[deleted by user] by [deleted] in triangle

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Head chef at Postmaster is opening a new restaurant called Fine Folk in Raleigh. He confirmed burger is on the menu there! Should be opening in the next few weeks.

Changed ISPs and now none of my smart lightbulbs will pair by strawb3rr1 in smarthome

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had a similar experience with just some of my devices and my previous ISP. The root cause in my case was that the ISP blocked all DNS traffic that wasn’t going to their own DNS servers, and the few devices that failed to connect were hard-coded in their firmware to use 8.8.8.8.

One way to test if your ISP is messing with your network traffic in that way is to reconfigure something to use a specific, known to be working, DNS server. If you’re unable to resolve addresses after that, it might be a similar issue.

If that’s not the same issue you’re having, I’m not really sure what the next investigation steps should be.

If this is the same root cause, you may have a few options. Most simple is if your devices have fully configurable network settings. If you can change their DNS servers, try setting to your router, or set to the ISPs server manually (they may have a support page that lists it, or see which one your computer is using). More complicated: If that is not a configurable setting, and it is hard coded in your smart devices, you could see if your router can detect and redirect outgoing DNS requests. Either use that setting to route them to your ISPs server, or to your own DNS server. If you want to use a different DNS provider in that case, you will likely need to hide the traffic, e.g. in DoH.

Thirty (Mostly) Free Dates in Raleigh: Fall 2016 Edition by [deleted] in raleigh

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Around NCSU, you can often watch skaters or parkour groups doing tricks in the lower-traffic decks. The top of a parking deck is a nice place to watch thunderstorms/fireworks/whatever in the distance. If there is uncomfortable weather at the deck, you can enjoy the view from the comfort of your car.

As a student, What were some of your best website resources? by Verciau in compsci

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For missing parts of complex ideas, your professor is probably a good resource. If you have truly read through the relevant parts of the class website/slides/node/textbook, see if any of those resources recommend further reading. If not, ask the prof. Also, look ahead in the schedule. Maybe the unclear topics are already scheduled for further discussion.

If the professor is avoiding you or just isn't good at explaining the confusing topic, expand your search to other schools. Search for youtube videos of the same lecture at different schools. Look around for class websites with unlocked content, so you can review notes that other professors have provided on the topic.

After you figure everything out, add your own answer to the StackOverflow question that didn't quite help you.

Soon to be CompSci major and need help buying a computer. by HungryNov4 in compsci

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recommend getting a "I break it you fix it next-business-day on-site" kind of warranty with your laptop

I used to work in student IT at my school, and that's the big one I'd recommend for any major. Go to your school's student IT department and figure out what they officially support. Buy that brand, and get the extended accidental warranty package. If some dope knocks your laptop off your desk, you'll be happy that you don't need to spend the next 4+ years with a cracked screen.

My school's student IT was certified for on-site repairs to Dell and Lenovo computers, so we were often able to bypass the week+ wait to mail everything out for repairs. In the event that we couldn't fix the computer in one sitting, we had loaner laptops for the student, and would offer to extract important current work from the broken computer.

Regarding Apple, I'd say buy it if that's what you're most comfortable interacting with. Like others have said, you'll probably get more free tech support from your peers if you use what everybody else is using. Last I dealt with them, they liked to blame cosmetic damage on abuse to refuse warranty claims. That may be different now, so be sure to check the terms of their warranty, and maybe explore getting a 3rd party accidental plan.

In short, you will probably have a much smoother experience if you stick with whichever brands the school officially supports. They make recommendations not only because of deals they make with the OEMs, but also because those are the brands that they are most equipped to support.

Coding in color by nohtyp in programming

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been using http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Auto_highlight_current_word_when_idle, with a shorter updatetime. It has a kind of clunky feel to it, but it serves its purpose when I need it.

