This comment reminded me of a cherished Little Joel video.

There’s also an EULA that you have to check the box for before you download the server software that basically amounts to “I acknowledge and accept that Microsoft can shut this down whenever they want for no reason at all and I have no recourse if they decide to do that.”

Fascinating video from Technology Connections all about the color brown.

Just consider whether you’ll be able to tolerate doing the work when you’re not going to be the one in charge of deciding what you work on.

This is my main apprehension when it comes to pursuing a CS career. I already have an undergrad CS degree. I got it right before LLMs were even a thing. I know I’m rusty, but I have pretty strong fundamentals. I was already working in IT as a student so I stuck with that and all the jobs I’ve had since college have been fixing broken shit for someone else. Part of me would like to make software engineer money, but I hear employed programmers talk about the soul-crushing monotony of staring down a bottomless ticket queue and burning up their passion for creativity on fixing annoying issues with software that someone else wants them to build and I unfortunately already know EXACTLY what they’re talking about. I’m so fucking sick of ticket queues. I understand the utility. I get why they exist, but goddamn it’s such a sisyphian way to organize a workflow. It never feels like I’m actually making progress.

I’ve been unemployed for the past few months and I’ve just started getting back into coding for fun and for the first time in forever I can feel what drew me to programming to begin with. Every time I had the “what’s your major?” discussion with a fellow student, I’d explain that the reason I was pursuing programming is because I like making stuff, and programming seemed like an obvious way to seriously level-up the kinds of stuff I can make. I usually got weird looks for this answer because I suppose I was expected to just say “money.”

Using the skills I’ve developed for something I’m passionate about and applying them to a goal that I’m either completely indifferent to or actually opposed to does not sound like a fulfilling career to me. If I spent all day on an annoying software bug, I’m not going to want to keep doing software after I get home. I already know this because I didn’t want to do troubleshooting when I got home after spending my whole day doing that. I had all-but completely stopped making things for fun because the hurdles I’d run into in my hobby felt too much like work. I’m only just getting back into it now because I haven’t been working for a while.

Part of me feels like I should at least try programming as a career, but I have a terrible feeling that I already know what it will do to my mental health.

At any point that I’m about to make a post online and I realize that the emotional energy required to continue engaging is more than I’m willing to commit to this particular discussion, I just bail. No reply, no downvote, just peace out. It’s really not worth it.

No problem. I was concerned I went way overboard so I’m glad it’s helpful. Just be aware that if you also use Freestyle Dash, basically anyone who’s familiar with 360 modding will be like “…why are you using that?” It’s over a decade out of support. Aurora is much lighter and up to date, but I’m old school and I’m nostalgic for Dream Theme. The good news is if you want, you can configure Dashlaunch to have both. You just hold some button you choose on the controller while booting and it will boot into FSD, Aurora, or straight into xexmenu if you want. Before I settled into a preference, I put both FSD and Aurora on all the consoles I modded.

RGH was the first mod I learned. Back then, you needed to use an ace v3 mod chip. Now with RGH 3, you only need a resistor and a diode for most models. I still prefer RGH because it persists between boots. Mod once and have a cracked console forever.

Honestly I mostly forgot that bad update was a thing while typing that comment. Back when I was still paying attention, you needed a specific game to make it work. Naturally, that game instantly became way more expensive on the resell market. Also the exploit used to take a few minutes to run, but I’m pretty sure that’s much shorter now.

If you have the game you need or it no longer requires a specific game, then I guess there’s no major reason to hard mod as long as you don’t mind running the exploit each time you power up the console. I haven’t done a mod in a few years now, but was planning to do another soon. I’ll probably look into bad update just to familiarize myself, but I imagine I’ll still do RGH 3 because it lets me set everything up, install all the games I want, customize the dashboard, make the menus pretty by getting all the full box art for every game, and then the console just stays that way forever and cleanly boots directly into the custom dashboard with virtually 100% success. I also prefer Freestyle Dash over Aurora which makes makes me somewhat unusual, but I very much prefer having separate categories for 360 games, original xbox games, xbla games, homebrew apps, and emulators (I could only ever find SNES so that’s all I have). Also I just really like customizing the look and feel with the Dream Theme installed on Freestyle. Scrub through that video to get an idea how crazy customizable Dream Theme is. Aurora has one look and one category with all games as far as I know, but most people go with it over Freestyle Dash.

All that to say, I mostly just enjoy doing an RGH mod because it’s fun. I mentioned how the whole process makes me feel like an actual hacker, and that first time you see the xell screen pop up (meaning the hack was a success), it’s worth it for the dopamine hit alone. Also these days if I’m modding a 360, I’m probably doing it for a friend and it’s much easier to give them something that requires no special knowledge to use.

It feels like people are upset about running into users who are politically left-leaning… on federated social media.

That’s like being upset about encountering queer people in the arts, or chuds in the weightlifting space, or conservatives at the gun range. What the hell did you expect?

