cerebralhawks

Always wanted to know this, always been afraid to Google it because I figured it would report me for self harm or something like that.

So, 1. What would happen if, while driving on the highway at highway speeds, you grab the gear shift knob and put it in park? Would it just lock up all the wheels or what?

And 2. What would happen if, also while driving on the highway, at highway speeds, you turn the car off (turn the key and remove it)?

I feel like both should be impossible while the car is in motion. But somehow I don't think they are. And to a gearhead, these are probably really stupid questions. But as someone who barely understands how cars do what they do... I'm curious.

I'm sure you've seen it if you subscribe to satellite TV, or if you watch local channels (either over the air, or if you follow them on social media, or get your news at their website).

It usually starts with the local station. They will run a story disguised as news saying that one of the big satellite providers is threatening to take them off the air, and they will give you a number to call. They may also suggest you cancel your service and sign up with the competition.

The local station may be the loudest, but they are not necessarily at fault! Though they do own some of the fault.

The satellite provider will typically react by taking the station offline... that is, they will take them out of their channel lineup. (They are still broadcasting over cable, and over the satellite provider they aren't beefing with, and over the air.) They will replace the station with a similar but opposite notice about how the local channel demanded too much money and they could not afford to keep the channel without raising your rates.

So who do you believe? Truth is... both of them. Neither of them.

The way local channels work is, they have their OTA (over the air) business. They sell ad time to local businesses. They also do fluff pieces promoting local businesses, or naming segments after local businesses (or national ones whose chains want more exposure). Aside from that, they also license their content to cable and satellite providers. This is important because people who pay for cable and satellite still want local news, and no one can be arsed to spend $20-50 on an OTA receiver (an antenna, but they're flat now, you tape them to a wall and run a cable to your antenna, now you get free TV as long as you're within 10 miles or so (don't believe them when they say they go further, this is always limited by physics, and digital is kind of "all or nothing"). With cable providers, they generally look at how many subscribers the cable provider has and go from there. Satellite is different because DirecTV and Dish Network are basically "everywhere". So they do business differently. They work with all the local channels everywhere, so they have these deals in place that last for so many months or years.

When these terms come up, both sides tend to negotiate better rates, so that's when you see them threaten each other. They both want you to call and complain to soften the other side. If a deal is reached, the issue is dropped until next time. If not... then the channel is removed from the lineup and the channel blasts the satellite provider on social media and their site.

Basically, the local channel wants more money for the contract because they have ongoing expenses. Especially with everything going up, they want to pay people more, pay competitive wages and whatnot, so they ask for more money, year after year. And mostly, they get it. Local channels not being on satellite is not a big problem and when it is, it doesn't last long.

As for satellite, they want to pay less money, and their argument is that they serve more customers, so they are in fact bringing more eyes to those local ads.

In the United Kingdom, Parliament has basically said if you have a TV, you gotta pay the Beeb — the BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation. The people who make Dr Who, and they also have a pretty awesome news network. (Seriously, you should bookmark them.) Typically you can't watch the BBC on TV outside the UK, but you can access it online just fine, and there are services that carry its programming. In the US, there's really no such rule. Anyone can get local channels OTA for free. If you use cable or satellite, there is no set value for each viewer that needs to be met, it's all up for negotiation, and the customers lose.

I generally side with the local stations, but I will not sit here and tell you they're blameless. Both sides are bullshitting you, and neither side respects you enough to spell out the actual issues. They don't trust you, and that sucks. It's expected of DirecTV and Dish Network and the cable companies, we know they're shitty people. Or at least at the top. But your local news? You're supposed to trust them. So yeah, it sucks, but if I gotta pick a side, I'm going local every time. As should you, IMHO.

Satellite sucks, but it's a necessity for many. If you can get Internet, you can often do better with streaming than you can with traditional cable or satellite TV. The idea of 50,000 channels with nothing on is a Boomer dream, and even as a Gen-X'er pushing 50, I got no interest in those. Plus, they're close to 1/3 advertising these days. A show in a 60 minute time slot is 42 minutes of the show, and 18 minutes of ads. If it were 20/40 it would be exactly 1/3 advertising. It's not quite there yet. You want an actual number? Fine. The common denominator between 60 and 100 is 5, so... I'm just gonna google it... it's an even 30%. Now look at your cable or satellite bill. Are those advertisers paying 30% of your bill? Fuck no, they're not! But they expect you to buy from them.

