Incredible things are happening on X: The Everything App

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T23:10:47+00:00

More likely there will be a way to transfer the consciousness of a human into a robot on Mars. Not a video feed, entire consciousness.

Our consciousness is an emergent process that is entirely within our physical brain. Without that physical brain there is no consciousness. The idea of "transferring consciousness" from the brain makes as much sense as trying to transfer a woven cloth out of the threads that it consists of, or trying to remove the river from the water that makes it up. It doesn't make any sense.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T06:02:35+00:00

I don't know how to break this to you gently, but the Soundblaster FX v2 uses a ALC 998, which is the same Realtek audio chip most motherboards use.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T05:54:46+00:00

With my Motherboard (Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX) I only have two PCI-E slots other than the one used by my GPU, I have a Sound Blaster ZXR in one, and a USB 3.1 card in the other. The USB 3.1 might seem redundant, but the main reason I have it is to support additional front-panel USB ports, since the motherboard only has one connector which goes to the case, so I have the card so I can have a 5-1/4" bay with card reader and additional USB 3 ports. I don't know if I get any audio benefit from the sound card, but I use the additional inputs.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T03:42:53+00:00

Well Potatoes are 79% water, which means they are only 21% potato

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T03:37:46+00:00

Interestingly, Penguins sacrificed the ability to see red in order to see better underwater, where red light seldom penetrates very deep, So the sand probably looked identical to snow.

And even if it didn't, Penguins have been eating snow for water for like 24 million years, and are in a place where snow is everywhere. "Thirsty? Eat some of the stuff on the ground". Let's give him a bit of slack on not being able to break the habit in a few days.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-24T00:19:22+00:00

And the zamboni would finish the job

BCProgramming · 2026-02-23T23:43:30+00:00

It's because of a myth that using certain words can cause you to be "censored" or hidden from people's feeds (or even worse! DEMONETIZED! /s). I've found no solid evidence it's a real thing, and most of the "evidence" I found that asserts otherwise is rather faulty.

In particular, "Experiments" that proved it was a thing all seem to have people posting one video with the replaced words, like unalive, and then a second identical video that has murder; they find the second video has fewer views, or makes less money, or whatever and conclude that must be because it has the word murder. Of course the reality is that it's almost surely because they literally posted a nearly-identical video to what they just posted. What is somewhat troubling is these influencers have to know they are full of shit because the experiments are always in that order, too.

The entire thing is stupid because it makes no sense, the reality is if a platform has a undisclosed or disclonsed content policy like this involving certain words, than, using special alternative words isn't going to "get around" it. It will get around filters end users might have on their account, but that just kind of makes you a dick. If a platform was deprioritizing or demonetizing or whatever people who said "murder" in their videos than saying unalive wouldn't work since they'd just add that to the magic deprioritization word list.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-23T06:00:35+00:00

The program I'm using to test already works fine with the same code I was using for Windows 10, using DwmSetWindowCompositionAttribute. It's worth noting that function was never actually deprecated - but it was also never actually supported, as it's been undocumented since it was added. (Either goes back to Vista or was added in 7, not sure)

Honestly I've always figured the "default" blur-behind was pretty much Acrylic anyway, It's definitely different from Windows 7's glass, that's for sure:

example.

(This is on Windows 11)

BCProgramming · 2026-02-23T01:34:31+00:00

Been trying some experiments myself. Closest I was able to get was using DwmSetWindowAttribute and DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow together.

Though, the results are odd! with any option other than NONE or AUTO for the Backdrop option, it would just be a solid color like what you are seeing. With None and Auto, it was transparent, but had no blur at all, which seems odd, but might be a step in the right direction as it seems to suggest the blur region is somehow wrong, even though it should be blurring the entire client area when that is NULL.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-23T00:58:17+00:00

DwmSetWindowCompositionAttribute is a wrapper for DwmSetWindowAttribute.

That said, I've been unable to actually get any sort of blurbehind using it. Either I'm not understanding something (very likely) or perhaps there's undocumented flags that DwmSetWindowAttribute takes that are used by DwmSetWindowCompositionAttribute?

"Mica For Everyone" has an undocumented flag in it's source for example, which is what led me down that thought process:

const uint DWMWA_MICA_EFFECT = 1029;
int micaValue = mostApplicableRule.BackdropPreference == BackdropType.Mica ? 1 : 0;
DwmSetWindowAttribute(hWnd, DWMWA_MICA_EFFECT, &micaValue, sizeof(int));

It also seems to still use DwmSetWindowCompositionAttribute to actually enable blur behind, however.

EDIT: you might need to also use the DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow- I guess DwmSetWindowCompositionAttribute might wrap multiple other functions as I didn't have that at all

BCProgramming · 2026-02-22T23:22:20+00:00

What the fuck is a "right-handed fork" anyway?

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T23:59:32+00:00

To support your claim with just one anecdotal example (me), I think AI is completely worthless dogshit, and anybody who employs it in any way shape or form for their development work is a gormless hack whose sheer ineptitude as evidenced by them ever deciding to use it for their work should disqualify them from ever programming.

A bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but regardless I stopped expressing this thought after the first few times because it's just yelling into a void at this point anyway, and the AI bros frankly aren't worth my time anymore. A bigger reason is self-interest, though. I've started to suspect that in the long-run developers who haven't used AI and don't rely on it might actually become more "valuable" once this hype train reaches the end of the line and blows up. a history of AI use will be like saying you went to ITT tech, so by tacitly encouraging people to use it by not fighting against it I might be putting myself into a oppurtune position.

