Notices by ⚪ the lynne creacher (lynnesbian@fedi.lynnesbian.space)

can a UI designer (preferably one who works at microsoft) tell me why there's a link in windows settings labelled "changing taskbar colour", which opens a bing search in edge for "change windows 11 taskbar colour site:microsoft.com", with colours spelt the UK way, which shows zero results but has a suggestion box containing a button labelled "open colors setting", with colours spelt the US way, which opens a new tab which asks if you'd like edge to open settings, which opens the windows settings app to the colour personalisation page, only to have the "set taskbar colour" switch be greyed out

we often talk about designing programming languages to guide the programmer into the "pit of success": it should be easy to stumble upon the ideal behaviour. it obviously follows that it should be as difficult as possible to implement bad behaviour.

an "ivory tower" language is so named because it gives the programmer a lovely tower to sit inside instead of having to interact with the disgusting (or, in FP terminology, "impure") outside world.

it is known that causing any form of externally observable behaviour - console logging, writing to a file, causing the self-driving car to apply its brakes when a pedestrian is in front of it, flashing an LED (FP term: "IO") is impure. therefore, it is the moral imperative of any modern language to make it as difficult as possible.

the ideal program takes no inputs and produces no outputs. you should not be able to observe any changes made to the impure world after running the code. the code is executed, a series of abstract tasks are performed, and it exits. we need not know what it "did". a program written in a functional language (or the modern replacement, rust) is de facto correct - we know just by compiling it that it will do the right thing. even executing it is an unneeded indulgence.

ideally, code would not run on such a grotesque device as a "personal computer" at all - the ideal program is one that is described to you, and you "run" it by considering its behaviour.

the day that haskell finally eliminates the undesirable side effect of causing bits in RAM to flip and your CPU's temperature to increase is the day programming as a field reaches its completion.

woke up to a truly horrifying number of unread emails

thankfully they're all duplicates - an email for each and every one of the ebooks bots i hosted all those years ago, with myemail+botname@gmail.com addresses

i'm making a video game with all my favourite accessibility features inspired by other popular games ☺️

• subtitles only present for "main" dialogue; background audio, battle cries etc. have no subs (from yakuza: like a dragon)
• subtitles that don't specify the speaker (metro 2033)
• no FOV slider (every seventh gen console game)
• head bobbing/swaying that can't be disabled (xdefiant)
• vision blurring and tinnitus sounds when you're on low health (early gears of war and its various ripoffs)
• manual saving, and only at specific points (dead rising (2006))
• unchangeable key binds that assume a QWERTY layout; enjoy using WASD on AZERTY (too many to list)
• font sizes that don't scale with resolution, based on running the game at 800x600 (fallout 1 and 2)
• mandatory QTEs that get progressively more difficult, with no option to skip them or replace them with button holds (balan wonderland)
• dialogue boxes that can't be advanced until the characters have finished speaking; also the game has no voice overs so you're just waiting for the mouth flapping animation to end (pokémon: sword and shield)
• crucial gameplay information communicated solely through colour (the legend of zelda: link's awakening DX (1993))
• no options to invert X or Y axis inputs (too many to list)
• content locked behind higher difficulties (wargroove)
• significant gameplay advantages based around being able to hear enemies approaching from various directions in surround sound (i dunno, halo, why not)
• unskippable and/or unpausable cutscenes (early metal gear solid)
• game language determined by your system language (state of decay 2), or better yet, your system region
• nested radial menus that require you to hold a button, hold the analogue stick in the direction of the desired option, and then press another separate button to open the sub-menu (rollercoaster tycoon 3 (nintendo switch), what were you people thinking, my mum would love this game if not for this one goddamn issue)
• mandatory motion controls (half of the wii library), or if not that, full controller support that still requires certain actions to be performed via motion controls, even though there are more than enough free buttons to bind those actions to (mario odyssey)
• no explanation for complex game mechanics, including things that you would truly never be able to guess without external documentation (minecraft pre-1.0)
• an in-game "help" button that launches the xbox assist app, which has been deprecated and no longer functions (many xbox one titles, although i really don't blame the game devs for this, fuck microsoft for removing all of that information for no reason)
• crucial exclusive content locked behind a shitty browser game (mass effect 3)
• exclusive content locked behind an external app that no longer exists or functions (dead rising 3)
• no pause function whatsoever (elden ring (yes i know about the help page trick))
• always online connectivity, even in single player (the crew: motorfest)

i think this list has a little something for everyone, but do feel free to suggest more great accessibility features! also every settings change will require restarting the game and sitting through six unskippable publisher logos

@tastytea @Polychrome
i can confirm that it wasn't me, but i don't know it originated

petra wanted to know if her old gaming PC was working, since it hadn't been used in a while.

i unplugged my PC, hauled the 15kg hunk of metal out of the way, set her 10kg hunk of metal up, plugged in the seven different cables it needed, turned it on... everything worked perfectly! even the wifi card that i'd lost the screw for and stuck down with sticky tape!

except... only one of the monitors worked. the HDMI one worked, the DVI one didn't. after i updated her OS from fedora 36 to 38 to 40, i tried a whole bunch of things. the monitor was working fine before i swapped the PCs, so i tried moving the cable between GPU ports - no dice. i powered it off, unplugged the HDMI, and booted into UEFI with just the DVI connected - nothing. the monitor states "the cable is connected, but your PC isn't sending a signal".