My advice for so many fucked up situations is eat local, drink local, buy local. Whenever you can. Shop with local businesses. Go to craft faires and support local artists. (Disclaimer of bias: my wife is a local artist.) Contribute to people directly whenever possible by buying locally. Try to keep your money in your local community when and where you can. Support the people who support you. Local news is telling you what's happening where you live. Support their advertisers. If satellite tells you to call them, call them! And tell them to keep fighting the good fight. Tell them you have their back. And maybe ask them to be a little transparent about their side. We know they're holding out for more money. Tell them they deserve it. They're working for you every day.

This may be US-specific, and if it doesn't apply to your area, sorry. I just wanna spread information on what I know. If I haven't been to your state or country or province or whatever, sorry — I've been around a bit, but I don't really travel these days.

This is a fan-made video, and I didn't make it. Also, the anime art shown is from Tokyo Ghoul, which has no connection to the song. I guess the guy just liked the picture?

The point of using this video and not an official stream is the lyrics. The song is almost entirely in Japanese, so if you don't understand Japanese, the meaning will be lost on you. Go to the video, enable captions, and set it to English, and, at least if you understand English, you will understand everything he's saying.

If you're wondering if the song is political, yes, it absolutely is. It's not related to current events, as the song came out years ago. But it does apply to some of the shit we're in. But the lyrics aren't condemning any country or political ideology, it's a different kind of message.

For those who want official streams, here's the song.link: https://song.link/i/1538110484 . Apple was supposed to offer translations (probably done by AI) with Apple Music, but that feature never materialised. I don't know what translation services are offered with other streaming services. The song is very good on its own, but knowing what he's saying adds another dimension to it. It's a shame these guys aren't more well known, but unlike more popular Japanese rock bands like ONE OK ROCK, Survive Said the Prophet, coldrain, and others, they don't incorporate English lyrics, at least not as many, and not as frequently. I suspect they're relatively big in Japan, and they're probably fine keeping it that way. I feel like they could blow up over here if they wanted to, but I also suspect learning English for a native Japanese speaker is about as hard as learning Japanese is for a native English speaker. If you can get into an amazarashi song, that's awesome, but if you can actually understand him... that's something else.

タイムカプセル (ja: Time Capsule) is a song released only as a single in 2025 by Japanese electronic rock band The Sixth Lie featuring Japanese pop singer Kimika (both formally stylised in all caps). The song is almost entirely in Japanese, except the title for some reason. (I've heard a couple other songs where time, in the concept of time travel, is translated to English... I wonder if the concept doesn't work well in Japanese. But I don't really know.)

The band (and singer) have released an all-English version, but you have to browse to their alternate channel "TSL" on Apple Music. I'm not sure how it is on other streaming services, or why they have two accounts, but they commonly use the other account for English covers of their own songs. So the song is available in English (except the video, as far as I know). The English version is nice to know what they're saying, but I think both singers sound better in their native language. If you need to understand the lyrics of what you're listening to, though, they've given you that option.

Wikipedia describes The Sixth Lie as "electronic rock," but I wouldn't really agree with that. Some of their songs fit that description, but if anything, I'd say they have a touch of New Wave, like a lot of early 80s rock from the US/UK. I'd just call it alternative, which IIRC evolved from new wave and rock in the 1980s in the west.

If you like this song and you want to hear more of the same, their song "Virtual Sky" is also great. If you want to hear them play more hard rock/nu metal, look up "Shadow is the Light."

Edit: Topic title originally contained the original title, "タイムカプセル" (and it still shows upon editing), but when I submitted the title, the Japanese title was removed. I'm not sure if that's a feature or a limitation/bug of the Lemmy software, but I felt it was worth mentioning since I did include the artist's chosen title and the system took it off. It's fine to call it "Time Capsule" as that is the literal translation of the title, but タイムカプセル is the name of the song.

It's been almost 30 years, and now the Final Fantasy 7 remake is out for everyone. I always said I'd buy the remake when it came out, but ~$500 was too much (for the game plus the console it required). When it came to PC (via the Epic Games Store), I was a Mac user. Now it's out on Xbox and Switch, and I've played through it on the former.

Of course, I loved the remake from the start, from the expanded opening showing the dystopia and the lack of plant life, the extra scene where Aerith's flower is stepped on before she can pick it back up, and of course the characters having voices. But then, shortly after the intro movie, I started to notice changes I didn't like. I'm fine with you not being able to rename characters. All I really changed was "Aeris" to "Aerith," correcting the translation mistake, but the remake already does this. (I also corrected "Red XIII" to [redacted] (spoiler) so when you get his real name, you get funny dialogue where Cloud asks "Who is [redacted]" and the other character says "[redacted] is [redacted]." It's not important, it's just funny to me, but it bothered me that after you learn his real name, you still call him Red XIII, so I always named him what his real name is from that point forward.)

