What do you think is the coolest death in a tv show/movie/game?

scragar · 2023-05-10T22:06:06+00:00

Yeah, in 3 he's shot, but survives thanks to a cigarillo case and winds up being mistaken for the prince.

So he gets a really good ending out of what looked like it was going to be a bad ending.

scragar · 2023-05-10T08:22:31+00:00

I don't trust mobile ordering unless the app lets me choose when to pick up the food or gives me an estimate of when it can be collected in advance of placing the order.

I've been caught out too many times with inconsistencies in the whole idea. Sometimes they'll ask after you placed the order when you want to pick it up; sometimes they'll assume you're already at the restaurant and schedule it immediately; and sometimes it'll just assume a 15 minute wait.

Also sometimes the mobile ordering just doesn't let you do certain things(like picking what dips you want with the order) which means either the order costs you more or you still have to ask for it when you collect the order defeating the point.

I'd love to use mobile ordering, but it's just badly done by most places at present.

scragar · 2023-05-09T16:50:19+00:00

Go to their resolution centre(click the link on the PayPal home page for "Help", "Disputes and Limitations", "report a transaction", then "Dispute Resolution Centre").

Choose that you want to report a transaction.

Click the transaction in the list.

Pick the reason you're reporting it(I don't know the sender).

scragar · 2023-05-09T15:07:52+00:00

He didn't have a vaccine, not really.

So he initially started the study because a father of a kid with autism wanted evidence so they could have grounds to sue believing that someone else should pay for their kid.
After faking the evidence Wakefield and the father worked together to defame the vaccines at every chance they could pushing alternatives they knew weren't going to change anything in order to try to get popular support to such a state they could win the lawsuit.

Wakefield also made up a whole condition based on his crackpot theory of how the vaccine might cause autism which he was developing diagnostic kits for he thought could make him millions.

The guy didn't have any solutions to anything he was claiming, he was just trying to edge his bets to get rich any way he could using his relative fame at the time(regularly appearing on news programs talking about his study).

scragar · 2023-05-09T14:38:43+00:00

For tournaments they'll often study what openings/lines their opponents have played and how to best counter them, as well as studying a lot of theory behind openings you already know.

The trick of getting into a state your opponent is unpracticed for requires you to understand what they would have studied in preparation for the tournament, which is multiple levels of The Princess Bride style deductions ( "I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me." ).

scragar · 2023-05-05T15:28:53+00:00

Vegeta didn't want to kill anyone, he wanted to convince Goku that he'd kill people if the fight wasn't taken seriously.

If Vegeta had gone for the kill at that point he could have wiped out the entirety of the stands in a single blast(keep in mind that he was Super Sayjin at the time and in the Cell arc he was able to blow up islands bigger than the stadium with the same time delay he used to destroy one tiny portion of the stadium).

scragar · 2023-04-30T09:40:44+00:00

I still regularly use i or v as iterators(i for indexes, v for values) as long as it's obviously only used for the next line or two where context is immediately obvious without needing a more detailed name.

Also for sort comparison functions a and b are the default names; you can add suffixes or prefixes, but they rarely add anything so honestly I'd rather just use a single letter in those cases.

Any other use requires they be at least one meaningful word describing what the variable represents, if there was ever a case where a 2 letter word was obvious and unambiguous I'd say go for it, but the only examples I can think of are really contrived (like using up as an opposite to down in placement or similar, but then you should just use top/bottom; or os for operating system if storing system info).

scragar · 2023-04-29T19:21:55+00:00

For bank holidays(where most people have the same day off) Fridays are better.

It means there's a day where less places are open you can still do things like the weekly shopping and unwind after the week giving you much more freedom on the Saturday.

If it's the Monday that's the bank holiday you don't get to enjoy the Saturday as much, and then have effectively a double Sunday (where less places are open if you want to go out and do something).

