Yup, versioned files ALWAYS get a YYYY-MM-DD HHMM timestamp. So when you sort alphabetically, they sort chronologically.

To me it’s much more unclear how sound is first encoded into a digital signal, transmitted as a digital signal through wires and radio waves, and then translated back into sound in a phone. I mean it’s essentially the same physics as the analog electronics, just with a bunch of extra steps added.

Yeah, this is where sample rate and bit depth come into play. In case you’re curious, digital audio is possible due to the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem. The TL;DR is that you don’t record a continuous stream of audio data; You just sample the wave at regular intervals by recording the current amplitude. And then you can recreate it on the other end. The theorem states that an analog wave can be perfectly recorded and replicated, as long as you have a sufficiently high sample rate and bit depth. Since human hearing generally tops out at 20kHz, we need to sample the audio signal at least 40k times per second; Most consumer-grade audio equipment uses 44.1 or 48kHz. Phones actually use a much lower sample rate for calls, but more on that later.

Again, as long as your sample rate is at least 2x the rate of the highest frequency being recorded, you’re able to perfectly recreate the wave. For an example, here’s a gif:

The image on the left shows the wave being recorded, and the dots are samples. As you add more samples, the reproduced wave gets more accurate. By the time you have 2x the fastest frequency, there is only one possible wave that will fit every sample. Again, human hearing tops out around 20kHz, so we use a sample rate just above 40kHz.

Phone calls will often put a filter on the high and low ends, and only capture the mid-range. It gives that distinct “this is shitty phone call quality” sound, but means they can use a much lower sample rate; Since they’re lopping off most of the high end with that filter, they may only need a sample rate closer to 15 or 20kHz. Because fewer samples means less data. The intelligibility happens in the mid-range, so that’s what the phone makers (and telecom companies) focus on. This low sample rate is also why hold music sounds so fucking awful. It’s essentially being passed through a “make this sound as shitty as possible while still being intelligible” filter.

And then bit depth simply determines how detailed each sample is. If you use 8 bits per sample, that gives you 256 potential values per sample. 12 bits gives you 4096. The trade-off is that a higher bit depth means each sample takes exponentially more data; Audiophiles will generally push for higher bit depths, so each sample is more accurate. In contrast, phone calls often use lower bit depths, (again, to save data).

As for how it actually transmits the data, that’s just 1’s and 0’s. It’s a little more complicated than that, (packets, for example) but in the digital realm, as long as the 1’s and 0’s get to where they need to be, you’re good to go.

Ironically, mobile phones being digital makes them easier for many people to understand. The analog circuitry that goes into simply making an analog phone ring is surprisingly complex, let along how they actually function as phones.

Analog audio is a lot less “computer nerds programming things” and a lot more “scrapped together from some resistors that were ripped out of an old TV. We don’t even know how it turns on, let alone how it functions.” You can literally build a basic microphone with nothing but a balloon stretched across an embroidery hoop, some copper wire, a small magnet, and some glue. It wouldn’t sound good, but it would function as a microphone in some capacity, and at least be able to detect loud noises. And the same goes for a speaker; You could build one out of a red Solo cup, a magnet, some wire, and some glue. It wouldn’t sound good, but you could at least get a basic “sound is being emitted from this” level from it. But if you showed that scrapped-together device to someone, they’d have no idea that it was a phone.

It has a decent community, yes. It’s basically the go-to gaming distro for many people.

Because China supposedly used Nvidia cards to train DeepSeek, which blew all of the US AI out of the water. And apparently that raised some eyebrows, because Nvidia wasn’t supposed to be selling to China (free market, right?). Since China was eating big tech’s lunch, they cried to republicans (and gave them a bunch of reelection money) and now we have this bill. The point is to be able to remotely disable cards if they’re outside of their sale region.

If you’re looking for a desktop version of SteamOS and are used to using Windows, your best bet is likely Bazzite with the KDE desktop environment. There are mixed feelings among Linux users about immutable distros, (many of the more advanced users feel it is too limiting), but there’s no denying the Bazzite is the most straightforward way to get things like Nvidia drivers and HDR.

Oh, is EA the reason Popcap vanished? Honestly, if they were still around, they’d probably make some killer mobile games (if they actually sold them as complete games and not the microtransaction hell that most mobile games fall into).

that respect their time

I know you’re not talking about old school RPGs. The older games tended to pad playtime by having insane difficulty levels or by requiring grinds. Hell, my favorite JRPG (edit: Legend of Legaia) is specifically more grindy in America, because the devs decided to slash the experience and gold drop rates by like 50% for the American release, and make all of the enemies hit much harder. (Interestingly, the original enemy stats are still present in the game code, and then the game runs some “x1.25” math when the battle starts, to bump all of their stats up to the values that actually get used in combat.) So you need to be a higher level to be able to survive, and you need to grind twice as long to reach those higher levels and to be able to buy better gear. I like it despite the grind, not because of it; In most of my play throughs, I end up using cheats to avoid the grind.

and aren’t a glorified second job

I mean, games like Ultima Online, RuneScape, Diablo, and EverQuest have existed since the 90’s. Hell, RuneScape used to be extremely approachable for young players because it didn’t require a good computer or any installs; It just ran directly in your internet browser.

