Troy Dowling

I prefer my accolades in the form of bonus cheques. I’ve got a git history for anyone else that matters

I noticed I was blocked today when connecting via the same VPN I’ve used for years, including back when I was a user. That’s fuck up enough for me.

I bought a popcorn bowl that turned out to be terrible. It came with a leaflet coupon saying if I left a 5-star review, they would send me another bowl for free.

The comment I tried to leave was a short, fair, polite statement along the lines of 'this bowl doesn’t meet the claims X and Y on the description, and came with an offer to trade a good review for another bowl for free." That review got flagged by the automod and was ultimately rejected. If I recall, the rejection message wasn’t even specific on what rule my review broke.

Root access should be available from the moment my purchase payment clears. I paid, it’s my device.

The dietary illuminati hid their food pyramid atop the unfinished pyramid of the one dollar bill! It’s pyramids all the way down!

The perpetual year of the Linux desktop.

You need a touchscreen to open the glovebox?

The only reason I know what webp is, is because its “that dumb format” that doesn’t play like a GIF in Signal.

I have no idea how these work, but one hack idea off the cuff:

You get the light for free. At least when your lids are open; that’s how vision works. A cheap digital watch lasts ages on a tiny coin cell because the polarisation of the LCD, which passes or blocks polarised light, takes minimal energy. Stack up a passive polariser, and the active LCD-like layer, (and maybe a second passive layer?) and you can cast selective shadows on the retina.

This gives you monochrome “smart vision” in the same sense as a monochrome Casio wristwatch. No idea how to tackle issues of focus at such a short focal length, or achieving any sort of active display let alone colour.

Maybe the whole thing is a pipe dream crackpot idea.

One of the frustrating things about Signal is its extreme compression. I hope WhatsApp laxing up a bit will be the final push to the Signal devs to allow me to send a 30 MiB photo if I want to. Just give me a damn opt-in option buried in a settings menu for Pete’s sake.

Annoys me to no end that I’m forced to crunch image quality down. The reasons I heard in discussion were to save disk space and network bandwidth. I have no sympathy for either of these points. Have a modicum of digital hygiene and delete old files, and pressure your ridiculous governments to invest and regulate ISPs, then join the rest of the world in the 21st century.

Telus? What a bunch of crooked hosers.

“an unknown (mobile?) client”

Well, nice try anyway.

USB One

Fiirefox?

Could you elaborate? If John Smith gets a speeding ticket, all other drivers get a video of it in a “Don’t be like John” email? There must be so many drivers, so surely it can’t be “all” of them.

I don’t think Logitech has been a contender for years now. At least for their desktop peripherals. I used to be a fanboy, but had three mice all fail the same way within a year (middle click failed), then my new, expensive keyboard I bought for the office started dropping many keys under my left hand. And I work from home, so the keyboard only had a few dozen hours of actual use on it.

It feels like there are so few options for peripherals that have the features I want, but don’t have gaudy LED light effects or an otherwise silly “gamer” aesthetic.