The stuff there is a heck of a lot easier to input than memorizing numeric Unicode codepoints and using GTK’s control-shift-U thing that the parent post was suggesting.

Emacs also can do that (C-\ u c s RET to enter ucs input method, and u 2 0 1 4 with that input method enabled), but it’s almost certainly not how you want to input oddball characters unless you’ve no other choice.

Most people aren’t taking the time to type in ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4 when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke.

emacs:

• C-x 8 _ m

• C-x 8 RET e m SPC d TAB RET

emacs using input methods

• C-\ T e X RET to enter TeX input method. - - - to enter an em dash when in that input method.

• C-\ s g m l RET to enter sgml input method. & m d a s h ; to enter an em dash when in that input method.

• C-\ r f c 1 3 4 5 RET to enter rfc1345 input method. & - M to enter an em dash when in that input method.

For X11 or Wayland, if you have assigned a key to be Compose: Compose and then three hyphens to get an em dash.

I have a JBOD SATA USB-C enclosure that can do eight drives and has a fan. I’ll follow up with the name in twenty minutes or so; not by it at the moment.

It took me a while to find it when I got it, because my previous JBOD USB-C enclosure — as with, apparently, most enclosures — didn’t have the ability to power back up on power loss without the power-on button being pushed. This has a mechanical button that locks in and doesn’t have that issue. If that’s something that would matter to you, I’d look for that when making a purchase.

It’s not a hardware RAID enclosure, but if you’re using it on a Linux system, you can set up RAID in software on that.

EDIT:

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Swappable-Drive-External-Enclosure/dp/B0DCDDGHMJ

Also, follow-up point, but if you don’t have a backup already, I’d do that and then if you still want a RAID setup for data redundancy on top of that to reduce downtime in the event of a failure, do that then. RAID won’t guard against some issues that a backup will.

I can’t get Arch to recognize it as an Xbox controller (so it doesn’t rumble or have any haptic feedback).

I’ve never needed to to anything to make a gamepad with rumble motors work on Linux, as long as it actually has the motors.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that “Arch” isn’t recognizing it as an Xbox controller or why that would prevent vibration. I assume that some software package that should vibrate isn’t? Some Steam game?

fftest should make it vibrate using the old-style /dev/input/jsX interface. Dunno about the newer /dev/input/eventX interface, which is what you’re probably using. Maybe evtest can do that.

kagis

Okay, evtest can apparently dump a flag indicating whether rumble is supported. fftest apparently supports the /dev/input/eventX interface too.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1139960/how-to-enable-a-vibration-in-a-pc-gamepad-in-xubuntu-18-10

A gamepad supports vibration if it supports the FF_RUMBLE event, which you can check with the evtest tool. Here’s the output for my Xbox One controller, which does support vibration.

To test rumble, use fftest. You’ll need to provide the path to the evdev node for the gamepad, which is included in the output from evtest. For my Xbox controller this was /dev/input/event16:

If you haven’t done that, I’d try that, as it cuts a bunch of variables out of the equation. If it works, then the issue is probably with the game you’re trying to play with, and if not, then the issue is probably going to be on the kernel side.

I don’t know, but start shaving off emojis to see when it’ll accept it and you might get some hints.

I don’t know about that, but if you use three hyphens, the Lemmy Web UI will render it as an em-dash, and you can remain human!

EDIT: Unfortunately, nobody appears to have made a Threadiverse community analogous to Reddit’s /r/totallynotrobots.

TortoiseTTS can, given a handful of WAV files of someone speaking, try and clone them on local hardware.

https://github.com/neonbjb/tortoise-tts

I don’t know how well it would work on Trump, who has a lot of unique mannerisms, not just some sort of general accent.

Can’t use AMD hardware due to a dependency on transformers, though it sounds like you can run it on the CPU alone.

I also want to see a shapeshifter character as one of the good guys! Why are they always the bad guys?

Morph, from X-Men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_(X-Men:_The_Animated_Series)

I think that it’s more that the viewer normally gets to see things from the view of the good guys, and suddenly revealing that someone is actually someone else shape-shifted — which doesn’t work if the viewer has been following along with the good guys — doesn’t work as well.

