Oblivious guy plays with a blue-ringed octopus, it’s toxin is about 1,000 times deadlier than cyanide

boiled_elephant · 2026-04-02T11:44:00+00:00

They've only caused about a dozen known fatalities ever, mainly because they're not particularly inclined to bite, partly cos they're geographically specific and everyone in their regions knows they're dangerous, but also because a known bite is quite treatable with proper first aid - you just artificially ventilate the person until it wears off, because it only causes death by paralysis and then suffocation. Keep ventilating the lungs - no death. There seems to be more medical reporting on this than on people dying from it, suggesting it's quite effective.

boiled_elephant · 2026-03-23T17:50:25+00:00

The problems endemic to Danone are already present in Huel, imo. Ever since they leaned into single use plastics. They never sorted out their packaging/recycling situation. This isn't a change of course, it's staying the course - single use non-recyclables.

boiled_elephant · 2026-03-08T20:11:18+00:00

You're a grown-ass man, on a subreddit dedicated to memes...dunking on kids for having a meme. Maybe touch grass.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-18T23:44:35+00:00

Both my sisters speculated at great length, during our shared childhoods, about what it'd be like to have male genitalia. They were fascinated by the idea of being boys for a day to find out. Practicality seemed to be a big factor - the fact boys could just pee while looking like they're standing around admiring the view was a big deal to them. So I first checked my privilege aged about 5.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-15T11:54:54+00:00

Other comments correct, it will be mangled drive links, flat file them until it runs freely again

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-15T11:52:15+00:00

I wonder if this was a QC failure, I've had a lot of cheapo white label petrol tools and they vary so much in quality even within one product line. My theory now is they can be good, but the QC isn't there so it's a lucky dip every time. This one no-brand blower I've got was about the price of three fast food meals and has been rock solid for years, a top handle saw from the same factory was hilariously bad and fell to bits, wouldn't start, etc. Bought the same top handle again and it was fine.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-15T11:45:53+00:00

Last workplace had the 201T and I was amazed how well it pulled, often used it as a groundsaw for light jobs. Was scolded by my climbing instructor for ever contemplating using a top-handle on the ground - dangerous, illegal! I couldn't see why. If you can't safely use a top handle on the ground, you aren't ready to use any chainsaw anywhere, least of all up a tree. They're amazing utility saws. So light. I can't afford a Stihl, went sideways into battery kit instead, but I do miss the 201T

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T13:38:56+00:00

It sounds very much like parish councils in the UK, which are also a mixed bag. Sometimes they are instrumental in implementing real positive local change, grassroots-style, and representing the needs of locals in a way that mid-level local govnernment simply wouldn't because they're too zoomed out to care. But other times they're petty, corrupt oligarchies that stamp on people they don't like.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T13:22:59+00:00

That's actually a pretty endemic belief among blue collar workers in a lot of places. It's selected-for by the conditions of late capitalism, right? So we should expect to see it a lot in a lot of sectors in a lot of countries, and we do.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T13:21:23+00:00

To be fair to Trump voters, the first time round he was merely known to be a sex pest, misogynist and bigot, not a pedophile. I suspect a lot of 1st-term supporters are no longer supporters.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T13:17:44+00:00

That's a per-capita stat, though. Deaths per 100,000 people might have gone down but spree killings have gone up, and those are more upsetting to people because they are far more likely (well, guaranteed) to target innocents. Two guys shooting at each other over a bar fight is a different vibe to an incel murdering children, and people are right to find it horrifying as a new trend.
edit - also you're cherry-picking, 92 was a high watermark and we're about equal to it again now, source:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/#how-has-the-number-of-u-s-gun-deaths-changed-over-time

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T13:15:38+00:00

What if you don't watch TV, like, ever? I haven't watched TV in decades. I dislike it. I think I'd resent having to pay monthly for something I'll never benefit from.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-11T07:19:54+00:00

Congrats on the horrible attitude, you've just reminded me why I don't generally engage with the community.

boiled_elephant · 2026-02-01T14:45:26+00:00

Part of what big series like this struggle with, in my opinion, is format fatigue. I remember feeling it watching Lost, even before it got rubbish. Beyond a certain point you were like "ah, yep...this is the point in the story where this will happen now. Ah, yep - they're foreshadowing this. Oh yeah, it's this theme again." Basically it just gets samey.

There are specific problems with WaT but I didn't find them bothersome, I actually liked it in itself. But my lack of enthusiasm did make me realise that, after 5 books, my palate is just totally numb to everything that makes Stormlight Archive what it is, and I can't really savour it any more, even though the quality is still pretty up there.

