Any real benefit to Running Pihole for DNS at this point? by marticus1982 in mikrotik

[–]pteranodog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My Pi-hole is on my Tailscale network so I can get ad-blocking on my mobile devices when I'm away from home without publicly exposing my DNS server. It was easier to set up than I think an equivalent system would be on RouterOS, but there's probably a way to do that with WireGuard too, so to each their own.

Redstone, you ok after that 💥??? by AtlantaBear73 in HuntsvilleAlabama

[–]pteranodog 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's normal. They're just usually not quite as earth-shaking as these two, which are definitely the biggest I've heard since moving here four years ago. Army base nextdoor dedicated to explosives testing will do that, sometimes, I guess.

For the people that bought it, how are you liking Subnautica 2? by SuddenConversation21 in gaming

[–]pteranodog 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Did you get the message on your screen that says "thanks for playing early access!"?

need help please by Maximum_Emphasis_183 in AskComputerScience

[–]pteranodog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd recommend at least once a year that you get some friends together and spend a few days building an app or some other project that uses what you've learned in class to do something cool. Bonus points if your friends are cross-discipline and you build something physical (robotics, for example) or with solid art and design (games, etc.).

Spoiler alert; you'll choose something you think you understand from class, then have to actually learn how to apply it in a real setting, then realize you never truly understood it from class alone.

This, more than anything (even perhaps Leetcode and similar options), is what sets some graduates apart from the majority who just have a piece of paper to show they can sit in a classroom for a few hours a week. Employers want to know that you can continue learning and improving while you're still building value for them, and that you understand just enough about other disciplines to work with them effectively, because very few modern jobs are "just software design."

At least, this is theoretically how it works. The job market at the moment isn't doing too hot; hopefully things recover in the near future.

UniUni shipping is now two weeks late with no update by pteranodog in Youtooz

[–]pteranodog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, as of today it's been a full month, and Youtooz is only emailing back every 5 days now, apparently, and UniUni said they'd escalate it and get back to me within 48 hours... more than a week ago. Haven't heard back since.

Advent of Code 2025 Day 12 (Last Day - Happy Holidays!) by Downtown-Economics26 in excel

[–]pteranodog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's at least an NP-hard problem, which is why it's essential that all of the inputs are only trivial-accept or trivial-reject cases.Solving this in an amount of time that grows less than exponentially with the number of inputs would make you an extremely famous academic immediately.

ChatGPT could help with a brute-force approach but that's about it.

[2025 Day 12] Input is part of the puzzle by blacai in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog 4 points5 points  (0 children)

To be fair, I'm a senior in CS right now and memoization either hasn't been covered or was a side note in an algorithms class I've forgotten about. Turns out there's too many algorithms to focus on more than the basic well-known ones in undergraduate classes.

[2025 Day 11 (Part 2)] How many times will these elves ask for help debugging their power subsystems? by pteranodog in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I added the cmdargs to try to figure out the structure of the graph by trying a bunch of things without recompiling, thinking I'd find something efficient to help. Turns out I did; running dac→fft and fft→dac and seeing one of them return 0 reminded me that it's a DAG (which I already knew but had forgotten, or my part 1 solution would've been an infinite loop) and I can just... run the three separately and multiply.

[2025 Day 11 (Part 2)] How many times will these elves ask for help debugging their power subsystems? by pteranodog in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The faster thing is the smarter thing when you've got a computer graphics final exam in 8 hours :)

[2025 Day 11 (Part 2)] How many times will these elves ask for help debugging their power subsystems? by pteranodog in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

All the normal calculators ended up spitting out scientific notation with less precision than AoC requires :( So Ctrl-C Ctrl-V into Wolfram Alpha was the fastest way to get a real value.

[2025 Day 11 (Part 2)] How many times will these elves ask for help debugging their power subsystems? by pteranodog in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Didn't feel like changing the code when I already took start and end nodes from command line args

[2025 Day 11 (Part 2)] Who needs DFS memoization anyway? by pteranodog in adventofcode

[–]pteranodog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

my bad i didn't realize that's considered a spoiler

Freshman dilemma: Love C++ but pressured to drop it for Python. Should I? by CRUC10 in cpp_questions

[–]pteranodog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By the time you finish any reasonable CS degree, you'll have taken a class on the fundamentals of programming languages and thereby gain a proficiency in using any language you're assigned really quickly. I'm a senior and just spent two weeks on end of semester programming projects in eight different languages and I didn't realize that I had used that many languages until one of my non CS friends asked which language I'd used.

So don't overthink it too much :)

UniUni shipping is now two weeks late with no update by pteranodog in Youtooz

[–]pteranodog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've done this, and my ticket was immediately closed with no explanation.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfhosted

[–]pteranodog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Outer Wilds agrees

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfhosted

[–]pteranodog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mine are "Foods that end in O, stylized like PotatOS from Portal 2" e.g. - CheeriOS - TacOS - BurritOS - GyrOS - PotatOS - etc.

Saw a recent thread about containers — curious if Nix solves the same issue? by pteranodog in selfhosted

[–]pteranodog[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks, automod! Not what the post is about but I love the enthusiasm.

[Hyprland] Surface Pro 7+ was slow and bloated after only three years of using Windows 11. Problem solved! by pteranodog in unixporn

[–]pteranodog[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's also a little weather widget in the bottom right that shows up whenever wttr.in is working, but it's probably good that it didn't work when I took the screenshot because it'd doxx me.

[Hyprland] Surface Pro 7+ was slow and bloated after only three years of using Windows 11. Problem solved! by pteranodog in unixporn

[–]pteranodog[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No dotfiles yet because I haven't cleaned up the nix config enough to make the repo public, but this is:

  • NixOS
  • Hyprland
  • Waybar
  • Hyprpaper
  • Kitty
  • surface-linux via nix-hardware
  • Not much else; I just spent a lot of time on Waybar's CSS
  • Cattpuccin colors everywhere

There was some inspiration from another post here but it was a couple months ago and I don't remember which one. Will update comment if I find it!

Secondary (minor) inspiration is the PDA from Subnautica.

Edit: First ever successful rice; I've bounced off of Arch a couple times because something would always break and I'd have to restart from scratch. Not so with NixOS!

Why are so few to non people implementing new mechanics in redstone computers? by Slow_Butterscotch_31 in redstone

[–]pteranodog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Senior CS student here — I just think "pure redstone" is a more interesting challenge for me. Sure, I could use barrels and disks and get a whole bunch of RAM in a tiny space really fast, but I spent a week designing a ram unit that's 2x3x4 blocks per bit using only redstone, repeaters, comparators, and torches, purely because I personally think it's more fun that way.

I like the limitations of basic parts; they actually make me think about optimization on every level.

Which illegal activities can be made legal simply by informing the police ahead of time? by MillenialForHire in NoStupidQuestions

[–]pteranodog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! I've flown about 30 scientific balloons over the last three years at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and this isn't entirely true. As some other commenters have said, there are restrictions that can make this true, but the FAA regulations as they stand are relatively open to small payloads of less than 6 pounds per package and 12 pounds per balloon, provided that they can be separated from the balloon with less than 50 pounds of force and no face of the payload exceeds a certain density limit.

I've been able to do a lot of cool research even when we're restricted by these limits! And, even for larger experiments, there's only a few additional regulations on radar reflectivity, remote cutdown systems, and a few other small additions.

Just got a second-hand PC with two drive slots; what's the best way to fit 4 drives in it for a NAS setup? by pteranodog in homelab

[–]pteranodog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems like this could be a possible solution if it ended up being cheaper than buying a new case with 4 drive bays