I’d highly recommend modding an xbox 360 if you’ve never done so. Very achievable if you’re somewhat technical, and you get to feel all the hackerman vibes because it requires soldering some wire leads to the motherboard and using a raspberry pi pico to read and write the nand. Most original xbox games also work if you install the compatibility files. So many incredible games from the 360 generation, and the consoles can still be found for around $50. Just make sure you get a “slim” model console because the phats don’t live as long. This site has basically everything you need to know. It’s an extremely good resource.

There was a brief period of time where they were actually on the “right” track IMO. You’d pop the headset on, call your friend(s), and when they answered, immediately your VR avatars would be standing in the same virtual space or in your room if you’re using passthrough mode, and you could “look at” and speak to each other in a way that felt extremely natural. You’d start gesturing and naturally moving your body as you speak in the same way you would in a face-to-face chat. The same way you can be at a Halloween party and after a few minutes, you’re having a completely normal conversation with Abe Lincoln or a frog or whatever. Even though the avatars weren’t perfect, there were times that three of us just stood around for 30-45 minutes just chatting and catching up before anyone suggested playing an actual game.

To me, the main selling point of VR is that it’s the best way to feel present with someone who isn’t physically there. It’s better than a video call or a traditional online game. It’s really the closest thing to just “hanging out” with someone who’s somewhere else.

Of course, it only worked that way for a month or two before they made it so that you couldn’t gather like that unless you were inside the horizon worlds app, which everyone always hated. Typical dark pattern enshittification as usual.

This is all beside the fact that it’s Zuck, Facebook, and all the other things everyone hates, but much like the perv glasses seem to be catching on, I think Zuck’s metaverse could have been somewhat popular if they hadn’t done… basically everything they’ve done to it.

I have to imagine that the customers BMW targets probably like ostentatious consumerism, right? Maybe something like “these plebs don’t even get premium ads on their car dashboard.”

I mean I have no idea. I’m just guessing. They could afford another car, right? They must like it. Or are BMWs only for people that are like the “McMansion” level of rich? It’s not like it’s a Bentley or a Rolls, right? Those are car words. Aren’t those the “old money” type of brands?

50% of all consumer spending is done by the top 10% of income earners. Maybe BMWs are the bottom of the barrel economy cars for that 10%. 🤷‍♂️

My favorite example of this.

Hint: George Lucas has stated in the most plain-English unambiguous terms that the empire does in fact represent US imperialism in A New Hope. It’s in a director chat interview thing with with James Cameron if you feel like searching it up.

I had a “career” class in highschool where they setup a mock budgeting exercise in the library, and we were supposed to visit the grocery store, pay bills, invest, etc.

Instead of using our chosen career like every other class exercise, for this one you were just given a card with your life details on it and you had to work with that. I literally took one look at my card and said to myself “this isn’t going to work.” I was a single parent of 3 kids and my income was something like 2k/month. I knew I wouldn’t have enough money to even make it through the entire exercise so I asked my teacher, who created the cards, what I should do. She just pointed me toward the first expense and said “go do that, then do that” like re-explaining the sequence I was supposed to follow without acknowledging that I was going to run out of money in just a few minutes, so that’s what I did.

I did like 1/4 of the exercise, ran completely out of money, and then stood around for the rest of class while other students decided what they were going to do with their leftover funds. For whatever reason, at the end of the exercise, the teacher asked who ended up with this or that card, and when I pointed out what I’d gotten she was like “yeah that was the worst one” and that was all that was said about it.

I guess it actually was a pretty good lesson on how America deals with poverty.

Idk, I could probably bear to hear about him exactly one more time after he gets sent to prison.

I saw a movie last weekend and there was an ad before the film for tiktok. The ad was super “wholesome” and about this dude who I’m sure is legitimately a great guy. He uploads “Dad” lessons on things like tying a tie and whatnot.

I couldn’t help but think that both US political parties were in lock-step just a few years ago that tiktok was a national security threat because it was a vector for foreign propaganda. Now that the American side of tiktok is owned by Larry Ellison, it’s not only no longer a “national security threat,” it’s a wholesome place where you can find trusted information from real people who are doing it just because they care.

It made me wanna puke.

The A.V. Club used to do a series where bands would come on and choose from a list of songs to cover. As the season goes on, the list shrinks and the covers get more exotic. You can search “av undercover” on YouTube to watch through the back catalog of old seasons for some pretty great covers. I don’t think they do it anymore, but it ran for several years.

This isn’t exactly the same thing, but Matthew Fox played a paratrooper with no lines in World War Z. This was after Lost, so he wasn’t an unknown by any stretch. He originally had a bigger part, but they changed the entire 3rd act in reshoots and his role was reduced to basically nothing.

I used to use sync, but it’s been abandoned and I heard from other former sync users that summit had a comparable feature set, so I switched to that. Summit shows profile pics next to each user.

Nice profile pic. I’ve been wanting to find a maker/tinkerer community on lemmy but I haven’t come across one yet. Am I just not looking hard enough? I love seeing and discussing people’s DIY electronics / 3D printed projects.