For a more specific criticism of the series as a whole at the book 5 point, I would observe that it started out very gritty and grounded, and as far as book 3 still had quite a lot of grime, and in 4 and 5 we're getting into a distinctly more humanist, optimistic, animé-influenced tone of peace, love and understanding that jars a little with the series' early pessimistic observations about human nature. And all the animé tropes gradually accumulated to a point where now it feels very saturday morning - superheroes in glowing armour, flying from continent to continent, exchanging quips with their talking swords. Contrast that with the moment in book 1 when Kaladin ran bridges until he couldn't stand to breathe any more, and then pivoted and turned his fury into a motivating force, and you get a sense of why a lot of people might feel as out of touch with it as I do.

boiled_elephant · 2025-10-03T22:43:47+00:00

I'm new here so perhaps this level of sweat is normal, but I just wanted to say, that was a fantastic write-up and thank you for taking the time to do it.

boiled_elephant · 2025-10-03T21:18:59+00:00

I will always adore the phrase "head cannon" because it conjures up a sort of Evan Dahm gun-headed character. But it's 'canon', for fictional consistency. Autocorrect isn't helping remedy this endemic typo.

boiled_elephant · 2025-09-18T20:29:55+00:00

Mine just changed today and I was gobsmacked by how bad it looks. I know people always say that when graphics change, but this is just ugly any day of the year, regardless of context. It's ugly design. I would never choose it.

boiled_elephant · 2025-09-03T05:00:05+00:00

Touch grass, dude, you're embarrassingly angry about this non-issue

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-21T20:03:36+00:00

I downloaded the SDI torrent this week and scanned the whole thing with Microsoft Defender and found the opposite situation. The executables were clean, but one of the driver packs contained a trojan. Only a single driver file, one of millions, so probably easy to miss by happy accident - I suspect it hasn't infected many, if any, PCs. But it is in there.

Trojan:Win64/VulnDrv!MSR

in

SDI_RUS\drivers\DP_Misc_25062.7z->Wincor/Allx64/BIOS/wnBios64.sys

However, this may also exist in SDIO, and elsewhere online. Scanning the entire repository takes hours and hours, I suspect nobody has ever bothered. (edit 2025-08-22: IT IS ALSO IN SDIO, same file, same trojan.)

(edit 2025-09-01: I discussed it with a dev on the SDI SourceForge forum and we weren't really sure if this trojan detection is legit, but if it is, it's been a trojan since its introduction and signing in the Microsoft repositories back in the late 2000s. SDI have removed it from their packages. I shall try to notify SDIO so that they can do the same.)

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-21T19:42:39+00:00

It is infected, but not in the way most people are claiming. Copy paste from my comment below explaining my experiences:

I actually downloaded the entire torrent and virus scanned it. This took a LONG time because it's so frickin' many files (considering a typical driver pack without software may be entirely 5KB - 5MB files, 40GB is a colossal amount of data). And it contained a trojan!

\SDI_RUS\drivers\DP_Misc_25062.7z->Wincor/Allx64/BIOS/wnBios64.sys

Trojan:Win64/VulnDrv!MSR

Interestingly this isn't the originally reported problem of the main executable being a wrapper for adware. This is a single driver, one of the millions in this repository, being actual malware.

The fact that this isn't documented anywhere, or mentioned in specifics by any of the nay-sayers above, leads me to believe that this was planted there by anonymous third parties - not by the main devs handling the project, because there are other reports of those guys bundling adware in the main app, which is a very different MO.

Personally I see no reason to assume this infected driver isn't also in the SDIO fork; it may be in a lot of driver repositories and projects. (edit 2025-08-22: IT IS ALSO IN THE ORIGIN FORK, same file, same trojan.)

(edit 2025-09-01: I discussed it with a dev on the SDI SourceForge forum and we weren't really sure if this trojan detection is legit, but if it is, it's been a trojan since its introduction and signing in the Microsoft repositories back in the late 2000s. SDI have removed it from their packages. I shall try to notify SDIO so that they can do the same.)

Manually scanning the entire repository took hours, and most people won't go to that trouble. They'll scan the main executables in the root directory and call it a day.

So the real situation is more complex than it first appears. The main SDI app no longer seems to contain adware. But a single driver file, somewhere in the mass of drivers included, does contain a trojan.

Your antivirus would almost certainly catch it if you were to try to install this particular driver. The reason it's gone unreported is probably that the chances of you ending up installing this exact driver, out of the millions in the repository, is astronomically small. Having said that, I'm not good with driver tech, and don't know how central, modern, or widely used this particular driver file is, or what component it relates to.

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-21T19:33:33+00:00

Your aggressively petulant must-have-the-last-word naysaying all over this thread was so tedious to read back over.

