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Sham bam bamina! posted:I wanted to send you a message, but you have PMs disabled. Yeah as I recall it wasn't quite as OP characterizes here
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Nov 16, 2021 20:01
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Can I request a link for the TBB discord please? The last one posted in the thread doesn't seem to work.
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Nov 17, 2021 12:57
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Gertrude Perkins posted:Can I request a link for the TBB discord please? The last one posted in the thread doesn't seem to work. https://discord.gg/CB3hJ2v6
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Nov 17, 2021 13:17
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Today is the last day to sign up for Secret Santa. I'll start matching posters up at midnight CST.
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Nov 18, 2021 15:03
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It's not a book, and I'm remarkably late to the party, but Disco Elysium is giving me the warm fuzzies of reading a really great book. I went hunting for an english version of the lead writer/designer's novel, but it sounds like the Estonian readers weren't super impressed by it, and it's not translated yet. I'm content with tucking into this multimedia experience, but I am almost a little disappointed by the fact that it has game elements.....
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Nov 18, 2021 16:01
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from what i’ve seen of that game, if you want something similar in novels I think Pynchon would be a great choice
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Nov 18, 2021 22:32
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I'm looking to replace Goodreads (or just use it better). I want something that can have books I've read, want to read, own, don't own, and maybe ebook/physical copy. I think I could do it with Goodreads tags, and I'm also messing with Libib which also uses tags. Any other apps/sites/spreadsheets I should check out?
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Nov 20, 2021 22:51
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There's Storygraph, which is specifically a Goodreads competitor and it includes a built in way to tag something as owned. Also you can mark something DNF, the lack of which is a big weakness of Goodreads imo.
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Nov 21, 2021 00:26
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Giving up on doing a Let's Read the Cypherpunks Mailing List thread, at least for now. The seventh or eighth post in the 1992 Cypherpunks mailing list dump file is a small 46 word post from Cliff Stoll that has sent me off on a 200+ word (and growing) digression on the deep weirdness and web of associations documented in non-fiction print that spring up for me anytime relationships come up in the Cypherpunks mailing list (aka the CML) or with 1980's-1990's computer hackers. If I got that much from a 46 word post, a podcast or a dedicated blog seems more appropriate. Anyway, here's that 200+ word digression in case anyone is interested. Half of Cliff Stoll's 46 word post that got forwarded to the CML from alt.cyberpunk.tech was how his marriage with Martha broke up. Cliff Stoll's 1989 non-fiction book "The Cuckoo's Egg" had a big thing about how computers weren't his life, instead Cliff's non-conformist lifestyle and his deep connection with Martha, his soulmate and girlfriend-turned wife was what he lived for. 3 yrs later, as per his forwarded post to the CML; yeah not so much. Writing that down also made me remember CML related deep weirdness in the 1996 book TAKEDOWN, which is a non-fiction book about how Tsutomu Shimomura tracked down and "caught" Kevin Mitnick during Mitnick's 2.5 year as a computer hacker fugitive in the mid-1990's. Two notes on this: Number one, as per TAKEDOWN, Tsutomu Shimomura was in a weird open relationship with his girlfriend that was also dating a few other guys including John Gilmore, the CML founder. For clarification purposes, John Gilmore was an early mega-rich internet libertarian and hosted the cypherpunk mailing on his own internet domain/personal server at his house, back when having a domain name and physically owning computer servers meant you were a extremely hardcore computer person. Anyway, the secondary plotline in TAKEDOWN was Shimomura documenting his open relationship with his girlfriend that was also dating John Gilmore. The girlfriend eventually choose Shimomura over John Gilmore, but Shimomura was so insecure over his relationship, he took his girlfriend everywhere during the final 2 months of tracking down Mitnick, up to and including bringing her to the actual arrest site and then court hearings of Kevin Mitnick. Number two: The main reason Tsutomu Shimomura got involved in tracking down Kevin Mitnick is because Mitnick hacked Shimomura's home server network. What really made it personal for Shimomura was that someone kept sending taunting voicemails to Tsutomu Shimomura about how Shimomura would never catch Mitnick, which Shimomura mentioned a few times in TAKEDOWN and posted on the website for TAKEDOWN which is still up as of 2021. http://www.takedown.com/evidence/index.html While Zeke Shiff ultimately took credit for the harassing calls; https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-case-of-the-kung-fu-phreak I always felt it was probably Lenny DiCicco, Mitnick's accomplice/computer