Pentium100

6 hours ago, Splashee said:

I don't know the scientific notation (because it has never been useful to me), so that's probably why I fail to completely understand floating point.

It's quite simple really. Instead of writing lots of zeros (0.0000003221 or 123400000000) where it's easy to miscount them, you can write it as such:
Move the decimal point until only one non-zero digit is in front of it (so, you get 3.221 and 1.234) and count how many spaces you moved it (7 and 11). If you moved the decimal point to the right, then make the count negative (-7 and 11) and write out the number, so you get 3.221e-7 and 1.234e11 or 3.221*10^-7 and 1.234*10^11.

Essentially what that means is that you take the "value", 3.221 and multiply it by 10^-7, which is 0.0000001 to get the number you want.

3.221e-7 = 32.21e-8 = 322.1e-9

Engineering notation is essentially the same, except the mantissa can be between 1 and 1000 (scientific notation it's between 1 and 10) with the exponent restricted to multiples of three (to match with the kilo-, mili- etc prefixes), so I can write the capacity of 470uF as 470e-6F or 4.7e-4F.

4 hours ago, Brony Number 42 said:

What about a binary multiplication table? Which leads to division. And then decimal places. 

Well, you can have fractional numbers in binary as well, just that they are not exactly used like that.

Normally, yea, you could represent one half as 0.1, one quarter as 0.01 and three quarters as 0.11.

However, in computers, fractional numbers come in two types - fixed point and floating point. Fixed point, as the name suggests, has the decimal point in the same place all the time. It's essentially an integer that you always divide by some number (for example, you count cents, then divide that by 100 and display it as Euros). This is useful for operations involving money and similar where accuracy is important (more on that later), but you do not need to move the decimal point arbitrarily.

Floating point numbers come in a few types, but they all work like the "scientific notation" works in decimal. Just like you can represent 0.034 as 3.4*10^-2 or 3.4e-2, the same is done in binary - there is a part of the variable that shows the "value", called mantissa and a part which shows where to put the decimal point, called the exponent. The space for those parts is limited, so you get limited precision - adding 1e10 + 1e-20 you will lose the small part, since the mantissa may not have enough space to represent the whole value. Just imagine having a limited amount of space to write the numbers after the decimal when writing the format 1.2345e5. 

So, when you do operations with floating point numbers, you lose a little bit of precision, which makes it a problem if you use floating point to calculate money. Floating point has another problem - just like in decimal, some numbers have infinite number of digits after the decimal. Representing 0.1 (decimal) in binary is like representing 1/3 in decimal. So, with floating point, 0.1*2 may be a little different than 0.2.

This can be shown in decimal as well. 1/3 is 0.(3), but if you had limited amount of space and no way to signify that the 3 is repeating, you would have tow write it as 0.3333. Now, multiply that by 3 and you get 0.9999, but the real value is 1. Even better, 2* (1/3) = 2* 0.3333 = 0.6666, while 2/3 = 0.6667.

Oh, I agree with you. However, I try to keep everything constant. A lot of times change is not actually forced on you, you force it on yourself. For example, I drive the same car as always. Now, others may think that because the car is old and they should get a newer one "because it is newer" I don't. I use a lot of old devices.

Or the wish to get a new phone even though the old one still works. "It is newer" is never the reason I buy something. The newer thing may better suit my needs or something like that, but not just because it is newer.

Also, Windows 7 will not stop working after the support ends. Windows XP still works, so do Windows 98 and Windows 3.10. What is going to happen is that gradually the newer software and hardware stops supporting the old OSs, so you have problems installing Windows XP (or 7) in a brand new PC. Then you are left with a choice of only using old software or finally changing the OS. The security issues exist, but their impact is overblown IMO, unless you connect the PC directly to internet without any router (with NAT) or firewall.

I really dislike Windows 10 because of the spying and the constant updates (with forced reboots). So, the only way I am using Windows 10 is after disabling as much of the spying as I can and disabling updates (because updates enable the spying). So, I just created a "unsuported, no-updates" version of Windows 10, thats pretty much what Windows 7 is going to become.

I absolutely despise UI changes in software (and the tablet-y modern UI in general, example is Windows 8 and 10). If something was done the same way for 10 years and now you are changing it, I can only think of one reason - to make me go look for how it is done now.

Thankfully, some software is customizable, Firefox, for example, can be made to look almost like version 3 (well, not exactly, but good enough for me).

I keep my hair short for other reason primarily (wait until it is long enough to need a comb and then get a number 1 haircut), but this would be an additional reason if I ever thought about it before.

20 minutes ago, Jetset Troblems said:

But aside from that, you never know who you’re connecting to in those three hops, and that’s what makes me hesitant to use it.

At least TOR can protect you from one of the hops trying to spy on you. A regular VPN service does not and is much easier to trace.