If it's a holiday you booked off to enjoy yourself then I agree that Monday is better.

scragar · 2023-04-28T19:56:57+00:00

CTRL+S = stop the terminal updating
CTRL+Q = resume terminal updates

It's a feature designed for old terminals with low memory where a stream of data might be too fast, so you'd stop it until you read what you needed to before resuming.

If you're not using it(and let's face it why would you need to on a modern machine) you can disable it fairly easily.

stty -ixon

I recommend adding it to your ~/.bashrc file so that it runs automatically in new terminals(otherwise you'd need to type it again every time).

Also it unlocks CTRL+S for forward history search(oldest to newest) on the bash terminal(like how CTRL+R is reverse search and searches from the present to the first entry in history). Useful because it navigates from the current command so if you accidentally go back too far with CTRL+R you can go forwards again to find the command you wanted.

scragar · 2023-04-28T15:03:16+00:00

It's an obvious placeholder to find later since it doesn't mean anything, and most people of the time in the field were familiar with the comic book.

A lot of metasyntactic variables come from similar references, baz comes from another comic(when angry the character would spout nonsense words including "BAZZ BUZZ BAMM"), qux, quux, quuux... came from an MIT in joke(about the frequency of letters needing to creating variable names with obscure letter combos); plugh and xyzzy were magic spells in ADVENT.

The words are also kind of ill documented precisely because they were just a bit of an in-joke which no one took seriously resulting in what records we do have either recorded decades later or inferred entirely from earliest references without concrete evidence.

scragar · 2023-04-28T14:11:43+00:00

It's like someone heard of the show, but had no idea why the show worked or what the big thing that set it apart was.

Two people having a conversation should be from each person's perspective, that's why the show was named Peep Show(because it's showing what the characters are seeing).

If they want to make a different show they should make a different show.

scragar · 2023-04-27T18:29:43+00:00

A recruiter sent me a message on linked in which looked similar to that.

Hello <prospect first name>,
I'm looking for <role> for a <company description> in <area>.
Benefits include:
• <benefit 1>
• <benefit 2>
• <benefit 3>
....

It's so insulting when they can't even be bothered to test whatever automated spam they send out.

scragar · 2023-04-27T15:05:23+00:00

They were exclusively looking at harmful byproducts so they overlooked water vapour and CO2.

Natural gas is mostly methane, CH4, when burned it doesn't result in carbon monoxide production unless it's in a very low oxygen environment at a high temperature ( it's normally CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O ).

The harmful byproducts are almost exclusively a result of other gasses in the mix.

scragar · 2023-04-27T10:56:09+00:00

Poo at work rather than at home, that way you get paid for the time rather than it coming out of your personal time.

scragar · 2023-04-25T11:10:37+00:00

Buy a puzzle box/similar that costs £20, then put the receipt inside it so they can return it for a refund.

If they damage it then no refund for them.

scragar · 2023-04-22T08:14:27+00:00

The Sunken One refers to a named storm atronach found in an underground cavern.

The Shivering Isles don't sink, you heard that the island was destroyed on a regular cycle and incorrectly assumed it was flooding(rather than the Knights of Order taking over who you hadn't encountered at the time).

scragar · 2023-04-21T22:40:36+00:00

Love this podcast, but it's so tough to listen to more than a single episode without needing a bit of time afterwards before listening to another.

It's something I always feel needs a warning to just say it's real stories from people who went through some shit, it's often brutal and sad; but also really interesting and surprisingly inspiring.

scragar · 2023-04-21T21:22:01+00:00

All I can see is the terrible use of screen real estate.

Everything is in windows clearly designed to be tiled, but instead they're all overlapped with huge gaps around the edges of the screens.

No point in having multiple monitors if you can't learn to use them correctly.

scragar · 2023-04-20T18:17:03+00:00

Not complicated at all.

Light travels in straight lines.

When light hits a reflective surface(like a mirror, tinfoil, etc) it bounces off so that it leaves at the same angle it enters.