Then after the first part of the training mission, we get back to Seventh Heaven, and I don't even have the option to give the flower to Marlene. I thought that option was special in the original, but the remake doesn't allow it. We're not giving it to Tifa because at no point does Cloud see Tifa like that — yet. It doesn't make sense. He has the flower because Aerith made him take it. Cloud's basically ace at this point, and he doesn't want to lead his childhood friend on. He just wants to get paid and move on. Aside from discarding the flower, which isn't an option, giving the flower to Marlene makes the most sense. Cloud sees that everyone in Avalanche has hope. Marlene only sees her daddy and his friends (who she also likes) go out and leave her alone every day. So you want to give her some hope. Having Cloud give Tifa the flower by default was the first half of my first issue with the remake.

In the original, Cloud loses some of his edge around the second mission. Meeting Aerith in the church, meeting her mother, the interaction with the Turks, and the whole Don Corneo business changes him a bit, and he lets more of his human side out. Not in the remake, he just stays an asshole through the whole thing, which runs through the Shinra HQ escape. Minor spoiler, but only for those who played the original and understand the context. You escape from Midgar HQ, you do the road scene, and instead of fighting the boss after, you fight the boss still on the bike. Then you fight Sephiroth for some reason and... that's it. It's over. You gotta wait until June for the second part, unless you pay $700+ for a PS5. And no one has the third part yet, even if you pay the steep fee for early access. We're not even sure if the third part will be further delayed on other platforms. So that's another issue — even those who paid the premium to access the second part early don't know when they're getting the third chapter, or even that the third chapter will be the final chapter. It's all up in the air.

What really convinced me the remake was kinda bad wasn't just the extra mission with the new Soldier villain (which is just training you for the bike mission at the end), but it was after Aerith is taken (sorry, minor spoiler) and you talk to her mom and you get her back story. Even with the voice acting... I remember thinking this scene hit so much harder in the original. But, buying Remake on the Xbox came with the original, so after I finished Remake, I fired up the original and started playing. It only takes about an hour or two to get to this scene. To do everything in Remake takes 20-40 hours in Remake, but it only takes about 3 hours in the original, due to all the fluff that was added. (Some of that fluff is good, but most of it literally exists to waste your time.) I got to that scene, and it hurt my heart nearly as much as it did the first go-around in 1997. I think it's the music. The music in Remake simply sucks. The music in the original was hot garbage because it was MIDI. I remember paying $40 to import the CD, then I found a 10MB pirated copy online. All the songs in MIDI except "One-Winged Angel" which was an MP3. I played the songs on the computer and the CD in my CD player. Sounded the same. But anyway, Nobuo Uematsu has since re-released music from Final Fantasy VII, with a full orchestra, and it sounds amazing. You don't get that in the Remake. You get boring, drowned-out songs. You also get this random ass song with vocals by Yosh from Survive Said the Prophet (Japanese rock fans know who that is) but you can never hear the song, even in the trailer. You have to go on a streaming service and look up the song and play it outside the game. It's not just weird. It's bad. The music was such an integral part of the original game, warts and all, but they couldn't get that right. And Aerith's back story just fell flat. It could have been amazing with the newer, non-MIDI, orchestral recordings, but we didn't get that.

If I said I wasn't going to play Rebirth when it comes out in June, I'd be fucking lying. Of course I'll play it. But I'm already to the Temple of the Ancients in the original. The original is ugly and the music is MIDI, but it doesn't completely disrespect your time (there are too many battles, but they can be disabled, but you shouldn't disable all of them), and it's still a great game. And it doesn't shut down on the train tracks leading to the town with Barret's back story like the original PC release did. They either used the fix from the Ultima Edition (a pirate release), or they fixed it on their own. Either way, you can play past that point now. You can probably play the entire game legally now without original hardware. That wasn't an option before — either you were emulating the PS1 version or you were running the Ultima Edition, even if you bought the PC release because no one ever played the PC release past Disc One. It just wasn't possible to proceed due to an unpatched bug. Fortunately, digital releases such as Steam, App Store, Xbox, PlayStation, and others, do allow patches and so the game was fixed. Anyway, of course I'll play Rebirth, and I'll play Reunion as well — what I assume the third one will be called, given the context and the pattern — and I damn sure can't wait to see what the new World Crisis scene looks like (that's not really a spoiler, and neither is this: if you have to go to the bathroom when you're fighting Sephiroth for the last time, pause during the match, because you won't get a chance during the nine minute cut scene that follows. At least it was 9 minutes on the PS1. It'll probably be longer in the remake. And I can't wait to see it. And I can't wait for someone to recut it with better audio.

