Progenitor of the Weird Knife Wednesday feature column. Is “column” the right word? Anyway, apparently I also coined the Very Specific Object nomenclature now sporadically used in the 3D printing community. Yeah, that was me. This must be how Cory Doctorow feels all the time these days.
As for why: I have no idea! Maybe just for user familiarity reasons, since a lot of people grew up with that kind of analog feedback that the antenna wasn’t getting a signal.
This is exactly why. Preventing screen burn-in may be a tiny peripheral reason also, but providing a familiar experience to chronically myopic and cranky users (i.e. boomers) is probably the bigger one.
The trope of video/audio breaking down into static is an easy shorthand that is unlikely to be forgotten, probably even well after all the devices capable of doing so have long since been buried in the landfill.
It’s especially hilarious in media depicting the far-flung future, where apparently all technologically advanced space men and their communications devices – not to mention high powered central supercomputers and so on and so forth – somehow still work over NTSC television signals. Even by the early 1980’s it should have been entirely predictable that in “the future” anything like that would be digital, considering we already had widespread digital audio media (CD’s), and digital video was already making inroads into the computing industry.
Tube TV’s remained in common service well into the 2010’s. The changeover from analog to fully digital TV transmission did not happen until 2009, with many delays in between, and the government ultimately had to give away digital-to-analog tuner boxes because so many people still refused to let go of their old CRT’s.
Millions of analog TV’s are still languishing in basements and attics in perfect working order to this very day, still able to show you the cosmic background, if only anyone would dust them off or plug them in. Or in many retro gaming nerds’ setups. I have one, and it’ll show me static any time I ask. (I used it to make this gif, for instance.)
In fact, with no one transmitting analog television anymore (probably with some very low scale hobbyist exceptions), the cosmic background radiation is all they can show you now if you’re not inputting video from some other device. Or unless you have one of those dopey models that detects a no-signal situation and shows a blue screen instead. Those are lame.
Smooth brain. No ridges or lumps, nor valleys or bumps; all facts and just logic slide right off.
You broke it, you bought it.
Ah, the Vetinari principle. One man, one vote.
Vetinari is that man, and he has that vote.
That’s the neat part: I don’t.
Not anymore. I scaled back my fast food consumption quite a bit in previous years, but when the prices of everything skyrocketed to absurd levels during COVID I just quit going to fast food places and never looked back. I get Taco Bell or something like, maybe two or three times a year now and that’s usually when I’m on a road trip or something. Otherwise they can get bent as far as I’m concerned.
If I want slop it’s cheaper and honestly also easier to just buy a TV dinner from any of the selection of general goods stores within walking distance of my house and pop it in the microwave. And these days probably faster, too, because I don’t have to deal with the McAttitude or inevitably discover that the fast food place is trying to run with half the staff it’s supposed to have because its franchise owner is a greedy prick, nor have to worry about getting sucked into the thrice-weekly fistfight in the parking lot, nor getting caught in the crossfire because some fuckmuch is salty about not getting enough ketchup packets and decides to shoot up the joint.
It’s satire, but it’s also very, very realistic.
Some people are apparently incapable of learning anything except by rote. To them, every problem or situation has one solution, and they have no answer for any situation that has not previously been explicitly spelled out to them and the solution memorized, and failing that they not only won’t know what to do but they flat out won’t even try. There is no such thing as figuring out a new solution to anything based on logic or deduction. In any process, they will refuse to understand how the result is actually derived from the actions taken, nor what each step does or why it is done.
I’ve had to work with several people like this over the years and it’s both exhausting and infuriating.
In my line of work I have also been forced to interact with people, mostly clients, who cannot understand hypotheticals. Any abstract or non-concrete concept is completely lost on them and worse, usually exposing them to one will make them irrationally angry in response – which they will immediately direct at you, you nerd.
These people are not only allowed to vote, but also drive cars, own firearms, and have children. It’s shocking.
Here’s the problem with that, though. It’s not going to be like there will be roving goon squads going from door to door snatching away your wives and daughters or anything. Even the MAGA-heads are just barely clever enough not to form themselves into any kind of entity that you could physically fight.
Instead, they’re going to chip away at everybody with asinine laws and legislation, selective enforcement and remote harassment, by filing mountains of frivolous lawsuits, etc. They’ll seize property. They’ll get you fired from your job. They’ll kick you off of your health insurance and freeze your bank accounts. Those responsible are never going to actually expose themselves in any capacity in which they can get got, because they’re cowards; they’re going to hide behind their desks and layers of security and fences and metal detectors and cops and the secret service. If it turns to outright violence vis-a-vis war in our own cities, it would be monumentally stupid for them to send troops marching down the street, and they won’t. They’ll just remotely bombard an entire city block and blame all the collateral damage on “leftists” or “wokeism” or whatever. And idiots will believe it, and then blame the victims.
“That’s ridiculous,” you say. “The government would never bomb anyone on US soil.”
I’ve always considered the six switch variant more iconic, but my six switch one is also the one I’ve got that doesn’t work. So there’s that.
Seems like someone spent a little too much time studying the blade.
From squinting at it, all the blocks appear to be 8x8.
I already have it, and the source code. It’s too late for Nintendo.
This port scales the graphics down to the GB’s resolution. I imagine it takes a lot of CPU cycles just to rearrange the graphics data into the Game Boy’s 8x8 tile structure in display RAM. Either that, or it’s precomputed and the ROM is huge.
What would make anyone think they’re downscaling graphics in real time on the Gameboy of all things? The graphics have been flat out redrawn to better fit the Gameboy’s lower screen resolution.
For anyone wondering, here’s the first little bit of what 1-1 looks like:
Look at that doofy goomba.
INB4 “But Mario Bros. DX already exists.”
I dig how the graphics have been reworked and tile size reduced to provide roughly the same field of view as on the NES.
Knives are prohibited
Tru fax, I am never working where you do, ever, so long as I live. I’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, I’m sure.
You can just send 'em back and buy something else. Amazon will take any damn fool thing back.
We could only hope.
I would have left a thumbtack on every chair, and a bucket of whitewash balanced over every door.