MacBalance

@jwz@mastodon.social I got a box set of Hammer a couple years back that has a mix of oamcoulle classics and a couple I think are less well known: *The Snorkle?* I also blame @cstross for getting me to watch *The Abominable Dr. Phibes* which isn’t Hammer but seems adjacent.

@BigJackBrass@social.vivaldi.net I’m way behind on this podcast but their estimate for the full run seems to vary between 8 and 40 years. A lot depends on how well their automation works to streamlines the copious record keeping.

@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social I remember enjoying the old Dragon/Dungeon articles they used to print in the 80s where they’d present elements from folklore and mythology. I feel like just “lists” might go over poorly not because people don’t like lists (they do) but because a lot of folklore stuff might feel underpowered inserted into settings full of magic. Setting-independent adventures centered around folklore-based entities and artifacts? Maybe with some options to adjust for different campaign styles? I’m pretty far out of mainstream RPG these days though, so take this as just rambling.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Was the 4th picture stating a nigh-identical photo being from 2023 been confirmed? I know there’s been efforts to determine if the newspaper was from the right day or not.

@CosmicRami Also the whole project was an example of international collaboration to my understanding.

@golgaloth @skinnylatte I always remember these due to a Dragon magazine article in the late 80s.

@KFears@mstdn.games @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems Itnlooks like IEEE 1394 or “FireWire” among other names. Mostly used for external storage. Many FireWire devices had 2 ports to allow daisy chaining: It essentially replaced external SCSI on Macs for a few years. I’m assuming this implementation was not tested and didn’t handle a possible layout with computer A to Device to Computer B which I don’t think was intended by the standard. MacOS did support networking over FireWire at some point as I remember, but it may have been OS specific.

@MugsysRapSheet@mastodon.social My understanding is it’s a bit more complex, but he did several things many would consider positive (tax on mostly-empty homes, ended contracts with consultants and similar or dubious quality, etc.) combined with some less positive things (I’ve heard he pushed off some payments to city employee pension accounts?) and, importantly negotiated an increased amount of funds from the state to the city. It still sounds like he’s doing a lot of good. Perfection is unobtainable but he seems to want to do the right thing and actually sounds like a human being. (Disclaimer: not a New Yorker.)

@yon@sakurajima.moe @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social Cray had something going designing computers that looked like modular furniture.

@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social @BernardSheppard@mastodon.au I’m on a William Gibson kick right now and for all his foresight he often undershot storage capacities by a massive amount in his early works. And then I read the link for this talking about a whole 10 gigs of storage.

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net I feel like my rough attempts definitely laid some pathways in my head that have helped more recently with trying to learn #blender. I just wish it wasn’t somewhere around 5th or 6th on my “to-do list requiring active intelligence”

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net I was, briefly, semi-competent with Strata 3d! Got an educational version back in the PowerPC era.

@zoharlee@mastodon.ie @cstross@wandering.shop I’m reading *The Regicide Report* and trying to decide if I should pause to watch two movies that have been rather directly referenced (albeit with slightly different titles) before continuing. Although the in-book review of the movies, albeit in the continuity of the Laundry books, is not exactly positive.

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net I would certainly be interested. Maybe a way to gauge interest is to do a handful of samples, just dipping a toe into specific elements you’d want to cover?

@jef My wife (with my help) is working on a children’s book. We decided to do collages of physical objects and painted elements to intentionally (hopefully) not look like AI as the market is flooded with AI children’s books.

@Zebadiah_Carter@mastodon.social I see. I notice the mask I. The lower corner now. I was hoping this was a relic of the 60s or 70s that could be pointed to. Good message though.

@amirbkhan@mastodon.social I applaud your uncommon willingness to acknowledge you were wrong and try to fix potential misinformation.

@deinol@dice.camp So what’s the ‘elevator pitch’ for Cepheus? Is it Traveller-descended rules but a more modern setting? Something more extreme?

@The_Whore_of_Blahbylon@mastodon.social I actually wouldn’t mind a city on Mars, but a livable Earth is still higher priority.

@SJohnRoss I think growing up some friends had these, mostly leftover relics from the parents or older siblings left in the family game cabinet. From memory most are simplistic at best, which might explain the age range somewhat. In the 90s and 00s it’d be an even simpler skin on a Monopoly set (or themed trivial pursuit) but a lot of these were basic Chutes & Ladders RNG Fests,

@ObsidianUrbex This immediately made me think of a section of the original Bioshock game where there was a catwalk above several rooms where the ‘Little Sisters’ were studied…

@TartanLlama@mastodon.social @b0rk@social.jvns.ca Don’t have a cat. Wondering if my dog would have enjoyed it.

