#Computer Experts

[l4tchk3y]

That trick didn't work a third time...

[lizasweetling]

I do think the excitement was probably addling them just a bit, because there's a distinct lack of tools with which to beat a hasty retreat

Given the Beasty's apparent reach, trying to Kite it out of the city is perilous to put it mildly.

All the better to keep Moloch, subject matter expert in Fleeing, nearby!

[baker-chan-senpai]

buncha doodles

[kommanderkeen2k]

Sharing here a photoshoot from my first computer to celebrante the MSX DAY #MaySiXth (model Expert XP-800, made in Brazil by Gradiente company)

[bittersweetresilience]

hello! I love your gifs so much and wanted to try my hand at making some. do you have a tutorial by chance?

AWW YEAH!!!! it's quite easy once you get the hang of it imo, at least the way i did mine was just a few steps.

download the source media somehow!

using a video editing program, clip and export the specific small section that you want to gif. a few seconds is best but it can be shorter or longer, you just kind of get a sense for what looks good when it's in a repeated format. i'll sometimes edit the clip further by cropping out seconds or even scenes in between. really you could work any kind of editing magic here before you make it a gif.

drop your clip into a gif maker! i use ezgif. you can also just upload full videos here and specify the time cutoffs without step 2, but i find that harder personally. then just play around with the size and frame rate, and other settings if you want, until you reach a quality you're happy with. i find that larger sizes actually end up looking worse sometimes because the rendering can start acting weirdly.

after you convert to gif, you can click write to add subtitles, effects to change the colors and saturation, and optimize to mess around with the compression level if desired or necessary. compression level makes the gif smaller, which is sometimes needed because social media like tumblr will kill you if your gifs are too big, but if it's too compressed the gif will look nasty. for subtitles, it's just basic aesthetics about font coloring and size, not including too many words in one gif, and avoiding widows, which are when you have lone words that go into the next line and leave a lot of empty space on either side.

don't forget to scroll all the way down and create animation or apply effects or optimize or whatever button will let you save whatever you just did. then just right click and save the file and boom, you now have a gif!

[cirrus-grey]

So the ARG introduced us to _6A1F7106A_$ (which some clever people decoded to jmj), the username for a mysterious person who dropped clues for the game, as well as making ominous statements such as "my mind is all corners."

It also gave us FR3-D1, a proprietary algorithm used by the OIAR which may be a sentient AI in disguise...

...And Freddie, an OIAR employee and the possible namesake for the FR3-D1 algorithm - or, potentially, the person whose consciousness was uploaded into a computer to form the basis for its programs.

There's an argument to be made that _6A1F7106A_$/jmj, FR3-D1, and Freddie are the same entity, currently existing as a sentient computer program.

Now, the trailer has shown us what appears to be the Fr3d1 OS v2.0 booting up, including the jmj.mag 2023 Beta and the... hard drives, I think? Called J.01, M.01, and J.02.

Other clever people have noted that cassette tapes can be used to store programming code, and that J.01, M.01, and J.02 could stand for Jon, Martin, and Jonah - which is to say, that the tapes from TMA could have been used to build a program integrated with the Fr3d1 system, and named after the prominent voices on the tapes. This integration could explain the _6A1F7106A_$ thing - the AI's username being code for three of its strangest new drives.

All this to say, I'm thinking about Jonny, Alex, and Tim Fearon being credited as blurry, unreadable names, and wondering... what if they are, in fact, all playing Freddie, who has no voice of their own and can only speak through the voices of the ghosts in the tapes?

[unnonexistence]

one of my friends is a biologist & i was really amused hearing some of her stories yesterday because they put into context just how believable newt's kaiju drift is as Shit A Biologist Would Do. like my friend has personally met both a guy who got infected with a botfly larva and didn't do anything to remove it (because he just didn't mind), and another guy who identified a tapeworm species by intentionally exposing himself to it (he had it narrowed down to 2 species and needed to know if it was the one that would infect humans) (it was)

[wr-n]

i am filled with contempt

[wyllzel]

i need to make more da gifs but i forget what i have clipped 😭😣

[hylianengineer]

if you've ever wanted to know how computers translate electricity into letters and numbers and whatnot, this article about encoding is really cool and beginner-friendly. Tl;dr on/off = 0/1 (I'm not sure which is which) and the strings of ones and zeroes get turned into characters by encoding, which is essentially a big reference table that says things like "01000001 = A." If you've heard of ASCII, that's an example of an encoding scheme. The kicker, though, is that there are countless encoding schemes and if you use the wrong one to translate your ones and zeroes into text, you get gibberish. Computers have to be told which one they're receiving information in - and if you deal with programming or software development, this can be messy.