Apologies if this is a bit hard to understand.

Some sites have a background that fills the screen... until you scroll. There's one on my work's intranet, so obviously I can't use that as an example. But I see the same thing on my Lemmy instance, db0 (not mine mine, the one I use). They made this thing, I think it's meant to be a black hole, heavily blurred, but when I scroll, the image scrolls away.

Is there some way to lock the background in place and let the content just scroll past it? Maybe with a setting, or more likely with an extension?

Song is in Japanese with some English. If you enable CC (closed captions), you can read the official English translation of the Japanese parts.

milet (stylised in lowercase) has been making pop/rock music for anime and for herself for a few years. This song is from the upcoming second season of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, the story of an eternal elf who spent ten years with an adventuring party saving the world, and after all her party has passed on (this is like, first-episode stuff), she takes on a new protege and begins a new adventure. It's a fun, casual/chill fantasy series, and Frieren herself presents as being on the spectrum, though it isn't explicitly stated and some disagree, associating her detachment with her being over 1,300 years old, and not neurodivergence.

Author Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive) delivers a keynote in which he articulates why AI cannot replace human artists and authors. He makes a few points that seem to be "for" AI (he is a nerd, after all), but stick with it. I think you will like where he ends up.

So I'm curious — we're all here because we at least hate the current state of AI with hallucinating facts, being used to undress women and children, and all the fuckery that goes along with it.

I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which takes place on a ship with a perfect AI that does everything right and basically does nothing wrong. It never hallucinates information; it's always right. It has never been used to undress people against their will; however, the Holodeck is kind of an extension of that and was used for that on Deep Space Nine, when operated by a Ferengi (capitalist alien race in a world where humans are communist). But the Enterprise holodeck would never do that. The shipwide AI also does not traditionally carry on conversations. The one time it does, the human was hallucinating — sort of. The doctor was in a pocket universe, people were disappearing, and at one point the AI told her she was the only crew person on the Enterprise, and no, that did not make sense, but that that was still how it was. Because, in her pocket universe, it was true.

So the question is... would you want a perfect AI that was incapable of lying or harbouring anything untrue? Basically you could ask it anything and it would give you the correct answer.

The one fault I can find with that fictional AI is when Data (the android), dressed like Sherlock Holmes, asked the computer to "create an enemy which rivals my intelligence." He meant to say Sherlock Holmes's intelligence, who he was cosplaying, but the computer made a self-aware malicious AI that got out of the Holodeck and tried to destroy the ship... because it was told to do so. Other than that, though.

...I'm not trying to mislead anyone, so I will drop the other shoe, answer the begged question now. I've always felt that to get to that level of AI, we need to wade through the shit we're in now. So yeah, before you ask, that's kind of the point of the thought exercise. However, I will also say that I do not think we will get to Star Trek AI, I think we will get to Terminator AI, destroying the world rather than lifting people up. I think maybe in the Star Trek universe, AI didn't really take off until people realised that war wasn't the answer, after WW3/the Eugenics Wars, and so they were making AI to make things better, not worse. We are not in that timeline. I look at what is happening now, IRL, and the timeline in the Terminator franchise, and it's clear to me that that one is more realistic.

That said, I still wonder if anyone would want AI if it did not have any of the problems.

I have a dish I've been making for over a year. The goal is to get protein and flavour. I start by melting butter in a small skillet on medium heat, then I sauté some chopped garlic in it. I then add protein — usually, chopped sausage. Add some salt and freshly-ground pepper, and kinda flatten it out. Then I pour three beat eggs over it.

Here's where things get interesting. I cut the heat down to low, and cover it, until the egg starts to rise. I dash it with some cumin, and flip. I lay some pepper jack cheese down, fold it over, cut the heat off, and let the cheese melt.

It's kind of like an omelet because it's egg with protein and cheese in it and it's folded. But I suspect some foodies would say it's not an omelet. It's not a quiche because I don't use crust (that would add carbs I don't want). It might be a frittata, but I think of those as having way more eggs (a whole dozen, at least).

I know, for a home cook it doesn't matter what a dish is called as long as it meets your needs, and my dish absolutely meets my needs. I'm just wondering what a cooking community would call it. Totally open to tips!

