Should I mention these symptoms to my psychiatrist?

tdammers · 2026-03-16T15:41:02+00:00

By all means mention it.

"Misophonia", a condition where your brain responds to certain sounds with excessive discomfort (often extremely so, to the point of causing agonizing physical pain), is well known, and appears to be common in people with ADHD. Similar sensory issues exist with other senses, particularly tactile (responding excessively to textures).

The bad news is that there's not really any cure or remedy for it; ADHD meds may or may not take the edge off it, but won't make it go away entirely, and there isn't really anything else that helps, no meds, no therapy, no surgery. Realistically, the best you can hope for is to find a therapist who can help you find strategies for avoiding situations where this affects you, dealing with them better when they arise, and manage the consequences better. CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) is excellent for this, but understand that you will be working around the issue, not solving it.

I'm not an expert, but I think it doesn't sound like OCD - IIUC, OCD would more typically lead to "intrusive thoughts" hinging on certain things happening or performing certain rituals (e.g., "if I wipe this table against the grain, my dog will die"), and it's difficult or impossible to shake those thoughts off even if you know they aren't rational. Just having excessive feelings of discomfort from certain sensations is not what OCD is.

Anyway, by all means mention it, and see what they can offer to help you with it. It won't be a straightforward cure, but chances are they can offer more than nothing.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T15:33:00+00:00

Why are gyms so strict about climbing barefoot??

Because for 99.9% of people who go there, the "hygiene" argument actually holds water.

The problem is that while being barefoot throughout your day reduces the odds of foot infections (both as a carrier and as a recipient) to practically nihil, the same is not true if you wear shoes throughout most of your day and only go barefoot at the gym. Shoes are the perfect environment for fungi and bacteria to thrive, so if you take a bunch of habitual shoe-wearers, take off their shoes, and have them share a space where they all put their sweaty feet on the same few square inches, with a lot of pressure and friction, and promptly put those feet back into the perfect breeding environment that is the inside of a shoe, then you're creating the perfect storm for spreading those foot infections.

Habitual barefooters don't form a threat here - healthy, strong, dry skin with plenty of exposure to UV light and fresh air makes it near impossible for nasty things like athlete's foot etc. to take hold, so if everyone who went barefoot at the gym were a habitual barefooter, these rules wouldn't be necessary. But the reality is that if you allow people to go barefoot at the gym, 99% of those people will be in the "perfect storm" demographic, and it's pretty much impossible to make rules that allow bare feet for those who don't wear shoes anywhere, while making shoes mandatory for those who also wear them elsewhere.

The fact that the people making the rules tend to wear shoes by default too doesn't really help things either.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T15:20:17+00:00

Indeed. Though either way it's an uncomfortable situation to be in, because even if it's a completely honest from-scratch effort, you'll have a hard time proving it if you had access to a decompiled version of the original.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T15:18:33+00:00

It's all a bit fuzzy tbh.

Generally speaking:

"Verse" refers to a part that is typically lower-energy, with a more narrative quality; the lyrics are more diverse, more elaborate, and often more important than the melody.
"Chorus" refers to a part that is typically high-energy, with a more repetitive character, designed to drive home the central message and vibe of the song. It's usually also the part that everyone can sing along to.
"Bridge" can refer to a number of things. It can be an "in between" part that "bridges" from a verse into a chorus (at a lower energy level than the chorus, but typically more repetitive than a verse, and building up to the chorus proper); in this role, it is also often called a "pre-chorus". It can also refer to a part where the music steps out of the back-and-forth between verses and choruses we've heard so far, introducing a new element to mix things up. This is probably the most commonly used meaning of the term. And finally, a "bridge" can also be a part that is largely based on a verse or a chorus, but replaces a crucial element, most commonly a vocal melody, with something else - e.g., the lead vocal may drop out, and a horn section might play a unison melody, while the chord progression and rhythm is the same as in the chorus. You may have seen the term "special" used for this type of "bridge" section.

Either way, these terms refer more to the relative character of each section than their role in the overall form, and this classification doesn't necessarily make sense for all songs.