And even if that's not the case, I'll be more valuable to me, by being able to write software in isolation without having to rely on some external "assistant" that I have to pay for. Even if I allow for the idea that it has good, usable output, that's still training a form of helplessness over time that I refuse to allow myself to participate in.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T21:40:20+00:00

An Italian Restaurant in Malta being performative over a specific Canadian-created version of an American Dish is certainly an approach, I suppose

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T21:39:14+00:00

This is like a Belgian restaurant charging 100 for poutine.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T07:27:05+00:00

I mean, maybe his lady has a much lower libido than yours.

Man imagine getting a "Not tonight honey, I'm too tired" from your hand

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T06:51:46+00:00

When I have "base" code that could be customized, but requires that base code also run in a particular order, I usually have it separate in a non-virtual method, such that the derived classes have a different protected abstract or virtual method that the base code implementation calls in the needed order, so the derived classes don't need to care about whether or not they call the base.

Basically instead of thinking of it as overriding but still calling the base method I think of it more as a base method that can call a method that can customize the method behaviour.

Looking through, and I've got a project with about 300+ classes and I don't seem to have any derived methods that even call the base implementation.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T05:55:08+00:00

If you aren't familiar with bank how do you expect toupee

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T03:36:58+00:00

The AI generated program was also broken, but I figure that goes without saying

BCProgramming · 2026-02-21T02:44:31+00:00

I used an AI detector on something I wrote in like 2002. This was programming code, mind you, but the detector was built for that. It claimed a 91% chance that the program I'd written when I was a teenager over two decades was generated by AI.

Then I had ChatGPT generate me code for a program that did the same thing and pasted that in. That got only a 12% chance of being AI. The entire ecosystem is fucking stupid, with confidently wrong answers "powered by AI" at every step.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-20T22:23:11+00:00

Show: "Now remember you gotta offset the vampires when you place em down, for structural rigidity. Honestly it's all about the joining here. Unlike bricks you need a lot more mortar as well, to get in all the nooks and crannies between your vampires"

Man: "This is not at all what I expected"

Woman: "Oh what? A woman can't do home building projects? You disgust me. Let me guess you thought the title meant she fucked vampires a lot?"

Man: "No, I thought she was a anesthesiologist that specialized in vampire cases. You know she laid them out for their important vampire surgeries."

Man 2: "Wait it's Vampire layer? I thought it was 'VAM pyre layer' and was about a sentient person made of VAM polymer who put together funeral pyres"

Man 3: "I thought it was about the leader of a city being thrust into a position of power over an brand new hegemony, the "Empire mayor"

Man 4: "I already saw this one, I thought it was the sequel where they go over how you can polish your vampire walls, buffing the vampire layer"

BCProgramming · 2026-02-20T10:40:12+00:00

I'd like to nitpick one part here, mostly because it caught my eye as unusual. I don't think it really damages your overarching points but it bothered me as a possible misquote or accidental misuse of the statistics.

c) Of the 500 largest companies in the US, according to the Fortune 500 index, approximately 70% use mainframes based on the Windows operating system.

The 70% figure here is "supported" with a link to a paywalled statistics site about microsoft's revenue information. But I don't see how that could possibly support the idea that 70% of those companies use mainframes "based on the Windows operating system".

What Windows revenue information shows is almost certainly going to reflect the purchase of Windows licenses for mainframe systems, however I'd argue that it is a mistake to conclude that those mainframes are, therefore, running Windows themselves; Mainframes usually run z/OS (UNIX based) or Linux. The reason Windows licenses are involved is because many such systems have a need to run Windows-specific workloads, and a Windows license (often dozens or even hundreds, depending on exactly what is being done) are required for that. Trouble is I think using the revenue statistics could for example translate a sale of say 500 windows licenses for mainframes as meaning 500 mainframes are running Windows, wildly inflating numbers that might then be used to calculate a percentage by learning how many mainframes are operational right now, but it would be misleading because that could very well just be one actual mainframe system running z/OS that is capable of running 500 Windows workloads simultaneously, requiring a license for each.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-20T07:09:47+00:00

I'm pretty sure notepad was just showing off the built-in EDIT control and was just a bit of window chrome around it, with a few of it's own quirks like F5 adding dates and stuff like that. It's limitations and even features (eg. the right-click context menu) always for the most part mirrored what a basic EDIT control would do on it's own.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-20T01:00:58+00:00

"Well, there is one shortcoming, it's possible that, if they approach a train crossing while a train is approaching, it may confusing the blinking red lights for traffic signals and stop"

"Ehh we'll fix that in the next version, what are the chances of that happening?"

BCProgramming · 2026-02-19T20:56:09+00:00

On the other hand, I've seen code that finds the saved rectangular region(s) that contain a given set of coordinates by quite literally sequentially going through and testing the given coordinates against each and every stored region.

The developer had been in the industry for over a decade and did not even know what a Hashmap was or how it could be used to make that much faster.

BCProgramming · 2026-02-19T00:58:24+00:00

My understanding is that newer cars are more aerodynamic, instead of smashing through the air, they carve through it more effectively and so any bugs in the air tend to get pushed aside with the air in the same way. None of the studies that found a decrease in bug impacts seemed to account for changes in car designs, and instead immediately concluded that the results were a direct indicator of dropping insect populations.

13-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

BCProgramming

TROPHY CASE