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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: August 24th, 2024

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  • Sadly the one harness my boy hasn’t managed (or indeed, even tried) to escape from was from Amazon.

    I’ll leave the link anyway, in the hope you can find something similar: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C93LKV5F - sadly it seems to be from one of those fly-by-night brands so I don’t really like your chances.

    You definitely want something a bit thicker / padded though, anything that’s just straight straps seems to get wiggled out of. I can see how the dog harness you’ve got (likely designed with a chihuahua in mind, where neck straps have to be avoided) is a bit too much fabric for a cat’s comfort though.

    This said, the biggest expression of displeasure I got to the harness was the cats flopping over and pretending their back legs didn’t work.

    Once outside mine seems to very much be a “sniffing the flowers” type of cat, just wanders around near the house taking in the new sights and smells, chewing on a bit of grass, etc. Being an indoor cat, even walking on grass seems to be an experience he doesn’t 100% vibe with. At least I’ve not had to retrieve him out of a tree, I guess?

    I tried carrying him 20 paces further from the house and he just made his way straight back to safety. Not with the biggest sense of urgency ever seen, but clearly headed back toward the familiar: https://imgur.com/a/PawWQLT

    Best of luck in your search.




  • Except sometimes it pays off massively.

    I had accidentally left the voice on for some reason, back when Google Maps’ navigation was fairly new here in New Zealand. Back then it wasn’t the easiest thing to turn off without pulling over and stabbing a bunch of buttons, so I left it.

    Approaching a large intersection, it seemed it was taking the words on the street signs somewhat literally, as it told me

    Signs for State Highway one-half

    Indeed, the sign did appear to read “SH1/2”.


  • They’ve missed a couple of times over the years.

    From LTO 1 to 9, the capacities (TB) were 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.5, 2.5, 6, 12, 18. LTO 6 also rather let the side down there.

    Apparently though LTO 10 is going to get things back on track? I’ve seen claims it will achieve 36TB, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

    The real problem is the environmental requirements for LTO 9 and newer have become too strict. The longevity is still (supposedly) fine, but the tapes are much more sensitive to temperature and humidity fluctuations when in use.

    Brand new tapes have to be brought into the environment where they’ll be written for 36-48 hours to acclimatise before being used, and then have a 60-90 minute “calibration” in the drive before they can be written to.

    Honestly, it could put the use of the newer types of tapes entirely out of the reach of many.





  • Reticulated gas is charged by the kWh here in New Zealand. The meter may well be calibrated in m³ (I don’t have gas at home, so I don’t know for sure) but all pricing is energy, not volume.

    For bonus points, if instead you buy your gas in cylinders - a pair of 45kg (~100lb) cylinders is a common installation for houses without piped gas - those are sold simply by the unit. The best conversion for that I can find is one energy retailer describing one 45kg cylinder as 2200MJ (611kWh).

    I expect this is one of those things that is overall horribly inconsistent depending on where you live.



  • Comparing the amount of noise my laptop’s CPU fans make between the two of them when doing moderately intensive tasks like screen sharing a 4K display, Zoom is measurably worse.

    Possibly the one time that Microsoft’s inexplicable inability to make their own software run well on their own OS has somehow not manifested.

    Don’t get me wrong, it is still death-by-a-thousand-cuts terrible, but the most current iteration of Teams is not the worst in its field… at this one specific thing.




  • Even for devices that will stand the test of time on their own, they’re still being unnecessarily modified by the addition of extra nonsense to support AI boondoggles.

    I was talking to our company’s account manager from one major PC manufacturer, he agreed that a generation of laptops with a likely-to-be-useless-in-future Copilot button permanently emblazoned on their keyboard will really date this era.

    The computers themselves will be fine - they have some extraneous hardware but that doesn’t really detract from their usability - but there’s a better than even chance that logo will exist as a reminder long after memories of what it was supposedly for begin to fade.


  • You might have to consider buying used.

    Even older HP printers are fine (and I know people love to shit on them, but they too used to be perfectly safe and reasonable choices). More or less the safe/unsafe divide coincides with the switch from printers with 2x16 character displays to ones with full colour screens.

    I’ve got a 2012-designed (but mine is 2017-built) HP Colour Laserjet CP5225dn, it has none of the modern lock-in shenanigans.

    Just gotta find one that’s new enough that consumables are still readily available (fortunately this usually isn’t too difficult), and in good physical condition.