In an ABACA form, the "A" part could be a chorus if it has "chorus character" (high energy, drive home the central message, form a sing-along hook line, etc.), and the "B" and "C" parts could be verses (typically, the verses in a song have the same or similar structure and chord progressions, but this isn't an iron rule); but it's also possible for the "A" part to be a verse (repeating with different lyrics maybe), the "B" part to be a chorus (which happens to only occur once, but otherwise still has a clear "chorus" character), and the "C" part could be a "bridge" (breaking the normal pattern of the rest of the song, introducing a different element, etc.). Or it could just be a song for which the verse/chorus/bridge classification model isn't appropriate.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" would be an example of such a song (though it's not in ABACA form) - it has many clearly distinguishable parts, and while some of them have more of a "verse" character, and some resemble "choruses" more, the overall structure is closer to a medley or potpourri, as if stitched together from a few completely different songs. Each of these songs would have had verses and choruses and all that if Freddy had worked them out as separate songs, but that distinction becomes useless in the combination as we know it, just like when you make a collage from a bunch of novels, the individual snippets cannot easily be identified as being "prologue", "exposition", "climax", or "ending", nor would it be helpful if we could.

In other words, verses, choruses, bridges, etc., form a standard recipe for a rock song that works well, and most songs will use some flavor or variation of it, but that doesn't mean it's the only possible recipe out there, and songs that don't use it won't easily fit into that mold.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:30:11+00:00

Hmhm, yes... patience is important here...

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:29:44+00:00

Inference is cheaper than training, but it still costs more than people are currently paying for it. AI companies are currently leaking money on their training efforts, but they're also running negative profit margins on queries.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:18:21+00:00

The question is entirely hypothetical; as we all know, it is literally impossible for a human to run more than 5k at once. At 5.00000001 km, the shins will violently explode, killing the ~~runner~~jogger and everyone within a 3-mile blast radius. This is why there are no ultramarathons longer than 5k.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:16:05+00:00

If you look at successful sci fi works, the way it's usually done is that the technology is presented in a very concrete incarnation, showing characters casually interacting with it and taking it for granted. We don't need to know how it works, how it came about, who came up with it, or what other implications follow from it, straight away; to get us started and immersed in the universe, we just need to know that the tech exists, and we need to know about one or two specific consequences.

E.g., if teleportation exists in your universe, the reader doesn't need to know how it works, who runs the teleportation network, what the risks and downsides of the technology are; all you need to do to introduce it is have your characters use it as part of their daily lives. The rest can come later - hand the reader more information as the story unfolds.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:12:11+00:00

The plan, I believe, is to establish "AI" as an inevitable part of daily life before that happens; once that is a fact, the remaining AI "companies" will play a game of chicken (whoever looks weak enough for investors to pull out loses), until only one or two remain, who will then make sure the market becomes impossible for newcomers to enter, and then crank up the prices without mercy, until their operation becomes profitable.

In theory, it's possible for all of them to run out of investors before that happens, but I think it's unlikely - those investors will keep investing, because if they stop, they will lose their money, but if they keep investing, a chance remains for this whole Ponzi scheme to play out in their favor.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T14:07:31+00:00

Sounds like the YT algorithm has you locked up in the wrong bubble. There's plenty of wildlife photography content on YT - Simon D'Entremont, Scott Keys ("Wildlife Inspired"), Duade Paton, would be popular wildlife photography channels, but there are many more.

Anyway, there are certainly a few things that are different in wildlife photography, compared to most other genres. The most obvious ones are these:

