Recent Posts

201

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 18, 2015, 12:06 AM »

Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level  MIT Technology Review

-Arizona Hot (September 15, 2015, 02:11 PM)

Original paper (masters dissertation) here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.01549

-mouser (September 15, 2015, 04:56 PM)

I remember when I was a kid I could beat the chess computer. At the time I never had any fear of AI. Both of those things have changed.

-Renegade (September 17, 2015, 09:11 PM)

I downloaded the paper and might read it in more detail when I have time. For now, I'd be interested in how it does in the traditional "anti-computer but legit lines" like defending the White side of a King's Indian Defense because it has those long nebulous buildups before the attack looks like it makes sense.

And also I don't exactly know where it picks up its knowledge, but even "simple learning" can survey say the existing GM games and say "let's do that!" So using for example my crude tool here at DC "PGN Extractor", you go "Select games of Hikaru Nakamura+Black Plays King's Indian+White Wins" and it studies whatever White did there. Before modern web realtime-y game knowledge came along, that's how I was studying a decade ago.

202

Living Room / Re: 14 year-old boy arrested for creating a digital clock

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 16, 2015, 07:36 PM »

It's an unfortunate state of affairs. I can understand the frustration, but if you ignore the context of recent history, you're just leaving out too much.
And if that context is introduced, I think it's going to be unfortunately pretty much Basement material...

-tomos (September 16, 2015, 05:02 PM)

And even worse (stairs leading to the basement), is look at his name. And he didn't have the right "marketing". If this had been a "science fair project by a good ol' boy sounding name", he would have been all over "look how smart our kids are!"

203

Living Room / Re: New Computer

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 16, 2015, 01:37 PM »

So it's time to put my now mildly arcane decade old flagship (Spunky-V) ...

-Stoic Joker (August 19, 2015, 07:13 AM)

Heh "Hey Spunky-V, say hi to my Twilight!"  (The end of XP, Mission Accomplished!)

204

Living Room / Re: New Computer

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 16, 2015, 01:35 PM »

Nice, but "1TB Raid5"?

Why Raid5, especially for such a small volume?

-f0dder (September 16, 2015, 01:25 PM)

Hey, y'all wanna just put in a two-paragraph explanation of what this even means so non-techies like me can pretend to know what this even means?

What is Raid 5, why would it be odd for "such a small volume", why didn't you just get a bigger HD (where this config might make sense?), and why not a second HD as well besides the existing base SSD? My box is aging too, but I have a dual 1-TB set of HD's from 2006, so I thought they'd be up to something like 4-6 TB by now per each hard drive. Or for at least one hard drive if you went that route, why 1TB? Why not bigger?

205

General Software Discussion / Re: Any free portable pdf editor with these features?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 16, 2015, 01:26 PM »

Check the PdfToolkit

-moongose (September 16, 2015, 09:41 AM)

From their page:

"Requirement 1:
Free Adobe Reader

Requirement 2:
Free GhostScript 8.63 (10MB)"

So I guess there's an efficiency effect going on here - that people want to preserve parts of the "freemium" effect and not just release a full featured competitor to Adobe.

206

General Software Discussion / Re: Any free portable pdf editor with these features?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 16, 2015, 01:20 PM »

Adobe Acrobat 8 PRO is neither portable nor supported, however by visiting the following site, with a bit of work you can install a fully functional version of this formerly pricey program. It has worked very well for me.
kk
http://blog.stead.id...crobat-pro-8-on.html

-yogi22 (September 16, 2015, 07:36 AM)

Interesting, though that looks too complex for me! (  "...then do the following steps ... download these updates and install them in the correct order ..." ) 

I have less complex needs than all that, and if I ever really need to do power house work, I might be able to justify affording a full Acrobat 11 or something.

207

General Software Discussion / Trouble connecting to chat

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 15, 2015, 09:37 PM »

Now it's not connecting to me at all! As about 10:38 PM Tuesday 9-15-2015

Anyone have ideas?

208

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 12, 2015, 02:26 PM »

How oldschool graphics worked Part 1 - Commodore and Nintendo - YouTube

-Arizona Hot (September 12, 2015, 02:16 PM)

I gotta take exception to this one.

Commodore 128.

