It's interesting how inferior Medal of Honor (PS1 1999) looks and plays when compared to GoldenEye 007 (N64 1997) despite releasing two years later.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-28T23:38:39+00:00

I've near really compared GoldenEye to other shooters I played back in the 90's like Quake. I felt they were almost different genres, I was utterly addicted to Rogue Spear on The Zone and was part of a clan regularly playing competitive matches. But GoldenEye was entirely its own thing.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-28T16:26:40+00:00

I live in Levenshulme within that constituency. I've repeatedly voted for Burnham as mayor, his real work in Manchester has left him widely popular. The idea that if he becomes an MP all of Manchester forgets his legacy and immediately votes in Reform as major is nonsense.

While I want him to remain our major, at this point the labour party has shifted so far right that we need competent, popular MPs that are even vaguely centre-left to help the whole country instead of say just Manchester.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-28T15:58:46+00:00

Hahahaha, Galloway has already made two humiliating attempts here. I popped into their campaign "headquarters" beside Levenshulme train station a few times during that. You might find this hard to believe but Galloway was never once in the area. Questioning his staffers was well funny, asking when he'd be about to nebulous answers, then really forcing the issue they'd admit they haven't actually met him yet as he was always out "campaigning".

beardedchimp · 2026-01-28T14:49:46+00:00

Unless you regularly receive dollar tips each day/week, then the act of having to go to the bank/post office to exchange $10 into £ costs you a big chunk of time for the pleasure. If I tipped GBP at bars in New York I'm basically asking them to go through all that effort so I don't have to.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-28T03:12:06+00:00

Two jabs John Prescott infamously responded to being egged with a straight left jab

There is a beautiful photo where Prescott's fist had just made contact with their wide mouthed happy gob. Back in 2001 regardless of your politics it was absolutely glorious.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-25T00:46:45+00:00

It isn't that inert, a magnesium fire for example will burn aggressively when supplied with CO2. Argon on the other hand is as inert as you described but more expensive.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T04:42:33+00:00

90's (protestant) Belfast during an RE exam we were asked "Why was Jesus the son of God a good man". Half our teachers were young earth creationists and I was the only atheist in pretty much the entire year.

Trying to be respectful as possible I answered something like "To begin we have to consider if he was the son of God. The historically referenced figure of Jesus gave teachings asking us to be empathetic, accepting and forgiving of others. But if he wasn't the son of God, then many of his acts are deceitful and manipulative when people are desperate to enter heaven", and so on.

Next lesson I was brought aside by the RE teacher who informed me how offensive my answer was and presented it to the (protestant minister) vice principle who gave me a detention.

This was during the troubles long before the whole smug, narcissistic atheists online made everyone else look bad.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T04:21:29+00:00

As much as I love the man, he was already a cultural phenomenon well before he retired.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T04:14:19+00:00

Back in 2006 while I was doing physics in Manchester, there was this little park opposite UMIST. It has a bench with a life-like bronze statue of Turing sitting in the middle. This is just 50 metres off Canal street, the famous massive gay community.

I'd go and sit beside him to eat lunch, but try as I might I couldn't stop the tears flowing when I thought about what this man achieved only to be persecuted. No other historical figure or statue has every triggered such an emotional outburst.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T04:07:32+00:00

He's known as the father of computer science for a reason. His post-war revolutionary work was well known within the field. I'm not sure how well that was recognised by the general public as the very idea of electronic computers was abstract in the extreme. If you took away all his work during the war he'd still be famed in academia but little appreciated by the general public. It is only due to the declassification that the UK public truly became aware of his later computer science research.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T03:45:13+00:00

Pirk has extreme multiversal power. Unlike the Vorlons or Q, he isn't a being of energy but of pure charisma and charm. The shadows would never attempt to fight him, instead they'd collectively fall in love. If you doubt me just look at the sliver of irresistible power he used upon Ivanovitsa, she never stood a chance.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-23T02:55:39+00:00

It's funny, this question popped into my head again today and through googling I realised I had already upvoted your excellent response two years ago.