@siracusa@mastodon.social Inhave a strong feeling AI tools will continue to be “good demos” that are less useful once users ask for things that are actually difficult.

@RogueAmoeba this is a great example of how relationships should work with Apple and Developers!

@panic@social.panic.com I’ll have to test when I have a chance.

@Zebadiah_Carter@mastodon.social Nice! Any context on this?

@kjhealy SoI watched (part of) a video earlier today of someone doing something similar with an ancient PDP11. (He has it in his garage. I think it’s an eccentric enough old man hobby) Are the “modern” LLMs basically this with a ridiculously larger pool of resources to train on? (Plus, I assume, various shims and rules to try to keep them at least sounding sane.)

@tvaziri I enjoy behind-the-scenes featurettes and deleted scenes. But a lot of scenes are deleted for very good reasons, and that’s the ones they put in special features.

@crankylinuxuser@infosec.exchange @catsalad@infosec.exchange @cstross@wandering.shop I’d argue there’s lots of weird things about cats, not just one. That’s okay, it’s what makes them interesting.

@halcyon Now I’m trying to remember why, circa 1998, i wrote a super basic screensaver for my Mac Classic II. Did macOS not have password protection at that point? I was in a dorm and may have wanted to keep my roommates from messing with my computer.

@renegademinis@dice.camp I mostly play #heavygearblitz which is 12mm so different set of problems, but I also have a small box of 28mm terrain for #OnePageRules, #7tv and similar. One of my at least wishlist pieces is either an arcade to fight in and a back alley (which is where I’d hide a Tardis). I’ll definitely take a look at your sets!

@gleick I think he is incapable of most of these. I think it would be difficult for most successors to do most of these, but that’s governing a large country. I think the ICC aspect might require an act of Congress (which I’d approve of) and in general there’s a reluctance for nations to admit mistakes, but we can hope.

@panic@social.panic.com Any fixes to the integrated terminal? I’ve noticed recently it often breaks if characters are deleted not showing spaces correctly. I can try and screen cap a demo of needed.

@halcyon It is amazing to remember that there was an era without even the slightest security.

@andypiper The audience seemed to be on her side. I’d love to see someone sit down with people like Jon Stewart and do a full show explaining the “how” of Mastodon and related tech. He has a podcast (using rss and such) and seems willing to learn, but is also not technical.

@kenney@mastodon.gamedev.place Trying to extract a confession.

@verymetalsite@mastodon.social @jalefkowit@vmst.io @jwz@mastodon.social I listen to several podcasts, but I don’t think I’d consider any of them the typical “podcast bro” type. I really don’t mention it sometimes because I don’t want people to assume I watch the really low-grade ones.

@renegademinis@dice.camp We had a regular-ish day for a few locals to play #heavygearblitz in Maryland near Baltimore but like a lot of gaming it sadly stalled. We’re trying to get it back on track but the core group is limited availability due to real life unfortunately.

@tvaziri I think I need to do this actually. My main Mac suddenly stopped seeing local applications when I hit cmd-space. For older Mac users there was “Rebuilding the Desktop Database” which was occasionally useful but often a placebo of sorts for somewhat similar issues.

@FrankAuLux @cstross Without going into spoilers, the series develops and has a bit of mood whiplash, especially in the early books. Don’t skip the short stories in the series as well! They’re some of the favorite parts to me.

@arstechnica It’s encouraging me to retreat further from active Reddit use, every time I see a bar like that I ask myself, “could I be doing something better with my time?” Reading a book often wins.

@kirb Honestly if they’d kept that base design and just iterated the internals it would have probably been viable for at least 20 years to the Mac Pro market that wants tasteful, but is also buying a tool they intend to use as hard as they can for at least 3 years. I actually miss the older G3 “fold open” case but admit the plastic wouldn’t age as well today as quality metal probably does.

@cstross Imma gonna steal this for a new D&D monster… Some sort of edible plant matter golem perhaps, “When Edible Arrangements Turn Bad.”

@BasicAppleGuy@mastodon.social Reminds me of the old Control Panel that replaced the Apple Menu icon and did include several alternative fruit options.

@renegademinis@dice.camp Do you by chance have a set with vending machines in it?

@f00fc7c8@kind.social since you asked so nicely…

@pdfarranger@fosstodon.org @eff@mastodon.social Yeah, most of the ”pdf tools” websites are apparently document-harvesting scams these days. I block 3-4 a week at my day job as our InfoSec team finds them.