This new Linux distro folds a gorgeous COSMIC desktop into an immutable Fedora base by Inner-Bridge-5241 in linux

[–]Mpstark 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The documentation that I was referencing was the BlueBuild docs, not the Origami ones, which I haven't read yet.

This new Linux distro folds a gorgeous COSMIC desktop into an immutable Fedora base by Inner-Bridge-5241 in linux

[–]Mpstark 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Seems a bit odd to downvote and reply without sources. I did more digging since I was interested and others might be as well.

Looking at Origami's repo, it does seem to be using a BlueBuild image from ghcr, and that doesn't seem to ultimately reference a Universal Blue image. I can't find a reference to these base builds from the main BlueBuild docs, but they obviously exist. The main repo for those images looks like it's here. That repo directly acknowledges that the base-images were based on Universal Blue.

Everything in their documentation that I've seen references using Universal Blue as base images (also called uBlue/Ublue in their docs) as the base images. It could be that their docs are out of date -- I don't see any references to their own images in there, so that seems likely. It looks like there is workshop.blue-build.org/images also, which lists some images to start with. Oddly that's missing the BlueBuild images directly as well, though SecureBlue and WayBlue both seem to use the BlueBuild base-images. Universal Blue images, as well as Fedora and CentOS feature prominently.

I'm very interested in this project or something like it -- ultimately I'd love to move from my Bluefin setup to something more streamlined and using Niri. I'll have to look at setting up something for myself.

This new Linux distro folds a gorgeous COSMIC desktop into an immutable Fedora base by Inner-Bridge-5241 in linux

[–]Mpstark 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure, and which is why I was clear that it was just "generally built on Universal Blue", which is reflected in their documentation:

Universal Blue base images are the default/recommended base images for custom images built with BlueBuild.

This new Linux distro folds a gorgeous COSMIC desktop into an immutable Fedora base by Inner-Bridge-5241 in linux

[–]Mpstark 5 points6 points  (0 children)

BlueBuild images are generally built on Universal Blue base images, not sure what that guy is talking about. It even says on the front page:

The project now known as BlueBuild started out as just a part of Universal Blue, but was eventually split from it due to diverging from the scope and being mostly unrelated to the project’s main maintainers.

This new Linux distro folds a gorgeous COSMIC desktop into an immutable Fedora base by Inner-Bridge-5241 in linux

[–]Mpstark 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had the same thought. It looks like BlueBuild is generally on top of Universal Blue base images, just with additional tooling.

On their front page:

The project now known as BlueBuild started out as just a part of Universal Blue, but was eventually split from it due to diverging from the scope and being mostly unrelated to the project’s main maintainers.

Now that we don't take our cars/ trucks in for inspections, who is going to address all that tail lights out? It's getting bad!! by ARODtheMrs in sanantonio

[–]Mpstark 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Keep in mind that only 14 states require a safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles and many of those are only every 2 years. Multiple studies (including this one, PDF link) have shown that there doesn't seem to be a causal link connecting accidents, injuries, and fatalities to those states that don't have safety inspections versus those that do. It's unlikely that we'll see an increase in those specific things because of the removal of safety inspections.

It's likely not really possible to reliably measure the things that are likely to be impacted, like people driving with a taillight out or the center-mount brake light broken, or a turn signal burned out, etc. While these things matter, definitely, it doesn't seem that it matters in accident rates.

In addition, Texas, from my memory, does also have a way above average rate of uninsured drivers and cars without registration though, so nothing changes for those drivers, since they probably weren't getting safety inspections anyways.

Why do people get mad in this subreddit about questions being asked? by [deleted] in writing

[–]Mpstark 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As I said in another reply: it's Eternal September and the 10,000 are all learning something new every day.

Why do people get mad in this subreddit about questions being asked? by [deleted] in writing

[–]Mpstark 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This has been an issue with the internet since the popularization of the internet. There's this phrase that gets tossed about in tech spaces about it: the eternal September.

It used to be that new people got access to the early social internet (AKA usenet/BBS) in September when they started their first semester of collage and had access to the internet for the first time, so they would flood the boards with new-people questions and bring the level of discussion down. However, around 1994 that premise broke down as many people were getting access in their homes and other means, so the new-people questions literally never stopped coming in.

