Here's a link for civvie11's review of tekwar for anyone who hasn't seen this pinnacle of entertainment.
See lots of post here fom all and local feed. I Like some of your memes. I used to be a hardcore scientific determinist type athiest. The kind who bought into a fully physical model of the world and anything unfalsifiable was discarded.
I have come around to being more spiritual since then due to very personal subjective experiences I've had through psychedelics. I'm very grateful for the opportunity I had to open my mind to the more mystical and personable aspects of reality. I still have my criticisms of traditional religion and blind faith though which is something atheist and I can usually agree on.
I like the memes here, but tend to lurk. I dont think my differing ideas on the nature of reality and god and whatever would be appreciated, this is a safe space for people who are in suffocatingly oppresive religious enviroments to vent, not a fourm to debate philosophy, so I keep my mouth shut.
Look, I was a life long PlayStation kid from ps1 to the end of ps3. There is no reason in 2024 why anyone should be considering a PS or a Xbox or a Nintendo in a world where the steam deck exist. It blows traditional consoles right out of the water into the stratosphere.
Not at all, I am what I am and say what I think. I'm not afraid of my ideas being sifted and correlated with my IRL person. There's nothing about me being revealed on Lemmy that my government hasn't already known about for decades. I try not to doxx myself but that's about it.
I will be disappointed if the tampon replacement mushroom strain isnt penis envy
Am I the only one kind of relieved when I loose digital files in a drive failure? Its kind of like a chance to start fresh. Yes I liked having pictures of my dead pets and relatives from 10 years ago but I wasn't going to ever look at them again. I have my memories and that's enough. Yes I liked having a copy of all the shows I ever enjoyed but I lost interest in half of them over the years and was likely never going to rewatch them locally or not.
There's a time and a place for all things, digital files are no exception. When the time has passed long ago and the place no longer exist as it once did, its time to let go
Permanently Deleted
I am a Dev for mineclone2. A lot of people have a hard time understanding that minetest is confusingly both a game and a game engine. The little game that comes with it whwn you download is not all that there is to see. There are a lot more developed and fully fleshed put games, mods, and texture packs available to download through the online content section.
I assume the center where all lines intersect is the earth, the dot-dash patterns are each pulsars particular signature patterns, and the length of the lines is the relative distance from earth perhaps in Astronomical Units
Not a problem the gravitational beam emitter can't solve. let's see the fuckers adapt to this!
I do my best to minimize micro plastics but also try not to worry about things I can't control. That cat is already out of the bag, micro plastics are inescapable. The silver lining this study show that they aren't that dangerous and its relatively easy for the body to get rid of them over the course of a month. While obviously its hard to say about long term toxicity it seems that life is at least generally resilient to it.
If I may add one personal anecdote. My parents were born in the 60s and 70s. They chain smoked cigarettes for many decades before their health finally caught up with them. Yet somehow they resisted the numerous toxins and carcinogens and tar they exposed themselves too every moment of the day. Maybe they are just really lucky but also maybe living things that got this far in the evolutionary tree already have expetience in biologically adapting to survive. Our cells aren't such easy pushovers to die over any and every little changes in the environment or new chemical players introducing themselves in the game of life.
God bless David Oshery and all the NB devs who have been working on dusk over the years. Glad dusk HD is here and the SDK is coming along. We are UNWORTHY
A favorite thing to do was stare at trees while tripping. They are an excellent visual study of a way natural objects arrange themselves fractally, some neat mathematics behind their geometry. One of my most profound experiences involved a telepathic communications between myself and a divine consciousness connected through my favorite tree in the backyard.
Glad Mick's still at it after Bethesda fucked him over so hard with eternal.
Managed this rig up a homemade induction heater from a 10$ board off amazon +7$ cigarette plug terminal cable
Induction heater is for my dynavap, the commercial ones are quite expensive and I figured it would be a cheap and easy project to make one up
I made a quick YouTube video showing the IH off :)
The Orb
The spherical bong is the Orb V2. Its an extremely simple yet highly functional piece that has TWO female intakes connected to a matrix perc. This allows you to combine smoke or vapor from two different sources with one inhale.
The orb also comes with a female outtake, a 2' long whip, and an insertable mouthpiece which opens up many options for switching between mouthpiece, whip or even connect to another piece for further filtration such as the intake of a bong filled with ice. In this shot I have a custom made 3' long silicon whip one end has the smoked glass whip that comes with orb whip and other side is arizer whip mouthpiece.