If you’re talking about what sort of content (rather than what type of media):

I haven’t really been into traditional superhero stuff for a while, but I did really very much enjoy the Parahumans novels (which some may know as Worm and Ward).

Those are dark, don’t shy away from taboo content, and tend to focus on using powers together in complex ways to pull off larger goals. The main character is an antiheroine.

I enjoyed the series more early-on, when it was “lower power”. I think that there’s a strong tendency with magic or superpowers or…honestly, many genres of fiction to always want to top the previous book or story in scope. This usually tends towards trying to save the world or universe or something like that. I feel like that gets to be a bit clichéd. It also limits the story and forms of antagonist that can come up, and makes it hard to continue the story effectively after a “save the universe” one. I’d like more authors who have discipline to hold the “power level” in their worlds down down. If Sherlock Holmes had been fighting cosmic brings by the end of story 10, I think it would have been hard to have a good story 11.

So I’d rather have characters with strongly-constrained, limited abilities that they have to use in creative ways, rather than doing the constant uncovering of new powers.

A few characters in the superhero genre have some form of ability that changes without their power, which helps to let the author explore other possibilities and then dial down the power later. Resurrection Man, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Man_(character)

Due to sub-atomic technology in his bloodstream, Shelley cannot be permanently killed. No matter how he is killed or how much damage is done, he always resurrects fully healed. With each resurrection he has a new super-power (while whatever super-power he had previously disappears). In some cases, there is a physical transformation element to his resurrection (in one case, he resurrected as a living shadow, while another time his body altered into a woman’s form).

I’m not sure that that’s actually a fantastic solution — maybe too random — but as a mechanic, it helps keep characters with superpowers from becoming stale or written into a corner after being extra-powerful in one story. Maybe it’d be nice to have a world where characters have some character-defining fixed powers, but there’s also some mechanic that can cause others to shift from time to time.

It can’t really be strictly-called “superhero”, but probably my favorite graphic novel series was Sandman. That is the dead opposite of “low power”, but the protagonist also typically faces a lot of serious restrictions on what he can do, for one reason or another. It’s conflict, challenges for the protagonist that make for an interesting story, and having a constrained and limited set of powers, I think, helps permit for a wider range of interesting conflicts.

If you’re talking about the type of media, superheroes evolved around for comic books and graphic novels, and I think that that’s still the best place for them.

As I mentioned above, I do like the Parahumans series, and that’s an illustration-free novel series, so that can definitely work, and the lower cost of production maybe opens the doors to some interesting niches. I’ve read very few superhero books, though, so I don’t knownif I have a feel for it.

For movies…they’re okay, but certainly not my favorite type of media for superhero stuff. There was a long run of bad superhero movies. After 2000, some better ones have come out, but while I enjoyed some, I don’t watch many movies in general. I also tend to feel that movies are shorter than I’d like for a good plot. and that a lot of the fantastic stuff that superpowers involve requires expensive computer graphics, where movies tend to do better if a lot of what’s going to be done can be acted out by ordinary humans on more-or-less real sets. Also, actors and actresses age, which I don’t think works well with very long-running characters…and a lot of superheroes are pretty long-running.

Video games…I’ve played some video games with superheroes. Generally not that enthusiastic about them. Some superpowers of existing characters were designed around being fun to look at and read about rather than being fun to play with. Many superhero games are action games, which I’ve been decreasingly interested in. For RPG games, I tend to prefer more CRPG-style conventions, which don’t work as well with already-fleshed-out protagonists. I suppose that there’s nothing really prohibiting making a video game in any genre with superheroes, but the track record for me just hasn’t been that great. I do enjoy roguelike games, where the main character may get superhero-like abilities, but I don’t think that one would really call such things thematically “superhero”.

The Freedom Force series was fun, but not amazing.

The “Heroes Rise” multiple-choice adventure series from Choice of Games isn’t bad, is one of their better games, but it also never left me really super amazed. I don’t like the tendency of many Choice of Games games to try to make a winning strategy just consistently playing a particular type of character. Don’t remember if those did that.

Ehhh.

