Mikko

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• Commented on The Radiant Future! (Of 1995)
  The IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was replaced by the MSN Messenger. IRC was used for a bit in universities, but the Real Operators took one look at it and prevented it being used as it was too decentralized and could...
• Commented on The Radiant Future! (Of 1995)
  Atari vs Amiga in the console and CGI market, aka multi-media works. So, does Motorola continue the 68000 line or do the Atari STs and Amigas run Acorn processors in the future? Of course both have a multitude of co-processors...
• Commented on The Radiant Future! (Of 1995)
  WAP! So the Windows CE phone can only do simple text-based pages (though the display is an alphanumeric one, so no real loss). The pages are all controlled by operators, so everything is properly curated and most importantly billed on...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Sucks to have a big border with Russia just now. Makes politics more about fear than reality. Well, yeah. Our Eastern border has been basically closed for months now, with no end in sight. Talks about 'human rights' are not...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  This appears to be a general trend among Anglophone "democracies" when they're in the hands of right wing governing parties this decade. They're shit-scared of the double-avalanche of climate change and primary energy economy change-over. Not only Anglophone, Finland seems...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  The European analogue of the Avro Arrow in the "really cool but technologically obsolete war plane" category is obviously the Saab Draken. By the way, last December I saw a couple of Drakens. They were on display in the Finnish...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  The Steam Deck presents itself as a games console with the usual gamified pick-a-game-to-play-now UI, but just barely buried under the hood is a switch to dump you into Arch Linux, and it's actually a pretty sweet linux portable (although...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Well, yeah, I've had Macbooks as my work laptops for the last twenty years, basically from the point when I was asked what kind of laptop I want. I picked that one because I hadn't used OS X (or any...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Oh & I REFUSE to use MS' "One Drive" - I want to store my files where I want them convenient in my hierarchical order, not some faceless sysadmin-in-California's ideas of where I "should" put my data. Again, OK? So...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  The politicians want to talk about high speed rail. But we don't have the locals to feed it. I just want to point out that air traffic, especially for short trips, has much of the same problem. The planes are...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  [Everything being at a walkable distance in Europe and how that's really not true.] Same in the rest of Europe. Yeah, same in Finland. I live in the second-largest city in Finland, in a suburb (which is again different from...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  I looked this up, and The Guardian has this quoted: 'an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance'. I'd think that the Conservative Party thinks it itself is not based on any of those but only pure logic, so the...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  In Japan, there're apparently two ski centres, named 'Hakuba' and 'Shirouma'. The fun thing is that they are both written '白馬', meaning 'white horse'. One of them is read with on yomi and the other with kun yomi, basically with...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  But to the "family" not being sprinkled soon after brith was a very very big deal. And for many still would be in terms of family relationships. This could also be a source of (in my opinion) unnecessary strife when...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  I remember some Amiga game which had a screen which basically said press any key to see the instructions press a key to start It took us some time to figure out how to start the game....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  I once worked in a team whose (company internal) abbreviation was 'PCP'. I found it hilarious but I think not all of the team members were that delighted or even knew other meanings....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Arguing about which is better makes no more sense than arguing about which computer platform is "better". I'll just drop 'ECS era Amigas with 4 Mb or more memory and a hard disk' for the MC68000 series here. (I had...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Somebody who screws up like this using an LLM will screw things up regardless. Still, there's a lot of stuff which the LLMs make easier to do. Generating posters, scripts and all that kind of stuff takes effort even if...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  [L]arge-scale statistical models trained on gigantic gobbets of input data (of dubious quality because it's hoovered up off the internet without adequate vetting) Which is a big reason why every 'it will get better in the future' feels a bit...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  I am delighted to report that he would probably be horrified by the direction licensed d&d based computer games are going in. I'm not sure he'd like the direction even the tabletop D&D games are going to, even in the...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  I did search for this and found out that 'To Hit A.C. 0' was mentioned in the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/THAC0 . It seems to have a longer history in the TSR material than just AD&D 2e. This...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Oh! I stand corrected. I had the impression that THAC0 was a markedly AD&D 2e thing. Maybe it was just writing down what people were doing anyway. I'm young enough to have started AD&D with 2e, though we did play...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  I'm not sure Derek is new school enough to use this modern 'THAC0' thing. Maybe Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and not the plain D&D, but the first edition could be easier to accidentally summon demons with. With the 2e you...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Cities need a different solution, one that ideally de-prioritizes automobiles entirely. Also you get different areas. We live in what I'd call a 'suburb', but in an apartment building. The houses were built in the 1960s, and there is parking...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Also, given that my gaming circles have enough real world issues with food given the various allergies, intolerances, adherence to belief/morality based restricted diets and preferences/dislikes between us all I don't think they would enjoy that as a theme in...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Not that I’m into RPGs at the moment, but the following question occurs to me. How many games have dietary restrictions on player classes? I don't claim to be any authority on this, but in my experience very few, really....
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  I was working for a commercial fire & burglar alarm company in eastern North Carolina (look at NC on Google Maps & draw a line from North Wilkesboro to Myrtle Beach, SC - everything east of that line was my...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  I work in IT security, and I kind of like having regular security updates for my pocket supercomputers. I also like having the magic slab in my pocket, so going non-smartphone wouldn't be fun. Using something connected to the internets...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  On the other hand, it replaced a multiple-years-old predecessor in a planned upgrade I'd been putting off until the new model was released because I understand built-in obsolescence and wanted to buy a phone with maximum support life ahead of...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  A lot of that is budgeting: living at least a bit below your means so you have a cushion rather than spending it as fast as it comes in. Still that requires you to have something to budget all the...