Pentium100

When I was a kid, we had a VHS player (not a recorder) and some tapes, some movies and some cartoons, though they were pirated copies and not factory made. They all were in Russian (the Western ones had Russian voiceovers) and I do not understand Russian, though for something like Nu Pgodi or Tom & Jerry it did not matter as there is very little talking in those cartoons. Later I got a TV tuner card for my PC, but had reliability issues where the recording would get corrupted or randomly stop or some other problem, so I bought a VHS VCR in 2006 or 2007 and started using it - video quality was somewhat lower, but it was way more reliable. Now I have multiple VCRs and still record VHS or SVHS tapes from time to time. Most of the tapes I have I recorded myself from TV and most of those are various concerts or music TV shows. A year ago I bought some tapes about steam locomotives and trains in general. While I am not using my VCRs as much as before, that is more due to the fact that I have a way to record/download from IPTV, so now I use a VCR to record from a channel I cannot get the other way or as a backup. If the provider ever stops me from doing it, I'll go back to using the VCRs more. My tape collection is not that big though, only a bit over 100.

Mainly it's the popularity of the platform. If you need to spend effort to make sure the game works on an OS, would you rather do it for a popular OS or one that only a few people use? I dislike Windows 10 and 11. As for optimized APIs, IIRC, recently the Linu kernel got a patch that adds some functions to have Windows-style locking or something (called NTSYNC), this was done mainly to improe the performance of Windows games on Linux. Linux caches stuff all the time, by default it even puts some programs into the swap file to free up memory for cache (you can disable that by setting vm.swappiness=1 in sysctl.conf).

I quite liked it, it was worth the money I paid for the bluray. Then nothing changes. Nobody is taking the original from my file server and I can ignore the new one if it sucks.

I quite liked the animated movie. I hope the reboot happens. If it sucks, I can just ignore it and rewatch the original again, but there is a chance it may be good.

For anything DOS related, I use an actual old PC with DOS (and Windows 3.11). More fun that way. Similar for games that run on Windows 98 or XP - an old PC with that OS. If a game is coded for Windows, then it makes sense that it would run worse on Linux, because the API calls are not the same, something that may be optimized on Windows may not be on Linux. I remember, at least in the past, there was a problem with Linux async file IO. There were multiple APIs to choose from and none of them worked very well, but the only async API on Windows worked better. I found out about that in relation to torrents and why a torrent client uses sync IO for disk, but that was a while ago, maybe it is fixed now.

I am not really interested in superheros, so I do not know much about them. Still, the only reason they would show the main character dying is if they can somehow resurrect him, otherwise the series would just end and nobody wants to end a popular series. Just like how Arthur Conan Doyle had to bring back Sherlock Holmes because fans asked for it (even though AFAIK, he really intended to end the series and write about something else, even if it meant less money for him). I guess if there are a lot of reboots of the same thing, it could get confusing, but I am reading about the attempts to reboot Babylon 5 (one of my favorite series) and if the reboot happens and it is great, awesome, if it sucks, well, I can still watch the original.

I don't particularly care. If the reboot is good, I'll watch it, if it's bad, then I won't. A bad reboot or sequel would not ruin the original show for me. I can still watch the original, nobody is going to take it away from me.

It was not 8%, I would not care about that. With a GTX970, Derail Valley on Windows 8.1 got about 40-50fps and on Linux it got about 15fps on the same PC. With a RTX3090 the framerates are higher (obviously), but they are also more similar between Windows and Linux. Yeah, I think I read something about Vulkan that may be the cause of this. I do not like "bleeding edge", I use Ubuntu LTS or Debian and dislike it when I have to use something else like CentOS and now I have to look for the equivalent of /etc/network/interfaces or some other config file. I also dislike updating anything and like seeing long uptimes.

I use Debian on my servers and Ubuntu (with KDE) for some PCs, though if I wanted to install an new PC now, I would probably use Debian on the desktop as well. Linux is what I would say programmer-friendly, but not neccesarily user-friendly. It does have the "self-made" or "designed by programmers" feeling, similar to the devices I build for myselt. Windows (at least the older versions) is different in that more setting are easier to access without editing text files or using the command line. Creating a custom resolution with an nVidia card is easier on Windows for example. Linux has the drivers for most stuff built-in, so usually most of everythign works immediately after installing. OTOH, if there is no built-in driver for some device (but there is one published by the manufacturer), you may have lots of "fun" trying to make it work. Or it may be easy. Games on Linux run quite well (at least the ones I play), but if you have an older card (for me it was a GTX970) some games have way worse performance on Linux than on Windows on the exact same PC. Apparently there is some kind of compatibility problem and you need at least a RTX20 series card to overcome it.