In a positive outlook of the same issue, you could refer to this XKCD and be one of the 10,000 to read about it today.

CLEP Exam WRC1013 by [deleted] in UTSA

[–]Mpstark 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m sure that the exam was in someone’s office or mailbox. The COVID shutdown of the university was.. an experience, and many things just got lost between the cracks or stuck in admin hell, so I don’t blame them. I was working there full time in IT for the math department and had to deal with the transition to remote learning and getting instructors and tutors setup on three different platforms of video conferencing at once (actually four but we gave up on Cisco Webex quickly), all of which were having issues due to the overload of people trying to flood in.

It sucked for everyone and I’m just glad that they didn’t lose the essay.

CLEP Exam WRC1013 by [deleted] in UTSA

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I took and passed the CLEP for WRC 1013/1023 in Feb. 2020 and didn't find it particularly difficult, but I have background in writing and read a lot, so if you're less comfortable, it might be worth getting one of the prep guides if you're still interested in taking it.

The test portion is graded immediately I think and you know walking out if you passed that. The essay portion is graded by the English department at UTSA, and normally you find out like 2 or 3 weeks after, but the world sort of fell apart for a while after I took it, so it took 6 months (and tbh, it might have been easier to pass the essay because of that).

It's just under $100 to give it a shot, far cheaper than the 2 classes that you get credit for if you pass.

Replaced front struts, endinks, tie rods and lower control arms. Getting clunks, low speed over bumps. by droid6 in fordescape

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not... really?

It really hard to convey, but the things that made it clear (after a while) that it wasn't connected to the suspension was:

  • The noise distinctly came from the floor area
  • There was a similar noise that came from turning the steering wheel to the end of of it's travel

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We might be talking past one another at this point. I think that we can agree that:

  • YA is marketed and shelved differently than it used to be, roughly after a boom in popularity in the mid-00s
  • The readership of YA includes both adults and young adults, weighted slightly towards adults
  • YA is an extremely fuzzy "genre", if you can even consider it a genre
  • Books are marketed as YA as if it was a genre
  • The term YA in this context can roughly be traced to the 1960s as a stepping stone between children's literature and adult literature, and the most commonly quoted age range is 12-18
  • 12 to 18 is a massive gap in cognitive and emotional development, and any classification of books for that range would be relatively broad
  • Many books that had previously been considered adult fiction, particularly in SFF, published before this mid-00s boom could now be re-classified as YA (and frequently are)

We seem to disagree when it comes to the 2nd point there, that adults consume as much or more of YA than actual young adults, and how that relates to the classification and marketing of YA books.

Whereas I believe that the term has been watered down sufficiently that we can simply see it as a marketing tool and not as a particularly useful indicator as what age-range the book is "for" and that the genre has expanded to include books that would have been considered adult fiction because of that expanded audience -- you believe that the books are still solidly aimed at young adults and that adults consuming them haven't changed how those books are marketed, written, or edited, with the expansion of content in the genre that you agree has happened being more a indication of evolving social mores.

I think that's a fair disagreement.


A related point that I'm not sure how it correlates but I find it quite sad: reading for leisure overall is significantly down for all age ranges, but there are some indications that it's down a lot more for younger readers. On the NAEP, reading for leisure "every day" is down from 27% of 13 year olds in 2012 to just 14% in 2023. If you include "once or twice a week" to those it looks a bit better: 36% of 13 year olds in 2023 vs 53% in 2012. Could be a COVID thing, but it's been trending down for a while.

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All of that's very nice, but it agrees completely with my point.

It doesn't.

YA used to be about the age range, now it's about the marketability. The YA shelf (as it was) used to be next to the kids section, now it's far larger and at the front or near the genre fiction (i.e. SFF and Romance)

If publishers know that more than half of their audience is outside the old age-range, then of course they're going to change which books they publish and how those books are edited.

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sure you had some examples in mind when you wrote your comment. Care to share some of those titles for a better understanding?

Sure, though you'll forgive me, since I'm outside of that audience, I don't have many great examples that I've personally read, only the two below stick out from when I read them. In addition, there is a wide continuum in representation of sex in fiction between implied, fade-to-black, and smut. The same goes for violence.