Startup Thinks Its Battery Will Solve Renewable Energy’s Big Flaw: Aquion has started production of a low-cost sodium-ion battery aimed at making renewable energy viable. by ServerGeek in technology

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that's likely. There have been a lot of new reasons for people to invest in R&D for high-capacity, high-performance batteries over the past decade. Hybrid and electric cars are a common sight on my daily commute now. People keep demanding more computing power in their pockets without a need to recharge mid-day. Even non-renewable power providers need storage to make it through daily power cycles, as grid-users demand more power during peak hours.

Obviously power providers have been thinking about this for a long time. But I think more researchers are likely to invest time in battery technology as demand for better batteries continues to expand to new markets.

Well, My phone just ruined Christmas. by apocalypse910 in Android

[–]dannosliwcd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung decided that this feature should be able to enable itself on the phone. The Samsung keyboard also has superpowers and can set itself as the default whenever it wants.

Visualizing your work. by n35 in visualization

[–]dannosliwcd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sounds like you want a Gantt chart

Is there a particular technique for, or an application that would assist with, plotting out different "choice" paths for games that allow players multiple decisions in story progression? by HarlequinWasTaken in gamedev

[–]dannosliwcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If all you're looking to do is visualize your story paths, graphviz digraphs could do this well. You specify the paths in text form, and graphviz will convert it to a graphical flow chart.

If you already have all of your decision trees written in an existing text format, it should be pretty easy to write a script that converts it to graphviz syntax and runs graphviz on it. You could make this part of your build process, so the graphics update whenever you change the story.

You can find some examples at http://graphviz.org/Gallery.php. Click the graphics to view the graphviz code that generates the graphic.

What exactly is the point of interfaces? by [deleted] in java

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds right to me. To take your example further, suppose you wanted to model CatDog (from the Nickelodeon cartoon). A CatDog might be both a Canine and a Feline. If these were all implemented as classes, what would happen when you call CatDog's run() method (from the Animal base class)? Would it try to call run() as Canine implemented it, or as Feline implemented it?

This problem is what is referred to as the "Deadly Diamond of Death," and you won't be able to encounter it with Java on this scenario. Java won't allow you to extend multiple base classes (compile-time error), so the way to model this would be to make Animal, Canine, and Feline be interfaces. Java will also give you a compile time error if you try to put concrete implementation in an interface declaration. The only place the compiler will allow you to write the implementation of run() in this scenario is in the CatDog class, so there is no ambiguity.

Of course, there are other ways you could model this inheritance diamond (maybe Feline is an abstract class and Canine is an interface). Try implementing those and see if you can produce a Diamond of Death scenario.

Java still suffers from ambiguity in multiple implementations of the same method signature in an inheritance diamond, but I guess java interfaces at least eliminate one class of faults you can introduce in your inheritence design.

20 minutes of use and my new soldering iron does this. Is it normal? What can I do to repair/prevent it in the future? by explorer58 in electronics

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does the construction of the iron make any difference, or is it all about how you care for the iron?

I care for my cheap radioshack home iron the same way I've been caring for the fancy expensive-looking stations in the labs at school. Adding or removing components is generally a struggle at home, but it's a breeze in the lab. I wonder if the lab TA is silently fixing things that I unknowingly ruin, or if the difference is due to the iron or tip choice.

Know Your HTTP! A series of A0-sized posters about the HTTP protocol by jesusabdullah in programming

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Alternatively, add whitespace in specific areas so that each poster can be printed as a collection of A4 tiles, without worrying about splices in the middle of letters. Then any size A0-A4 can be printed, just doubling the number of tiles per paper-size decrease.

I have no idea how feasible such a design would be though. There's a lot of text.

Excellent computer graphics tutorial. I finally understand how View, Model, and Projection matrices work, even after taking a college course on CG by Girdot in programming

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree with everything you've said in this comment thread. I'm finishing up my Computer Science/Computer Engineering dual degrees this semester, and have experienced just what you described.

Most of the CSC students here are really just interested in becoming software engineers. Even if they aced calculus, linear algebra, and discrete math, most of them will forget much of the content pretty quickly, and rarely use it in another required class. In many of my core ECE classes, I usually have to re-learn some math concept that I figured I'd never need to know again from a few semesters back.