Combine the "hardness" of C64, with passage of time as a child, into the stunningly easier C128 overlay that *still included a C64 backbone for compatibility*, and I STILL ponder about making a "twenty years later" version of my "avoid the people" game, except this time with NY City streets and people looking at their cell phones while Doing Stuff.

At about age nine, I found the C64 completely un-programmable. At about age twelve I made a low-digit bunch of games, typed in more before that croaked (and that's how I learned to type!), and lived life before it blew up on me about three years ago.

Poke 16380,0: Poke 16381,6: New

Ready.

RIP Commodore. It matters "which old skool you go to" at which age.

209

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 12, 2015, 02:16 PM »

Most forums have theme switcher mods (drop down somewhere in the footer) too. I believe smf does but probably not actively maintained if I had to guess.

-rgdot (September 10, 2015, 02:55 PM)

SMF has always had user-selectable themes but mouser has always disabled them - Having more than 1 theme available for people, means making more than 1 theme, then dealing with half a million requests for changes on both...

-Stephen66515 (September 10, 2015, 03:18 PM)

And that's before my Antarean Trader system gets involved!

210

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for White-on-Black or Transparent Menu-Less Text Displayer

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 12, 2015, 02:11 PM »

Thank you for the suggestions, but the main need is the capability of using a key combo like CTRL-SHFT-DOWNARROW that will still move the cursor (and therefore, the displayed text) down one line at a time even when another window has focus.  I hope this makes sense?

-CodeTRUCKER (September 12, 2015, 12:00 PM)

Hopefully someone will find a glint of value into this uneducated guess, but I kinda have a small specialty of "chaining" programs together and this almost makes me think you need some three scripts, one of which "knows to do that" and drop you back into whatever the other solutions are doing.

Last I knew, Programs Like Having Focus, so then to elaborate above, you need something deep-leveled that "over-rides Liking Focus" and Do Stuff.

211

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 12, 2015, 02:02 PM »

Hi Inuendo.

I was raising similar concerns a few days back, but nice research into "whatever" the 24 ESR release branch means into Stuff.

I think I'm slightly meta-concerned that Google, well, became "a verb" to replace "web search engine", but then they decided to make Android and are scaring Apple, then they decided "hey, let's do browsers" and A, made Chrome that lots of people like as is, then made *Mozilla* turn add-ons into Chrome Compatible things.

So now that Pale Moon is going to decide to make their own engine, did someone "super-trap" them into that?! "No security experts" (but you know some will), "will be looking at their code..." - I'm getting lost in the Meta-Game again.

I really emphasize the split between User UI and Backbone. And Mouser just (medium) changed the User UI look to fix a decade of creaking backbone. But so - if people can't just do old school "let's do FF forks", are we getting meta-played into something? So Mozilla is Doing Things, Pale Moon has been a serious leading contender spin, I'm using a 3rd tier one by Comodo called Ice Dragon, Vivaldi is trying to re-undo Opera-ish-things, and sky only knows what MS's Edge means into all of this!

I just want non-sleek old style menus where all 70 features are there, and people don't go "yay simple, so we can trick you into us hiding behind gear icons into cutting huge swaths of features!"

But Opera V1 and possibly Vivaldi are getting stuck into "invent your own rendering engine" and the Pale Moon guys might be good, until someone meta-sinks them with "oh look, your new engine just died to a security failure so go away now."

212

Living Room / Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 02:27 PM »

We've been playing this non-stop, it's become one of my favorite board games.
How did your daughter like it?  Remember that some of the factions are definitely harder to play than others -- so help her to avoid the crazy ones.

-mouser (September 10, 2015, 02:15 PM)

What Magic the Gathering taught me is that sometimes it's one of the "crazy" systems are the ones that beyond-break the game.

So I don't know which tone to use - "help her play a nice sensible system, or one that breaks the game so badly the company has to invent entire new rules to stop it!"

 

213

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 12:32 PM »

Surely we need some color! 

-mouser (September 10, 2015, 12:35 AM)

I agree.  White is just too... white.  Especially at night.

-wraith808 (September 10, 2015, 08:14 AM)

There's a fascinating social question here somewhere because about a decade of Cyberpunk lore made dark colors "the thing", until the "masses" decided "White feels safe".

Now I don't know what anyone thinks of Light Blue.

