One last point he makes is the personal savings rate soared during lockdowns, as key costs like childcare and commuting vanished. “When the world reopened, the costs returned, but now inflated by 20%. The rage we feel today is the hangover from that brief moment where the American Option was momentarily back in the money,” he says.

So people were actually better off during the pandemic. smh

This one’s Japanese (which has a lot of onomatopoeia btw), but ki-ki-ki is the sound of a violin being played badly. I put my poor family through a lot of that when I was taking lessons as a kid. I could hear my aunts in the background saying “mata ki-ki-ki yatteru.” That’s basically Japanese for “there he goes sawing away again”.

A little follow-up on this. Tonight I had a look at what it generated. It produced 2 files: a .wav and a .ass. The latter apparently contains subtitles that sync to the audio. But how do you play them together?

After searching around online, the general consensus seemed that you need to make a video file that throws it all together. For the background image I used a still of the book cover art. Then I ran an ffmpeg command that looked something like this:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i cover.jpg -i abogen_file.wav -vf subtitles=abogen_file.ass -shortest audio_book.mov

It sounds pretty awesome and looks like this while it’s playing!

I installed it yesterday and started having it chug through the Murderbot series I got in epub format. It seemed to be taking forever, but then I checked a system monitor and discovered it was using the GPU to do most of the work. So whenever my GPU-heavy screen saver kicked in, it slowed to a crawl.

At any rate, it was done this morning but then I forgot to bring the files to work, so I can’t say at this point how good a job it did? It was a bit of a pain to install because it needed Python 12 and wouldn’t accept Python 14 for some reason, and pyenv on my Mac is a bit of pain because it hates tkinter. Go figure. But I got it working in the end.

Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it’s still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

I wonder if this means it’s less locked down the Deck? Like is it kind of an iPad vs Mac situation? When I got the Deck and it was my only CPU travelling around at one point, I tried installing some general tools so I could get some actual work done on the road. Things were fairly heavily sandboxed, though nothing was a total deal-breaker I guess?

I was just trying to make sure that this is ok and won’t tangle up my code later on.

I guess the main issue there is Python doesn’t like circular dependencies? Like if you try to import dep2 from dep1 and dep1 from dep2, you’re going to have a problem. You’d essentially have to refactor your code to have a dep3 that both can import to use the common functionality I guess.

As others have mentioned, I would add a src/__init__.py file to turn src into a package.

Then, inside dep1.py, you can do a relative import with:

from . import dep2  

I’m not sure why you’re using as to make the module name longer? Usually, if I use it at all, I use it make things shorter. Anyway, once you’ve imported dep2, you can call dep2.some_fn(). You could also go:

from .dep2 import some_fn  
some_fn()  

I lost a close male relative to breast cancer and he had been in the US Navy. It can happen to anyone and with men, it’s often not diagnosed until it’s too late due to the stigma and general lack of awareness that it’s a thing.

Yeah mine does, but it’s a USB-A. Not sure of its max output, but it’s rather limited compared to what USB-C could theoretically give you.

I suppose with USB-C, you could flip it around and use the bike battery as a giant power bank you can plug your laptop or whatever into?

This of course hinges on my parents and uncle staying reasonably healthy and financially secure, if they end up as vegetables with a nursing home draining all of their assets or decide to blow all of their wealth in Vegas or something the whole plan could kind of fall apart.

I’m a Gen X with Gen Z kids and this is literally the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. I don’t want to go through a long and costly retirement. My mom got dementia. My dad lived to be a hundred. Either of those outcomes fills me with dread that there is no way I have saved anywhere near enough to make that work. At least I don’t see myself doing the Vegas thing, unless it’s a side-effect of the dementia?

I read somewhere that when they were envisioning the storyline for The Matrix, the original idea was supposed to be that human grey matter powered it in a computational sense. This kind of tracks, given the brain can perform outstanding feats running at a measly 20 watts or whatever it is, but somehow the story got distorted into its eventual form in which the human body is acting as a grossly inefficient battery.

My sister-in-law lives in Beaverton—a suburb of Portland (the Oregon one). It cracks me up when I visit and see the signs. The Beaverton is a satirical publication in Canada. Basically a Canadian version of The Onion.

I have no problem with functional protuberances. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing more, such as a universal mounting connector of some sort? I don’t know if I am atypical in this regard, but I like mounting my phone on things. Handlebars, car dashes, tripods, mic stands, etc. There are solutions for this, but they invariably involve something wrapping around and blocking some of the front side of the phone, which has become increasingly problematic over the years with screens pushing towards the edges. My bike holder sometimes blocks the front-facing camera needed to unlock the iPhone, for example. But if there were something on the back side that a mounting bracket could securely latch onto, none of this would be a problem.

