#programming speak

[bitletsanddrabbles]

This is the second time in my life I've heard the word 'codec'.

The first time was in university when one of my online friends was super into this one anime series and thought I should watch it. Please note, this was in the days when if you wanted non-dubbed anime, you needed a source of fan subs. So she made me a copy of the fan subs she'd gotten and sent it to me with the promise that 'it had the right divex codec." Or was it divix? Divx? No clue and it doesn't really matter because I didn't know what the hell it was.

We'll go with divex, since I can't remember and have never heard of it since. The important part is that having no idea what she was talking about I went "Um, okay, thanks" and tried to play the DVD on my computer.

It didn't work.

When I told her I couldn't get it to play, she was absolutely confounded because she knew she'd given me the right codec, so she tried again. And again. I finally just gave up.

Ages later, after I'd lost any and all interest in the anime in question, something occurred to me. I hit...I think Hotbot was still THE Search Engine at the time...and sure enough.

With all of her fretting over getting me the right divex codec, she'd never once thought to make sure I had a divex player.

I still don't have the first idea what a codec is, and probably wouldn't know what to do with one if I did.

one piece of Computer Guy contrairianism i can't stand is "webp isn't actually bad, the programs you use just aren't equipped to support it!" okay well. soudns like for all intents and purposes its bad then innit

[always-a-mad-comet]

So I went ahead and cleaned up the audio for the Beatles 1960 demo I Don't Know (Johnny, Johnny). I know very little about audio mixing and all that, so it definitely isn't perfect, but in my opinion it's significantly more listenable and comprehensible than it was before.

[lavenderhorns]

Every now and then I remember that Malbolge exists and I get to spend the better part of an hour cry-laughing at the world’s worst programming language

already starting off strong, but it gets worse

Wow! Sounds easy and intuitive to use! What’s the “crazy operation” you ask? We’ll get to that later. For now let’s see what a program in this language looks like :)

Thanks! I hate it!

it’s so difficult to work with that the first program was written by another brute force search program

mmmmm delicious base-3 arithmetic, what could go wrong? (For reference, that means this program forgoes the usual “0/1″ values of binary code in favor of a much more fun “0/1/2″ set of values)

ah.

Here’s how the language actually figures out what to do. It’s got 8 “simple” commands that can be executed easily by *checks notes* running the code itself through the modulo operation and taking the result.

As a bonus, on top of all that every single character in your code will now alter what every single other character does. So I hope you’re alright with cracking a cipher every time you add a new letter to your program!

oh god oh fuck.

behold, Malbolge’s primary arithmetic operation and what you’ll be using for most of your math while programming with it :)

This looks specifically designed to be the least logical math operation you could make, and knowing what the rest of Malbolge is I’d wager that’s precisely what happened. I never want to ever use this and it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge

Anyways here’s the wiki page if you wanna read through it more deeply, I’m gonna sit here holding in my laughter staring at the hello world program again.

[somegrumpynerd]

Little pencil doodles of this post since @pigeonstab’s tags got me inspired again

And a bonus one

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[moonlitkissing]

How does one fucking flirt?

[bearotonin-international]

Please don’t tell Beejee that Narwhal Slammin Saturday doesn’t really have the right ring to it.

[teammateswap-au]

Susie and her friend who is completely real and normal :-]

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Don't understand why more people don't appreciate programming as a creative artform. It's one of my most self-indulgent admissions but programming an environment is like playing at being a God to me. I get to create swarms of little attendant automatons like biblical angels that contribute to the mechanism of the bespoke ecosystem I am crafting, and they all turn together in perfect harmony. If I could find a way to represent the interaction of data structures visually I could put this shit in a museum as a whirling sculpture that plays its own hand-shaped swarm ecology.

[darlingillustrations]

This is not art related, but it is Important, and I feel like y'all need to hear about it.

I found a way to get assistance with my Internet Bills.

Bills are really treacherous for me right now, as I imagine that they are for many of you as well. So I started reaching out to all the places where I have bills to see if the companies have any emergency assistance available for hardship situations.

I reached out to my Internet Provider (who will remain nameless). After spending HOURS on the phone, getting the run around (aka: agents trying to upsell products, having disconnections, and being treated really poorly) i FINALLY got someone who treated me like a human being, and he told me about the Affordable Connectivity Program!

The Affordable Connectivity Program

This is a federal assistance program in the US and it GIVES YOU MONEY TO HELP PAY FOR INTERNET. I want to scream about it here because Enrollments End February 7, 2024 and I didn't even know this program was a Thing!

Apply Before February 7, 2024!

The application is VERY easy. I completed it is a few minutes, and I got accepted the next day. It will take $30 off my internet bill every month.

So, if you are low income in the US, please please *please* check this out!!

(Link to the government page in reblogs.)

[phantomrose96]

I've been pulled into a work project where I'm the token senior engineer in a group of principals and partners.

And I'm on a sort of two-man engineering team with the notable partner in the group--which is a title they only give out when an existing partner dies (or retires I guess so I've heard)--and every day the whole thing feels like a comedy bit between cartoon scientist and assistant.

Like scientist whips up 10 whiteboards worth of schematics and calculations out of absolute nothing and I'm sitting there on the little three-legged stool sweating following along and go "but, but boss, if yous put the fuselage in series with the flux capacitor on line 3 of whiteboard 5, aint that gonna blow things sky high? It oughta be in parallel aint it?" At which point the scientist stares at the board and brushes his mustache with his hand and goes "by GOD assistant you are right! GENIUS work, assistant! this is why we have you!"

Anyway it's going pretty well

[dakotac0le]

I wish everysingle person who feels doubt about using aac for [insert literlly any reason] a very merry USE AAC !!! aac of every type. Communication cards . Communication boards . High tech boards . Etc . Is a wonderful and glourious tool !! Made explicitly for the purpose of helping disabled ppl communicate better. So if thats you for ANNNNY reason . USESEE IT !!

[ketprincxss304]

i’m so broken. i think someone should get to benefit from it.

like i don’t feel safe in a healthy relationship. i want to be scared. i want you to make me dependent on you. i want you to be jealous and controlling. i want you to punish me when i do something wrong. i want you to hurt me when you’re upset so that you can feel better. i want you to insult me and tell me the things i like are boring or why im stupid for liking them. i want us to fight until you lose your temper. it just makes me feel loved and like home if someone loves me enough to control me and hurt me

[kalashtars]

y'all remember when book fairs used to have those "banned books" display sections that advertised books based on that fact that they had been banned in schools in the past and everyone went "haha wow, it's crazy that they banned books like this! what a wacky thing to do!" haha........ yeah....... who would even do that......

[bandsanitizer]

oh how I missed them

[kermit-coded]

anyone else kinda getting orpheus and eurydice vibes from this episode?