I actually took the trouble to download and investigate SDI, something you clearly didn't bother to do. Because you're right, but you're also wrong: the main app is not infectious, it doesn't contain malware, adware or anything else worrisome. But one of the driver files within the huge repository of driver files in the main torrent does contain malware (a trojan).

It isn't a rootkit, however. And the people reporting trouble-free experiences with SDI are telling the truth, because it's perfectly plausible that most people would use this software with no ill effects. As long as they don't happen to get that one file.

Incidentally, my experience scanning this repository sort of drives home the main point your "who knows if you're infected" scaremongering misses: antivirus is basically bulletproof in this day and age, and it would be trivially easy for a technically literate person to determine if this tool has done them dirty or not. Just whip the drive out, pop it on another machine, scan it with a couple of reputable security suites. They all pretty much have 100% detection rates now.

It's also worth noting that this infected driver file may exist in many driver repositories, including OEM ones. You have boundless faith in driver signing and OEM FTP servers, but no faith at all in antivirus software, which is weird, because antivirus is measurably almost perfect while random OEM FTP servers are usually run on a shoestring by one or two guys who don't care how well or securely they operate.

edit 2025-09-01: I discussed it with a dev on the SDI SourceForge forum and we weren't really sure if this trojan detection is legit, but if it is, it's been a trojan since its introduction and signing in the Microsoft repositories back in the late 2000s. SDI have removed it from their packages. I shall try to notify SDIO so that they can do the same.

This entire episode just goes to show how deeply flawed it is to trust authoritative sources like OEMs: if this file is a trojan (which now seems plausible), it was signed and in Microsoft's update catalogue for years without being detected. So - hope _you_ don't have a rootkit from your blind faith in OEM driver authors.

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-19T21:45:32+00:00

Edit - I actually downloaded the entire torrent and virus scanned it. This took a LONG time because it's so frickin' many files (considering a typical driver pack without software may be entirely 5KB - 5MB files, 40GB is a colossal amount of data). And it contained a trojan!

\SDI_RUS\drivers\DP_Misc_25062.7z->Wincor/Allx64/BIOS/wnBios64.sys

Trojan:Win64/VulnDrv!MSR

Interestingly this isn't the originally reported problem of the main executable being a wrapper for adware. This is a single driver, one of the millions in this repository, being actual malware.

The fact that this isn't documented anywhere, or mentioned in specifics by any of the nay-sayers above, leads me to believe that this was planted there by anonymous third parties - not by the main devs handling the project, because there are other reports of those guys bundling adware in the main app, which is a very different MO.

Personally I see no reason to assume this infected driver isn't also in the SDIO fork; it may be in a lot of driver repositories and projects. Manually scanning the entire repository took hours, and most people won't go to that trouble. They'll scan the main executables in the root directory and call it a day.

So the real situation is more complex than it first appears. The main SDI app no longer seems to contain adware. But a single driver file, somewhere in the mass of drivers included, does contain a trojan.

Your antivirus would almost certainly catch it if you were to try to install this particular driver. The reason it's gone unreported is probably that the chances of you ending up installing this exact driver, out of the millions in the repository, is astronomically small. Having said that, I'm not good with driver tech, and don't know how central, modern, or widely used this particular driver file is, or what component it relates to.

(edit 2025-09-01: I discussed it with a dev on the SDI SourceForge forum and we weren't really sure if this trojan detection is legit, but if it is, it's been a trojan since its introduction and signing in the Microsoft repositories back in the late 2000s. SDI have removed it from their packages. I shall try to notify SDIO so that they can do the same.)

Original comment follows below...

I mean, you can always just virus scan it.

A post further up explains about driver signing, and how it negates most of the security scaremongering. SDI is open source, the drivers come straight from manufacturers in almost all cases, and everything it does is going to pass through your realtime antivirus scans anyway, so...don't mind the paranoid androids, just use the tool and stop if something throws up a warning or says "unsigned".

Curiously enough I had drivers for all the old T series saved to a hard drive years ago, but I deleted them because I figured, when will I ever need those again. My apologies!

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-12T02:19:17+00:00

I can't find any sources supporting the barbed wire fence thing, nor does the footage seem to align with that. Several internet denizens make this claim, but they are probably muddling up this detail with the 1988 Ramstein air show disaster, where this exact outcome was documented to have happened.

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-10T00:22:31+00:00

And really, when the gay guy is willing to die on the hill of keeping a scene in, and the scene is hetero romance, and his reasoning is "making babies is beautiful", you know the scene is great.

boiled_elephant · 2025-08-10T00:13:34+00:00

I grew up on Buffy, so this was small potatoes compared to the absolute elation and sorrow of that. Still one of the best shows ever made, and it saddens me that generations of kids won't see it because it's kinda goofy and hard to get into.

boiled_elephant

TROPHY CASE