Windows updates should be accompanied by “Yakety Sax” playing loud in the background.

Generally the subtitles here used to be exceptionally good, but nowadays the quality varies wildly. The broadcast companies used to have their own in-house experts who did the translations extremely well, translating even the proverbs and cultural idioms to a form that made perfect sense in the context. Those old school translators were highly respected.

But then the companies started skimming money off everything to increase their profits and started buying the translations from the cheapest provider, which led to the drastic drop of quality consistency.

I learned English by watching subtitled films and series since I was 4, we had a VHS-system which I used extensively. At the time there was very little domestic production aimed for children and almost 100% of imported material was subtitled, so that kids would have an extra incentive to learn how to read. I remember that the Disney films my friends had were always dubbed, but my parents considered them too expensive to buy.

My kids are now in the lower grades of elementary school and I’ve watched a lot of new subtitled films with them. The translations aren’t downright bad, but they are clearly “lazy”. If there is something difficult to translate directly, mostly they just skip it if it’s not important to the plot. And many of them are done by only listening to the audio track, missing the visual cues that would indicate the correct meaning of the words. As in use of “a drill” as a tool, when it should be about a training excersize.

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

I only just now found the modern translation at the end, I’d say I got maybe 50-60% right. But I didn’t get the Maister part either.

If you speak German or/and Swedish, the 1000’s can be understood with a bit of effort. I speak both but it still took me awhile to make the right connections.

This is the way

Legion is simply amazing. I still do not understand how they got it made.

Winamp is one of the few things I really miss from Windows.

This young woman is an exceptional writer. Not many her age can achieve such coherency and well laid structure in longer essays.

I hope she will continue using her skills and keep fighting against this new rise of misogyny.

A long, long time ago my friends baked a batch of brownies. One of them had managed to buy a batch of “really good weed” and dumped it all into the batter. I wasn’t present during the baking, but when I got offered one I could tell just by the smell that it was STRONG.

I ate just one small brownie while we watched Pulp Fiction. My friends ate 2-3 each. “There’s something wrong with these, I’m not feeling anything”, they said.

By the time the film ended my friends were giggling and squirming on the couch. Coherent speech was far beyond them. I was also pretty high, but with a little bit of focus still in full control of my abilities. I brewed a fresh pot of strong coffee, drank a few cups and kept watch for an hour or two. It took a lot of effort, but I got my friends to drink some water and I walked/dragged each to the toilet, so they wouldn’t soil the couch.

Then I made sure everyone was resting comfortably and walked home. It was a warm summer night and I remember vividly how awesome all the sounds and smells felt on that long walk.

Next morning I called to check up on them and everyone was feeling great, but not one of them had any idea what had happened after the 3rd act of the film.

We’re about the same age. If I had a penny every time I discovered that something we were taught as the truth was later discovered to be completely wrong, I’d have a LOT of pennies.

Do you have a source for this claim? I remember reading an article where a mosquito researcher claimed that eradicating mosquitoes would have basically zero effect on any ecosystem. While they provide an additional food source for several species, no other species is dependent on them. If they would disappear, their predators would just eat something else.

One could argue that if the mosquitoe’s predators switched their cuisine, it could have an effect on other insect species. But the reseacher was adamant that this would be neglicible, since in many regions mosquitoes don’t even hatch until mid-June and the birds do just fine without them.

A clipshow episode. These were used as cheap fillers when the shows still had 20+ episode seasons, if the production needed to save money this was the easiest way to do it.

My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don’t, nothing in-between. They work or they don’t.

Around the time when HDMI was released my friend bought some "super-high-end "cable that cost over 200$, since he wanted the "best possible performance " out of his system. I tried to explain that the cheapest cables would give the exact same results if they’re not faulty from the start. We had a loud argument about this, even though the guy is a goddamn tech PhD. He just could not admit he got scammed and tried to give me a lecture about “how the gold plated connectors make all the difference”.

You are correct.

This anecdote is empirical, I know, but from my own experience I know how very hard if not impossible it can be to tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC tracks, even with a high quality setup.

I happened to find excellent vintage studio monitors some time ago and with my music afficionado friend we wanted to try if we could tell the difference. We are no audiophiles, but we both can tell the difference between good and bad sound.

Both selected three favourite tracks from different genres and we converted the CD-ripped FLACs to 320kbps CBR and put them on a random playlist with the originals. Then we listened.

Both got a few right, but I couldn’t really say what it was that made guess the FLAC. It was more like a feeling in the back of your head than anything substantial. “This sounds somehow more alive” is maybe the best description I can give. Or it was just dumb luck.

Anyway we came to the conclusion that 320kbps can be enough to replicate an enjoyable sound, at least for us. Not one track sounded lacking and we had a good time with our little experiment.

EDIT: Fixed typos.

I will do anything in my power to protect my children from online ads. At home it’s very simple with your basic adblockers and Pihole.

In the 5th grade my daughter got a laptop from school, it was a quite decent Thinkpad. She brought it home to do some presentation and went to her room. After few minutes she brought the laptop to me and said: “Dad, I think there’s a virus or something like that in my computer.”

The only web browser installed was Edge, without any kind of ad blockers. My kid had assumed that the hideous intrusive ads were some form of malware attack. I installed Firefox on her laptop with all the proper tweaks and disabled Edge as best as I could. All the Windows ad and telemetry options were also on, I disabled everything that was possible. I also showed how different themes can be installed, we ended up with a classic Nyan Cat ;)

When she took the laptop back to school I told her that Edge is not to be used. Firefox can handle everything and if the teacher has some issue with this, I am happy to come and explain this in person.

Now my daughter’s laptop is apparently the only ad free machine in her class and the other kids have openly expressed their envy. Why the school IT-department had not installed adblockers and had left the Windows telemetry on is simply baffling. No one should have to watch ads, but kids in school should be especially protected from this crap.

I’m Gen X and one of the oldest people where I work. Just one person besides me has any true understanding of computers/IT, one year younger than me.

Everyone else is completely lost if the connection between your personal terminal and the office printer fails. Or the cleaning lady has once again managed to release the mystic cables out of their holy sockets.

Sometimes I fix stuff in the terminal just to tease the younger colleagues, then I show them how it can be done with the GUI. They find it baffling that a “not-programmer” can “hack stuff”.

It is both funny and frustrating.

As milk chocolates go, Fazer is top-tier stuff.

This. I’ve been using a 2 Gen 8GB iPod Nano since 2008. They’re not hard to find and installing a new battery is not that hard, if you have any experience at soldering.

I also have a Sansa Clip+, it has a far better DAC than iPods and can take a 32GB SD card. Runs Rockbox without any problems.

If Zelensky announced that they had started building a gigantic gilded statue of the Orange One in Kiev, there would probably be a US guarded no-fly zone over entire Ukraine as soon as the first carrier could get close enough. And they:d be loading Tomahawks and all the other gear Ukraine has requested for transport within few hours.