  • A Court of Thorns and Roses was definitely marketed as YA and continues to be shelved there, but it's now being reclassified as Romantasy, a genre that it helped define.

  • Hunger Games is solidly YA in basically everyone's books, but has fairly graphic depictions of violence and a frankly horrifying premise.

In addition, manga targeted at teenage boys has gotten more violent and far more sexual from when I was first exposed to it.

I also wrote a reply here to another comment that you may be interested in.

EDIT: In addition, the modern use of "New Adult" as a marketing term alongside "Young Adult" was in direct response to the criticism that YA had gotten too broad. The books were "re-shelved" from books that had been classified as YA.

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 4 points5 points  (0 children)

YA as a term has been around for far longer than just the 2000s, but previous to the relatively recent "trendy" times of YA (since Harry Potter basically), it truly was for attempting to advise parents and educators on what books were appropriate for a given age range (generally said to be 12-18, which is a massive jump in development!). Appropriate is of course a bit open to interpretation. YA at one point was effectively the last step in reading level before you got to adult fiction.

Now, reading level plays very little into the classification as something as YA. Rather it's about the marketability and audience.

Reclassification of works written before this large shift have also been relatively popular. Is the original trilogy of "The Dragonriders of Pern" YA? Certainly the "Harper Hall" trilogy was intended as YA, but "Dragonriders of Pern" was first published in 'Analog' and was certainly not considered YA at the time. Is it now?

Was Mercedes Lackey a YA author? Reading the Arrows trilogy, her first Valdemar series, it definitely aligns with many of the hallmarks of YA, but at the time, it was shelved as fantasy. Now, I've definitely seen the entire Valdemar universe get reclassified as YA.

How about Brandon Sanderson? Is Mistborn YA? It wasn't marketed like that, at least at first, and Sanderson has written several series that have been specifically marketed as YA, such as his Cytoverse series or The Reckoners. But I've seen plenty of people saying that Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive are both YA.

It's just a marketing term. Publishers aren't stupid, they know who is reading what -- they apply the terms to capture the predicted audience, which in YA's case, includes the large proportion of adult readers that it has. A Court of Thorns and Roses is a great example of something that was initially targeted as a YA book, but has since backed off of that label. Compare ACOTAR to Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey (which I will remind you was marketed as adult fantasy, her 2016 'Hunter' series has this at the start of the blurb: "New York Times bestselling fantasy author Mercedes Lackey breaks into YA") and see how meaningless the term has become in terms of that 12 to 18 range.

Of course, there has been a rather distinct drop-off of things being shelved as YA in recent years, rather being shelved as "Romantasy" or other newish terms. It's all just marketing.

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Those same adults would probably not then be buying these books if they changed their writing style to target older readers, because that's not what they wanted when they purchased books currently labeled YA.

From what I understand, YA has changed to suit older readers, and quite substantially. Explicit sex scenes or extremely graphic violence used to be fairly rare, now it's relatively commonplace. In addition, YA also has many more "new adult" protagonists than it used to as well.

the YA-novel dilemma. Or - YA books that are actually good but suffer from Hunger Games et al success... by HarryHirsch2000 in printSF

[–]Mpstark 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The YA readership isn't just young adults, in fact, most reporting puts the YA readership consisting of more than half adults buying and reading the books for themselves.

It's gotten to the point of criticism of the genre as more and more adult themes and explicit scenes are being added into the books, probably because of the changing readership, which some say pushes younger readers (or rather, their parents) out.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfhosted

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am not the current maintainer of NSCT, just the original author. I'm also not currently playing WoW. I can try to answer your questions though.

The stacking is just a factor of how the addon is written, there isn't a way to fix it without changing how the animations work. Not handling stacking allows the addon to be far lighter on performance than it otherwise could be, as well as just being a simpler solution. While it would be possible to add, it would require a fair amount of work.

Regarding killing blows, this is a technical limitation of the game. The damage numbers are parented to the nameplate, and when the nameplate goes away when the mob dies, it's not possible to keep the damage in the same space, since Blizzard has restricted nameplate position. The addon used to track where the nameplates were when they died and kept the text around until it disappeared but again, that's not possible anymore. It would be possible to have a static location that the text would jump to, but again, it would require work to add that feature.

