they get no ads on this particular platform while getting a target painted on their back.

And if you need more money later you can just convert youtube premium from a no ads platform to a less ads platform. You just have to do it slowly so not to many people bail at once because the pot got to hot to fast

ridgered4··on Last Call to Migrate Mojang Accounts
It is almost like it isn't about suspicious behavior at all!
ridgered4··on Last Call to Migrate Mojang Accounts
> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.

I wish this was true for me. My experience was after Microsoft extorted my phone number out of me (for 'verification' of my 10 year old account that I converted) that it now demands a text message 2FA authentication any time I haven't played for awhile. Which since my kids are usually the ones playing means they're usually blocked from starting up again unless I'm home. Which means they kind of just don't play it anymore.

I never wanted a Microsoft account in the first place and I want one even less now.

ridgered4··on KeePassXC pull request to add basic support for WebAuthn
What would happen if Apple just started using attestation at a later date? It is still in the spec after all. I could see some services being willing to drop Apple for competitive reasons. ChatGPT only works on Edge browser at the moment IIRC.
ridgered4··on The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok: Or how, platforms die
If they just released a new map pack for L4D2 and called it L4D3 I'd probably buy it for $60.
ridgered4··on People are trying to claim real videos are deepfakes
All this technology and recordings just amount to eye witness testimony again. Crazy.
ridgered4··on People are trying to claim real videos are deepfakes
A more realistic defense would be that Musk is a clown and all statements he makes are intended to incite laughter rather than be taken seriously.
ridgered4··on People are trying to claim real videos are deepfakes
Isn't this backwards in criminal court? Wouldn't the onus be on the prosecution to prove that the video was real?

This sounds ridiculous since we lived most of our lives in the video-is-real era that has sort of been coming to an end. I recall the Kyle Rittenhouse trial had an interesting take on this where the defense asked to throw out upscaled video which contrary to every police procedural TV show is a lot like just fabricating data. With the amount of post processing and AI a cell phone camera does these days you could argue everything they pump out is doctored and fake by default because it kind of is. And most video is stored with lossy algorithms even without the post processing.

ridgered4··on Somehow AutoHotKey is kinda good now
I use it mostly for automating repetitive actions that cannot be otherwise automated with bespoke scripts. A simple example is I needed to test drawing 255 selections on a screen. So I just wrote a couple loops to automate drawing tons of triangles while I was eating lunch. But I've written ones that process tons of files in an application and go through all the sub dialogs to see if they were functional.

It is a nice tool for this because it works on anything you can see (and some things you can't) so if the software can be used then you can automate it. Sometimes you have to fall back on the image recognition sledge hammer but there is always a way out.

ridgered4··on Somehow AutoHotKey is kinda good now
AutoHotkey has a huge support forum history in addition to great documentation. The language it uses seems terrible and confusing, almost as bad as bash! But if you want to do something chances are it has been done and there is example code already there to get your started, a lot like bash. That is worth a lot more than it having a better language at the end of the day.
ridgered4··on Somehow AutoHotKey is kinda good now
As near as I can tell nothing on linux matches AHK's wide ranging ability. It is probably the thing I miss most about leaving Windows. I've used xdotool but it isn't even close.
ridgered4··on faulTPM: Exposing AMD fTPMs' Deepest Secrets
That link does not say it will work fine. It says it is not recommended or supported and if it blows up it is your problem. Additionally it says you might not get any updates. Certainly, it sounds like it might just be some ass covering on their part but they were also testing a nag watermark for unsupported installs like this so maybe not. Either way it doesn't sound like a really solid path forward.
ridgered4··on The “Location Off” switch on your phone is a lie
And you can't remove the battery on most new phones either.
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