titusjohnson (u/titusjohnson)

titusjohnson commented on Cassette tapes are making a comeback? theconversation.com/casse... · Posted by u/devonnull

baobun · 14 days ago

> decades-old, chemically degraded cassette

Somehow it never occurred to me. I wonder how all the C64 games in the basement are doing...

About 5 years ago or so I was able to collect my Dad's C64 collection from my Mom's house, buy some new cables and an official C64 monitor off of eBay, and gift him his old computer back for Christmas.

I can't speak to cassettes, we had only cartridges and floppies. My Dad was a prolific pirate, so cases and cases of floppies. I'd say roughly 3 out of 5 worked, and we were able to boot the old game up. Karateka, 4th and Inches, Hat Trick, Bubble Bobble, Impossible Mission...

I was surprised the C64 worked, honestly. It had been stored for nearly a decade in an old Barn next to decrepit plow/cattle equipment from the early 1900's, not protected from the environment at all, just an old cardboard box literally busting at the seams. At least it wasn't on the ground.

titusjohnson commented on Valve is about to win the console generation xeiaso.net/blog/2025/valv... · Posted by u/moonleay

somenameforme · a month ago

Yes. There's a peer thread below this one with more examples, but in general the biggest (and most relevant) cost you're looking at with a new computer is the video card. And a PS5 level video card is the RX 6700 XT which is like $200-$300. If you're willing to purchase second hand you can go substantially lower.

I suspect most of us are of a vaguely similar age, and when "we" were growing up, PC gaming was ridiculously expensive. A new gaming PC was thousands of dollars and then obsolete within a couple of years, leaving you constantly checking new release 'minimum system requirements.' It was quite painful and a big reason I (and I suspect others) migrated to console gaming. But now a days? I have a relatively old PC and never even bother looking at spec requirements - it'll run it, just fine.

titusjohnson · a month ago

I used to budget the bulk of my yearly tax refund for a PC upgrade of some kind. A bit over $1k every year. Something was always due for a replacement in an endless treadmill of avoiding total system obsolescence.

Now, shit just lasts forever. I upgraded from a 1st gen i7 920 _this year_ into some mid-range Ryzen 5. I'm still using the 2070 RTX I bought over 5 years ago to power the HTC Vive and a 1440p monitor; with this new CPU the gfx card is finally getting a workout and has become the bottleneck while also giving me a massively better experience.

I'm tempted by the 9070 graphics cards but honestly, I just don't need it. I can tweak settings on any AAA game and get ~50fps of real frames and I'm just fine with that. I probably won't upgrade the graphics card until I pick up a dramatically better display device that requires it. Maybe the Frame will push the issue, maybe it won't.

titusjohnson commented on iPhone Pocket apple.com/newsroom/2025/1... · Posted by u/soheilpro

titusjohnson · a month ago

I take the pants that have insufficient pockets to a tailor, and ask them to extend the depth of the phone pocket. You can even ask them to do the extension in phone size if you want to restrict its movement in your pocket. On average I've needed about a 3" extension which both restricts lateral phone movement, and also carries it low enough on my thigh that the phone doesn't pinch into my hip when I sit down.

$30 or so later you'll have an integrated Pholster and don't have to carry another thing around with you. For $200 you should be able to update all the pants you have that lack a proper pocket. This is also an incredibly easy thing to sew yourself, by hand, while you watch TV. $30 for a tailor to do the first pair to give you a template to follow, $50 at a craft store will get you some decent scissors, needle, thread, and a yard of whatever material you like. You'll butcher the first pair of pants, but the second, will be better and the third will be perfect.

titusjohnson commented on YouTube Just Ate TV. It's Only Getting Started hollywoodreporter.com/bus... · Posted by u/wallflower

giancarlostoro · 2 months ago

Just let me buy an MP4 legally for $5 and I will buy every movie.

titusjohnson · 2 months ago

We need mandatory licensing. It worked for Radio, it can work for Streaming.

There's no reason Netflix and Hulu couldn't both have ALL media available. Then they could actually compete on features and capabilities, not on media catalog.

titusjohnson commented on The Era of Video Game Remakes Is Just Getting Started, New Report Finds kotaku.com/remakes-popula... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

titusjohnson · 2 months ago

I'm a big fan of tasteful remakes/remasters/updates. I don't mind paying again. I liked the Monkey Island update, System Shock, Myst, and Oblivion. They hit the right balance of QOL changes to take advantage of modern control schemes and polishing up the gfx to match my rose-colored memories. Oblivion on my HDTV looks so much like how I remember it looking on my 15" Compaq my nostalgia bones vibrate.

> About 60 percent thought 5-8 years is the ideal amount of time between versions. Only 11 percent thought 10 years or more was preferable.

