FinishingDutch

FinishingDutch , 9 days ago to 196 in Dog toy rule

That’s some quality plausible deniability right there. Flared base and everything.

That’s definitely ending up in someone wearing a dog collar…

FinishingDutch , 19 days ago to 196 in lemmy user(ule)s: "this sign won't stop me because i can't read"

Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.

I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.

FinishingDutch , 19 days ago to 196 in lemmy user(ule)s: "this sign won't stop me because i can't read"

Airbus is Ableist!

FinishingDutch , 25 days ago to Technology in Raspberry Pi becomes a public company

Guess I should stock up while I can huh?

I’ve been a RPI fan since the beginning and have used their boards for all sorts of projects and tinkering. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s losing sight of what made it attractive in the first place: low power and low priced computing. It had its charm in buying a Pi Zero and just chucking emulators on it and handing them out to folks who might want to have a go.

But with the more expensive, more powerful hardware you just can’t really use them for things like that anymore. Just too expensive and too much oomph for the use case.

We’ll see if the company finds its way. But this usually isn’t a good sign…

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to Interesting Global News in Nearly half of journalists covering climate crisis globally received threats for their work

Heck, journalists get threatened for their work anyway. It’s a fact of life in this profession.

I’ve been in radio and TV since the early 2000’s and have been a newspaper writer since the mid 2010’s.

We’ve gotten letters with bullets in them, ‘anthrax’ letters (they were all the rage post 9/11) and most recently we had two attacks with fireworks explosives on our building. Mind you, this is just a local newspaper. We’re not exactly the New York Times.

I couldn’t tell you what reporting might’ve prompted it. Could’ve been the articles we wrote about wind farms, could’ve been climate change, could’ve been local politics or the soccer scores.

Because these days, people get seriously outraged at basically nothing. Even the most neutral, strictly-the-facts reporting can set some folks off. So it’s not exactly surprising that a ‘controversial’ topic like anything related to climate change prompts threats.

But: we keep reporting. Because fuck them. Facts are facts. Don’t like it? That’s a you problem.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to Technology in Twitch terminates all members of its Safety Advisory Council

Fuck ban-happy Reddit and its IPO shenanigans. That place is a dumpster fire that I wouldn’t piss on to put out.

Welcome to Lemmy. It might not be perfect, But At Least We Aren’t Reddit (TM)

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to 196 in lego rule

That’s awesome! I got back into LEGO as an adult in 2012 when they released the first VW camper.

On mine that panel seems pretty secure, though it is a bit finicky to attach. Might want to check if it’s properly attached.

Recommendations are tough; LEGO makes so many awesome sets. It also depends on things like budget and space. For example, the Concorde set is awesome, but also quite large.

Personally, I really like their modular sets. Larger, very detailed buildings like a hotel, jazz club, bank, etc. I’ve collected most of them so far.

There’s also a lot of cool new soace sets, in addition to the galaxy that you’re familiar with. I’m really looking forward to the lunar rover that’s coming out later this year.

A good site to follow for LEGO news is Brickset.com. That way you can get a feeling for any future sets that you might like. Some can sell out pretty quickly; lots of us adults love LEGO ;-)

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to 196 in lego rule

That’s an awesome set; the Polaroid OneStep SX-70 camera.

https://www.lego.com/en-nl/product/polaroid-onestep-sx-70-camera-21345

It actually has a really neat feature where you can push the red shutter button and it actually pops out a cardboard ‘photo’. They tweaked it to perfection; it doesn’t shoot out fully, but instead sticks out just partly like the real camera. They went through a lot of iterations of that mechanism in order to get it just right.

It’s an awesome set for photography nerds.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to 196 in vampire rule

The best strategy when it comes to expensive niche lenses like this is: save up and buy a good used example of a lens that won’t limit you and will let you grow as a photographer. There’s always people selling gently used lenses because they either don’t use them or they’re switching systems.

I’ve always bought better lenses and gear than I needed at the time and never regretted it. If you buy a cheap lens, it often comes with tradeoffs that the expensive lenses don’t have. If you buy a good lens - especially dumb, manual lenses like a tilt-shift, you can always use them on other cameras down the line or sell them to another eager photographer without losing a lot of money.

