pixelscript

Python is the only programming language that has forced me to question what the difference is between an egg and a wheel.

The two apps are identical and built from the same codebase anyway. K-9 is just a branding asset swap.

I’ve seen conflicting info from Thunderbird devs on how long they actually intend to keep both branding packages active. I’ve heard no longer than a year. I’ve heard only as long as it takes to get Thunderbird out of beta. I’ve heard they have some sort of agreement with FDroid that obligates them to keep it listed for some minimum duration of time (???). I’ve most recently heard indefinitely, because their build script is just a toggle now and it costs them nothing. Which one do I believe? I have no idea. I doubt K-9 will be kept around in perpetuity, though.

I’d be more than happy to sacrifice a distro I don’t care about like Ubuntu to the mainstream if it means Microsoft’s market cap gets a sizeable chunk taken out of it.

Nah. The real cancer is the quiet plurality of users who just scroll through the post feed and only voting, not even reading comments. The ones who are responsible for the occasional thread that has entirely negative comments but gets upvoted to the stratosphere anyways.

Rule of thumb: if it sits between you and the ground for an extended period, don’t cheap out on it or settle if you have the choice.

Shoes, desk chair, mattress, pillow, car seat.

Life is too short to be uncomfortable.

There’s actually no digital audio involved anywhere in this process. It’s all analog.

A magnetic tape cassette holds raw wave data of the sounds it records. Just like a vinyl record, except the groove is in the magnetic field instead of physically etched into the surface of the tape, and the needle is an electromagnet instead of, well, a needle.

An audio cable using a standard 3.5mm jack also transmits raw wave data. It has to, because the electromagnetic pulses in the cable are what directly drive the electromagnets in whatever speakers they’re hooked up to. If it’s coming out of a digital player, the player has to convert the signal on its own using an onboard digital-to-analog converter (a DAC).

The neat part is that since a tape deck read head is looking for an analog wave signal, and an analog wave signal is what an aux cable carries, the two are directly compatible with one another. If you actually crack one of these tape deck hacks open, you’ll find the whole thing is completely empty, save for the audio cable wires going directly to the write head that mimics the tape. Beyond that, there’s no conversion equipment, no circuit board, nothing. It’s a direct pass-through.

The body of the thing is nothing more than an elaborate way to trip all the mechanisms in the tape deck to trick it into thinking it’s holding a valid cassette, while simply holding the write head fixed in the proper spot.

I’m sure you already know all of this. I just think it’s really cool and I enjoy talking about it. Analog tech is amazing.

Aww… That Marnie cover is one-of-a-kind.

Pity. It’s far and away the nicest one I’ve seen.

Votes on Lemmy are public, fyi.

You have to host your own Lemmy instance to see them for yourself, but you can check if you were so inclined.

I love cats. Other peoples’ cats.

I will never own my own cat because I don’t want to accept the burden of responsibility that responsible pet ownership demands.

I guess, in a very liberal definition of the term, “cloud gaming”. Specifically the old LodgeNet systems in hotels where you could rent Nintendo games by the hour to be streamed to your room from a physical console somewhere behind the front desk. Every room had a special controller with oodles of extra buttons on it hardwired to the television that also functioned as television remotes.

The service was objectively awful, of course, when factoring in how much the hotel charged compared to what little you got for it. But I’ve always found it fascinating.