The Air Max
The cylindrical black device in the top intake port is the Arizer Air Max, a well engineered electronic dry herb vaporizer. Essentially it is a miniature electric oven which bakes your herb to produce vapor. Vapor is healthier than smoke, taste better, and you get decarbed flower as a usable byproduct instead of ashes which is used for making edibles and other things. Electronic dry herb vaporizers excel at ease of use and precise temperature control.
The Arizer air max allows you to swap out the glass pieces. Instead of a mouthpiece I have a 14mm Water Pipe Adapter (WPA) inserted into it which allows it to connect to the larger top insert of the orb.
The Dynavap M+ 2023
The metallic stick in the smaller 10mm intake port is the Dynavap m+ 2023. It is also a dry herb vaporizer, but is instead heated through torch or induction heater. The Dynavap allows for complete vapor extraction of herb .1G of herb in a Dynavap cal fill the orb with milky white clouds. Its tip acts both as a mouthpiece and a built in 10mm WPA allowing it to be inserted into the smaller 10mm intake of the orb.
Im not really a political person but the one thing I do care about is pot. Which candidate is most supportive of federally legalizing or at least bumping down the schedule 4 drug status of pot.
I wanted to power my extreme with my powerststion directly since its a 20v DC device, however arizer doesn't make car adapters. So I got clever.
This setup makes good use of my power stations 100w USBC-PD charger port by utilizing a special USBC-PD to DC input cable that lets you manually select the voltage you want the charger to put out. This is necessary since the extremeq doesn't have the tech to communicate with the charger, so this device communicates in its stead.
USBC-PD 100W can put out 20vdc at 5a, the extremeq consumes 20vdc at 1-3a, comfortably below the spec limits.
This is an excellent way to power your extremeq and other similarly power rated desktops right from a dc system/ portable battery without the horrible inefficiency of converting to ac just to convert back to DC.
Smokey's Simple Guide To Search Engine Alternatives
This post was inspired by the surge in people mentioning the new Kagi Search engine on various Lemmy comments. I happen to be somewhat knowledgeable on the topic and wanted to tell everyone about some other alternative search engines available to them, as well as the difference between meta-search engines and true search engines. This guide was written with the average person in mind, I have done my best to avoid technical jargon and speak plainly in a way most should be able to understand without a background in IT.
Understanding Search Engines Vs. Meta-Search Engines
There are many alternative search engines floating around that people use, however most of them are meta search engines. Meaning that they are a kind of search result reseller, middle men to true search engines. They query the big engines for you and aggregate their results.
Examples of Meta-search engines:
Format: Meta Search Engine / Sourced True Engines (and a hyperlink to where I found that info)
Duckduckgo / Bing has some web crawling of it own but mostly relies on Bing
Ecosia / Bing + Google a portion of profit goes to tree planting
Kagi / Google, Mojeek, Yandex, Marginalia, Requires email signup, 10$/month for unlimited searches
SearXNG / Too many to list, basically all of them, configurable, Free & Open Source Software AGPL-3.0
4get / Google, Bing, Yandex, Mojeek, Marginalia, Wiby Open source software made by one person as an alternative to SearX
Qwant / Bing Relied on Bing most of its life but in 2019 started making moves to build up its own web crawlers and infrastructure putting it in a unique transitioning phase.
True Search Engines & The Realities Of Web-Crawling
As you can see, the vast majority of alternative search engines rely on some combination of Google and Bing. The reason for this is that the technology which powers search engines, web-crawling and indexing, are extremely computationally heavy, non-trivial things.
Powering a search engine requires costly enterprise computers. The more popular the service (as in the more people connecting to and using it per second) the more internet bandwidth and processing power is needed. It takes a lot of money to pay for power, maintenance, and development/security. At the scales of google and Bing who serve many millions of visitors each second, huge warehouses full of specialized computers known as data centers are needed.
This is a big financial ask for most companies interested in making a profit out of the gate, they determine its worth just paying Google and Bing for access to their enormous pre-existing infrastructure without the headaches of dealing with maintenance and security risk.
True Search engines
True search engines are honest search engines which are powered by their own internally owned and operated web-crawlers, indexers, and everything else that goes into making a search engine under the hood. They tend to be owned by big tech companies with the financial resources to afford huge arrays of computers to process and store all that information for millions of active users each second. The last two entries are unique exceptions we will discuss later.