So, the initial, and real reason that NKRO was introduced was to deal with inexpensive keyboards that used grid encoders. This requires that each key be assigned a place on a grid, with each row and column having a wire associated with it. When you push a key, it sends the associated pair of wires high voltage. The keyboard encoder chip has those wires running to its pins.

Such a scheme can permit detecting any one key going down, which will always set two wires to high voltage. It can permit detecting any two keys going down, since that will always set at least one more line to high voltage, which will uniquely identify the key. But beyond that, additional keys may not be possible to uniquely identify (and, in fact, pushing one may send only lines that are already high to high, which is totally invisible to the encoder), and so it may ignore additional keys.

This prevents a grid-based encoder from doing NKRO.

If you want to do NKRO, you have to have a unique line coming from every keyswitch, which costs money.

There is a second issue with NKRO.

You can have a keyboard that can have NKRO to the encoder, rather than a grid. And can have a USB interface to talk to the computer.

But last I looked, USB has a protocol limitation that cannot support NKRO, and this was a major reason that you could still get some dual-interface keyboards with PS/2 support and USB recently.

PS/2 is edge-triggered by a key. A key goes down, the computer gets a message. A key goes up, the computer gets a message. All that message says is “this key went down” or “this key went up”. The computer maintains a list of keys and its idea of the up or down state of them.

This is also why PS/2 keyboards can sometimes have keys that appear to be “stuck” that get unstuck when you tap them — if the computer misses the “up” message for some reason, then it only gets notified about it next time the key changes state and the computer gets a message about it.

USB doesn’t work like that. When a USB keyboard sends an event, it contains a dump of the keyboard state. Every keypress, new dump. However, there’s a restriction on the size of the message. It can only contain…I think it’s seven keys that are down, plus modifier keys.

kagis

Six keys.

In practice, six is probably enough for pretty much anyone. The real problem was grid encoders, as a video game player might legitimately hit three or four keys at once. But…it still isn’t, strictly-speaking, NKRO unless it can do all.

It looks like there are basically two approaches that keyboards have used to try to provide a similar effect. One is to just invent a proprietary protocol, and rely on that and a driver rather than the standard USB keyboard behavior.

The other is to tell the computer that the keyboard is a whole array of keyboards. Since most OS environments can use multiple keyboards and just use their input, such a keyboard can pretend to have multiple keyboards pressing buttons.

The broccoli thing depends on the kid. I loved broccoli as a kid.

Whether-or-not it and some other vegetables have a really unpleasant taste is a genetic thing.

https://distance.physiology.med.ufl.edu/the-science-of-supertasters/

It’s a tale as old as time. Growing up, your family tried to instill a love of broccoli and other leafy greens in you, but it never quite took. Now, you might be an adult who still doesn’t appreciate certain veggies, coffee or spicy foods. Perhaps you’d even go so far as to call yourself a picky eater. If so, have you ever considered whether you might be a supertaster?

Picky Eating

Many supertasters have a laundry list of foods they wouldn’t dare touch unless they were stranded on a deserted island — and even then, it would be a challenge. To their credit, there is a scientific reason behind their finicky food preferences. Scientists believe that many supertasters have the gene TAS2R38.

This particular gene increases a person’s perception of the bitterness in various foods and drinks. Many supertasters that have taken part in scientific studies often find that they’re extremely sensitive to a chemical called propylthiouracil (PROP). This chemical is often used in research to measure a person’s sensitivity to notes of tartness. Because PROP has an easily detectable bitter taste, supertasters often note an extremely bitter taste when given the chemical, more so than average or non-tasters.

Camouflaging Bitter Flavors by Overcompensating With Other Flavors

Broccoli and spinach may leave an overwhelmingly bitter taste in the mouths of supertasters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand the nutritional value veggies offer. To mask the bitterness, some supertasters add sweet, salty or fatty flavors to foods they wouldn’t eat otherwise. This makes certain bitter-tasting foods more palatable so supertasters can have their vegetables — and their nutrients too.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Easy-Bake-Ultimate-Electric-Oven-Playset-Kids-Toys-for-Ages-8-up/5512174576?classType=REGULAR

Easy-Bake Ultimate Electric Oven Playset, Kids Toys for Ages 8 up

CAUTION – ELECTRIC TOY: This toy has a heating element, which can result in burns.