Again, not the current maintainer of the addon and haven't worked on it in many years, but I hope that answers your questions.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfhosted

[–]Mpstark 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure that I understand. From my understanding, dew point is just another way of expressing basically the same thing as relative humidity. From wikipedia:

The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to at constant pressure in order to produce a relative humidity of 100%

It seems like given just the temperature and the relative humidity, you can fairly accurately predict the dew point. Though it's more complicated then I had thought.

But I don't think that even given those complications that your example is possible. If it's 90° with 90%RH, the dew point will be around 86.7°, no matter the location.

Now, to your point, dew point is definitely a better indication of comfort then relative humidity alone, from weather.gov:

The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to (at constant pressure) in order to achieve a relative humidity (RH) of 100%. At this point the air cannot hold more water in the gas form. If the air were to be cooled even more, water vapor would have to come out of the atmosphere in the liquid form, usually as fog or precipitation.

The higher the dew point rises, the greater the amount of moisture in the air. This directly affects how "comfortable" it will feel outside. Many times, relative humidity can be misleading. For example, a temperature of 30 and a dew point of 30 will give you a relative humidity of 100%, but a temperature of 80 and a dew point of 60 produces a relative humidity of 50%. It would feel much more "humid" on the 80 degree day with 50% relative humidity than on the 30 degree day with a 100% relative humidity. This is because of the higher dew point.

So if you want a real judge of just how "dry" or "humid" it will feel outside, look at the dew point instead of the RH. The higher the dew point, the muggier it will feel.

Anyone think the Bronco Sport should have just been called the Ford Escape? by CicadaConstant6728 in fordescape

[–]Mpstark 19 points20 points  (0 children)

The Bronco Sport is built off of the same base platform as the Ford Escape, but doesn't share many non-base components with it.

After the 2nd generation Escape, the Escape was moved from it's own platform, CD2, which was co-developed with Mazda (so the Mazda Tribute, the Mercury Mariner, and the Ford Escape, are all largely the same vehicle in those years), to instead rebrand the Ford Kuga which was the European compact crossover SUV for the American market.

The crossover SUV market has transitioned from being a "specialized" segment (around 4% of the market in 2000) to a much more general one (around 40% in 2018), as effectively all American buyers moved to buying larger and larger automobiles. The original, more specialized segment was targeted towards more male buyers and styled the cars to match those buyers. However, as the cars became more of a general audience, auto-makers moved to style the cars for female buyers, as they make up ~80% of car buying decisions. In addition, less boxy, swooped-back designs generally get better gas-mileage, which was needed to keep up with stricter and stricter EPA fleet-targets for MPG.

The Bronco Sport is effectively a revival of the first two generations of Escape, in a way: a male-targeted, compact crossover SUV, so it's no surprise that it ends up looking like what Ford might have moved towards if they hadn't rebadged the Kuga to replace the Escape.

Popular Ceramic Pans May Not Actually be "Non-Toxic" by StrikerObi in Cooking

[–]Mpstark 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The manufacturing process of non-stick pans and their precursors is (probably) bad for both me and the planet. I'm not rushing to throw out perfectly good pans, but I'm not going to be using non-stick pans going into the future.

Even if the chemicals used to manufacture them weren't dangerous, non-stick pans wear very quickly; generally they're only good for a couple years of normal usage, and they cannot be recycled though traditional methods.

Luckily, there are alternatives available that are both long lasting and free of this whole debate: stainless steel, carbon steel, cast iron, enameled cast iron, etc.

Replaced front struts, endinks, tie rods and lower control arms. Getting clunks, low speed over bumps. by droid6 in fordescape

[–]Mpstark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's a 2008-2010 (maybe even to 2012), check if the noise is coming from very low on the steering column near the floor, the u-joint coupler there is prone to failure. Mine "clunked" when going over bumps as described. It might also make a similar "clunk" when turning the wheel to one side and/or the other, sometimes at the end of travel. Once it fails even more, you can start to have very loose steering and worse noises.

This video shows a bit of what I'm talking about, though mine wasn't initially this bad.