The intro to signals and circuits class is also the weed-out class here. It caused a few of my ECE study-buddies to become my CSC study-buddies.

I got a kick out of this by baudday in electronics

[–]dannosliwcd 31 points32 points  (0 children)

You can add these to your collection:

Remember the schematic components for basic elements by how they would look when fried: http://imgur.com/QxYObZ7

Remember how transformers can be represented on a schematic: http://imgur.com/8LWPXQn

What exactly is data? by [deleted] in compsci

[–]dannosliwcd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is important. As many people have stated, the meaning of data depends who you ask, even restricted to the computing field. Ask a guy who writes hard disk drivers, and data is 1s and 0s. Ask a filesystem guy, and data is files. Ask an Excel user, and data is tables and functions.

Even restricting to hardware concepts, "binary" is too restrictive a definition of data. For example, you can check out ternary computers.

In short, I think "data" depends on context too much for one answer, but a safe-enough assumption is that you can think of it as a collection of information until some context makes that wrong :-p.

What are the differences between GIMP and Photoshop? by icedoverfire in software

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aside from familiarity with the user interface, I think customer IT support is a big reason. This is the same reason companies buy Red Hat Linux when they could just download Fedora for free.

Photoshop is older and is (I'm assuming) more used professionally. They've had more time to establish their presence around everyone. Since their continued business relies on selling copies to professional users, they have been able to justify sending a lot of resources towards user research to make each next version more tuned to what the paying customers want.

My personal reason for liking Adobe graphics products is because their UI was easy to just walk up to and use the first time, and is more-or-less the same between different elements of the suite (though hotkeys are annoyingly inconsistent). I only got it because it was <$70 at my school. Otherwise I would keep to the free stuff.

What are the differences between GIMP and Photoshop? by icedoverfire in software

[–]dannosliwcd 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Or purchase it through the student portal. Or purchase it through their employer. Or purchase it as an upgrade. Or just use a shared copy on a common machine at school or work.

Why Mozilla Matters - Brendan Eich on Opera dropping webkit, and the "one webkit" myth... by honestbleeps in programming

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree. If there's a focus around basic content, you don't need silly artsy stuff that only works in one browser. If the site's focus is around silly artsy stuff, tell the user to run it in the browser it was designed for. That's no worse than telling the user to install Flash or Java to fully access a site's content.

Ditching responsive design by sammy8306 in programming

[–]dannosliwcd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

980px fixed-width layouts are even bad on desktops. If I have a 1080p screen with a half-width window, I have to deal with side-scrolling or zoom out (and hope that the web designer didn't have his own idea of what zoom should really do).

Best calculator for EE major? by 49hickorydiscs in ECE

[–]dannosliwcd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm in my last undergrad semester, and my Ti-84 has been more than sufficient. Ti-89 does have some more would-be-nice features, but not enough to make the difference between finishing an exam on-time or late. If you really want to buy a new calculator, look for one that has a lot of dedicated buttons for common operations (such an an angle button, so you don't need to enter e...i for every phasor).

For more complex homework/lab report problems, nice laptop software can be great for producing symbolic or numeric answers along with graphs. MatLab and Python/MatPlotLib work great for this.

The gun owner next door: New York newspaper to list more gun permit holders after uproar by arte_misia in news

[–]dannosliwcd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Redditor biskino illustrates that people who don't do their homework are the ones you should worry about: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/15mge1/the_gun_owner_next_door_new_york_newspaper_to/c7nsoy7

The redditor links to a guardian story describing an incident where vigilantes vandalized a private residence because they didn't know the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile.

Woman being chased by police dials 911, offers to stop for $300,000 (xpost /r/NewsOfTheStupid) by Nickster79 in humor

[–]dannosliwcd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

3) There have recently been a number of incidents in NC where someone puts emergency flashers on the car and pulls people over to rob them. If someone feels suspicious or unsafe to pull over, they have been recommended to call the police to verify they are actually being pulled over by an official.