hacker friend that actually made those calls. Lenny DiCicco had a conflicted history with Mitnick that reached it's deeply weird peak when DiCicco uh took over Mitnick's relationship with Mitnick's wife at some point during Mitnick's 2.5 years as a fugitive. Source on the DiCicco wife takeover thing is The Fugitive Game. As much I've mentioned Kevin Mitnick here, I want to make one point. Refreshingly, Kevin Mitnick never seems to have harassed or stalked women (that is outside of a toxic hate-hate relationship with female hacker Susan Thunder ((who also apparently became a cypherpunks/CML poster)) unlike most computer hacker/phone-freaks of 1980's-1990's. Most computer-hackers/phone phreaks of the 1980's-1990's merely just creepily stalked women over the phone or used their phone-hacker skills to call phone-sex lines for free or if they needed under-the-table cash badly, setup ad-hoc unregistered phone-numbers for illegal escort/prostitution rings. It was the "other Kevin" 1980's hacker aka Kevin Poulsen that stalked and harassed women over phone lines and PHYSICALLY. Poulsen became obsessed with Molly Ringwald at the height of her movie career fame, and recorded her phone calls and hacked into her answering machine and deleting messages on it. Physically following Molly Ringwald around Los Angeles, into restaurants and movie theaters, yelling things Ringwald had only mentioned in private phone conversations, etc. Poulsen source is The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 12:41
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ulvir posted:from what i’ve seen of that game, if you want something similar in novels I think Pynchon would be a great choice I've had him recommended to me enough times I probably should just take the leap, thanks for the push. Sounds like Inherent Vice might be a good entry point based on the subject...and I've been meaning to watch the movie for a long time.
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Nov 23, 2021 15:52
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I dunno if this is the right place to ask- my dad's been reducing his gigantic book collection and recently asked me to help him list this fancy set of 'art' books? Anyways, turns out, it's quite an expensive collection of books: A Survey of Chinese Ceramics. and I was gonna throw them on ebay, but then I started wondering if there's a better more focused place for books like these to be sold? I don't really know anything about these kind of books.
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Dec 1, 2021 22:10
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Revitalized posted:I dunno if this is the right place to ask- my dad's been reducing his gigantic book collection and recently asked me to help him list this fancy set of 'art' books? you should probably be talking to a rare book dealer or an auction house that specialises in rare books
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Dec 2, 2021 05:58
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I've been reading Wittgenstein's Poker - 'Ardly even knew (Popp)'er* and I'm really glad I opted for "just alphabetize everything on the shelf" instead of "put things that are about things next to each other", because I've no idea how to categorize it. But it's a good light read for someone like me who doesn't really know anything about anything. Anyway,  e: Also started reading Martin Andersen Nexø's De tomma Pladsers Passagerer, which seems to be a collection of short stories about the "passengers of the empty seats" i.e. people who could have been going somewhere, but The Man got them. Very bleak stuff but also not overly pathetic (so far). *) That is not the actual subtitle for I am a funny jokester, you see. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Dec 2, 2021 |
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Dec 2, 2021 06:48
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Any other Reacher heads in here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSycMV-_Csw I'm glad he's humongous, but he's way too pretty imo. Reacher in my head always looked kind of rough, this is the handsomest guy alive.
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Dec 3, 2021 18:47
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fadam posted:Any other Reacher heads in here? I should read those, they seem keen the kind of trash I could spend a week burning through It was just silly seeing Tom Cruise trying ro be huge, this guy at least you're like "ok yes huge dude"
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Dec 3, 2021 18:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I should read those, they seem keen the kind of trash I could spend a week burning through I started reading the series semi-ironically because I was spending a lot of time on the train and wanted something trashy to read while I didn't have cell service, then got radicalized after the third book and read and loved most of them over a few months. The quality drops off significantly near the end of the run (I suspect Lee Child hasn't been the main writer on any of them for like five years now) but I legitimately think the first like fourteen (lmao) or so books are a ton of fun. They share a lot of DNA with the original Conan short stories imo. I'm an adult literacy tutor and the first book ("Killing Floor," which this series is based off of) is my first go-to book for doing novel study with my students. Everyone loves the fact that there's no pretension of stakes or danger and its basically just some godmode guy loving bad guys up for 300 pages.
