Notices by mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)

@mntmn This Is What Mcc Actually Believes

Fantasy setting where armor is powered by magic and magic is powered by confidence (you can do magic only if you believe you can do magic), so combat clothing is precisely calibrated fashion. Designed to be whatever makes the wearer feel best about themselves

So this is how you get elf girls fighting dragons in impractically cute miniskirts, because that's what makes them feel cool and powerful. It's why barbarians wear loincloths and metal bikinis, because showing off their muscles makes them feel strong. It's why wizards/necromancers/clerics wear ornate/spooky/holy robes, they are doing a performance for themselves to convince themselves of their arcane power. Everyone in the world is doing a performance to convince themselves that they are real

Not everyone can do spellwork (magic directed by conscious thought), but defensive white magic is intrinsic, instinctive, a biological reflex. If magic existed in a universe obviously every living thing would evolve to take at least some advantage of it. However both conscious and unconscious magic require confidence, therefore, fashion armor

Using your personal computer, it is possible to run software for both entertainment and productivity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edzfnCNkspo

@arstechnica "Meta claims it will find other ways to hire employees from different backgrounds."

For example, they could attract diverse employees by calling them slurs, or accusing them of being mentally ill

Fast-spreading nonlethal targeted neuroactive virus that causes every single person in North America to forget their mother's maiden name

2025

So this vlogger seems to have identified that at some point, someone uploaded an entirely fake border between Syria and Jordan to OpenStreetMaps (the citation on the OSM diff says the source is a CIA map, but the CIA map does not resemble the OSM content) and OSM got used as a basis by lots of commercial mapping tools, and now tons of news articles about Syria are featuring maps of Syria that just has an incorrect southern border?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAM9zw1eMPs

I miss Mr. Gatti's. I used to think if you ordered Mr. Gatti's and drank RC Cola with it you were getting the true Texas contrarian experience.

@foone The only other detail we are trying to figure out, which is "if we cannot find Miguel's DOS disk, and we cannot create our own disks, and we need DOS disk to load other software we want to load, is a Compaq Portable III likely to need a special Compaq Portable III DOS disk or will any DOS 3.1 disk do"

But like

There is NO WAY i would expect you to know this absurdly specific question, I'm just not sure how to research it myself exactly

@foone Cool, thanks! Would it be accurate to say an internal 5" drive is gonna run me well over $60 USD at this point?

(I am trying to price the difference between being able to create floppies on a modern PC, vs adding a SD-card-based "hard drive" to the Portable)

@foone OK, you're the one person I know who might know about this—

Is it possible to get a USB 5-inch floppy drive right now? If so, where? It's hard to search on Amazon because searching "5 inch floppy" gives you 3.5 inch floppy drives…

We're trying to figure out the least painful way to run some software on a Compaq Portable III that works but will no longer talk to its hard drive.

https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113783888319654999

@RahulVadhyar @nicknicknicknick I assume the idea is supposed to be 64-bit apps in "Program Files" and 32-bit apps in "Program Files (x86)" but in practice the apps just install whereever the fuck they feel like

I'm not explaining what I'm doing with the Apple // emulator in case I wake up tomorrow and just don't feel like doing it. What if I'd already posted this big long statement of intent thread. I'd feel a fool

Trying to remember the name of that Windows ISO burner with the whimsical name like "Eloquent Ventriloquist" or something (It was "Balena Etcher")

A running problem I have on Windows is I install a program and then I forget what the name was or where I installed it

YouTube

I don't miss IRC but actually I do miss DCC

Keep Away from Fire