214

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 12:30 PM »

As useful as that private test area was, it involved quite a bit of ugly hacking around with a bunch of scattered areas of the forum codebase, and in my effort to keep things clean i am hesitating porting it over.

-mouser (September 10, 2015, 10:17 AM)

It's not something used every day anyway.  One can just preview and modify someplace or other I guess. 

-MilesAhead (September 10, 2015, 12:27 PM)

It was a strange thing - because it was semi-live bb posting. A key other choice is to leave it in a local text file, but I only used it like three times so it's not worth 30 hours of Mouser hacking to only use it three times.

Watch out, we're getting into Biz Mgt here soon!

 

215

Living Room / Re: TSA's master keys leaked, 3D printed

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 12:25 PM »

The big difference here is that if the bad guys can get into my suitcase, they might steal my socks.

The potential damage to us if and when somebody backdoors our secret data is far more serious.

-CWuestefeld (September 10, 2015, 11:37 AM)

Unless instead of stealing your socks they put an additional item or two in your suitcase.

-40hz (September 10, 2015, 12:23 PM)

40hz was being nice. It gets WAY worse!

216

General Software Discussion / Re: Browsers History Manager (even several browsers at the same time)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 12:24 PM »

This thread disturbs me a little because I purposely split my browsers so at low levels I fix certain problems. I have noticed more and more how my "Youtube suggestions" are being populated with stuff.

I'm stuck at prob 1, why are you/you-plural using multi browsers and then trying to track it!? It feels like a "Work wants X, I want Y, then Z shows up somewhere" type problem but I'm saying we're missing a backstory here.

217

Living Room / Re: TSA's master keys leaked, 3D printed

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 10, 2015, 12:19 PM »

I'm currently typing this on my tablet. It's too much work to properly quote the article. I'll edit this later to look nicer.


http://www.wired.com...-keys-leaked-photos/

I don't think there's much of a stronger argument against intentionally putting in backdoors to any form of security, including encryption than this. Once the master/secret key is out, it's over for everybody!

-Deozaan (September 10, 2015, 11:26 AM)

I'm gonna mis-fire my tone a little, but somewhere you (the Govt) can't both whine about "Cybersecurity" and "Let's put in weaknesses!"

Flannery O'Connor goes all "Everything That Rises Must Converge" on you.

So I am starting to disengage in all these stories because actually applying your third day of logic class 103 in college leads to madness. You just have to decide which of eleven squares you step into when you step out of the box, and eight of them lead to insanity. Renny would agree.
 

218

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 04:16 PM »

Instead of segregated blogs, it might be useful to have a "DC Blog" where, with varying bits of editing help, everyone can post articles. So if we ever get into marketing, it's easier, and you can always do a sub-pull of people's posts, but it helps them/us not feel "pressured by blog decay". The byline is there, and the general momentum carries us all more than the sum of the parts.

It's easier to keep a "DC Blog" rolling than everyone dealing with blog stagnation. "Some other day's problem" is if you get so many initial articles, tactically space them out so you don't get a 3 month drought right afterward or something but whatever.

219

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 04:09 PM »

"Zoom in" is a bit of a strange thing. Because your browser "mostly" remembers those, and then you forget you ever even did it "whenever back then".

So I'm on the fence and don't know what to say.

A laptop and a desktop with a big screen are totally two diff experiences!

220

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 10:44 AM »

I think logically there is something to be said for not having links bolded by default -- just because it enables SOME links to be bolded for emphasis; other than that I am ambivalent.
Let's try it this way for a week and make a decision at that point.
Screenshots above show the difference in look -- or you can always use a local css file to override the site css.

-mouser (September 08, 2015, 10:32 AM)

Me on my admittedly creaky system, I have no idea what any of you are talking about. No new colors, no new icons, the works.

221

General Software Discussion / Re: urgent free AVG expired request!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 09:13 AM »

As a more general answer I should say that I'm more of a satisfactionizer than an optimizer when it comes to system tools -- once a tool works well enough i tend to stop looking for the best tool..

-mouser (September 06, 2015, 01:38 PM)

Yay for Mouser creating words!

I'm a *terrible* "Satisfactionizer" !

(Much to the chagrin of a few coding snack people here!)