I modified it for my wife by sautéing sliced mushrooms with less garlic, and using ham, and Swiss for the cheese. I do not like mushrooms or Swiss cheese, but I made it the same otherwise and she said it was outstanding. I've also made it (for myself) with chorizo, with boneless/skinless chicken breast, with brisket, with carnitas — meat always cooked, of course! I've even laid down a few scoops of leftover Jambalaya and poured the eggs over that. Gotta cook that lower, so the rice doesn't burn.

Bit of back story, I started with Android (2010-2014) but have used iPhone since. I have an Android phone (Galaxy S10) I use for some things. My wife is an Android user since 2010 but is not very technical.

Right to my question: how do you manage your images/gallery on Android? I know that the Android OS defaults to sorting by folder. I used to use QuickPic; my current gallery of choice is Google Gallery, for its simplicity (and being free). So you have your camera pics, your saved images, images from various apps tend to be in folders for those apps.

Is that organisation good enough for you? Or do you do more?

Jumping over to the Apple side, every image, saved or taken with the camera, goes into the "Camera Roll" gallery. It's all one monolithic thing. You can create albums within it, but unless you did that from the start, it's a monolithic task. Fortunately I found an app that makes it easy. It shows me an image, I tap the album I want to put it in. After a few hours, I had it sorted. Now I have a wallpaper album, an album of pictures of my wife, an album for holidays, an album for friends, one for cars, one for food... and so on. Every week or so I go back to this app to get the unsorted ones.

Yesterday I was looking at my wife's phone, and something bothered me. It occurred to me that, she's had this phone for 3 years and has never changed the lock screen. She said she tried to do it once and couldn't figure it out, so she left it alone. (It's a Galaxy S22, if you're curious.) I had a minute, so I dived in. Found it pretty quick. Asked her what she wanted. She said there was a wallpaper from this anime I sent her once... This is when I found an issue with Android's image organisation. It was hard to navigate and completely unsorted. (Likely, partially user error, which is why I'm asking here!) I solved the problem by going to my iPhone, going into my wallpaper album, finding the wallpaper in question, sending it over to her, and then picking it as the most recent image. I got the clock set up with her favourite colour, and now she's super happy with her lock screen. It's no longer "just there," now it reflects its owner better. Win/win. (Of course, if you looked at my S10, you'd never know it was managed by an "Apple guy." Nova Prime, everything customised to specification... honestly still an awesome phone, and does a few things better than my five-years-newer 16 Pro Max.)

So, TL;DR: are you happy with the folder-based (source-based) gallery system in Android? If so, how do you make it work for you? How can a user with something like 2500 saved images best make it work for them?

For some background, Blue Prince is a PC (Windows/Mac) and Xbox/PlayStation puzzle game in which you inherit a 45-room mansion from your late, eccentric uncle, but to earn it, you must reach the rumoured 46th room. The twist is, all the rooms reset every day (except a couple permanent rooms), so every time you come to a door, three blueprints (get it, Blue Prince) are drawn like cards from a deck, and you choose the one you want. Some are dead ends, some have goodies, and some have traps. (Sort of.)

Furthermore, a Souls-like game (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33) was controversially stripped of its Game of the Year award by an indie publication, due to it using generative AI to make some of its art. (33 won dozens of other GOTY awards elsewhere.) After this disqualification, Blue Prince was awarded the title in its stead. Because of the controversy, some unknown parties (33 fans? Someone else? Article is not clear) started accusing Blue Prince of using genAI as well.

The truth is a bit more interesting. First of all, there's no genAI in Blue Prince. Second of all, it's made by one guy, who 8 years ago allegedly sequestered himself away from all other games — kind of the antithesis of how AI works, stealing content from artists — so he wouldn't be influenced by any other game. So any puzzle or Roguelike game, or any deck building game you might think Blue Prince is similar to, if it came out in the last 8 years, it's purely coincidental.

You should play Blue Prince for a handful of reasons. One, it's an awesome little digital puzzle box. Beautiful, hand-drawn graphics, lots of secrets to uncover, lots of red herrings, it's just so fun to try to unpack it. It's also fun to just run blindly through a run. Despite the time limit implied in the beginning, there is no time/date requirement for completing the game. You can make 500 runs and never be told you took too much time. Two, it's on Windows and Xbox and PlayStation, but it's also on the Mac. Support for Mac gaming is rare and should be rewarded. Three, it's made by one guy. Four, it's like $20 when it goes on sale (I think the full price is $30 — I only care about sales because I bought it twice, once for my Mac and once for my Xbox). Four, Roguelikes, when done right, are some of the best games out there. I wish we could get Noita on Mac or at least Xbox. And five... because it wasn't made with genAI.