Earthbound: Halloween Hack was really great! I played it this season. I wish it were longer though.

Thanks for posting the others! I’ll check them out!

Russia is sanctioned for invading Ukraine.

In ye old’n times we would leave the console on as a stop-gap way to save the game between in-game save opportunities. Because ye old’n times game design philosophy believed that the added difficulty of crazily separated save points was “fun”.

In modern times I sleep the hardware if I expect to be back within <24 hrs, and power off if I expect to be longer.

(Thank god for saving memory states in emulators!!! Elsewise I probably wouldn’t play retro games at all.)

Ugh, you’re right! I didn’t realize. I’m going to give SpamBlocker a try instead. I just downloaded and flipped through the options and it looks better than “Yet Another Call Blocker” anyway.

You’re right, I hadn’t noticed that.

Looks like the F-droid version is way behind, because you can see on their GitLab page that the project is still maintained. It’d be best to get the app directly through GitLab I suppose, or add an F-droid repo that has a more up-to-date version.

It can block hidden numbers, if that’s what you mean by “private”.

I hope you like the app!

Yes. Go to settings and toggle the Block hidden numbers option

I use Yet Another Call Blocker. It has a custom block list you can use to block a specific number.

The block list also supports wildcard characters, which is my favorite feature! I use it to block swaths of numbers (much of my spam comes from the state I used to live in, so I block those area codes).

That’s insane!

What do you mean? That’s the same layout as the SNES controller, & it’s what most of the retro handhelds use.

Also, it’s running Linux so it’s easy to remap the buttons to a custom layout if desired.

Looked up “cromulent” in the dictionary. Wasn’t disappointed!!

The chances of a deal are said to be weeks away, if not non-existent.

What kind of non-sentence is that?

I have an Anbernic RG353M & it sounds like it fits your needs. Emulates up to PSP. Moddable: I run ArkOS which is Debian-based - so I can SSH in, apt install programs, run custom bash scripts I wrote, etc. I also ported a desktop game to run on it. So moddability points are high! Also dual-boots into Android, so Android games are available if that’s your thing. It comes with the Android dual-boot right out of the box!

Downsides:

• It can be a little small in my hands for long play sessions. I have a custom 3D printed handle extension which works great and solves this problem.
• There’s a hardware problem involving the 3.5mm audio jack output where chip noise gets in the audio. Annoying, but ignorable. Switching to Bluetooth headphones is a fine workaround too.
• In long play sessions when the device gets hot horizontal bar artifacts show up on the screen. Like the audio thing, they are annoying but ignorable. When they show up I normally interpret it as a sign I’ve been playing too long and take a break while the device cools down.

Overall, it’s got those hardware quirks above but I still like it and I don’t regret it for the price (something like ~$100 a couple of years ago I think). Battery life is very good, even for graphics intensive games. It can go many hours without needing a charge, and generally it has better stamina than I do!

A couple of ideas:

Encoding holograms

• Model the object in 3D space (using Blender maybe?)
• Use the Angular Spectrum algorithm to model light propagation, its interaction with the object, and it hitting the recording medium.
• Your final recorded hologram should have two maps (aka “images”) across (x, y): a map of the light’s amplitude and another of its phase offset. This is your recorded hologram.

Decoding holograms:

• Use the angular spectrum algorithm again except reverse the light’s propagation direction. The amplitude and phase maps from the encoding phase are the initial conditions you’ll use for the light.
• The light’s amplitude and phase information you calculate at various planes above the recording plane are the 3D “reconstructed” image.

Last thought

Holography is often used to record information from the real world, and in that process it’s impossible to record the light’s phase during the encode step. Physicist’s call it “the phase problem” and there are all kinds of fancy tricks to try to get around it when decoding holograms in the computer. If you’re simulating everything from scratch then you have the luxury of recording the phase as well as the amplitude - and this should make decoding much easier as a result!

A coworker recently sent me a Word document with edits and comments they had added. When I downloaded & opened it (in Word on Windows!) it told me that it had the edits/comments but it wouldn’t let me see them unless I log in to my Microsoft account and then view it online in the web version of Word. What the actual fuck?

Fuck that. I responded to my coworker and asked them to just send me the edits via email in plain text. I’m not winning popularity contests at work, but what the fuck Microsoft?

If you’re nervous about the switch consider dual-booting. Then you’re not fully committed to the switch & you can have your old Windows system back whenever you want it.

Main steps are:

• Run a defrag on your Windows machine to physically consolidate all your Windows data to one area.
• Break that partition into two (Linux will go one the new empty side)
• Install Linux from a USB as normal, but don’t choose to wipe your drive completely. Choose a manual option instead where you specifically indicate your intended Linux partition from above.
• Optional: Once installation is complete you can set up another partition to hold files which can be available to both OSs.
  • Boot into Linux & define the remaining unused space in the Linux partition as a new NTFS partition & give it a name which makes it obvious what it is (i.e. “sharedspace”)
  • Then boot into Windows and move the existing data you’d like to share between OSs here (work documents, movies, music, etc.)

Some useful links:

• Video on setting up a dual boot
• Howtogeek used to have a great walkthrough for doing this but I’m getting a 404 error when I try to follow the link now :(
• Optional: Setting up Linux symlinks to point to the shared space partition

What’s a “gang input”?

Could switching your user agent help? Try setting yourself to Windows+Chrome.

Google has way too much power & influence. BREAK THEM UP!!! This status quo is ridiculous.

I wonder whether Nukem would consider running again in 2024?