I fell down this rabbit hole because one of the lab instruments at work spat out a text file using an encoding scheme called UFS-16 (a version of Unicode, which is like a big master encoding system designed to include all the possible characters you could ever need, in practically every language on earth. Fun fact, there's an unofficial version of Unicode that includes Klingon letters!) but the software I was using to process the data wanted UFS-8. It took me most of an hour and accidentally turning said text file into Chinese characters (used the wrong encoding system, oops) before I figured it out.

[kingprinceleo]

"Poor meow meow (tortures people)"

Does this mean there's lore for the dessert vampires au 👀👀👀👀👀

theres always been lore ! im still fleshing it out though, theres no overarching plot rn its just setting up the most important base details i have a REALLY clear vision for how i want to introduce the whole au so its pretty unfortunate i cant share anything until i drop the introduction

[not-equippedforthis]

THEM.

[icicleteeth]

I think the crisis is for now (i say for now because im always prepared for something to happen out of nowhere) averted wrt the computer not booting to windows 🥹 I don’t know how this makes sense because the expert that fixed it doesn’t know why this happened either, but something with installing the new cpu fan did something to the slot my storage goes into (it kept boot looping to bios because it could no longer detect my storage at all)

BUT there’s another slot on the bottom of the motherboard we could put it in (it’s below the gpu which is a bit awkward but clearly the original slot wasn’t working) and now it boots 🥹 When i ran tests, xiv stuttered a bit when loading the title screen and character select, but doesn’t stutter in game… bit confusing but im hoping it’s just a quirk with recompiling shaders or the pc acclimating to being changed around (we reseated almost everything and reset the cmos battery and reflashed bios in the process of trying to get the motherboard to detect the storage, so we did do quite a bit)

But!!! Fingers crossed this is the last crisis 🥲 Temp wise, it’s actually been incredible, the new cooler keeps the cpu at mid 50c-60c even in high traffic zones (i used to get low 70s-high 70s constant, which was probably safe but i wanted the extra peace of mind since i am stuck with this 14th gen) Quite literally operating on wishes and prayer with this thing 👍

[rapha-reads]

Asked my brother to ask one of his friend to help me fix my sound issues with Linux using EasyEffects

My brother: I know you don't like it but have you tried asking ChatGPT?

Me:

I broke my headphones 😭 have to use my earphones instead and the sound became so awful. Can't use the laptop's own speakers because they've been out of service for years. If I can't fix this awful sound quality soon I'm going to lose it.

[hero0ft1me]

Going to college, what kind of laptop should i get and where are the best places to get it (besides amazon and walmart)

AYY I’m going to college this year too!!! 

It honestly depends on your major and budget, I’m going for computer science so I got a laptop with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage, but that’s not completely necessary if you’re not doing a ton with computers. I wish I could’ve gotten a computer with an NVIDIA graphics card, but it wasn’t available for what I wanted so I had to go with intel graphics, which is subpar but it does the job.

If you’re going for graphic design/animation or anything in that field, I’d suggest getting a MacBook (air specifically, since it’s the lower price point). Apple has a tendency of baby proofing their computers, but they work extremely well for graphics. They’re definitely more expensive, so see if your college store has any discounts on computers, mine does.

If you’re going for a more STEM based field, get a PC. I personally like the 2-in-1s (laptops with a touchscreen that can fold backwards to work like a tablet) just because it makes it really easy to take notes on it, but sometimes that brings the price point up so it’s not the most important thing. As far as brands, I have a lenovo, but there’s a lot of laptop makers that are also decent. Just don’t get a chromebook.

I usually have just bought laptops from best buy when they go on sale, but I know there’s better places to buy. Once again, see if your college store sells laptops, sometimes you can get a good deal with that. Also, if you’re willing to get a refurbished laptop, that takes off a few hundred dollars usually.

[contagiouswatermelon]

its always annoying when you reblog something that on its own is normal and understandable, but then someone reblogs it from you and you know they're doing so for reasons which you directly oppose and that are a misinterpretation of the sentiment behind (why you reblogged) the post