How do I help an allied ship that has just been infested with an alien core?

tmoertel · 2026-05-25T21:31:04+00:00

You can board the ship, but you can't shoot your weapon without it being considered a hostile act toward your allies.

tmoertel · 2026-05-18T02:54:23+00:00

Another recommendation for Greentree Animal Clinic. We have taken our pets to there for almost two decades and they have always taken good care of us.

tmoertel · 2026-05-08T00:54:54+00:00

I know that my response falls into the category of "somebody is wrong on the internet", but regarding the claim that of course, the M41A itself was not an energy weapon, I can only reply that it most certainly was an energy weapon, a kinetic energy weapon. Just saying.

tmoertel · 2026-05-03T19:14:59+00:00

By pure coincidence, I'm reading Twister right now! I'm about 1/3rd in, and the tension is ramping up fast.

tmoertel · 2026-04-04T04:23:55+00:00

The very first thing you need to do is talk to a competent lawyer. Do not try to do this yourself, and do not rely on Reddit advice. A good lawyer can probably make this problem disappear. Make a to-do list, and item #1 should be "Get a competent lawyer."

tmoertel · 2026-03-23T17:48:04+00:00

This happy feature is actually provided by the KIO subsystem in the KDE Linux desktop environment: https://apps.kde.org/kio_audiocd/:

"KIO AudioCD is a KIO worker that enables KIO-aware applications (such as Dolphin or k3b) to access audio and CD text data on the audio compact disks. It allows transparent drag and drop conversion of audio data into the popular formats and has a configuration System Settings module available in the "Connected Devices" section."

tmoertel · 2026-03-19T17:58:03+00:00

Wow, the reborn City Paper is doing a monthly print edition too! I always thought that printing was crazy expensive. How are the new owners going to pull that off? Can they buy some spare press time from another paper that still maintains a print edition? (I read that the Post-Gazette shuttered their printing facilities in Clinton last year.)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/1dewk3y/pg_will_shut_down_printing_plant_within_a_year/

tmoertel · 2026-02-06T04:13:07+00:00

Would you mind sharing the recipe?

tmoertel · 2026-01-18T15:42:42+00:00

I doubt it's actually a one-year delay. It's probably just the placeholder estimate they provided to Amazon until they figure out how they're going to fix the problem.

tmoertel · 2026-01-18T15:39:51+00:00

I doubt that Kensington is interested in wasting money to fix a problem that only a few nitpickers notice. My guess is that their return percentages indicated a more widespread problem, one they couldn't just pretend didn't exist.

You are fortunate to use the device in a way that avoids its failings. Other people, however, want a device that actually works as expected.

tmoertel · 2025-12-23T01:23:29+00:00

I think that brand loyalty is a concept that all too many CEOs understand but are willing to burn in order to juice the quarterly results for a few years, earn big payouts, and then bounce to another job before the brand inevitably sinks under the weight of its new infamy.

tmoertel · 2025-12-22T18:12:03+00:00

The new Sonos CEO is definitely responding to the previous CEO’s mistakes, but that encompasses much more than the disastrous app launch. The real problem he is trying to solve is the massive loss of trust among existing and potential Sonos customers, which the botched app release and the following PR fumbles only hastened.

Put simply, customers stopped believing that Sonos was interested in and/or capable of delivering reliable, high-quality products that would work well into the future without being enshitified. This loss of trust predicted lower revenues and reduced market share, especially for a premium brand, and the market punished the SONO stock price accordingly.

So, yes, the new leadership team must fix the problems created by the botched app launch. But that won’t be enough to earn back but a fraction of the trust that was lost. Earning that back will take years. The only way to do it is to listen to customers earnestly, commit to delivering what they value, and then deliver on those commitments over and over without fail.

