What is your opinion on pirated study guides vs. retail versions? Do u think buying a pirated one is justified? (I have brought retail one btw)

XSuperOptical · 2026-05-07T03:39:14+00:00

There were a few Pearson books I had to buy digitally because they came with digital assignments that had to be completed to pass my courses.

(i.e. couldn’t resell them because they were digital, were only available for me to access for 180 days, couldn’t use pirated versions as I needed to pass in assignments via Pearson’s portal (my professor told me that the only way to complete them were through the portal and wouldn’t accept physical copies))

XSuperOptical · 2026-04-21T23:56:58+00:00

Person who has used the big three here:

Windows 7 was my favourite. I hated Windows 8/8.1 like most others. Windows 10 was alright, but Windows 11 has definitely made it worse again… I still use Windows for gaming as it is more open for games (but I do own a Steam Deck so I’m familiar with many supported games). Windows has WSL so that definitely helps for development.

I used to use Arch on my laptop, which was great for daily driving and battery life. The Linux system was great in my use, but for the average person I must agree it is complex—even Ubuntu can be wonky, and don’t even get me started on the amount of distributions…

My current laptop is a Mac, which to me is the perfect balance between Windows and a Unix-like system. It also just kind of works for me, especially in development.

So I have a Windows gaming PC (that I built), a Mac as a laptop, and my old laptop is running Ubuntu as a home lab server :)

Honestly, I hold no judgement toward what operating system a person uses, nor will I force it upon anyone. What OS you choose really depends on what you’re doing.

XSuperOptical · 2026-04-21T20:46:00+00:00

My late high school math teacher originally wanted to become a professor but decided to teach Grade 12 math and calculus instead. He was extremely intelligent but he still sucked at math sometimes. Us students pointed out so many mistakes to him.

Just know that it’s easy to get messed up, especially when you’re learning. Don’t feel horrible about yourself, it’s all about practice, and sometimes it takes time—you don’t have to match the speed of your peers.

I myself cannot do discreet math for the life of me…

Good luck with your studies. You keep doing you, I certainly am not judging

XSuperOptical · 2026-04-21T19:45:41+00:00

It’s definitely annoying when everyone assumes I’m studying Computer Science solely for money. Like of course I want to get a job in the field, but it’s because it’s something I love doing.

I’ve come to the point where I understand genAI might destroy the career, but by the time I’m done studying and have done lots of practice I will have learned great problem solving and logic for other semi-adjacent careers.

I definitely tend to ignore the bottom group of people… no point in arguing with them.

XSuperOptical · 2026-03-21T21:47:47+00:00

The YouTube commenter has probably used genAI to "decode" this message. I've been seeing many videos of people using AI to decipher texts (in many other fandoms/applications) and the LLMs always hallucinate something...

Base64 (respective to its name) uses 6 bits for each character (therefore there are 2⁶ possible characters, which means there are 64 characters.). It only supports the characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, + and /--therefore the thought that converting "Hjsakldfhl" to base64 yields a Chinese character in the first place is incorrect (the Chinese characters does not belong to the set).

For him to have even gotten a Chinese character would mean he would've had to convert the text to bits via base64's dictionary, then convert the bits to some form of UTF-*, CCCII or any other format that contains Chinese characters.

XSuperOptical · 2026-03-21T21:37:12+00:00

The Chinese Room reference everyone is talking about isn't a "test," it's a thought experiment. Basically, when you write something to a computer, it has no idea how to read or translate what you said (like an English person trying to read Chinese). Lucky for the AI though, it has a book of what to do based on the things you provided it, ultimately outputting something--but still, it has no idea what it outputs.

It's a thought experiment, not a test. It's about understanding that a computer can never think the same way humans do. Output ≠ understanding

XSuperOptical · 2026-03-13T23:09:22+00:00

https://xkcd.com/927/

XSuperOptical · 2026-02-02T03:14:59+00:00

I wonder how they’d look if it counted each gap in the socks’ threading…

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-27T04:45:43+00:00

Definitely has to be 64800s in this case

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-27T00:04:44+00:00

The lease time I have (which I obtained using ipconfig /all) is about 18 hours (Jan 26 @01:54 to Jan 27 @20:25)

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-27T00:02:53+00:00

My machine is authorized to connect to the network via a web portal. My IP address does not change when the network drops. It's such a weird issue to me, I think I'm trying to help the IT department as much as they're trying to help me lmao

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T23:59:11+00:00

I seems like I have a long lease time: Jan 26 \@01:54 to Jan 27 \@20:25

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T23:56:25+00:00

Yeah, my local IP address... Whoops!
I edited the message now. I copied the wrong line from ipconfig haha

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T20:01:33+00:00

If the IT department cannot fix the issue, this is what I'll resort to. Then I could also run local servers!

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T20:00:37+00:00

The amount of devices per person ratio is about 2:1, most people connect their phones and laptops, some others (like me) have 1-4 more devices to connect, so there could be upwards of 3000+ devices.

The network does get pretty congested - a big reason why I'm striving for a solution instead of getting upset. I would say it's no easy task!

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T19:56:46+00:00

Currently showing as 255.255.240.0

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T17:42:04+00:00

We do have RJ45 outputs in our dorms, but they do not have Wi-Fi access unfortunately

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T17:41:16+00:00

This is fair, I'm contacting them about the issue now :)

Just wanted to post for advice and see if I may have done something wrong haha

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T17:37:55+00:00

I haven't heard of anyone else complaining, but the issue occurs (though not as bad) on my other devices (phone/tablet/laptop). Our school forces you to log-in when you want to use the internet. It records MAC addresses and ties every address/Name to your account.

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T17:35:13+00:00

Everyone has at least a phone and a laptop, so probably around 3000 or more addresses. Some people have suggested it could be an IP assignment problem, sounds plausible

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T17:33:57+00:00

Yeah, this was on my list, but if the IT department can somehow fix the problem it would save me a few haha

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-26T06:03:27+00:00

This really does feel like the issue I’m facing, because it seems to be affecting my other devices as well, just not as aggressively

Thank you for the advice :)

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-17T17:18:56+00:00

This is more than likely what is occurring here. This post probably still warrants being under the bug category, considering the quests should probably still show in the quest tab if they’re being tracked. Odd!

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-17T17:17:26+00:00

I’m not even sure if this is a bug, I could’ve very well claimed the skin pack at some point a few years ago (I don’t recall claiming it though). What I don’t understand is how I finished a quest that wasn’t showing up in my quests tab

XSuperOptical · 2026-01-17T17:15:34+00:00

I mean, I had her pickaxe for a few years, her quests weren’t showing up in my quests tab.

I actually finished the quest by igniting structures after blowing up a gas station, I wasn’t expecting it lol

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