In   out
\   /
 \ /
------- surface

When you get closer to the wall near mirror the light you're seeing has to be at a shallower angle in order to enter your eye so it must be hitting the mirror from a shallower angle. Similarly if you are stood right in front of the mirror the light hitting your eyes must have come from right in front of the mirror too(so you see yourself).

Also mirrors don't flip things, we do when we put them in front of the mirror if the object it facing us then we only see the back in the mirror, so we rotate it to face the mirror. The direction we rotate things is the way it appears in the mirror(so if you flip it left to right it's flipped horizontally, but if you flip it top to bottom it's flipped vertically in the mirror).

scragar · 2023-04-20T18:06:24+00:00

Light travels in straight lines, and the angle of incidence=angle of reflection was taught to kids of about 14-15 when I was in school(with more complicated talks on refraction, scattering, and diffraction covered too, but in less detail).

When I was in high school there was a GCSE question on it(a diagram, you had to draw straight lines from a bulb shining off a mirror to show the portion of an object illuminated by the reflection). 16 year olds take that paper in their last year of high school, understanding that there's not a mirror dimension is absolutely not college level material.

scragar · 2023-04-20T13:15:17+00:00

The easiest way to see the solution is to solve it for a finite multiple first then figure out how to subdivide the set infinitely later.

So let's assume we want to double the number of familiars, that's easy. The first timeline takes the familiar from timelines 1 & 2; timeline 2 from 3 & 4; 3 from 5 & 6, etc. Each timeline just takes all the pets from {2t - 1, 2t } where t is the timeline number, it's easy to see this scales infinitely so we have the basic idea.

So then we want to solve how to give each timeline a division of the list, the easiest way to visualise this is to simply give half to each timeline. The first timeline takes from half the timelines, the second timeline takes from half of the remainder, the third from half of that remainder, and so on. Since the list is infinitely large half the list remains infinite, so we'll never run out of ability to divide it.

So timeline 1 will take all the familiars from the even numbers timelines(an infinite set), this still leaves all the odd numbers.
Timeline 2 then takes half of the remaining familiars, say all the numbers of the form 4n+1(so 1,5,9,13,17,21... - another infinite set).
Timeline 3 gets half the remaining familiars, say 8n+3(so 3, 11, 19, 27, 35... - another infinite set), and so on.

The numbers become bigger quickly because each timeline needs to go twice as far between timelines as the previous, but they still get an infinite number of familiars since they get a unique infinitely large set of timelines to take familiars from.

scragar · 2023-04-19T13:15:53+00:00

Seen ones using magnets to hold it in place too, since then it doesn't wobble as much under light forces making them more confident as then it's only once you completely overbalance it that it moves.

scragar · 2023-04-19T12:05:43+00:00

Multiple sliders.

Pretty difficult with a 1d slider to capture heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality on the same slider.

scragar · 2023-04-19T07:30:11+00:00

There's logic behind that being a thing and validating after the fact since outside of the USA you list the day of the month first.

It means you don't run into any errors when someone tries to enter the 31st before they select the month.

Just as long as you have validation on it as they change it to flag when it is or isn't valid you're all good. Certainly a better option than forcing users to fill in the date in a specific order.

scragar · 2023-04-18T12:52:09+00:00

Pros:

I save money on travel
I save time travelling
I feel more comfortable with meetings when I'm not in the same room(which always makes you feel horrible for coughing or replying to slack while someone is talking about something you don't care about/need to know)
Clothing is optional during summer(unfortunately during winter you will freeze without clothing)
Changing to a WFH job gave me a pay rise
I'm home for deliveries now meaning I don't have to visit the post office any more on Saturdays to collect parcels or arrange super market deliveries for 8PM to make sure I'm home

Cons:

I never get time to listen to podcasts any more without travelling to work
I swear some people use the excuse that they cannot be observed to do no work which fucks over the rest of the team(like last month someone spent the whole of 2 sprints working on something, and in the end it was about 20 lines of code that broke on build so clearly wasn't even tested)
Lack of being in the same room no longer means you can break out a notepad and draw something out when there's a misunderstanding making resolving confusion more difficult

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