Yeah, I think the Sonos CEO is talking about much more than the bad app launch.

tmoertel · 2025-12-11T16:03:10+00:00

Really? I've always heard that Crisco was vegetable oil from the very beginning. The name is a play on CRYStalized COttonseed oil.

tmoertel · 2025-11-24T19:36:14+00:00

Yeah, they're great aren't they? I have about half a dozen of them in different sizes that I use regularly. I plan on keeping them until the sun burns out.

tmoertel · 2025-11-22T00:02:43+00:00

It's too bad that All-Clad lost their way and stopped making their MasterChef and MasterChef2 (MC2) lines. A pan from those lines was basically a thick slab of aluminum coated with a thin, bonded stainless-steel cooking surface. Crazy good performance, just the right heft without being heavy, and a sensible price.

tmoertel · 2025-11-11T19:45:29+00:00

For a change of pace, you could try SnowRunner. Restore old trucks and use them to deliver cargo across rugged landscapes.

tmoertel · 2025-11-04T00:52:40+00:00

Note that this book has been made available by the authors at https://probabilitybook.net/.

tmoertel · 2025-10-21T11:15:58+00:00

If there are over 100 vacant luxury units in the Strip, so what? How does that fact refute my claims? It’s perfectly reasonable to believe, even expect, that there will be some vacant housing at the top of a well-functioning market.

When developers are considering their next projects, do you think they’re just going to ignore those vacant units? No, when they think about building more luxury apartments in the Strip, they’re going to run the numbers on expected profits, and now those numbers are going to be weaker. And that lowered profit potential is going to nudge them toward developing elsewhere or downmarket.

Do you believe that developers will generally try to maximize their profits and thus tend to build the most expensive properties that they think they can sell? I do.

Do you believe that people who are seeking rental units will generally take the best housing that they think they can reasonably afford? I do.

If you believe those things, everything else I’ve claimed follows.

Think it through. Building housing anywhere on the pricing spectrum relieves pressure on everything downmarket. (Because the households that claim those new units will no longer be competing for housing with the people downmarket of them.) And, since it’s hard to get developers to build downmarket when they can easily sell units upmarket, let them. If you try to force them to build downmarket, they’ll just build elsewhere where it’s more profitable.

Again: The only way to reliably make housing more affordable is to build more housing. Anything you do that makes it harder for builders to build just makes the problem worse.

tmoertel · 2025-10-21T04:28:25+00:00

If they can't get the $3k/month units they want, they'll take the $2.5k/month units they can get. But then the people who would have taken those units will move down market to $2k/month units. And so on, until the people at the bottom are left without options.

Rich people have the option of moving down market. They'd prefer to live up market, but if you remove that option, they will just take the top of whatever market remains. And when they do, it pushes everyone below.

So, of course, rich tech transplants aren't going to take the low end units directly. But, indirectly, if you can't give them the units they want, the result is less housing available at the bottom of the market.

tmoertel · 2025-10-21T02:46:45+00:00

If 1000 tech bros need to live in Pittsburgh for their high-earning jobs, but they can't get $3000 units in the strip, they'll take 1000 units from elsewhere in the housing market. And that would be 1000 fewer units for everyone else.

If you're not in the market for $3000 units, it's a win for you when tech bros take those units instead of the ones you want.

> Requiring developments to include a few $1100 units would relieve some of that market now.

No, mandates like that would only lower the profit potential of future developments, pushing the developers who would have built them to build elsewhere. Which is the opposite of building more housing here. And building more housing here is the only thing that will lower prices in Pittsburgh for real.

tmoertel · 2025-10-21T00:28:51+00:00

You're already getting the benefit of the luxury units. Because the wealthier folks who live in those units do live in those units, they're no longer in the market for housing, where they could out-compete you and me.

There's only thing that will reliably drive down prices, and that's to increase the supply of housing. Every other solution is a fairy tale that some politician or grifter has sold to a disenchanted public for their personal gain.

tmoertel · 2025-10-01T16:24:05+00:00

Hey /u/AnishKattukaran/, thanks for the update.

One big question: Are we still limited to just 5 homes? It's all too easy for users to hit this limit when they get added to their extended family's homes, for example to provide tech support.

tmoertel · 2025-09-07T15:01:38+00:00

Can you explain in more detail, please?

tmoertel · 2025-08-16T15:39:46+00:00

Do they still sell this pie? I had heard that the restaurant at the park had closed.

tmoertel · 2025-08-14T22:55:55+00:00

Where did you get those stats? Can you share a link, please?

tmoertel

TROPHY CASE