User talk:Eighty5cacao/misc/Random thoughts

tvpassfail without NTSC filter
Previous discussion at User talk:Eighty5cacao/TODO -- Eighty5cacao 17:37, 4 June 2012 (MST)
 * This "encoding guide" shows that TASVideos tends to care more about maintaining 4:3 DAR than about accurately reproducing the PAR of the console. Eighty5cacao 23:41, 7 September 2012 (MST)

MineShaft with the frog
In the last one we discussed a predecessor to Nioreh's MineShaft with a frog character. After some random wiki surfing, I discovered that the device I owned was the Pelican VG Pocket, for what it's worth. --Tepples 16:56, 2 July 2012 (MST)

Coneheads
The words you're looking for are brachycephalic and dolichocephalic. Put 'em in Google sometime, or just start with Cephalic index. It is (was?) believed that Iberians and Scandinavians have long heads. It might have something to do with surface area. I seem to remember some fictional universe that had two main branches of Homo: round-headed and long-headed, but Google is failing me at the moment. But no matter whether the brain gets big in one direction or all directions, that's why our teeth are misaligned and our spinal cords can't heal. (And this has nothing to do with Facebook.) --Tepples 04:50, 6 July 2012 (MST)
 * I was already aware of those words; sorry if I implied having any trouble expressing myself, for any reason besides the abuse of Cracked as a source. The issue is that (whatever)cephalic doesn't quite cover the extent of change I have in mind for a long evolutionary time scale. Are there any factual errors that urgently need revising? Eighty5cacao 11:39, 6 July 2012 (MST)
 * Not yet. I was just giving out some material for further research. --Tepples 12:23, 6 July 2012 (MST)
 * As for the other maladaptations associated with a large brain (the last couple of sentences of your OP), I wasn't specifically focusing on that, only on the difficulty in giving birth. Anyway, I'll probably be making some minor wording tweaks soon... Eighty5cacao 12:47, 6 July 2012 (MST)
 * Head size at birth is related to mommy's ability to run, as I pointed out in allthetropes:Super-Deformed/Analysis. The length of pregnancy, on the other hand, is more related to the mother's metabolism.[ref]Todd McLeish. "URI anthropologist’s research refutes long-held theory on human gestation". University of Rhode Island (press release), 2012-08-27. Accessed 2014-03-04.[/ref] This means a coneheaded adaptation isn't quite as necessary. --Tepples (talk) 16:20, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * &larr;

Ok, well, seeing as I've given up on the promised rewording, I can probably get away with throwing one of those "resolved invalid" boxes around the content in question. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 16:49, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

No open proxies on TV Tropes

 * This entire section is unmaintained (i.e., the discussions mentioned within are no longer being pursued) now that All The Tropes exists.

I felt a little uncertain about putting this in an even-numbered namespace, which is why it's here...

In response to an incident of abuse, TV Tropes is considering blocking Tor users from creating accounts and possibly also from editing. They will take similar actions against other proxies on a case-by-case basis.

How much interest does TV Tropes receive from countries where the Internet is heavily censored? What about users who simply want to get "some" encryption into the network path to mitigate the site's lack of HTTPS support?

I might already have raised these issues myself if I were a known troper, which I am not ... but I may have to get known soon in order to be able to disable. Let's see... Eighty5cacao 23:09, 27 August 2012 (MST)
 * I brought it up. I wonder how they'll take it. --Tepples 09:27, 28 August 2012 (MST)
 * A member ended up playing the "CPU-bound" card. Before I go further, I need to know why letting your ISP see your plaintext credentials is any worse than letting the operator of the exit node see your plaintext credentials. --Tepples 19:25, 28 August 2012 (MST)
 * As I previously wrote: "countries where the Internet is heavily censored." Does TV Tropes collect server statistics on that?
 * As for the general security concern, the typical exit node should be more trustworthy than the typical public Wi-Fi network (though I guess TV Tropes admins would just say not to log in from the latter). However, there exists a list of nodes banned from operating as exits due to suspicious behavior. Even though the Tor community as a whole is presumably quick to diagnose such problems, I wouldn't necessarily call the typical exit node more trustworthy than the typical home ISP in the US. So I suppose you have a point... Eighty5cacao 14:04, 29 August 2012 (MST) (last edit 14:15, 29 August 2012 (MST))
 * I forgot that the discussion was now more about HTTPS than about proxies. Please allow a few hours for me to formulate a better response. Eighty5cacao 14:18, 29 August 2012 (MST)
 * I brought up the censorship aspect too and mentioned what TOW does. --Tepples 16:19, 29 August 2012 (MST)
 * As for the revised response I promised:
 * ISPs that engage in censorship are inherently untrustworthy, regardless of the reason for the censorship or the method used. (If a SOPA-like bill eventually passes, the wording "in the US" in my last post may no longer be relevant.)
 * MITM attacks of any kind are potentially serious, regardless of the presence or absence of login credentials; consider the possibility of malicious code injection, or user interface tampering with serious consequences.
 * The typical ISP's customers are more representative of the general population than are the users of any given proxy. Thus, the ISP has more to gain by snooping for statistics. Eighty5cacao 21:51, 29 August 2012 (MST)