The bigger reason many adults feel this way is not because games have gotten longer or harder. Adults simply have less time to play. They don’t want to spend a bunch of time researching optimal builds or grinding rank in multiplayer matches. Instead, they want to fall back to the games that they already know how to play. They’re willing to ignore the fact that their favorite single player game requires 10-20 hours of grinding, because it doesn’t feel like work to them. Or if it does, they can just use cheats to get around it. They don’t need to research how to get a specific item, or how to approach a specific boss fight, because they have already done it a dozen times.

Trump and Epstei- oh wait…

Sheriffs are usually elected, not appointed. It’s one of the big reasons decriminalization is so difficult; No elected cop wants to look soft on crime, because their opponents can use it against them in smear campaigns during the next election.

There’s also the fact that the entire American education system is set up to teach Americans that peaceful protest is the only acceptable form of protest. History classes teach about the American revolution as if it was a fully justified break from an oppressive monarchy… And then as soon as it’s done, there’s a hard turn towards “but that was the only time violence was justified. In every other case, you’re expected to peacefully protest instead. Here, have another portrait of MLK Jr in case you forgot what he looked like.”

The Black Panthers were barely even a footnote in my history books. There weren’t any mentions of the union riots, where factory workers threatened to drag the owners out of their offices and lynch them. Because those would show that violence is effective.

Homeslice is smoking crack on an airplane.

And this is the real crux of the issue. If there are no penalties for ignoring the court order, then we have already entered the “we need to start lighting dome-topped buildings on fire” phase of protests. Because if the judicial branch is truly being ignored, then there is nothing to stop it from escalating to straight up “Secret Police disappearing citizens in the dark of night for having dissenting opinions” levels.

Yeah, the EU has forced Apple to allow third-party browsers, but that was only a few months ago and there aren’t any currently available yet. Since they had been disallowed for so long, no browsers had something ready to go; writing them to be compatible with iOS will take time.

Yeah, my “Public Transit” option on google maps is entirely greyed out. This is my daily commute to work:

It’s always entertaining to see the Europeans go “lol just ditch your car, it has to start somewhere” like it wouldn’t require me to move my entire family across town, (and pay 3x as much rent to live in the city…) Like I don’t even have the option of taking public transit, because there are no connecting lines between my home and my job. Literally none. The nearest bus stop is almost as far away as my job, and it’s in the opposite direction.

And to be clear, that 2+ hour walk would be on a highway with no sidewalk. I’d be dead on day 1. If I wanted to avoid the highway, the walk would be closer to 4.5 hours; The highway is the only direct path.

This feels a little bit like Brainfuck tbh.

For what it’s worth, I can think of one thing that would make brainfuck even worse: Instead of using 8 arbitrary characters (it only uses > < + - . , ] and [ for every instruction) for the coding, use the 8 most common letters of the alphabet. Since it ignores all other characters, all of your comments would need to be done without those 8 letters.

For example, “Hello World” in brainfuck is the following:

++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++.

If we instead transposed those 8 instructions onto the 8 most common letters of the alphabet, it would look more like this:

eeeeeeeeaneeeeaneeneeeneeenesssstonenentnneasostonnIntttIeeeeeeeIIeeeInnIstIsIeeeIttttttIttttttttInneIneeI

Apple has had it built into iOS for a while now; This person likely got scammed out of $10 to “buy” a feature that was already baked into their OS.

Yeah, one of my most often stated phrases at work is “you can’t make people read.”

Error pops up, explaining exactly what the issue is and how to fix it? Oh god, let me call IT to see what I need to do. Yeah, you can’t make people read.

Some piece of equipment or machinery has changed in some meaningful way? Management is quick to go “just hang a sign on it, letting people know the new process.” Nope, you can’t make people read. People will physically move the sign to the side, try to use the machine like they previously did, and get surprised when it doesn’t work as expected.

Some area is unsafe due to work happening overhead? “Oh just hang signs on the doors, telling people not to come in.” No, you can’t make people read; I have seen people push their way past physical barriers with big “do not enter” signs, just to ask if we’re open. How about we lock the doors, and disable the keyways on all the doors (except one, where we have physical barriers to entry) until the work is completed?

The floor is freshly painted? People will walk past six different “do not enter - wet paint” signs and physically push past stanchions or barriers, and then act surprised when their shoes stick to the floor.

I mean, her feet are chained. Which also feels appropriate…

Yeah, this is what a lot of people don’t initially understand about eldritch horror. The horror isn’t in seeing something scary. The horror is that seeing that thing teaches you things that you can’t even comprehend.

Imagine if there was a living, breathing, real two dimensional creature. It’s a stick figure on a piece of paper. All it knows is is up, down, left, and right. As far as it is concerned, the infinite X/Y plane is the entire universe. And then one day, you rip it off of that sheet of paper and drop it into our 3D world. And it can’t even begin to comprehend what it is experiencing. It literally doesn’t have the right sensory organs to experience 3D life. It struggles to understand anything. And after letting it experience 3D life momentarily, you simply stick it right back onto the paper where it came from. The stick figure screams, for it knows the universe is much larger than any of their friends believe… But it doesn’t even have the right words to describe what that larger universe is, because it doesn’t even understand it in the first place.

That is where the mind-melting horror comes from. To an eldritch being, teaching us anything is like teaching calculus to an ant. Anything it tries to teach us is just going to be useless, because we won’t even have the ability to process the information after we’re dropped back into our current existence. Even if it’s not trying to teach us anything, the simple fact that we encountered it is enough for us to start seeing things we can’t even comprehend. But we’ll know it exists. We’ll know it’s out there somewhere.