Oh that would be cool!

Hopefully, this new algorithm is not overly taxing. The amount of processing they’ll have to do to keep up with Rubin must be staggering. It’s got what, a 3.2 Gpixel camera mapping the entire night sky every few days. And then all that data has to be processed across the timeline of past observations. I wouldn’t be surprised if the computational demands are what kept it from becoming a reality until now.

So ground based observatories have long benefited from the development of adaptive optics. That’s basically where you have a small mirror that is synced to the movements of the upper atmosphere and essentially cancels out the shimmer that makes stars twinkle to the naked eye, bringing them into a sharp focus more like what you would get from a space telescope. But the tech can only achieve this feat over narrow patches sky, meaning wide field observatories were left out. I think that’s what they’re talking about here? You can’t get much more wide field than Vera Rubin.

Among the requirements of the DMA is that Apple ensures that headphones made by other brands will work with iPhones. It said this has been a block on it releasing its live translation service in the EU as it allows rival companies to access data from conversations, creating a privacy problem.

I’m not really understanding this. Where is the privacy problem? What is different with airpods that solves this? At the end of the day, are they not just bluetooth headphones? Do they add some extra security layer beyond what bluetooth itself offers?

Yeah I guess the big issue there is the voltage on the main battery is pretty high. Too high for USB. But it has to be brought down anyway for the electronics, so why not let people tap into it at that point? It’s petty not to offer the option.

Mine was a USB-A connector hidden under the display. Once I realized where it was, it was easy enough to get to. On my wife’s bike, it was trickier to find/use. I had to crane my neck and look carefully under where the finger controls were and there was a tiny panel with a USB-C connector behind it.

This all reminds a bit of what happened when we got a hybrid car and my coworker needed a boost. I had jumper cables on me but it was a real head-scratcher to figure out where to attach them on a hybrid? Like in the bike case, the battery is plenty powerful but the voltage is way too high. Eventually, I found a positive 12V terminal hidden in the fuse box! You remove the cover and there’s this U-shaped piece of metal sticking out you can attach the positive clip to.

I’ve tried it both ways. What I have noticed with the e-bike is I ride it 7 days a week, where it was more like half that with my old bike. Frankly, it is so much fun I am making excuses to get out there.

Some points based on my experience:

• I used to avoid deep ravine trails due to the steep climbs involved. Now I seek them out.
• I don’t mind travelling somewhat out of my way to reach said trails. It’s really no bother on an e-bike. Nothing is ever a slog anymore.
• Heat waves and smog alerts don’t phase me anymore.
• As for winter, you have more options. You can get fat tires that ride better through snow or mud, for example. Of course you can do so with a regular bike also, but it adds weight, so there’s a trade-off.
• Travel times have lowered somewhat, but more importantly, they have become much more consistent. You don’t pay a time penalty for fighting head winds.
• I don’t show up at work a sweaty mess.
• If I want a stronger workout, I can choose where and when to do it, such as on a trail rather than busy city streets, and on the way home rather than work.
• I tend to slow down more often, where before I was blowing through stop signs and what not.
• If you have any muscle or joint issues, e-bikes are a godsend.
• A minor point, but my e-bike has a usb for charging phones. (These things are amazingly stealth. I owned mine for like a year before realizing it was tucked under a rubberized cover below the front panel, and then I found it on my wife’s bike in a different spot.)

On the negative side:

• My e-bike model at least is bulkier than a regular bike (I do have the fat tires for winter and all that), which can make it more challenging to lock it up at bike racks.
• Brake pads don’t seem to last as long as they used to.
• Yes, it costs more initially. But as the article points out, if this is an alternative to driving, you quickly make back the investment. A regular bike is obviously the cheapest option of all though.

I was renewing my CAA today (Canadian equivalent of AAA motor club in US) and they mentioned they do roadside assist for bikes now. So I looked it up and among the FAQ it said:

Do we cover motorized bicycles? Yes, provided they are conventional bicycles with standard pedals and chain and mounted with an external electric geared motor. Motorcycles, electric scooters and mopeds are covered under Plus and Premier Memberships only.

That’s interesting that scooters are only covered by their higher tiers while e-bikes are fine with the basic plan I have. Bikes are looking better and better at this point.