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Dec 3, 2021 19:16
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Yeah Reacher has been through a ton of combat and messy situations and isn't maintaining a complicated skincare routine. He's huge and does well with ladies but never would have imagined him as pretty.
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Dec 3, 2021 19:22
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Enfys posted:Yeah Reacher has been through a ton of combat and messy situations and isn't maintaining a complicated skincare routine. He's huge and does well with ladies but never would have imagined him as pretty. The description of him I like the best is "His face looked like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time."
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Dec 3, 2021 19:23
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I think he looks good. The tone of that trailer, though, seems a little off to me. Reacher drops a lot of badass oneliners, sure, but he's usually pretty deadpan about it. The trailer all but had a laugh track. The first Cruise movie actually got that part way better.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:23
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1467122006470668294?s=20
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Dec 4, 2021 14:24
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Ereader question: I have a Sony ereader a got as a gift in 2013 and have happily used it all these years because all I use an ereader for is epub books I get from the library via Libby or Overdrive. But now the software I use to upload books to it (Reader for PC) has stopped being able to recognise them, I assume it's something to do with DRM, and when I tried to re-download it I noticed it was last updated in 2014. So I begrudgingly think I need a new ereader. I assume Kobo is best for epub, but do all ereaders these days emit light? The Sony one didn't and I liked that, I could read it in broad daylight at the beach, and I just generally don't like reading off any kind of screen. Also, am I correct in understanding that Kindles don't support epub at all, i.e. I won't be able to borrow books off Libby or Overdrive with one?
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Dec 5, 2021 01:57
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Most (but not all!) Libby/Overdrive books have a Kindle option, where you get through Amazon (as a rental). Kobos have Overdrive built in. You may want to try using Calibre though to see if your current reader can be used still. As for the light, all Kindles have lights now but they're not like LCD screens, the lights shine onto the screen not out at your face. And you can adjust the brightness. On Kindles they technically never turn off but setting 1 is not noticeable; I read at the beach all the time with mine. There is actually an ereader thread in IYG: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3366619
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Dec 5, 2021 02:34
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I borrow a lot of books off overdrive for my kindle. It’s a two step process that sends you to Amazon. 
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Dec 5, 2021 02:39
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I love the Reacher books unironically, and agree that the first 15 or so are pretty much universally outstanding. The writing is clear and crisp and spare, they’re a joy to read. Agree that the tone of this trailer is weirdly off but I will still probably end up watching this.
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Dec 5, 2021 02:49
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Is it bad that I just read ebooks on my iphone
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Dec 5, 2021 03:24
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I wouldn't say it's bad but if you read on your phone every day I think it's worth the investment to get an ereader.
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Dec 5, 2021 03:45
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The Kindle reader on iOS syncs with your Kindle ereader, so you can hop between them really seamlessly. Also, you can email .mobi files to a Kindle email address and have your books appear on both readers synchronized immediately. You can configure Calibre to convert .epub files and send them through email automatically without having to do any manual work to convert/send. It rocks, I haven’t had to plug my Kindle in to my PC or screw around with library/storefront DRM in years.
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Dec 5, 2021 17:38
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The paperwhite is a pretty great little thing. By far the best Kindle and the older ones with the recessed screen are the hardiest consumer electronics since Nokia phones. I know it's 100% unnecessary, but if Amazon released a hinged Kindle with two screens that held like a book and read like one, I'd pay whatever the extravagant cost would surely be. And since I'm wishing for horses it would also be cool if it allowed for dual-screen use for things like comics and pdfs. Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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Dec 5, 2021 17:49
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freebooter posted:Ereader question: (a) The Sony PRS line is still supported by Calibre, which is free, so if you really want to keep using your PRS you can use that; that said, it does take some work (and some additional software) to get Calibre to process DRMed books, so this is only a practical suggestion if you're willing to spend a while loving around with your computer in to save the cost of a new e-reader. (b) Pretty much every e-reader today has integrated lighting, but if you don't like it you can turn it off. The screens are still e-ink (i.e. reflective, not emissive like an LCD screen) and the lighting is an integrated booklight for reading in bed and stuff, not an integral part of the screen technology. (c) Kindles do not support epub, but most library software supports downloading in kindle formats as well, and there are also converters you can use (although you'll probably have to strip the DRM off first). Also not mentioned but (d) most modern e-readers either have no hardware buttons at all or just have forward/back buttons and rely on a touchscreen for everything else. Also the UI for browsing books is worse than the PRS. Sorry.