It comes from a stunning disparity of skills. With the existing known-coded features of programs, I'm kinda good at getting "A few extra Gigawatts out of these babies" (Scotty, Star Trek TNG, Relics), but when the low level stuff starts to crack, I'm doomed. I noticed about a week ago that something that was churning my disk drive and/or fan suddenly isn't. It's close to the time frame that I did a sloppy hand-block of TaobaoProtect, probably acquired near the time I got the bright idea to install Firefox Chinese Edition. (And that thing! It tries to re-copy itself into like four locations! All I did was crudely chop it with a woodcutter, it could be lurking still, in some zombie state!)

So I am so much of a Satisfactionizer.

"If your system is still alive, abuse it some more, because at this rate, Microsoft deprecates OS'es faster!"

   

222

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 08:34 AM »

I find that there isn't enough contrast between pinned threads and everything else (eg the living room) particularly when viewed on a small device (like my 10" netbook).  Did the old format have a dedicated icon (I can't remember, but it was quite plain)

-Target (September 07, 2015, 07:15 PM)

Check again now please (make sure to F5 to reload css).

-mouser (September 08, 2015, 05:58 AM)

Well, since you switched it, do you still want any screen shots?

PS What is NOW different for me ... is when I quote, it was green yesterday! Now the theme colors are all blue! (I have an old tab open so I can see the changes.)

223

Developer's Corner / Re: Double Clicking, Force Touch, and other strangeness

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 08, 2015, 08:19 AM »

I gotta check my settings, maybe look into some kind of function key disable widget. Because I don't use them, and they sorta only seem to show up when I reach for a "real key" and then my browser goes crazy doing something.

But then, those are often the only ways to do low-level boots, so it feels dangerous!

224

General Software Discussion / Re: Mind mapping software

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 06, 2015, 05:24 PM »

I had actually looked at a tool that used a more tree-like structure and I am debating if that is going to be useful for my processes. I had looked at myBase before but wasn't really drawn to it. While I do rely on a tree style architecture for things like email, I found the process cumbersome to add things in/out of this database.

I am really interested in thoughts on how people use this software so I can look at new ways to think about it. I have had a lot of random thoughts that I need to somehow relate so I can see where the major focus areas are in an attempt to focus my research efforts on my thesis (and later, hopefully, my dissertation). I will check out MyInfo none-the-less as perhaps I may be able to go back to that style of tracking.

Thanks!

-Josh (September 06, 2015, 04:35 PM)

Dear Josh,
The following is just a detailed note from a paid Pro user with no agenda/conflict of interest.

But One of the things I thought MyInfo could be perfect at is research!

In a nutshell, you start developing topics like this:

WhyJoshRules
   He is so smart, and he's asking for my help! OhMyGawd!
   He's smarter than I am, so he's researching some cool topic!

Topic1-Whatever you are researching
   Control-N to add a new subnode.
   Yay new subnode!
   Yay new subnode!
   Yay new subnode!
   Yay new subnode!
Oh Look this Subnode got important so control-shift-left arrow to make it Important and move it up later!
   Yay new subnode!

   Footnotes
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here
       Some ref goes here

And then you roll them all up when you work on the real project. Roll them back down to do x to them.

It's the "only winner" of a medium survey I did about five years ago now. I don't know what MyBase is, and I want to stay away of exactly why it may or may not fit you. For now just suppose the tree idea fits, then try the free version of MyInfo. (I bought the Pro version mostly for a Publishing Export feature.)

Then fair enough, a couple of other people decided it was not quite for them, but then that at least gets to specifics, and if there's just one niggling thing, you might hafve a chance at the dev adding it. (A bit rare, but it happens.)

225

Developer's Corner / Re: Double Clicking, Force Touch, and other strangeness

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 06, 2015, 05:12 PM »

Sometimes, simple, no matter how inelegant it may seem, is just better.

-wraith808 (September 06, 2015, 03:59 PM)

it is very hard advice for a programmer to take -- and as much as i give it to myself i still find it hard to take -- but one of the things you learn over time as a developer is the extremely high price that one pays over time for complexity.
The initial development cost is misleading and unimportant compared to the accumulated maintenance costs over time with complexity.

-mouser (September 06, 2015, 04:37 PM)

Except be really careful, because in the FF-Chrome wars, this is rapidly becoming
"Yeah! Simple! We'll only put 18 of the 70 existing features there, call it Simple, and save ourselves 4690 dev hours! Win!"