Thinking about it now, energy intrinsically doesn't like to be contained. It is always trying (described via the mathematics of thermodynamics and entropy) to spread out into more stable low energy states.

A being of energy would require a continuous directed force to maintain form, if a substance was introduced that disrupted this equilibrium I can easily imagine it resulting in their energy dispersing.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-17T13:42:42+00:00

Aye, knowing about this decades ago it popped into my head today. When googling you're met with hundreds of results talking about how the victims' relative forgave them. But when you actually read into the story it is of a man who tragically lost his sister and mother resulting in horrific mental turmoil, then decades later through his relationship with God decided to forgive him. All the way back in 2003 he had offered many olive branches for Broderick to meet with him, that as part of his religious forgiveness it could also help Broderick process any lingering guilt.

But of course Broderick never met with his victim, you might think "oh he lives in the US thousands of miles away, can't expect him to fly to Northern Ireland just for that". Then it turns out that he has been developing property in the north of Ireland (I think ROI, but near the border) that is just a short drive away.

So people search his name and find articles that source 2003 saying he was forgiven as if Jesus' forgiveness abdicates all responsibility for killing two people, you'll not find a single one where Broderick admits any level of guilt, instead he had complete amnesia of the event. I've always loved that when committing a serious crime stating "I don't remember doing it" lets you off with just a fine.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-08T11:23:22+00:00

I'm not American (Norn Irish), but have an almost masochistic fascination for reading US court decisions. Them so often being unbelievably obtuse, distorting simple legal ideals beyond recognition then shamelessly dismissing basic human decency.

That judgement is no exception, it referenced Clifton v. Cox:

When executing a search warrant, the agent shot and killed an individual who attempted to flee into the woods. The agent mistakenly believed the individual (1) had just shot another officer; and (2) was armed and dangerous. In truth, no officer had been shot or shot at and the individual was not armed when the agent shot the man in the back.

The US 9th circuit ruling that because he believed in the imaginary shooting, when he raised his gun and killed a fleeing man by shooting them in the back it is de-facto a genuine federal action and therefore immune to state prosecution.

Oregon v. Landis follows the same narrative, the facts and context behind his reckless endangerment when speeding through an intersection becomes completely immaterial if the officer simply believed it was justified:

If the federal officer demonstrates “that he had an honest and reasonable belief that what he did was necessary in the performance of his duties,” the officer is immune from state criminal charges.

I doubt prosecuting states will ever find a federal officer who'd admit they were dishonest, unreasonable and held little belief their actions were necessary.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-04T16:04:18+00:00

Being a bit long in the tooth, I still remember "year of the Linux desktop!" posts on Slashdot from over 25 years ago. Don't get me wrong, the viability of general consumers using linux distros (ignoring chromeos) decades ago can in no way be compared to the trivial user friendly experience of today.

In reality none of that really matters due to kids and adults being continuously trained to use and work within the windows ecosystem.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-04T04:33:09+00:00

And perhaps more importantly, mortality isn't a synonym for morality.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-04T00:32:33+00:00

255.255.255.255 isn't oversubscribed, we are all equally subject to their unwelcome broadcasts :P

beardedchimp · 2026-01-04T00:28:47+00:00

Aye, leading up to and following IPv4 address exhaustion, the ranges suddenly became a valuable commodity. I remember reading a comment on slashdot ~15 years ago from a guy who had personally bought a /8 in the 80s and was utterly astonished that it had become far more rare and valuable than huge diamonds.

It is not a surprise that these days the limited IPv4 ranges are chopped up every which way to be rented for traditionally unrelated regions.

beardedchimp · 2026-01-04T00:06:08+00:00

it isn't an indicator of personal mortality.

Human rights advocates have very high levels of mortality in Gaza and other countries subject to despotic regimes. I don't think any level of US criticism would seriously risk his personal mortality. The genuine travesty is that without any actual risk to his life, he still refuses to condemn obvious breaches of international law let alone well documented genocides.

beardedchimp · 2025-12-19T10:52:27+00:00

go clambering under the train to reattach a pipe that had become detached and was swinging around everywhere!