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Dec 5, 2021 19:04
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Eason the Fifth posted:The paperwhite is a pretty great little thing. By far the best Kindle My partner loves her Paperwhite but I think the Oasis is the best, if the extra cost can be justified. It feels much nicer in the hand, like a top end iPhone vs a $200 Android. And the extra screen area is nice.
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Dec 5, 2021 19:10
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ToxicFrog posted:(a) The Sony PRS line is still supported by Calibre, which is free, so if you really want to keep using your PRS you can use that; that said, it does take some work (and some additional software) to get Calibre to process DRMed books, so this is only a practical suggestion if you're willing to spend a while loving around with your computer in to save the cost of a new e-reader. I've had a crack at this, but the problem is then getting it onto Reader for PC (the software, which hasn't been updated since 2014) because I can't seem to make my Sony ereader sync with Calibre. It's only DRMed library books that I'm having trouble with in Reader for PC (and which only started a few weeks ago, so I assume there's been some change in how Overdrive manages DRM files); I can still download and then transfer onto the reader unprotected public domain .epubs from Gutenberg just fine. I also tried hooking the ereader straight onto my wifi (which I'd never bothered with before) to see if I could log on to my library directly and cut out the middleman, but no dice, it connects but won't recognise any websites.
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Dec 6, 2021 00:55
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freebooter posted:I've had a crack at this, but the problem is then getting it onto Reader for PC (the software, which hasn't been updated since 2014) because I can't seem to make my Sony ereader sync with Calibre. It's only DRMed library books that I'm having trouble with in Reader for PC (and which only started a few weeks ago, so I assume there's been some change in how Overdrive manages DRM files); I can still download and then transfer onto the reader unprotected public domain .epubs from Gutenberg just fine. Huh. Does Calibre not see the e-reader at all, or does it see it but can't send books to it? I don't have a working PRS anymore to test with, but my calibre 5 install still has "sony device interface" and "sony PRST1+ device interface" plugins enabled.
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Dec 7, 2021 15:05
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The Discord link has expired, can I ask for a new one?
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Dec 7, 2021 16:41
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not a bot posted:The Discord link has expired, can I ask for a new one? https://discord.gg/K8CM4xNV
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Dec 7, 2021 16:43
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Started reading a translation of Lisa O'Donnell's The Death of Bees and checked out what else she may have written. I got curious about the fact that there were no more Finnish translations after the one novel. Turns out the publisher (Moreeni) was acquired by one of the two Big Ones (Otava) in 2015 and now their specialty is books about how to make wool socks. Anyway I'm enjoying the book. I also enjoy wool socks so it all worked out in the end I guess.
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Dec 7, 2021 21:02
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Does anybody have a favored method for reducing the file size of extremely large M4B files? I'm poking back and forth at various audio editors and I'm having a hard time meaningfully reducing a 400MB audiobook without also making it kind of tinny. I could always take the time to convert it to MP3 and split it into chapters manually, but that's such a pain.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:44
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I don't know anything about that format but in general, a good trick for media like this is to convert it to mono if it's in stereo. Unless it's a full voice acted audiobook with foley effects and whatnot, mono is just as good as stereo and should be significantly smaller.
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Dec 8, 2021 15:52
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Is Termination Shock good?
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Dec 9, 2021 03:36
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regulargonzalez posted:I don't know anything about that format but in general, a good trick for media like this is to convert it to mono if it's in stereo. Unless it's a full voice acted audiobook with foley effects and whatnot, mono is just as good as stereo and should be significantly smaller. Yeah, that's normally my first move, but in this case I'm not having much luck doing anything at all that doesn't notably degrade sound quality, even if I'm only going from 400 MB to 200MB, which should barely do anything. Maybe just manually splitting the files into separate MP3s is my best bet, much as I don't want to (because it's work).
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Dec 9, 2021 04:13
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is Termination Shock good? 
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Dec 9, 2021 04:25
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