This I don't understand. 5-8 years old is the ideal age to remaster? So Skyrim should have had a full-blown remaster by now, if not 2?

I want to see 20 year old stuff get this treatment. Homeworld 1, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Max Payne, Mech Warrior.

titusjohnson commented on Why do LLMs freak out over the seahorse emoji? vgel.me/posts/seahorse/... · Posted by u/nyxt

Melatonic · 3 months ago

I searched Kagi quickly and it looks like it never existed in Unicode but did exist on MSN messenger and Skype.

Since Unicode emojis were formally codified well after the popularity of both these messengers is it not that surprising this is confusing for both people and LLMs?

Emojis existed long before iPhones

titusjohnson · 3 months ago

Emoji, Emoticon, Smiley, to the average user these are all the exact same thing. They mean "fun inline image in my text". Technical people dismissing the Robber or Seahorse emoji as a Mandala Effect is actually a great example of not diagnosing the root problem, aka _not listening to the customer_.

I had massive, massive packs of custom icons installed into my Trillian client going all the way back to the early 00's. So did my friends, and we all knew it. Anyone new to the friend group was installing packs right away too so they could get all the fun jokes that were only applicable if you had the right emoticons installed. Here's [1] an example of a phpBB board distributing their custom icons as Trillian emoticons, so their members can keep the vibe going no matter how they are chatting.

The whole world did not fantasize a Robber emoji. We sent robber smileys. We sent and received gun emoticons, seahorses, aliens, etc. What changes is how those symbols are communicated. The feature shifted from being a local-only token-to-img replacement operation to being encoded in the character set that is delivered, and in that version rev of the "Fun images in text" concept, commonly used pictographs were left behind.

[1] - https://www.nightscrawlers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9745

titusjohnson commented on iPhone Air apple.com/newsroom/2025/0... · Posted by u/excerionsforte

davidclark · 3 months ago

“Thinnest” should be measured by the thickest slice for a given dimension.

I have an iPhone 11 which also has a camera bump and the experience of typing while the phone is on a flat surface is laughably annoying. For a company that prides itself on design aesthetics, it is honestly an embarrassing miss.

titusjohnson · 3 months ago

Apple doesn't advertise this as the intent, but until the Air I felt that the Phone+Case combo is the complete phone, as it is intended to be used. Add any of Apple's official cases, leather, silicone, whatever, and that's the official "thickness" of the phone. The cameras are recessed, the front display is recessed, the whole phone is wrapped in leather and further customized to your style.

Now the Air has a bump that is so big no case can hide it without also being unreasonably thicc, breaking the trend. I wonder what a case mfg could stuff into the awkward space on the peninsula where the camera is missing so the case provides a uniform surface when laying flat, even if that means a bigger bump on the top when cased. The phone would have a natural angle towards the user, that's kinda nice. Maybe a little bluetooth speaker setup so owners of the Air can more efficiently irritate their fellow passengers.

titusjohnson commented on Scientists No Longer Find X Professionally Useful, and Have Switched to Bluesky academic.oup.com/icb/adva... · Posted by u/sebg

ants_everywhere · 4 months ago

> there's still the issue of all the comic and manga crap labeled as art

I'm not into comics or manga, but surely they're art?

And I mean this quite aside from the annoyance of seeing them when you don't want to. I'm not saying you should have to see them. It just doesn't seem right to imply that you shouldn't have to see them because they're not art.

titusjohnson · 4 months ago

The problem with Art is Art is whatever the Artist says it is. There is no concrete definition of Art, it is wholy subjective to the perspectives of the creator and the appreciator. Comics & Manga certainly fall under the umbrella of art in a strict sense, they are first and foremost Comics & Manga.

Colloquially when people say Art they mean what they see in a museum, not what they can buy in the corner store. When I subscribe to a generic Art category I want to see artists showing techniques, cool paintings, breakdowns of how marble was carved, and most certainly not catgirl uwu. I might be interested in a post about how comics are made (high effort, interesting content), but I am not interested in a picture from issue #346 (low effort fandom attraction).

titusjohnson commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

swah · 4 months ago

You got me, I thought I had missed a Things release!

titusjohnson · 4 months ago

Woah... gonna be honest I really thought I was using a v4. Well, Things 3 is fantastic and I highly recommend it.

titusjohnson commented on Perplexity offers to buy Google Chrome for $34.5B theverge.com/news/758218/... · Posted by u/ndr

Topgamer7 · 4 months ago

Y'all are crazy. What is even the possible value in this?

titusjohnson · 4 months ago

Not who you're talking to, but there is none. Browsers have had "Bookmark all tabs" functionality for ages, which completely replaces tab hoarding. Especially now that the content of the page you visited 5 months ago isn't actually loaded in memory. It's basically a bookmark, switch to the tab and the content is reloaded.