stealth_cookies

joined 1 year ago
[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 7 points 7 hours ago

Nah, 3D printing as a hobby actually involves printing things. What you are describing is 3D Printers being the hobby. That is fine too, but too many people can't seem to make the distinction that they never actually make anything.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 hours ago

This is a topic that could be a novel for how much there is to consider, but in the end it comes down to resources and companies trying to choose what it best for the company overall. For a company to do anything, they are giving up many other things they could be doing instead. Whether it is limited budgets, limited personnel, or company priorities every decision made is always a tradeoff that means you aren't doing something else.

Most companies prioritize releasing new product so they can start getting revenue from it as soon as possible. A new product has the largest potential market, and thus makes shareholders happy to see revenue coming in. The sales from a new product are the easiest ones in most product's lifecycle. Additionally. releasing new products helps keep you ahead of competitors. So ongoing maintenance work is de-prioritized over working on new things.

The goal of testing is to simulate potential use cases of a product and ensure that it will work as expected when the customer has the product in their hands. It is impossible to fully test a product in a finite amount of time, so tests are created that expose flaws within a reasonable search space of the expected uses. If an issue is found then it needs to be evaluated about whether it is worth fixing and when. There are many factors that affect this, for example:

  • How much would it cost to fix?
  • How much time would it take to fix?
  • Does it need to be fixed for launch or can it be a running change?
  • How many customers are actually going to see the issue? Is it just a small annoyance for them or will it cause returns/RMAs?
  • Is it within the expected use case of the product?
  • Can we mitigate it in software/firmware instead of changing hardware?
  • Is it a compliance/regulatory issue?
  • Would this bring in new customers for the product?
  • Was this done a specific way for a reason?

Unfortunately, after considering all this the result is often that it isn't worth the effort to fix something, but it is considered.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Good to see you are out of your 5 year coma...

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Even in that context it doesn't make any sense. BC saw how badly the BC Liberals fucked everything up for a decade+ they were in power due to their corruption for corporate interests and kicked them to the curb. Now we have a government that is actually trying to fix important things like housing costs, healthcare, and the environment yet the people are saying "Nah, we would prefer what conservative governments in other provinces are doing to make services worse by privatizing them. "

I get that people are unhappy with their decline of quality of life, but we know from looking elsewhere that a Conservative government is not the solution that helps most people.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I was thinking about this recently after a frustrating trip to a brick and mortar store that was missing the specific item I wanted to purchase which should have been easily available.

Has it always been this bad and we just accepted it until Amazon came around and carried most everything, or have stores significantly reduced the inventory they carry to the point where they have become practically useless except as a showroom? It extends to things I only want to purchase in store. Why do clothing and shoe stores never have my size in stock of the item I want? Clothing has become so poor in quality (even expensive stuff) and I'm hard enough to fit that unless it is an item I already have and need to replace I only want to buy stuff I can try on first.

As much as I'd like to avoid Amazon, the lack of inventory at other retailers really pushes me towards them. Why would I pay more for slow shipping from the East coast because the local store doesn't carry anything when Amazon delivers in 1-2 days for free?

I've also been really struggling recently when trying to buy items that are less than $15. Amazon often charges double what it should cost for the items, but at the same time, local stores don't carry what I'm looking for. I can find it for the right price online, but then the shipping cost makes it more expensive than Amazon.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If you see the video there is no way a battery behaves like that, even if you drive a nail into them they more rocket flames than explode (I used to work in a battery lab).

I should clarify, typical cells won't explode, you could defeat safety features for pressure release in a can cell but at that effort they would have just added something more energetic.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah they added "action keys" that can trigger different percentage presses (20-40-60-80-100%) as a "fix" because the bobsleigh blocks they added in the new game were not keyboard friendly and they wanted to even the playing field. They eventually changed the physics to get rid of that specific need (but not completely) but they are still useful in some situations.

Download the newest game! It has a free access tier which gets you access to the first 10 tracks of the quarterly campaign and to the ranked mode. It is a bit limited but enough to see if you might get back into it. There is a decent community on reddit for the game.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

AI has tons of potential but the final decision should come from a person that evaluates the output for correctness. This is a great example of that.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

There are advantages and disadvantages to all the control schemes depending on the types of tracks you play, the surface you play, and the car/environment you play.

Most good players play with controller because there are many situations you run into where you want the precision of steering a specific amount around a corner, or you are playing a track where you want to either speed drift (SD) at a specific angle (e.g. fullspeed or higher speed dirt/grass/plastic) or want to keep your steering under a certain angle to no slide (e.g. low speed dirt/grass/plastic).

There are techniques such as neosliding where it is much easier to do them in keyboard as it requires multiple taps in quick succession. It is also easier to play keyboard when you need to make turns where timing of a full steer is important (e.g. ice).

Considering cars other than the stadium car you start getting into situations where one control scheme is far superior than others. The snow and rally environments require smooth steering so wheel is superior there, but controllers are a good middle ground. Desert is faster with tapping movements over smooth steering so keyboard is a bit better there. I recall canyon is a bit better with keyboard as well.

This all applies equally regardless of whether you are playing older or newer games, analog and digital controls are available in all the PC games.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Seconding Trackmania, though I'd recommend playing the latest one released in 2020 rather than Nations Forever. A year's access to everything is $20 and you get tons of content to play.

For a game that is at its core can be played at the highest levels with just 4 buttons it is incredibly complex with an insane skill ceiling. I'm pretty good and the difference between me and the top players is absolutely insane. The game is a bit beginner unfriendly, mostly because you are going to suck against good players because there are tons of mechanics that the developer tells you nothing about and unless you watch a video you aren't likely to understand why players are leaving you in the dust.

This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don’t think there’s a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.

The max speed is 999 km/h, which is only acheivable with speed drifting, but speed in excess of 800km/h are not uncommon to hit in certain kinds of tracks. Your statement about controls also isn't correct, most of the top players play with controller, but there are some that are keyboard players, there is even a couple insane ones that play wheel (most notably Granady).

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like this article could be 1 sentence. Windows 11 is a piece of shit so people (including your IT department) don't want to upgrade, and those that would just accept the upgrade are frequently limited by perfectly good machines which aren't compatible.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Paul's online math notes are by far the best resources out there for the first few university level math courses.

https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu

It is a great shame that his linear algebra notes were removed years ago.

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