Humor Random Comments Thread

[N_Molson]

Cheviré is special . I seem to enjoy flying (not off bridges), but I do have a fear of heights.

I remember I just had my driving license and also discovered one of the earliest version of Orbiter in 2000 or so and each time I took the bridge, it was like "3,2,1, ignition !".

 

[Matias Saibene]

So, I guess this is bug hunting?


It just happened. I was watching the learn programming videos and I was running an exercise when suddenly a ladybug landed on my screen. Fortunately, I had my cell phone nearby and I took a picture of it.

I've seen lots of these bugs in my backyard these days so I guess, I'll have to use a bottle of GDB?

 

[francisdrake]

Found on BoredPanda

 

[Matias Saibene]

I'm posting this not to get technical support (not to go off-topic) but to get ideas.
I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and am having an intermittent issue:
Sometimes the headphones don't work and no audio comes out.
It's not a problem with my headphones, it's not a problem with the audio card (because it works perfectly on Linux), and I don't know if it's a problem with the drivers.
I tried uninstalling the driver and it didn't fix it, as well as checking settings or updating the driver (there were no updates).
Here is my system info:

inxi -A
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.36-1-rt41-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.51 running: yes

Maybe my laptop is not compatible with Windows 10. But it is strange because sometimes the sound works.

 

[Linguofreak]

Are these headphones 3.5mm, or USB/Bluetooth?

The difference is that 3.5mm just takes an analog audio signal from your internal sound card, whereas USB/Bluetooth headphones and speakers present themselves to the OS as a separate sound card, and in my experience every OS has trouble dealing properly with hotplugging sound cards. If the hotplug device is set as default, you often get no audio when it's removed. If the internal sound card is set as default, the system doesn't switch to the hotplug device when you plug it in.

 

[jedidia]

The difference is that 3.5mm just takes an analog audio signal from your internal sound card

Yeah well, it used to be like that... Nowadays that crap needs driver support and whatnot.
My wife's 3.5mm outlet went dead after a recent windows update. Rather annoying, since we were using that to connect it to the sound system when watching movies...
Can't use my laptop either, because the HDMI outlet of that one won't talk to the TV anymore after a windows update some 6 months ago... Hoorray Microsoft!

 

[N_Molson]

Can't use my laptop either, because the HDMI outlet of that one won't talk to the TV anymore after a windows update some 6 months ago...

My father had that actually, but a couple of years ago... I really tried to find a workaround but no way, and there are many reports of the same issue on various web forums. ASUS Vivobook ? It is really unbelievable they didn't write a patch. Sure, they need to sell new computers but this is programmed obsolescence at its worst...

 

[Matias Saibene]

Are these headphones 3.5mm, or USB/Bluetooth?

The difference is that 3.5mm just takes an analog audio signal from your internal sound card, whereas USB/Bluetooth headphones and speakers present themselves to the OS as a separate sound card, and in my experience every OS has trouble dealing properly with hotplugging sound cards. If the hotplug device is set as default, you often get no audio when it's removed. If the internal sound card is set as default, the system doesn't switch to the hotplug device when you plug it in.

Mine are 3.5mm headphones. So, it is an arbitrary and random failure of Windows 10?
In Windows 7 I never had problems and in GNU/Linux neither.

 

[Linguofreak]

Yeah well, it used to be like that... Nowadays that crap needs driver support and whatnot.
My wife's 3.5mm outlet went dead after a recent windows update. Rather annoying, since we were using that to connect it to the sound system when watching movies...
Can't use my laptop either, because the HDMI outlet of that one won't talk to the TV anymore after a windows update some 6 months ago... Hoorray Microsoft!

HDMI sound devices are often separate from motherboard sound (generally being part of the graphics card) which can be a component of the whole "wrong sound device gets selected" issue.

Then again, the fact that both of these came in with Windows updates makes me wonder if HDCP -ery is involved, in which case Microsoft is not guiltless, but it's really more a "Hooray Hollywood" issue.

 

[Linguofreak]

Question for the German speakers on the forum:

1) How often have you spoken German (as opposed to written conversation online) with Americans from the area highlighted in red at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_American_English ?