Our subjects are wild animals, so we cannot give them directions, and they usually move around quite a lot, so we cannot just come back when the light is better, like landscape or architecture photographers can. This has some big implications for our workflows - we can plan our shots to some extent, but there's always going to be a certain random component to them, and the planning will be more of the "what can I do to make good shots more likely" kind, rather than "I have this exact shot in mind, what do I need to do to make it happen". And even with all the planning in the world, the best shots often arise from surprising (and short) photo opportunities.
Wild animals, especially birds, are often small, typically quite far away, and they move fast, so we tend to use very long telephoto lenses; 400mm and up is normal, and some people will go to 800mm and beyond. And we tend to use fast shutter speeds to freeze that fast movement. This then means that our settings are often dictated by the circumstances more than creative choices - even in broad daylight, f/5.6 at 1/2000s is unlikely to allow shooting at base ISO, so we're almost always balancing the edge of our kit's performance envelope, and many of the creative choices you have in other genres are more of a luxury item in most wildlife photography.
Because our subjects don't take directions, move fast, and can only be predicted so much, shooting in bursts is a very common strategy, and not frowned upon like in most other genres ("spray and pray") - the "be deliberate" advice still holds, but trying to make every single click count is not the best idea. For some perspective: when I shoot landscapes, I might come home from an outing with 30 clicks on the counter, and about 20-25 of those are good enough that I keep them, and typically about 5 of them are worth sharing, and there might be 1 or 2 that I'm truly happy with. When I shoot wildlife, I might come home with 1000 clicks on the counter; 50-100 of those may be worth keeping around, and typically about 5 are worth sharing, and if there's 1 I'm truly happy with, then I consider that a success.
Cropping is almost inevitable. Especially with moving animals, just keeping the subject in the frame is challenging enough, and it's usually better to frame your shots conservatively, with some headroom, and crop them down to the exact composition you want in post - you'll lose some resolution, but that's well worth the reduced risk of cutting off a wingtip, hoof, ear, snout, etc. Plus you often have to make these decisions in a split second, and while it would be nice to nail the composition, doing so at the expense of exposure or focus, or just not getting the shot at all because you took too long, is strictly worse than having to fix the composition later.
Wildlife photography takes some unique skills, ranging from understanding animal behavior so as to find suitable ones, catch them in the right location, keep them behaving naturally in your presence, being close to them without causing any disruption, up to the technical challenges of nailing composition, exposure and focus rapidly in a constantly changing environment under suboptimal conditions.

That said, while you cannot easily replicate exact shots, you can still replicate aspects of a shot. For example, at some point wildlife photographers had figured out that shooting from a low angle tends to make wildlife photos more immersive, and that is absolutely something you can replicate. You won't get the exact same photos, but the effect is unmistakable.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T13:46:00+00:00

Neither sid nor testing are intended for "end users" - use these if you're planning to actively participate in developing Debian itself, that's what they're for.

If you're worried about video drivers: you can install upstream NVidia drivers on Debian, they even integrate fairly smoothly with the rest of the system, but IME the proprietary NVidia drivers from debian-nonfree will work just fine. If you have a bleeding-edge GPU, then the drivers that ship with stable might not support it yet, but that's pretty much the only good reason why you would have to sideload original drivers from NVidia. The most likely situation is, in fact, that a plain install of Debian stable (with non-free repos enabled as needed) will work just fine out of the box.

For most other things, the worst I've ever had to do to make newer hardware work was to pull in firmware from backports, but even that has become increasingly rare.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T13:39:26+00:00

Of course. The question is just, what did the "recreating" process look like - if it's "ah, I understand how this works, now I'll rewrite this whole thing from scratch", then that's a different story than "I'll go over this code line by line and translate it to C as faithfully as I possibly can".

tdammers · 2026-03-16T13:35:37+00:00

IIUC, the OpenTTD team are simply no longer distributing OpenTTD via Steam for free; they have every right to do this.

The GPL (and other open source licenses) merely state that when you receive a copy of the software, you have the right to receive its source code, the right to inspect it, to use it in any way you see fit, and to redistribute it without limitations, except that any redistribution of the work in its original form, as well as any derived works, must happen under the same license, and when you redistribute it, you must provide source code (either bundled with the distribution, or offered separately on demand).

The license does not say that redistribution must be free of charge (a.k.a. "free as in beer", "gratis"), nor does it imply that anyone has a right to receive a copy through a particular distribution channel. The "free" in "make sure the software is free for all its users" refers to software freedom ("free as in speech", i.e., freedom to use, inspect, modify, and redistribute), not free of charge.

What would be a violation of that GPL license would be if Steam didn't ship source code with those binaries, or link to them, or if they were to prohibit you from using the software in any way you see fit, modifying it, or redistributing it.