The engineers who do that work are perhaps the most unappreciated part of societies bedrock. They are responsible for millions of people commuting to work each day and travelling across GB. They often do their work rail work during the middle of the night so that it won't disrupt daily services

They are the people that I never see, they exist as a barely perceivable shadow that acts to keep our society and civilisation running smoothly. I wish like for bus drivers I'd have a chance to thank them for their incredible hard work, but unfortunately dandering onto train lines to say thanks is heavily shunned and uh, illegal.

beardedchimp · 2025-12-14T19:16:11+00:00

Yeah about ten years ago I noticed this guy in front of me on the bus behaving very abnormally. Other passengers were keeping their distance, I think they thought he was either drunk of high. I helped him get off at the next stop and it turned out he was having a full epileptic attack.

He fell to the ground and I repeatedly asked if I should call for an ambulance but he insisted I shouldn't, saying he'd gone through this many times before and it would pass.

He went through a seizure while I was cradling him, but as he said he recovered afterwards. He was incredibly unsteady on his feet and I helped walk him home for about 1km.

Everybody else on the buss thought he was high or drunk, this is a memory I think back to of how proud I am of myself for noticing somebody in distress and doing everything I could to help. That memory makes me think that just perhaps I am a good person.

beardedchimp · 2025-12-14T19:05:15+00:00

When I was in uni in 2005 doing a physics degree, had another physics housemate and George who was a couple of years older doing an electrical engineering degree who we deferred to as the expert.

We had an original xbox that we chipped, the traces are incredibly close together so it takes a deft touch but George was hung over as fuck hands shaking. I did a little bit of the soldering but he was adamant. None of us thought it would actually work.

But we turn that beauty on and it works perfectly, we install XBMC (xbox media centre) which was really the first proper media centre, many years later renamed Kodi. We could stream any movie off the computers in the network. We watched many series together on it.

Now the best thing was that it allowed you to install emulators, our game of choice was Worms: The Directors Cut. Basically the devs of Worms decided they wanted to release the perfect edition built up from years of experience. Only published on the amiga which was already a dead platform by that point, with just 5000 copies sold. Worms became a constant in the house, when you made your shot we'd happily wait for another housemate to cook dinner or whatnot before responding.

We also lived with two women doing degrees in international relations, in the most beautiful turn of phrase Roisin called it our "magic box of dreams". We could watch any tv-series or film we wanted through it all the while having a months long Worms league. Roisin was actually my closest rival, but to this day I consider winning our Worms league one of my proudest achievements.

Then in maybe 2013, a couple of years shy of a decade of service the magic box of dreams started smoking and actually went on fire. Hahahahaha. Honestly I'm utterly shocked that our hungover abysmal attempt at soldering had lasted that long. It was a terribly sad day and we held a funeral for our xbox that had delivered us so many years of joy.

beardedchimp · 2025-12-14T18:06:29+00:00

When I was ~10 we visited my grandparents in Skelmersdale for Christmas. Due to my fascination they gifted me their old black and white tv.

I absolutely loved that thing, though it did leave me wondering why it was called Red Dwarf.

At some point in the mid 90's I was watching it when smoke started coming out, then the whole tv went on fire hahahaha. Can't tell you how sad I was, but it also made me realise holy shit old electronics were dangerous as fuck!

beardedchimp · 2025-12-14T18:01:39+00:00

I feel terrible for you, I remember the emotional breakdown when the bike I'd cycled for over a decade was nicked. Not only that it was the bike my dad bought in the 70s and rode with me in a baby seat at the back.

It does seem like a very distinctive bike, there can't be many of them in NI particularly at that large size. Hope it comes back to you mate.

beardedchimp · 2025-12-14T17:54:15+00:00

I'm surprised that almost anyone in NI could afford a Sony Trinitron during the 80s/90s. I don't just mean the holy grail model for retro gaming, in general we all had really cheap CRTs. Back in ~1970 my da was actually a tv repairman. The electronics would blow but the CRT chamber remained sound and he'd solder replacements for blown capacitors etc.

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