2) Have you noticed any tendency to overpronounce "ü" among such Americans? "Ü" is supposed to be the "foreign" sound and "u" the "native" sound, but my English /u/ is somewhere around IPA [ʉ], and in California it can go as far as IPA [y] (that is, more or less German "ü"). I've had Germans perceive an intended "u" as "ü" far more than the reverse (in fact, I'm not sure I've ever had the reverse happen. I've maybe forgotten that a word has an umlaut and thus tried for "u" when "ü" was called for, but I don't think I've ever not managed to pronounce "ü" when trying for it). This makes me wonder if I'm over-fronting "ü", given that I'm moving forward significantly from my normal "u", which is already fairly far forward.

 

[Urwumpe]

1) As far as I can tell with certainty: Zero times. Those contacts I had, where I know where they are coming from, had been inside a broad ellipse from Texas to Tennessee, with Houston and Chattanooga being in the focal points....

2) DNA

 

[jedidia]

How often have you spoken German (as opposed to written conversation online) with Americans

Yeah, I haven't ever had a german conversation with an American either, I'm afraid.

As for the second question... uhm... the pronounciation of an umlaut is by no means consistent throughout german speaking populations. We have a dialect in Switzerland where "u" is pronounced more like my dialect would pronounce "ie", while the actual "ü" almost becomes a straight "i". So how americans speaking german pronounce an "ü" might very well depend on what german dialect they have been exposed to the most.

This makes me wonder if I'm over-fronting "ü"

If by "over-fronting" you mean how your mouth actually forms the sounds, the only difference I can perceive for myself is that for U the tongue is more or less pointing forward towards the lower teeth, while for Ü it points upward towards the root of the upper teeth. The lips have the exact same position.

 

[Linguofreak]

If by "over-fronting" you mean how your mouth actually forms the sounds, the only difference I can perceive for myself is that for U the tongue is more or less pointing forward towards the lower teeth, while for Ü it points upward towards the root of the upper teeth. The lips have the exact same position.

The primary characteristics used to identify vowels are the position of the highest point of the tongue (front, back, high, low), and rounding of the lips. U and ü are both high, rounded vowels, with u being a back vowel and ü being a front vowel. English doesn't have a high front rounded vowel, so "u" has freedom to move forward without causing to much confusion, and in Western American dialects it does (think of a Californian saying "duuuude!", the vowel is pretty much an ü). Since /u/ in English is canonically back, "ü" is generally trained as a rounding of /i/ (or "ee" in English orthography), since that's easiest to teach to someone who doesn't know how vowels work, but English speakers with linguistic training will generally try to keep it well forward of their /u/. But having gained consciousness of his far forward my /u/ is, I wonder if I'm exaggerating the frontedness of "ü".

 

[steph]

The bad part - managed to miss a Korpiklaani concert. Saw it too late and didn't have time to plan. The 'good' part? It got cancellesd anyway due to weather.

 

[N_Molson]

 

[N_Molson]

Was Hume a bit drunk when he wrote this ? Likely. Scottish winters were very long back in 1748.

 

[Linguofreak]

Was Hume a bit drunk when he wrote this ? Likely. Scottish winters were very long back in 1748.

I mean, in pretty much any eventuality where the Sun does not rise tomorrow, there is no tomorrow. Either the Earth stops rotating within 24 hours, or the mass of the sun is distributed to points outside of Earth's orbit (so that you can't easily point to where the Sun is anymore, from Earth's point of view). Both events are energetic enough that we'd all be very quickly dead.

The only way that it happens in a such a way that tomorrow matters is by divine intervention.

 

[Urwumpe]

Was Hume a bit drunk when he wrote this ? Likely. Scottish winters were very long back in 1748.

Maybe he just wanted to be Captain McObvious.

 

[jedidia]

Was Hume a bit drunk when he wrote this ?

I don't know, to me it feels like he's trying to point out that logical and semantic arguments of philosophy can still be plain wrong, even if they satisfy every semantic and logical requirement.

 

[N_Molson]

Actually his point was to show that reasoning by induction isn't a proof by itself. Even in the light of today's science, we never know, there could be suddenly another dimension opening and swallowing the Sun. Also, you can sort of say that if say Mr. Putin decides he's fed up and sends the nukes aflight, well even if someone survives there will be so much dust in the atmosphere that seeing the Sun will be impossible...

In general we can't say something will happen tomorrow because it happened yesterday and today. It is 99.999999...% likely that the Sun will rise tomorrow, but...