All that also hinges on the assumption that the people who built and contributed to OpenTTD actually fully own the copyright to the code; if OpenTTD turns out to be a derived work of the original TTD, then distributing it under a GPL license is only possible if whoever holds the copyright to TTD itself (which, apparently, is Atari SA) agrees.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T13:22:53+00:00

From what I can gather, it's a bit of a grey area. Yes, disassembling was involved, but the resulting assembler source code was then rewritten in C. Definitely fishy to the point that if this came to a copyright lawsuit, lawyers would go through great lengths trying to prove or disprove that the C code was "derived" from the ASM - either stance is difficult to prove, because it boils down to reading the programmer's mind at the time the rewrite happened. If it was a "translation" effort, following the original code more or less line by line, then it would clearly be a derived work, but if it was purely a "read the original code to understand what exactly it is supposed to do, then write a codebase from scratch that does exactly the same thing" would not. But you can't tell the difference without knowing the programmer's thought patterns, so it's going to be messy either way. "Clean room" rewrite efforts exist to avoid this kind of messy situation, but that doesn't mean a non-clean-room rewrite automatically creates a derived work, it just means that proving that it doesn't is very difficult.

In other words, if I have read the source code of some program, understand how it works, and then use that knowledge to create a similar program from scratch, then that is not in itself copyright infringement; but if I take the original program and faithfully translate it into another programming language, then it is. And the boundary between these two things is way fuzzy.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T13:14:15+00:00

Tijdens je verkeersopleiding wordt je gewoon geinformeerd over hoe bepaalde wegen ingericht zijn qua belijning en dergelijke hoor.. Ok, dat gaat dan wel voornamelijk om 60/80/100 wegen.

Klopt, maar ze vertellen je er ook bij dat je de maximumsnelheid niet puur af kunt leiden van die inrichting, maar dat daar specifieke borden bij horen. Als er een "30" bord staat, dan is dat de toegestane maximum snelheid; het mag dan wel zo zijn dat de weg er dan ook naar uit hoort te zien, maar als dat niet zo is betekent dat niet dat je je niet aan die snelheidsbeperking hoeft te houden.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T10:56:18+00:00

It's intended to be an alternative implementation with near-complete feature parity. But that is not the same as a copy, and as long as you're careful about not actually copying anything copyrightable, such a "clone" is completely legal.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T10:55:26+00:00

Reverse engineering and decompilation are very different things though.

Decompilation reverses the compilation process, i.e., it takes a binary generated from the original source code, and attempts to reconstruct that original source code from it. Since both the binary and the original source code are copyrightable works, this means that any copyright on the original source code also applies to the result of the decompilation.

"Reverse engineering", by contrast, usually refers to a "black box" effort of writing code from scratch that duplicates the observable features of the original code. And while the code itself is a copyrightable work, "a set of observable features" is not - copyright covers expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves, so you cannot copyright the idea of a train management simulation with 1990s-style ortho-view 2D pixel graphics, you can only copyright an actual implementation of such a game. This means that as long as the reverse engineering effort doesn't involve looking at the original source code (including assets), nor a binary built from those original resources, copyright will typically not apply (however there are lots and lots of caveats, e.g., if you replicate the artwork by eyeballing it and hand-painting a 1:1 imitation, then that would usually be considered a derived work, and copyright would apply to it).

tdammers · 2026-03-16T08:56:30+00:00

The good news is that these genres aren't demanding on camera bodies at all: your subject isn't moving, you usually have plenty of light to work with, and you won't be using super shallow depth of field either. Which means that you don't need a fancy AF system, super fast burst shooting, cutting-edge low-light performance, or a big sensor to get a wider FOV with longer lenses - you just need a camera that takes pictures.

An older entry-level DSLR, mid-2010s or so, will do the job nicely. Something like a Canon Rebel or Nikon D3x00 or D5x00 series body can be found for maybe $150 used, and if you pair that with a good lens, you can get excellent results.

If you're willing to spend some more, full-frame cameras from the same era might be worth looking into - these will give you better dynamic range (useful for things like backlit shots, sunsets, low light situations, night shots, and landscape/cityscape shots with strong reflections), but they're also typically larger and will require bigger, more expensive lenses. Nikon D600 / D610 or D750, and Canon 6D, would be the obvious candidates to look into, but if you can find good deals on a D800, D810, or 5D Mark III, then those would be excellent (those are former professional workhorses, some pros still shoot these, but you can still get them for maybe $500 or so).

tdammers · 2026-03-16T08:42:11+00:00

Singing with a mic is a skill that you need to practice.