3 hours ago, Bas said:

I read about that some VPNs are still vulnerable to something called DNS leak. I don't know any specifics, but it was called a security issue.

DNS leak works like this: by default, your computer uses the DNS cache of your router and your router uses the DNS servers of your ISP. So, even if you run VPN software on your PC, if you try to go to some site, your PC sends a request to your router, which sends it to the DNS servers of your ISP, not over VPN.

To avoid that you would need to configure the PC to use some other DNS servers, like 1.1.1.1 - the requests would then go inside the tunnel.

4 hours ago, Bas said:

being unattractive enough in order to get tracked for reasonable resources spent

The problem is that VPN services may provide good targets for tracking - if you manage to hack or otherwise get access to the servers, you can track a lot of their customers easily.

3 hours ago, Spider Demon said:

And also, DON'T. Use. Facebook.

Oh yea, I have that blocked in my router as even without an account it can still track you.

4 hours ago, Jetset Troblems said:

Services like TOR are a step in the right direction, but then there's the possibility of human error, along with things like keystroke cadence.

Yes, if TOR works as advertised, then great care must be taken when using it as it is rather easy to screw up and leak your real IP.

The problem with VPNs is that it all comes down to trust.

Is there any way to know that the VPN provider does not sniff your traffic? No. They may do it for fun or the server may be hacked or someone may force them to sniff the traffic, you will never know.

Using your own VPN works great for the public Wi-Fi (I do this when I need to use public Wi-Fi for something more than just watching a Youtube video), but obviously your home ISP will still see the traffic.

OK, so maybe I can rent a VDS, pay for it with anonymous cryptocurrency and run my own VPN there? Well, the hosting company can still sniff my traffic and grab my keys (just dump the memory of the virtual machine).

Renting a physical server would be better, but is expensive and the provider can still sniff part of the traffic (and now you do not have the advantage of sharing the same external IP with other clients of the VPN service). On the other hand, VPN services may be more tempting targets for people who might want to sniff your traffic (as hacking one server gives you access to the data of many people).

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Everything should always be skippable if you want: tutorials, cutscenes, etc.

It should be possible to replay cutscenes - a few times I accidentally skipped them (or somebody called me at the wrong time etc) and then had no way of replaying them. Bonus points if the game has a checkpoint system and the checkpoint is right after the cutscene. 

12 hours ago, Justin_Case001 said:

What grinds my gears the most is when I politely tell them I'm fine and don't need help, but they don't take a hint.

In that case I agree with you. Though the employee is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation - they may continue to hover around you after you told them to go away because somebody explicitly told them to go away and then complained that they did just that.

And who is more likely to complain to a manager - someone who wanted to interact with the employee (or changed their mind, or just stupid and don't know what they want) or someone like you who (from your posts) does not enjoy interacting with people and tries to avoid them?

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refrain from asking customers questions unless they ask for help first.

And then some customers complain that the employee didn't ask the questions. Whatever the employee does is going to annoy somebody.

I agree with you though - sometimes I just want to browse to kill time and the employee asking me questions makes me feel like I am wasting his time since I do not intend to buy anything.

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And the worst is when they hover outside of a fitting room and ask you if the clothes fit right and how they feel.

I do not see a problem here - I can say "this is a bit too small, please bring me one size up" or something so I don't have to leave the dressing room. This is especially true for smaller shops where I would need to ask the employee to get a different size anyway and is probably even more applicable in my country where it seems that clothing sizes are not consistent so it's very likely that the first attempt will not fit, unless the employee has a good eye and can select the right size. Some times maybe I'll even ask the employee how it looks on me.

What I dislike are the really thin cases, essentially folded paper sleeves that open or like record sleeves. Not only they are too thin to have legible writing on the spine, putting the disc in may scratch it and bending the sleeve may break the disc. And the sleeve may be too tight to easily get the disc out.

Record sleeves are OK because the record usually is in an inner sleeve which protects it from dust and scratches and the record is heavier so it can be made to fall out of the sleeve into my hand as opposed to grabbing the cd and pulling.

I'm pretty sure this is illegal in my country. Someone from the house needs to sign for every package delivered to my home. If I get a package trough regular mail, I have to go pick it up and show my ID (anybody else can pick up my package provided they show a notarized permission).

Most couriers call just before delivery to check if someone's at home to pick the package up. One company sends an SMS indicating one hour window of delivery.

I think that if the driver decided to leave the package outside like this, he would be responsible if it got stolen, since there is no signature of the recipient.

Case: check
RAM: check
MB: check
HDD: reuse
PSU: check
Monitor: check
Keyboard: reuse
Mouse: reuse

mmm... I didn't see a CPU in there.
Video card too, unless the motherboard has an onboard one.

Those are the only things I noticed. I did not look for compatibility. Did not check the prices.