Twice, both times at night. Once I made a small mistake when driving though an empty and dark intersection, so I had to blow to the breathalyzer (got zero). The other time cops were bored, saw my car that's not common anymore and wanted to chat. This time they did not check if I was drunk.

Yes, I buy CDs, records, reel to reel tapes and cassettes. The reel to reel tapes I buy are usually ones recorded by the previous owner, not an official release (as far as I know, there were almost no official R2R releases in the USSR). I also download some music from torrents, youtube or other places, sometimes I record a concert from TV (to a VHS tape or to my file server, depending on the source). Sometimes I buy a cassette of the music I have downloaded if I can find it. If I buy a brand new record, I usually record it to a R2R tape on the first or second tme I play it, so that I then can play the tape and not wear out my record. If I buy a used record, I usually do not bother with that, unless I think I will want to play it a lot.

It would depend on the circumstances, but maybe Poland or the US. If I was going to the US (the advantage here would be that I can speak the language, even if not that well), I would prefer to go to some state where it's not too hot. Alaska maybe?

hard drives are not good for archival storage like this. A lot of things can go wrong with them - bearings can seize etc. Better to use magnetic tape or magneto-optical disks (kind-of old technology so the capacity is not that great) for this. Choose a popular format so that it would be possible to find a drive to read it. Minidiscs are magneto-optical so I would probably use them. Or LTO tape if I wanted terabytes. The 3.5" or 5.25" MO drives are kind-of hard to find. Flash memory can also be used, weirdly enough to make it retain the data for longer, you need to write it when the memory chip is hot and then store it in a cold place. Use lower density technology lik SLC or MLC instead of TLC. However, some SSDs (especially enterprise IIRC) have very short data retention, they are not designed for being unplugged for long periods of time. I am not planning on doing this, but if I was, I would probably just use analog reel-to-reel tape and maybe film. Stored sealed they can last a long time and even if they get damaged, usually it is still possible to recover some of the information. I may be tempted to include a LTO-1 or SDLT tape (lower density, hopefully bettter reliability compared to something like LTO-6) or a minidisc.

The universe is very big. Seriously. So, IMO there are multiple reasons why we have not seen any indications of other intelligent life, though both come down to "the universe is big". 1. It may really be impossible to go faster than light. That means it would take hundreds or thousands of years for some aliens to travel to Earth. It may not be possible to do that or even if they can figure out the technology, it may be too expensive for them and not worth it. If we had such technology, how many volunteers would there be to travel 1000 years to some planet that MAY have life. How many would trust the spaceship to last 1000 years with only what spare parts you could take? Also, 1000 light years is "very close". Our galaxy is 100000 lightyars across and the closes other galaxy is 2.5 million lightyears. Anyone up for a three million year trip (in one direction)? Nobody? How about a 50000 year trip? And the three million is the closest galaxy. 2. Even i it is possible to travel faster than light, but not instantly (let's say a 1000 light year distance takes 10 years), it still would be impractical, but less so. However, who's to say that someone would notice Earth? Our radio signals reach, at best, 110 light years and in that distance they are so weak that it is likely impossible to receive them. So, from distance, our planet looks like it may have life on it, but no real evidence for it. Anyne up for a long trip to see if there's anything there? 3. The radio signal problem works in reverse too. We may not be able to receive any radio signals from some far away planet because they either have not reached us yet or because they are so weak, it is impossible to receive them. That's assuming we would be able to recognize them and decode them even if they were strong enough. Imagine being on a small island in the middle of the ocean 500 years ago. You may not even know that there are other people somewhere. After all, maybe no ship came close to your island and all you see is water in all directions. Maybe the whole planet is water and your island is the only land there is? Maybe there's life somewhere on the continent, but you have no way of going there and they are not bothering with you and your island?

Yeah, I listen to albums. I usually can't be bothered to make mixtapes, so I either listen to an album or a mixtape (as in, a used audio tape) that I bought. When listening to audio files, I also usually listen to the entire album as I usually can't be bothered to make a playlist and do not want to choose the next song after every song. Sometimes I'm in the mood to listen to a particular song, then I'll play that.

Yes, I mean what's the difference? However, usually I set the volume on the PC to maximum and then control the volume with the volume knob on the amplifier. It's an analog potentiometer and does not have numbers on it. The tape deck in my car has digital volume control and I set the volume to what I want, I usually do not even look at what the number is. Most of the time the numbers are arbitrary 0-100 or whatever. Some ampifiers show the volume as dB (with 0 being maximum) though. Still, I just set the volume where I want it not paying attention to the numbers.