i spent an hour and a half researching xrandr, the kernel DRM structure, DVI-D vs DVI-I, dual-link vs single-link, different graphics modes, driver and firmware updates, spurious kernel message logs... nothing could fix it. i declared the GPU's DVI ports dead. i knew she was having some weird graphics issues when this computer was last used (over two years ago!), so i chalked it up to that.

then, i swapped the machines over, set mine back up, and... no output on the DVI monitor! is my trusty decommissioned dell monitor that i got for free from university ewaste finally dead?

i reached behind the monitor, wiggled the DVI cable, and it sprang to life.

so, uh, just because the monitor says "the cable is connected", doesn't necessarily mean it's properly connected.

the moral of the day is: make sure you try the dumb things first. question the most basic assumptions you make when debugging - if i hadn't assumed "it was working before, so it must be plugged in properly at the monitor end", i would've saved myself a ninety minute goose chase.

no no, not a teams meeting, it's a meet meeting. on google meet. it might be called duo for you? i sent you a hangouts to the drive link on messages. no no not your gmail inbox, it's under "all mail", not every email goes to the inbox, haha. or if you're using the classic mode it might be under meetups or promotions. yeah where the chats used to be, before they made google voice an RCS thing. have you got it from google play? no not the green one, the new one with the multicoloured icon. you can only use the green one with legacy members. ok so the problem is you're on workspace for business, it's under google one basic now. did you try quick sharing it? no see you can't use it on a tablet, only a phone or laptop, unless you want the plus features, that only works on phones of course. honestly the easiest way from here is through the docs plugin, unless you wanna family share if you can do vowifi

decided to try out google's gemini chatbot thing... i started by asking about new features in ARMv8 and ten minutes later it was arguing and doubling down that powerPC was a CISC architecture

its reasoning was:

• newer powerPC chips can run code written for older ones, and backwards compatibility is pretty complex
• it has SIMD extensions

i think the reasoning capabilities of large language models have been somewhat over exaggerated

@ClubTeleMatique @agatha

it's written in the style of a QI episode, but i made it up :blobcat:

@agatha this is almost as bad as the time apple HQ moved from the inherently funny "1 infinite loop, CA" to the boring "1 apple park way, CA"

SANDY TOKSVIG: yes, the windows NT kernel was first introduced to the public in 1993. it is still used to this day! windows 11 states that its kernel version is NT ten point oh.

ALAN DAVIES: and uh, what's the NT for?

SANDY: new technology. it replaced the previous--

DAVID MITCHELL: new technology? the new technology kernel?

SANDY: yes, and the filesystem, NTFS, is the--

DAVID: new technology file system. and - to be clear - this is from nineteen ninety three?

ALAN: yes, but you have to consider that it was new at the time.

DAVID: oh, i have to consider... everything was new at the time! that's what "new" means! i-- when i was born, i was new! but they don't call me "new david", do they? because - by definition - things stop being new after a point!

AMERICAN CELEBRITY GUEST: ok, but, like... you know, like, with the... the other one was like, the old one, right? so they--

DAVID: but you must understand that anything that has ever been replaced by anything ever could be described as "the old one", right? it's a completely useless name! "hello, my name is new man, my father is old man, because i'm new and he's not and we don't need to specify any further details!" it's madness!

AMERICAN: yeah, but [laughs]

DAVID: so what happens when they replace the new technology kernel, then? do we get the new new technology?

ROB BRYDON: i think it would be, they rename the new technology to old technology, and the replacement gets called new technology. so the NT kernel is now the OT kernel, and--

ALAN: i bought a new fridge last month.

SANDY: moving on!

android phones with 6GB of RAM and 4+4 CPU cores when they have to keep two browser tabs and a chat client open simultaneously

playing PC games from the 2000s is like

This game, like most Scringle Engine 3 games, does not support widescreen, and instead crops the 4:3 image to a 16:9 ratio. This can be fixed with Jambo's Game Tool, although this will disable the "Advanced Features" video option, which will remove reflections from puddles and mirrors.

To fix the immediate crash when starting the cutscene on level 3, download GregFix.dll from the GregUtils website (no link provided - Greg will send DMCA takedowns to any websites besides Google that provide his website's URL) and drop it in your system32 folder. Run the game with administrator privileges twice, letting it crash both times, then start it normally. This is confirmed to work on December 2022 through April 2023 builds of Windows 10.

according to wikipedia, only the north americans are allowed to use the ¢ symbol, while us poor southern hemispherians and the EU folk have to make do with the letter c

so if an australian shop tells you that a freddo frog costs 90¢ they are most likely a CIA front

@oracle
wii would like to be addressed with she/her pronouns

@lunarised
:ablobcatbongo:

just once. just once i want to hear that we are experiencing lower than usual call volume and you will be put through shortly. please

man goes to windows error logs. says he can't delete file. lacks permission. life seems harsh and cruel.

windows says, "treatment is simple. windows administrator account is in town tonight. go and ask him to delete the file."

man bursts into tears. says "but doctor... i am the administrator"

introducing the LynnePhone 5G. there are two models, one that can place calls, and one that can receive calls