In the HTTPS thread, a moderator wrote: "Tell that user to create a unique handle and password for TV Tropes. [...] Nobody cares enough to snoop a TV Tropes account. It's a solution in search of a problem." --Tepples 07:20, 1 September 2012 (MST)

On a similar theme
...but not to be mentioned on TV Tropes, as I'm giving up on the original purpose for this discussion: See this bug report about Firefox's address bar autocomplete, specifically from this comment down. No comment on the bug itself, but a lot of people don't seem to understand the principle of "https everywhere"... (Essay hook: "HTTPS should be a basic fact of security, like the lock on your house's front door." I'll run with this analogy later here.) Eighty5cacao 23:04, 1 September 2012 (MST) (last edit 20:17, 5 September 2012 (MST))

VRC4 variants
I have proposed submappers for the VRCs. If emulators other than a prerelease version of Nintendulator were to support NES 2.0, there wouldn't be so much of a problem. --Tepples 05:10, 3 November 2012 (MST)

Flash, Gordon, Shumway
"Shumway" is named after Flash Gordon and Gordon Shumway. Earlier attempts to implement SWF in JS include Gordon (also named after Flash Gordon) and Smokescreen. --Tepples 09:53, 19 November 2012 (MST)
 * Ok, s0rry for not doing my research again, though I really didn't see why it would have been warranted in this case. How is this comment meant to be actionable (i.e., any urgent fixes)?
 * I have not personally tested Shumway nor any of the other projects mentioned here. BTW, it took me several seconds to remember that this was not the WMG dump. --Eighty5cacao 15:38, 23 November 2012 (MST)
 * It was meant to be a reply to "TODO: do any other projects of this type exist?" --Tepples 19:24, 23 November 2012 (MST)
 * In that case, sorry for not rereading my own words more thoroughly. --Eighty5cacao 21:17, 24 November 2012 (MST)
 * And in a few months, Shumway will be part of Firefox. --Tepples (talk) 19:58, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But I haven't heard a peep about Shumway through the media since. Apart from its wiki page, it must be in stealth mode. --Tepples (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Doesn't mean it isn't officially being worked on though... I'm aware of various Bugzilla discussions about the milestones changing (Facebook player vs. JWPlayer etc.) and the fact that it's only enabled by default in development builds if at all, but I'm not sure how to summarize concisely. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 16:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC) (EDIT: It is on official hiatus. Will explain later. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2016 (UTC))

Unofficial opcodes
"nesdev:CPU unofficial opcodes refers to SKB and SKW as 'NOP'; should this be fixed?"

In my opinion, it's not necessary because the addressing mode disambiguates them from the 1-byte NOPs just as the addressing mode disambiguates shifts (ASL, LSR, ROL, ROR) with implied (accumulator) mode from the RMW shifts with an actual address. I did add a note to the lead clarifying the existence of these NOPs. I couldn't figure out how to bring in differences in mnemonics among various assemblers and references, and considering that it's a page about behavior of the CPU when it reads particular binary opcodes, I don't think nitpicking mnemonics is quite on topic there. Mnemonics are for programmers, so I added something about variant mnemonics to another page. --Tepples (talk) 15:01, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * [//pineight.com/mw/index.php?title=User:Eighty5cacao/misc/Random_thoughts&diff=8068&oldid=8066 ACK]. Yeah, I didn't really think this through. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That clockslide part is interesting. May I split it? In any case: 1. if you need an all-official clockslide, I recommend a bunch of CMP #$C9 followed by CMP $EA. It screws up the flags but no regs. 2. There's an opcode matrix in the interwiki horizon at nesdev:CPU unofficial opcodes. --Tepples (talk) 16:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. BTW: When, if ever, should edits to talk pages of undesirable topics (like this one) be RCC-hidden? --Eighty5cacao (talk) 20:23, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've been meaning to revisit the RC rate control guideline. Edits related to on-topic sections, such as your NES tech section, are fine to leave on RC so long as you don't excessively serial-tweak. So are talk edits related to those on-topic sections. I'll execute the splits when I get a chance; I have family to visit today. --Tepples (talk) 21:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Cuteness aggression and jealousy
Cuteness aggression may express jealousy according to how I read a Cracked article about the bond dogs have with humans. --Tepples (talk) 21:32, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok...hmm, I'm not sure how relevant this is to TTM, which I believe was the context of that discussion. I should probably let you know that I almost never read (all of) the current day's Cracked articles; I try to avoid the two on the top row at any given time. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 02:08, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Besides, I was thinking more of the "food metaphors" aspect than of the "physical squeezing" (but both are still relevant). --Eighty5cacao (talk) 06:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * One specific case: As mentioned on LiveScience, cuteness aggression in recent mothers may be related to overstimulation of the dopamine pathway by the odors of infants. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 18:21, 23 September 2013 (UTC) (+ 01:48, 24 September 2013 (UTC))
 * More coverage of this in Jezebel, Christian Science Monitor, and University of Montreal News.[ref]Callie Beusman. "Science Finally Explains Why Women 'Want to Eat' Babies". Jezebel, 2013-09-24. Accessed 2017-04-30.[/ref] --Tepples (talk) 03:57, 15 August 2015 (UTC) (https fix: Eighty5cacao (talk) 05:11, 1 May 2017 (UTC))

