Bernie is one of the few politicians that have a voting record which aligns with their rhetoric, going back decades.

I did this using the Meta Quest when designing our bathroom. I used Unreal Engine to set up all the materials, lighting, and VR stuff.

It worked great. There's nothing better than walking through a design. It turned out to be the _only_ way I was able to get over my analysis paralysis and actually commit to the project. I took pictures from all angles and printed them for our contractors, and they found it very useful as well.

It's stunning how similar the real pictures are to our renders. Here's an example for those interested: https://imgur.com/a/y3KXphc

If the issue in the west is that voters don’t have visibility into the systems that cause their problems, what is the solution?

“People” being informed is quite different from an individual being informed. Presumably you were informed back then, yet here we are still.

I’m getting back into it again after a long break due to burnout. I’m still burned out but it’s getting easier to think through problems.

I’m building a home server. This was something I put off for years due to some perfectionism. Eventually I just threw together something with old hardware and headless Ubuntu. Much to my surprise, the power draw is only about $4 a month. I can live with that so no need for specialized hardware.

I’m doing the common -arr stack using docker compose. I’m using plex because the jellyfin doesn’t work as well on an Apple TV.

Having a server running is nice. I can set up some stuff on a whim. Most recently was the Mealie recipe manager. It’s great knowing my data won’t be paywalled. I’m using syncthing as a simple backup method between my devices - everything but media of course. It’s fine if I lose media.

An unexpected benefit of having the server is that it inspires my wife. She decided to give vibe coding a try. She’s an artist, not an engineer, but with a little help she was able to make a task tracker for us. She tailored it to the way we tackle our tasks and, again, it’s really nice knowing it won’t get paywalled in the future.

I’m still burned out, but having a server to tinker with is helping.

I have a similar setup at home, I’m sure you heard this before but I must +1 the Infuse app on Apple devices. It’s a much better client than Jellyfin’s but can connect to Jellyfin server no problem. No plex needed.

I’ll take a look, thanks for suggesting it!

That's a neat site but I'm stuck looking in from the outside. Can someone spare me an invite please? My email is in my about.

A friend’s parents were recently targeted by AI scammers that impersonated family members. This shocked me because her parents are pretty poor, and I imagine it’s not free to make targeted scams like this. So, why were they targeted?

My guess is that my friend is listed on a company website as an executive, and scammers are using company pages to find targets worth spending money on. Scams like these aren’t free, but they’re cheap enough to cast wide nets. The nets are only going to get wider as AI becomes cheaper and more available.

Security by obscurity, as effective as it was, is coming to an end. AI enables scammers to spear phish indiscriminately.

Do you have an example? I’ve done a slightly-more-than-casual search for convincing post-processing and haven’t found success. Filters still tend to retain the sharpness of pixel edges in a way that CRTs don’t, and the contrast doesn’t look right either.

I'm not saying the tech currently exists in a form you can just plop into a project and have it give you the exact CRT look and feel that you want. What I am saying is that you can do that within any modern game engine - you just have to decide what, exactly, the look and feel you want is and how to get there.

As an example, I will quote the article:

> Retro Game Engine owns the full frame lifecycle. I decide what the input signals are, what the display does with it, how time affects it, what gets presented and when.

You can replace "Retro Game Engine" in that sentence with "Unity" or "Godot" and it is just as true.

Balatro is a good example. Lots of different opinions on whether its a good CRT effect or not.

Still the best CRT simulation I've seen is in an X screensaver called XAnalogTV. It simulates both CRT artifacts as well as NTSC channel cross-talk and analog interference. It amazes me that still no one has produced a portable version.

I think you are underestimating what a filter is allowed to do.

You could build a simulation of the universe, send the frame data to the CRT inside that universe and capture the output of the simulated CRT and show it on the LCD.

Interesting article. I hope their engine gets to the point where it actually looks like CRT instead of the blocky filters we see nowadays.

Here’s an entertaining video showing the difference in retro games on crt and lcd screens. It’s pretty incredible if you aren’t aware. Games back then were designed on CRTs and can look awful on LCDs in comparison.

https://youtu.be/bC-8y2R6IxI?t=166&si=D6K2v28RIR4bACQ3

Baking everyday as a way to keep a professional identity is an interesting idea. Being semi-retired, I’ve noticed that I am starting to struggle the curiosity and motivation that kept me going when I still worked. This article makes me think I should pick up a habit of doing some “work” daily.

Yeah, I think it's a tough one for some people. Case in point: my parents.

My father has always had a million hobbies, and his work was what was preventing him from fully exploring them. He's taken to retirement like a fish to water.

My mother on the other hand (still working at 73) like most academics has been very dedicated to her work, and her main hobby outside of work has been hiking.

I'm a little worried that she'll struggle a bit to adapt to retirement.