Examples of True Search Engines:
Bing / Owned by Microsoft
Google / Owned by Google/Alphabet
Mojeek / Owned by Mojeek .LTD
Yandex / Owned by Yandex .INC
YaCy / Free & Open Source Software GPL-2.0, powered by peer to peer technology, created by Michael Christen,
Marginalia Search / Free & Open Source Software AGPL-3.0, developed by Marginalia/ Martin Rue
How Can Search Engines Be Free?
You may be wondering how any service can remain free if it needs to make a profit. Well, that is where altruistic computer hobbyist come in. The internet allows for knowledgeable tech savvy individuals to host their own public services on their own hardware capable of serving many thousands of visitors per second.
The financially well off hobbyist eats the very small hosting cost out of pocket. A thousand hobbyist running the same service all over the world allows the load to be distributed evenly and for people to choose the closest instances geographically for fastest connection speed. Users of these free public services are encouraged to donate directly to the individual operators if they can.
An important take away is that services don't need to make a profit if they aren't a product to a business. Sometimes people are happy to sacrifice a bit of their own resources for the betterment of thousands of others.
Companies that live and die by profit margins have to concern themselves with the choice of owning their own massive computer infrastructures or renting lots of access to someone elses. You and I just have to pay a few extra cents on an electric bill that month for a spare computer sitting in the basement running a public service + some time investment to get it all set up.
As Lemmy users, you should at least vaguely understand the power of a decentralized service spread out among many individually operated/maintained instances that can cooperate with each other. The benefit of spreading users across multiple instances helps prevent any one of them from exceeding the free/cheap allotment of API calls in the case of meta-search engines like SearXNG or being rate limited like 3rd party YouTube scrapers such as Invidious and Piped.
In the case of YaCy decentralization is also federated, all individual YaCy instances communicate with each other through peer-to-peer technology to act as one big collective web crawler and indexer.
SearXNG
I love SearXNG. I use it every day. So its the engine I want to impress on you the most. SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers.
Here is a list of all public SearX instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn't seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like DuckDuckGo? If you really need Google like for maps and business info just use !!g in the query.
Other Free As In Freedom Search Engines
Here is Marginalia Search a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no JavaScript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor Search Engine Optimization (SEO) score which means the big search engines won't index them well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable.
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big web-crawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download YaCy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download YaCy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
Free As In Freedom, People vs Company Run Services
I personally trust some FOSS loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of altruism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day. I have had several communications with Marginalia over several years now through the gemini protocol and small web, they are more than happy to talk over email. have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowledgeable every day Joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide.
Self-Hosting For Maximum Privacy
Of course you have to trust the service provider with your information, and that their systems are secure and maintained. Trust is a big concern with every engine you use, because while they can promise to not log anything or sell your info for profit, they often provide no way of proving those claims to be true beyond 'just trust me bro'. The one thing I really liked about Kagi was that they went through a public security audit by an outside company that specializes in hacking your system to find vulnerabilities. They got a great result and shared it publically.
The other concern is that there is no way to be sure companies won't just change their policies slowly over time to creep in advertisements and other things they once set out to reject once they lure in a big enough user base and the greed for ever increasing profit margins to appease shareholders starts kicking in. Companies have been shown again and again to employ this slow-boiling-frog practice, beware.
Still, If you are absolutely concerned with privacy and knowledgeable with computers then self hosting FOSS software from your own instance is the best option to maintain control of your data.
Conclusion
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, and that you find something which works for you. During this difficult time when companies and advertisers are trying their hardest to squeeze us dry and reduce our basic human rights, we need to find ways to push back. To say no to subscriptions and ads and convenient services that don't treat us right. The internet started as something made by everyday people, to connect with each-other and exchange ideas. For fun and whimsy and enjoyment. Lets do our best to keep it that way.
From what I can gather this conflict as been going on a long time and the Hamas group has existed for a while too. Why are all the news cycles suddenly focusing on this the past few weeks?
I am doing research on best practices for my lithium batteries and lifepo4 powerstation. There's some conflicting opinions and variation for cycle numbers.
Will leaving my things plugged in at 100% hurt it more than constantly unplugging at 80% and replugging at 20%?
My current means of powering things is USB rechargable batteries. I have a about five of them that range between small 3000-5000mah ones to a big 20000mah interstate battery jump starter pack. Is there a device that lets me add all their power together into a centeral power source so I don't have to keep swapping them out?