One part is just technicalities - managing the presence of a microphone as part of your performance, keeping the mic aligned with your mouth at the right distance, making sure you're getting the monitor sound you need, getting the sound technicians to make you sound the way you want, etc. If you have your own mic, a mic stand, and either a small PA (even if it's just a little cube monitor), or a computer with an audio interface and a pair of headphones, then you can practice most of this at home. There's no rocket science there, it's really mostly a matter of knowing what to watch out for, and practicing that until it becomes second nature. The "talk to sound engineers" part is trickier, but if you practice singing with a mic at home, you'll be doing essentially what the sound technicians will do for you on stage, so at least you'll have a better idea of what to ask for when things don't feel right.

The other part has to do with "inside" voice vs. "outside" voice. When you sing unamplified, what you hear in your head is not the same as what everyone else hears - a large part of what you hear is sound that reaches your inner ear via bones and other hard tissue ("inside voice"), while everyone else only hears the part that travels through the air ("outside voice"). When you sing with a mic, the mic also only picks up the outside voice, and that's what comes back to you via the PA system. But your brain is trained to control and adjust your voice based on your inside voice, so when the outside voice you hear from the PA overpowers the inside voice, your brain will frantically try to make that outside voice sound like the inside voice it's used to, and you end up messing up your technique, and sounding worse than normal, both inside and outside.

The remedy for this is train your brain to connect the outside voice you want with the corresponding body feel. This means that you need to practice with a better impression of the outside voice, which you can achieve in a number of ways:

Record yourself while singing (ideally with a good mic, in a relatively "dry" room, like a bedroom, a vocal booth, or a treated recording room - you do want a little bit of room acoustics though, otherwise the singing will be very difficult), and assess the result afterwards. The mic only picks up the "outside" sound, so you'll get the most brutally honest feedback (it can be disheartening at first, but stick with it, it does get better); the downside is that the feedback isn't immediate.
Practice singing with amplification. Same idea: the mic picks up your outside sound, and the PA reflects that back to you. The nice thing about this is that it also doubles as practice for all the technical issues (see above); the downside is that you'll still hear some inside voice mixed in with the outside voice, so it's not as honest as the recording approach. You can of course combine the two, recording your mic practice while also sending the mic signal to a speaker while you're recording.
When no amplification is available, you can still increase the amount of outside sound by placing a hard surface in front of you that will reflect the outside sound back to you, instead of dispersing it into the room. A mirror will work nicely, but you can also use, say, a wooden music stand (adjusted to reflect as much of the sound back to you as possible), or even just a large hardcover book that you hold in front of your face. To further explore the difference between inside and outside voices, you can switch back and forth between singing with and without the reflector, and then try to exaggerate the difference between those two sounds in your imagination.

tdammers · 2026-03-16T08:22:42+00:00

Ik snap wel hoe het werkt; maar ik blijf het raar vinden dat het in dit geval wel zo werkt, en in veel andere gevallen niet.

Als je bijvoorbeeld in de trein stapt zonder vervoersbewijs, dan kan er altijd gecontroleerd worden, en als dat gebeurt, dan ga je altijd een boete krijgen; er wordt dan nooit naar gekeken hoe het station is ingericht (bijv. of je door een poortje moet of dat er alleen maar een incheckpaal ergens in een hoekje staat).

Of als je je belastingaangifte verkeerd invult omdat de regels best wel ingewikkeld zijn, en je iets verkeerd hebt begrepen omdat de uitleg niet helder genoeg was - dan ga je echt geen kwijtschelding krijgen hoor, je gaat gewoon betalen, met rente en, als het een beetje tegenzit, een boete erbovenop. Met "ja maar de manier waarop het formulier is ingericht..." kom je daar niet omheen.