I dislike dogs. I like cats though, I would not want to have one as a pet (or any pet at all), but if one of my friends had a cat, I would love to play with it when I visit him. I don't like the hairless ones though, I think they are ugly.

Metaphor: ReFantazio and Expedition 33, but I'm waiting for them to go on sale. I do not play that many games so I can wait. In the mean time I can play the games in my Steam library.

While I use incandescent lightbulbs for my home, I like LED flashlights - they are quite bright and small. While sometimes there is a problem with a bad contact or switch, it is not that big of a deal. I also use one a lot and usually do not buy the expensive kind. The flashlights I use are small, powered by a single AA cell or a bigger one I have uses 4xAAA cells. From what I have noticed a LED flashlight flashing rapidly can be a sign of battery being discharged and no longer able to supply enough power.

To me, the art style is OK (way better than the 2D G5) and it has Twilight in it, so I'll at least try to watch it.

If/when they switcho off 2G I'll just buy a feature phone that can do 4G (yes, they make such phones). Yeah, though it seems that EU will force phone manufacturers to make batteries replaceable. On my phones, replacing the battery is no "repair" - remove the cover, remove the old battery, insert new battery. In fact, removing the battery is needed to access the SIM card.

I dislike touchscreens in general, but specifically on smartphones it's not just the touchscreen. The screen is relatively small, so when the phone displays a full keyboard it is difficult for me to hit the key I was aiming for. Even worse is that since this is a touchscreen, I have zero tactile feedback whether I am pressing the correct key. I can type better on a physical keyboard with the same size keys. If the keys on a physical keypad are smaller than my finger, there is no problem, as I can still feel which one I am pressing. Not so much on a touchscreen. Making the phone display just the numpad and typing like on an old phone is better (larger keys), but still more annoying than on a phone with physical keypad. A lot of functions are not obvious. That is, on a PC I can left click, double click (performs some action) or right click (displays menu). On a phone it's tap or hold, but sometimes I have to tap something and then find a button to edit or whatever, some other times I have to press and hold until a menu shows up. The phone itself is big and uncomfortable to hold in my hand. I am used to holding the phone with one hand and pressing buttons with the thumb of the same hand. This is difficult to do with a big phone and especially with a touchscreen. Making it smaller would make the UI or rather trying to press a key suck even more. The software is crap. Everything wants an account, logging in and then agreeing with tracking. If I could have pure Linux (something like Debian) running it woudl be better in this regard, though it would make the hardware/UI part suck even more. Advertisements. I despise ads with a passion. The phone itself is less durable. I am sure there are ruggedized versions, but in general an old phone handles dropping much better. I just need to find the battery and put it back in. Speaking of batteries, they are hard to replace on most phones. There are ones with replaceable batteries though, so I guess if this was my only problem I could get one of those phones. The smartphone I actually tried was with Android 2 OS (IIRC), but sometimes I have to handle more modern ones (someone asking me for help etc) and IMO the modern ones suck more than Android 2 as far as UI goes. Also, I do not really need it. I can call and send text messages from my current phone. I can (and usually do) carry a handheld PC (for example, GPD microPC, but I have a few others) if I need to actually use a computer (which is not often), it is way better than a phone (both the hardware and the fact that I can use normal Linux on it). Interesting. Here, in Lithuania, 2G (GSM) network is still active and runs great. It's not just old phones, there are alarm systems and various other devices that likely use 2G for calls and text mesages. I have visited Poland and had no problems with my phones as well. I have a tablet that I almost never use. I got it for free and use it if some stupid site insists on it for identification or if I need to test an android app for a customer. A tablet is a bit better than a smartphone as it is bigger, so I do not have as many problems with typing. Still, it stays turned off for months until I need it.

I pretty much never used a modern smartphone, as I dislike them. I tried to use one for a while, got fed up and continued to use an older phone. If I have to use one now (someone asks for help) I get reminded really fast why I dislike them and give the phone back as soon as I can.

Out of the main 6, I relate to Twilight the most. There is a big difference though - I am not a pedant and I do not care about getting perfect grades in tests. That is, when I went to school I obviously wanted to get good grades, but I never cared about perfecion - just good enough to pass. If the subject was boring to me, I was happy with a 5 (the minimum passing grade) out of 10 and if the subject was interesting to me, I naturally got high grades. I also would refuse any higher level management or government position, especially if it turned me into a public person. While I think that I and Twilight could be friends, I don't think I would be able to have her come over to my house, because she would likely get very annoyed at the lack of order.