Hello, I am currently stressing out over something and wanted some input on the matter.
So to start off I am the only full time housekeeper at a 3 story mansion turned rehab. I have a schedule/list of things I am supposed to get done daily and weekly. I work 2nd shift 3-11pm and on weekends. I work alone and have to do a lot of hard physical labor such as patroling every room in the mansion, doing full room clean outs, doing trash, sweeping, mopping, hauling trash 500ft to the dumpster in midday summer heat multiple times with a broken wagon, and vaccuming the staircases. Not to mention a bunch of other things I wont bother to list. I get every single thing on that list done to the best of my ability. My coworkers told me the week I showed up most of the cleaning complaints went away. I like to think I have done my best overall even if I cant give 110% everyday.
Now heres the thing, I take my breaks. When I get done an hour or two of physically taxing work I do take a good size break. when it gets late in the work week I get tired more easily. Ill go into a office with a spare desk and eat my lunch or whatever. Sometimes when its later at night ill turn the light off to rest my eyes if they hurt. My boss knows this, we have had this discussion before. My terms are that I will do the labor they want and in return I will take my breaks how I see fit.
So, my mom also works at the same place. This weekend (my weekend) she calls me up in a panic saying "They have irefutable evidence you were caught sleeping in the office, I dont know if they are going to fire you or what." I told her whatever and I dont really care, but it is actually bothering me. She has severe panic anxiety issues so I doubt they will actually fire me, almost certainly will be a vocal wrist slap or maybe a write up. I know for 100% fact I dont sleep on the job. Hide away in an office from time to time sure, but my radio is on and I make sure to patrol every hour or two. It irritates me that I have to worry about stupid bullshit like this. I have a hard enough job already and I dont need this stress for what little they are paying me. I make 14.50$. The local gas stations pay 17.00$. I have an electromechanical engineering degree and have worked in industry as a maintenance tech, I am overquailified but took this job because of the reduced stress. That benefit is quickly slipping away. They also pulled the 'just one more thing' card with me by moving the dumpster 500ft back from where it used to be (much closer) then pushed it on me to be the only one to haul it with no extra pay.
I am kind of done. I like that I am making money and most days its not too bad. Also great excersise. But I have been yelled at by enough managers in my lifetime, its one thing I do not tolerate. Throw some extra work at me fine, but I refuse to be spit on and treated life a stupid bitch boy, especially when I do the work of 3 people for jack shit pay. Fuck you, I can find a job anywhere, do anything. maybe take a few months off and travel first.
I conicidentally sprained my ankle this weekend and put in for all my acrewed PTO this week. I wont have to see my manager till next week. So what should I do? My thoughts were:
-
Hand in my keycards right then and there to my boss, shake his hand thank him for the opportunity and walk out. Refuse to tolerate 'speaking about it'.
-
Speak to the big boss, the Facility Director. Tell them exactly what I just said here, I do a lot of work alone and have essentially kept the place in clean order single handedly for months now. I am not asking for a raise, I just want to be left alone by management. Either accept my conditions or I walk.
-
swallow my pride and tolerate a wrist smack. Let management chew me out and go about my day. I don't really want to do this but financially I like making money. I am in a fortunate position where I have saved up most of what I made and am now sitting on a couple thousand in e-fund. I wanted to travel a bit anyways so I have the $ to burn through for a few months if no major unexpected expense happens (Crosses fingers).
Your thoughts? I am worried I am being a little self rightious but I have thought about it for a long time and come to the conclusion I have done nothing wrong really. I am being wrongly accused for something I didnt do. I put in more work than I should have to for what I get paid. And I give a good attitude to boot.
I have been working a very labor intensive job for about 3 months now and have lost enough inches on my waist to go down two pants sizes yet my total weight when I go on the scale remains around the same. How is it possible that I lost 4 or 5 inches off my waist yet the scale doesn't change? Is it possible what weight in fat I am loosing is made up for with an increase in muscle mass?
I got an old used guitar today. I never had any natural musical talent but it was fun to strum it and try to find some sembelance of a tune amid the mostly random strumming. I enjoyed using it and want to learn a bit more about how to use it. I was hoping you guys could point me to some good guides and references to help me learn and maybe some advice. Also will probably need a guide on reading sheet music eventually.
Reminds me of concentrate residue