I’m absolutely confident that I helped Mom in the kitchen long before 8, though. A relative’s toddler was helping make cookies the other month. Wasn’t putting the cookies in the oven, though.

A lot of services today do require a cell number for sign-up, as a form of “expensive ID” that one can’t just make more of.

My guess is that a lot of kids might be kinda conditioned to provide it to services, since these days, they’re probably already handing it over if they’re getting a Google account or something.

All this is assuming that the kid has a cell phone with service. I suspect that it’d be easier, from a technical standpoint, to keep a kid from cell service — which actually costs something and is harder to share — than Internet access.

Not a hard link, but first grade is normally 6-7 years old, so eighth grade is 13-14.

On timing, I’d say that unless you plan to live in wilderness somewhere and limit connectivity options, that it’s going to happen pretty quickly regardless of your position. Even if you don’t provide access to the Internet, once kids start going to school, I expect that they’ll make friends, and at least some of those friends are going to have Internet access, probably in a mobile form.

And phone-based WiFi hotspots and Bluetooth tethering means that if someone’s friends have some sort of cell service with unlimited data, as long as they’re around them, they can share an Internet access link, so can use their own WiFi-capable device, don’t need to share devices. I expect that used WiFi-capable devices are not going to be hard to come by, though I guess that a parent could try to forbid their kids to have one.

And once a kid’s location isn’t restricted to being around their parents all the time, for anyone in an urban setting, there are going to be foot-accessible places that provide WiFi access — like, everyone at school knows the local Starbucks password or whatever.

EDIT: On consideration, I don’t think that Starbucks actually passwords their WiFi service, but even for restaurants or shops or whatever that do and have guest WiFi, not a super high bar.

I can type 160wpm on a good day.

That’d be very fast. I mean, even without doing real-time composition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Blackburn_(typist)

The Guinness Book of World Records included her speed records amongst others in the “Typing, Fastest” category of the 1976[5]–1986[6] editions, where she was listed as able to “attain a speed of 170 wpm” and “maintain 145 wpm for 55 minutes”

Blackburn was popularly recognized as the “world’s fastest typist”[9][10] and made media appearances to exhibit her typing speed and the Dvorak layout, notably appearing in a 1985 episode of Late Night with David Letterman[9] and in a television commercial for the Apple IIc.[10]

On my system, I can just run

$ sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

And it’ll take the system to the BIOS.

From the systemctl(1) man page:

   --firmware-setup
       When used with the reboot, poweroff, or halt
       command, indicate to the system's firmware to
       reboot into the firmware setup interface for the
       next boot. Note that this functionality is not
       available on all systems.

       Added in version 220.

   --boot-loader-menu=timeout
       When used with the reboot, poweroff, or halt
       command, indicate to the system's boot loader to
       show the boot loader menu on the following boot.
       Takes a time value as parameter — indicating the
       menu timeout. Pass zero in order to disable the
       menu timeout. Note that not all boot loaders
       support this functionality.

       Added in version 242.

up arrow

If readline hasn’t been reconfigured from the default emacs mode, you can use Control-P and keep your fingers on the home row.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting.

https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html

This paper explores a novel interface to a system administration task. Instead of creating an interface de novo for the task, the author modified a popular computer game, Doom, to perform useful work. The game was chosen for its appeal to the target audience of system administrators.

The Doom process manager (PSDoom) is a modification of the game Doom [8] that displays representations of the processes running on a machine. Rather than using standard text-mode UNIX tools to view and manipulate processes, one surveys and shoots at a room full of bloodthirsty mutants, as shown in Figure 1. When a user starts PSDoom, currently running processes are instantiated as “process monsters” in a single room in a ``dungeon.‘’ These monsters have their associated process’ name and id printed on them. The program periodically polls the operating system to add newly-created processes to the game. The user may choose to view the processes from a balcony above the room, as shown in Figure 2, or to enter the room to interact with them. If the user inflicts a wound upon a process monster, the corresponding process’ priority is lowered to give it fewer CPU cycles. When the monster accumulates enough damage and is killed, the associated process is also killed.