Fructose intolerance
Today I learned about hereditary fructose intolerance, a genetic defect in Earth humans, when C-SPAN replayed a talk given by Dr. Robert Lustig at UCSF on August 28. It called to mind a webcomic character who can "eat gelatins, as long as they are sugar-free bonemeal based gelatins without fruits". I'm thankful I lack this defect, but I still prefer diet soda. --Tepples (talk) 05:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

BRD is hard, let's go shopping
Consensus on Slashdot in comments to many, many articles about Wikipedia is that "difficulty putting up with BRD" is precisely the problem. New editors give up because they can't deal with OCD or ASD campers who spend all their free time using wikilawyering to back their own agendas in the guise of upholding quality policies. People claim to have better things to do than babysit a small change through days or weeks of discussion. --Tepples (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Indie is a misunderstood word
"The problem with the video-game industry is that the capabilities of computing hardware will always outpace the ability of independent developers to affordably make use of those capabilities."

L. Ron Hubbard's organization was right about one thing: misunderstood words cause problems with understanding that lead to people getting hung up on semantics and talking past each other. (Before, I'd link to an article on Ward's Wiki about the tendency of longer debates to be about definitions, but that wiki has been frozen for a year, and its successor Federated Wiki appears to require buying a domain and leasing a VPS in order to edit. "You can expect to pay 50 cents a day.") I never studied under a Scientology-affiliated school (thank God), but I independently invented Study Tech's "word clearing" method myself and used it in high school up to the point where I hit a wall of circular definition at "normal".

So anyway, one breakthrough I had with respect to understanding conflicting opinions on the value of indie games happened when CronoCloud on Slashdot posted a comment explaining two meanings of "indie". I ended up realizing that it can mean any of several things depending on the author: hobbyists, a startup whose employees were previously hobbyists, a startup whose employees were previously employed by established game studios, or even a company transitioning from another field of software to games (such as Stardock).

So do the capability of computers and expectation of production values always outpace amateurs? Or startups of amateurs? Or startups of video game industry alumni? --Tepples (talk) 21:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * My intended meaning was closest to hobbyists (regardless of team size, as long as it is reasonably small and not a legal company ), as well as any individual person regardless of education or employment history. I suppose all of your hypotheses could cover my thoughts ... which technically makes my usage ambiguous. Therefore I will reword it. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 23:23, 6 February 2016 (UTC) (+ 02:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC))
 * My rewrite emphasizes that there is a continuum of money and manpower, with no bright line separating "independent" from not. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 23:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I am aware of the definition from an Anonymous Coward in your link dump, but it doesn't really address the gratis case. I don't believe further rewriting is warranted; the original problem (as I hinted at in an edit summary) was at least as much with the word "always" as "independent." --Eighty5cacao (talk) 02:24, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Weena vs. Pocahontas
Beyond the Time Machine parses "Weena" as "boldly adventurous one". Is there an exploitable parallel with Matoaka Wahunsenacawhsdaughter's nickname "Pocahontas", which means "little wanton" or more loosely "playful one"? Or is this a Dances with Avagully-level conspiracy theory? --Tepples (talk) 22:10, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Although I have no strong objection, I have not given much thought to this due to BTTM being generally agreed not to lie in the same continuity as the original TTM novel and its authorized sequel The Time Ships. (Yes, I know continuity doesn't matter when it's fanon we're talking about, but the point is I haven't read any of the books I mention here other than TTM itself.) I can't rule out having more to say later. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 05:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC) + 17:47, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

x86: It's a (Java) trap
"In other words, taking the definition of "libre" to the extreme would imply that every nontrivial computer program is Java-trapped by nonfree hardware."

Like the x86 and x86-64 ISAs in particular. --Tepples (talk) 02:37, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Acknowledged; no substantive reply yet.
 * I also acknowledge that the entire context was a strawman breaching thought experiment (does that make sense?) to convince the paranoid cypherpunks out there that their worries are useless. --Eighty5cacao (talk) 04:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)