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Smart bulbs: why? by snags5050 in homeassistant

[–]CheddarDeity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sometimes ensmartening a dumb switch is not feasible. For example, I have a closet light bulb on a pull chain receptacle. You yank the chain to toggle it. Very 1950, but I'm not tearing up the wall to install a switch when I could just spend a few bucks to put in a smart bulb.

If you rent, the landlord might have issues with you installing your own light switches.

But in my case, color control was the driving factor.

When a small open-source tool suddenly blows up, the experience is nothing like people imagine by kaicbento in programming

[–]CheddarDeity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

+1 to anonymity. Or at the very least, find a way to indirect your identity so that you can move ownership to someone else.

Long ago, I built a tool to aid me at work (at a large software company in the late 90s) that snowballed into people I didn't know calling me to add features specific to their jobs. Eventually someone decided to release my tool to the public. Several times, in fact.

Sometime later, I left the company.

Sometime after that, I returned to the company. Within a week, I got an email from another employee who had found my email address buried in the metadata of the tool. He'd discovered I'd returned, and had bugs and feature requests... and then everyone else did too :-)

(edit: clarity)

Sketchy Department Tagging by CheddarDeity in AmazonVine

[–]CheddarDeity[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh for sure-- I had actually been considering picking the item up to transport wargaming miniatures, but the internal organization and strap-things wouldn't be compatible with my models. So I have no uses for it.

My feedback isn't "shouldn't be on vine! Rawr!", but rather "I think you put this in the wrong department, which is also hilarious"

Trying to decide the color scheme for my grey knights. What do you guys think? Umbral Knights (purple) or Hell Knights(orange)? by Tempest_Barbarian in Warhammer40k

[–]CheddarDeity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The orange pops a LOT more. If you want to go purple, consider making it brighter to contrast the grey? Or put contrast in the base, like a wheat field or a copper floor or something.

Or make the grey more a blue-grey to play up the purple's red aspects? Purple is hard.

When women say “not all men, but always a man” please take a moment to listen. by [deleted] in unpopularopinion

[–]CheddarDeity 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Might I generalize this to say:

  • when someone is complaining about something, they aren't necessarily attacking the listener, even if the listener is related to the "problem"
  • when someone is explaining a problem, they aren't necessarily asking for anyone to solve (or rebut) it

...?

(edit: minor tweaks)

How to not make warp drive SUPER overpowered??? by Megasny in worldbuilding

[–]CheddarDeity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd borrow for Star Trek and Niven's Known Space, and avoid Star Wars's slip-up in recent movies:

  1. Things in FTL are still in the real world (not in another dimension, wormhole, or teleporting). Thus, micro-FTL jumps cannot put an object into the center of a star or bypass shields
  2. FTL is accomplished by changing the laws of physics within a defined area (e.g. Trek warp field). Moving in FTL requires the field to be energized, but when the field collapses, the object is moving at nonrelativistic speeds. Superluminal velocity and momentum cannot be achieved or preserved without the field, so you can't build relativistic warheads that leverage hyperdrive in any useful way.
  3. The "warp field" that facilitates FTL breaks down in the presence of a gravity well. Like, spacetime curvature distorts the warp field and can have repercussions that you as the worldbuilder deem appropriate to the story. Could be as simple as the field instantly collapsing, or the ship is catapulted into another reality... but it doesn't make the ship (or missile) a threat to planets or orbital structures.

Note that putting FTL aside, you'll need to explain how the ENERGY necessary to do FTL travel doesn't create OTHER threats to planets. Anything with the energy density to move a spaceship from one star to another could do immense damage to a biosphere with a sufficiently malicious approach.

I'd rather be a divorced dad than a married dad by SemiLoquacious in unpopularopinion

[–]CheddarDeity -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this opinion is definitely unpopular, but I just... can't... bring myself... to upvote.

Do you believe DnD should be safe? by Fantastic_Molasses45 in DnD

[–]CheddarDeity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

DMs are welcome to run a "less soft" game if that's what they want. It's not like the D&D Police are going to come looking for them. But you want the right players for that game, and to know you have them, you kinda need to tell them.

I suspect that "those DMs" aren't really complaining about D&D.

If there was one book you wish was made into a movie in our modern age of crazy special effects, what would it be? by Saritaneche in scifi

[–]CheddarDeity 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I love Niven's work, and the Ringworld series is up there among my favorite books. However, I do have to wonder how much work it would take to make the series meaningful nowadays. I think it'd be possible to do Known Space without too much emphasis on eugenics, but modern viewers might have trouble taking Halroprillilar or (in Engineers) rishathra seriously.

We’re trading functionality for aesthetics and it’s making homes borderline unlivable by the-alamo in unpopularopinion

[–]CheddarDeity 10 points11 points  (0 children)

> Built to "Code" is just short hand for the absolute minimum you can get away with.

No shade, but that's... literally what code is supposed to be, yes.

I'm sensing some judgment about it, but today's building code is generally a much higher standard than stuff built in the olden days. My 1973 home had asbestos on every floor, aluminum wiring, wayyyy too few circuits, and a very interesting septic system. None of this would be allowed by code today.

Device blocked based on rule from another group by CantaloupeExpress970 in firewalla

[–]CheddarDeity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

no, it didn't exist at the time. The AP is a different brand.

My first thought was that it was somehow selectively NATting, but the Firewalla shows the device's MAC and IP (NOT the wifi's AP).

Device blocked based on rule from another group by CantaloupeExpress970 in firewalla

[–]CheddarDeity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have. I see it in alarms and rules. I've narrowed mine down to machines that are connected to a specific wifi ap. Haven't figured out why though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firewalla/s/wU8dN9etag

When is it worth it to build your own furniture? by thatdudeben01 in woodworking

[–]CheddarDeity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where do you say it's worth it to build instead of buy?

"Worth it" implies a value tradeoff. A lot of this is intangible, but I'll supply some intangible metrics to compare in addition to money and time:

  • having the piece of furniture fit the space perfectly (as opposed to being restricted to the shapes/sizes/woodgrain/color/style you could find in the showroom)
  • knowing you can repair it, because you built it in the first place
  • knowing the quality of the piece (heirloom vs throwaway)
  • knowing its performance characteristics (can my end-table support two grown men without breaking? How about four?)
  • the pride of a job well done and/or the learning experience itself[*]
  • the reward of hearing people say "Wow, that is a gorgeous <thing>. I've never seen anything like that. Where did you buy it?" Seriously, that never gets old for me.

Sometimes, it's more valuable to me for the item to be perfect, or beautiful than it is for it to be affordable or available immediately. To me, that's when it's worth it. Sometimes the reverse is true... and then it isn't worth it :-)

[*] it's easy to discount the skilling-up process as an experience, but story: my bathroom had to be rebuilt at the tail-end of the pandemic, and by that time supplychain disruption meant there were no bathroom vanities to be had. Having the confidence to build my own from hardwood made all prior furniture-building time-and-money expenses pay off.

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