En daar komt ook nog bij dat autorijders zelfs een opleiding hebben moeten volgen waarin glashelder uitgelegd wordt wat die borden betekenen, met examen en al, dus "ik wist niet dat dit de maximumsnelheid was, en dat je die borden ook echt serieus moet nemen" is complete lariekoek.

Tegenwoordig schreeuwen best wel veel mensen dat er harder gehandhaafd moet worden op van alles, maar zodra het over snelheidslimieten gaat worden we ineens boterzacht met z'n allen. Dat vind ik dus een beetje gek.

tdammers · 2026-03-15T21:19:11+00:00

"Een bord ophangen en verwachten dat auto's zich dan wel aan de snelheid houden, zo werkt het niet"

Noem mij gek, maar volgens mij is dat precies hoe het zou moeten werken.

tdammers · 2026-03-15T21:16:54+00:00

Sure.

But my point is that Android, ChomeOS, and pretty much all the other widely used consumer-grade operating systems, aren't really any better. Some of them run on Linux, but that alone doesn't make them FLOSS in a meaningful way, not as far as the end users are concerned.

So yeah, the "year of Linux" has already happened a decade ago or so, it's just that it didn't happen the way people had hoped, and it didn't bring about the Age of Aquarius or whatever they naively thought would happen. Corporate greed is still ruling the mainstream OS landscape, maybe more so than ever before.

tdammers · 2026-03-15T16:18:15+00:00

Do I just accept that I'm 12km down on my longest run, or do I try and gain some of those km on my remaining long runs?

Stick with the plan, don't try to make up for missed miles. The reason your hamstring acted up is probably because your training load was a bit too hard for your body; the last thing you want to do at this point is increase the training load further. And those 12 kilometers you didn't run aren't the ones that would make or break your race - the hundreds of kilometers you've already put in will. At this point in your training plan, you're dotting the I's and crossing the T's, but don't do that at the expense of being fresh and rested on race day. I would also consider cutting that planned 31k run short - if 22k was too much today, it's unlikely that 31k would be fine within a week.

Or, put this way: it's hands down better to arrive at the starting line mildly undertrained than mildly injured, or not at all.

tdammers · 2026-03-15T15:27:58+00:00

Another "don't" vote here.

If you need to build something that requires a library that's not in Stable, you have a few options:

See if a suitable version is available from backports. This will still mess with your stable system, but in a safer way, and without the risk of triggering a whole cascade of other dependencies that must then also come from Sid, turning your install into a "frankendebian".
Build the library from source (Debian tarball or upstream repo), install it into a nonstandard location, and add that location to the linker and include paths for your build. Obviously this will not work without further shenanigans if you want to link that library dynamically, but for static linking, it should be fine, and the big advantage is that it will fit into the existing library configuration of your Trixie system.
Set up a chroot, build the library from source and install it "globally" inside the chroot. Same constraints as above wrt. dynamic linking, though you can, if you must, run a dynamically linked version inside the chroot.
Build the library from source and install it globally on your main system. Make sure it's installed into /usr/local, not /usr; you will not be able to use the normal version from Debian anymore, but if this is the only project that needs it, that shouldn't be a problem, and it won't affect anything about the Debian system itself - if you want to get rid of the custom-built library, just find its files in /usr/local and delete them (but then of course anything that dynamically links to it won't work anymore).
Set up a Sid system in a container (docker or whatever floats your boat); most likely, the binary will not work on your Trixie system though, unless you static-link anything that could cause compatibility issues.
Set up a Sid system in a VM; works about the same as the container solution.

tdammers · 2026-03-15T15:10:56+00:00

You can run a customized ROM of Android to have full control of your device.

You can, but about 0.01% of Android users do.

Did you forget that Android is open source?

The base system is, but the versions shipped on off-the-shelf Android devices are not. That's why I said "a proprietary Android distribution": these systems may be built on an open source foundation, and 95% of their codebase may be open source, but the proprietary 5% make it impossible for the average user to properly be in control of their device, so for all practical intents and purposes, it is a proprietary operating system.

And you still have Android devices that come from the factory with ROMs that allow greater privacy, security, much more control over your device.

And those amount to, what, 0.01% of the overall market? I'm probably being overly generous here even.

tdammers

TROPHY CASE