Owning niche gear like this is kind of its own joy anyway. It’ll let you do and experiment with things that others can’t do. You might not use it every day, but you’ll be ticked pink to use it when you can. I can’t really tell you what I paid for some of my specialty gear, but I can damn sure tell you about how much I smile when I use it :D

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to 196 in vampire rule

The one in the video is a Canon TS-E 90 - that's a 1000 bucks USED. And that's not really what you want if you're going to be doing landscape stuff. You want the TS-E 24 for a much wider field of view. Those are even more expensive.

You CAN however buy cheaper, new lenses. Brands like Laowa and Samyang produce tilt-shifts that cost less than half of what a Canon costs if you really want a new example.

That said though... anything in photography is expensive anyway, and these are niche lenses. They do some things that other lenses really can't, like this magic trick. And while you can replicate some of its effect digitally - like the miniature effect - the best way to do things like that is always in camera. If you take a good shot to start with, you'll alsways have a better end result.

I'm personally looking to buy a TS-E 24 one of these days, assuming I find a gently used - and gently priced - example.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago to 196 in vampire rule

You CAN in fact more or less do this for real: photographing a mirror from a straight on perspective without the camera visible.

https://youtu.be/ZlaeWRMYwGg?feature=shared

Basically, you need a special tilt-shift lens that distorts perspective to where it looks ‘straight on’ while the camera is actually off to the side or down below. If you do it correctly, the viewer won’t even notice anything’s missing.

These lenses are primarily used for architecture photography to prevent ‘leaning buildings’. They can also create really cool miniature effects. It’s quite a useful bit of gear, but also rather expensive because it’s such a niche lens.

FinishingDutch , 2 months ago to Technology in That time when Microsoft bought and killed Nokia phone unit

Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.

God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.

FinishingDutch , 2 months ago to Technology in The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks

Pretty much this, yes.

There’s also the complexity of approach procedures that they need to follow in order to mitigate noise complaints. Back in the old days, they’d just fly from radio beacon to radio beacon, with look-out-the-window navigation for the final approach.

These days, lots of airports are within or close to cities, which means a much more complex routing and specific altitude and speed restrictions. GPS made that possible; they’re simply too much workload for pilots.

So yeah, in emergency situations where GPS fails completely, there’s going to be some changes to procedures needed in order to make that work. They’d also need to increase separation between planes in order to prevent problems.

The simple solution is: nobody should fuck around with GPS since we literally all benefit from it.

FinishingDutch , 2 months ago to Technology in AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'

Probably.

So, we complain to a regulatory body, they investigate, they tell a company to do better or, waaaay down the road, attempt to levy a fine. Which most companies happily pay, since the profits from he shady business practices tend to far outweigh the fines.

Legal or illegal really only means something when dealing with an actual person. Can’t put a corporation in jail, sadly.

FinishingDutch , 2 months ago to 196 in When TV tie-ins work TOO well rule

I honestly don’t mind people discovering Fallout. Heck, I’ve bought and lent copies to people to get them interested in it.

But I’ve also been in gaming since the late ‘80’s, and I’ve seen franchises ruined because developers chased the mass market instead of sticking to what made their games popular in the first place.

People came to Call of Duty for tight, sweet multiplayer matches with a military aesthetic.

Nowadays it’s got silly battle royale modes which let you play as Snoop-Dogg, The Terminator or a Warhammer 40K character. It looks nothing like what the original games were. And as a result, the playerbase has declined and shifted towards casual.

Battlefield is a shell of its former self after they moved away from what made it good. Need for Speed games also suck because they chased the Fast and the Furious trend. Flight Simulator has become too mainstream leading to quality decline because developers chase casual players. And there’s numerous other examples of games moving towards a more casual, wider base. Usually because newcomers think the old gameplay is ‘boring’ or ‘too difficult’. Go talk to some Diablo veterans about their thoughts on IV…

And yes, as someone who’s been with Fallout since 1: 76 should never have been made. Fallout is a single player, story driven experience. And it should stay that way. The mobile game… I’d rather they put that effort into making a proper game.