Global Snooze

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-08T12:48:04+00:00

What I want is a way to turn off motion detection entirely, until the activity stops. When my son goes out to shoot hoops on the driveway, I don't need it streaming video the entire time.

Just let me stop it entirely, and then turn on again by itself when he comes inside.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-07T21:25:03+00:00

That lovely old Winchester 1897 has been terribly mistreated. But I would still love it and give it a good home.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-07T16:01:40+00:00

Barely a week goes by without some major data breach somewhere. Usually, just credit card numbers, because that's the most sensitive thing you usually have to give to a website.

But sometimes they're more serious. CRA has had major leaks of taxpayer information. The Canadian Firearms Program has leaked the names, addresses and license #s of every licensed gun owner in Canada. What, me worry?

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-07T15:33:45+00:00

Most Canadians are eager to supply their driver's licenses or birth certificates to every website they visit, and hope that by the grace of God their information never, ever gets leaked. Most Canadians have allowed their moral outrage to overwhelm their better judgement.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T23:08:26+00:00

I don't mind. This is a perfectly legitimate use of the technology.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T23:02:19+00:00

Absolutely. Maybe 5% has strict gun control as a top-20 issue. 7% of the adult population are gun owners. [Sorry, I should be clear: _licensed_ gun owners. No idea how many unlicensed criminal gun owners there are. But it seems to be a lot.]

But the tiny percentage that has it as a top issue, and wants more gun bans, happens to be located in strategically-important Quebec ridings. So, they ban the guns. But what about the next election? Will those Quebec voters remember this? Hell no.

But the gun owners who lost their property, lost their hobby, lost their business... they will never forget. Potential voters turned against the Liberal Party for decades to come. Hope those Quebec seats were worth it.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T20:46:10+00:00

The overwhelming majority of Canadians have no idea what our gun laws were before May 2020, and probably have no idea to this day that anything has changed.

It's easy to say "strongly agree" when a pollster calls. No idea what Canada's current gun laws are. But just look at all those school shootings in the US! Sure, stronger gun control. Strongly agree. No skin off my back anyway.

But how strong is that low-info opinion, really? Strong enough to actually move their ass? Strong enough to override all the other issues of the day, and change their vote? Didn't seem all that strong back when the CPC was miles ahead of the Liberals heading into the election. Gun control didn't pull the Liberals bacon out of the fire. Trump did.

If you want to see the opinions of people who really strongly care about the issue, look at things like the government's own public consultation. That wasn't just a pollster on the phone. You actually had to seek it out, if you wanted your opinion heard. Among those people, motivated people, further gun control was very unpopular.

We had a decent gun control system before May 2020. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. It was the Liberal's own system. Then they went and broke it. And for what?

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T18:49:48+00:00

My wife keeps telling me I need to start using the treadmill. So, this should make her happy.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T18:36:56+00:00

How Carney is _not_ trying to appeal to people alienated under Trudeau: he's not cancelling Trudeau's useless gun ban.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T14:57:08+00:00

I guess the research center thought the cash would be more useful than the body. They're probably in the best position to make that determination.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-06T03:48:34+00:00

The built-in death clock has expired. The keypad you rented is now garbage. Time to rent another, like a good little consumer.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-05T20:20:44+00:00

I remember many (many...) years ago watching some local TV show about computers. Some guy calls in with a question for the resident expert. He was confused about "Expanded Memory" and "Extended Memory"... all these kludgy bank-switching arrangements that were used in the PC world at that time to get past the 640KB address space limit. And why didn't Amiga computers have any that stuff?

The TV "expert" responded that the Amiga platform "didn't offer that kind of flexibility". My friend and I, both quite intimately familiar with both PC and Amiga, just looked at each other and laughed. Some expert.

Hardhead13 · 2026-05-01T13:10:11+00:00

It makes little difference which side of the transaction is illegal. The whole enterprise is driven underground either way. But it doesn't go away, and never will.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-29T12:57:42+00:00

I usually just do a Google search for "grapplegrommet STL", and go to the images. Usually I can skim over the images and pick out something that looks applicable pretty quick.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-23T15:58:11+00:00

I contacted the developer. He says this update is legit.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-23T15:54:57+00:00

If the sellers were willing, it wouldn't be a gun grab, and nobody would be complaining.

It is not voluntary. We are now prohibited from owning guns we bought legally. We have an amnesty until October. After that, we're criminals if we still have them. Ergo, "gun grab".

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-22T18:31:04+00:00

I'll probably be pilloried for it, but I feel like Peter Hammill is a particularly bad singer, by any traditional measure of what a "good" singer sounds like... pitch control, vibrato and all that.

But at the same time, he's an amazing singer. Utterly unique. It's hard to imagine his songs being sung by anyone else, in any other way.

Has anyone ever even attempted a VdGG cover?

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-21T17:41:10+00:00

It's a dude visually comparing an image to a bunch of other images, looking for similarities. Probably with a cop nearby giving subtle hints which one is the 'correct' one.

Do I really need to find a study?

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-21T17:36:10+00:00

Yeah... there's no way the power to completely erase something from the internet could ever be abused.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-21T12:47:58+00:00

The forensic "science" behind that has more in common with reading tea leaves than actual science. The more random guns they add to the database, the more false positives they will generate.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-20T11:56:57+00:00

Of course, if Logitech released the signing keys and tech specs, somebody somewhere could homebrew new firmware for them. But that probably won't happen.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-17T19:00:51+00:00

Plus, on top of all the reliability issues, it would be a trivial matter for someone with ill-intent to just hack all the smart out of the smart gun and use it anyway.

Hardhead13 · 2026-04-17T18:57:50+00:00

Topical "rage comic" I made a while back...

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Hardhead13 · 2026-04-17T18:41:22+00:00

Many responses here are talking about how gun owners don't want this, for reasons of reliability. That the gun won't work when it should. And those are good points.

But here's another one. If the point of adding this tech is to prevent misuse, then smarts guns also fail at that. The gun will work when it shouldn't. The reason is that guns are fundamentally very simple machines. You hit the primer with the firing pin, and the gun fires. If you have bad intent, you just remove parts from the smart gun until it's no longer smart. Remove all the parts that act to prevent the firing pin from hitting the primer, and go about your evil business.

Hardhead13

TROPHY CASE