• 4 Posts
  • 26 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • The majority of cars don’t have a warning for low oil levels, the sensor for that has historically been the owner checking the dipstick. Oil level sensors are becoming more common now as more models appear with them but are still not ubiquitous even in brand new cars.

    The oil warning light in most cars is for low oil pressure, and if that one comes on it’s time to pull over immediately and hope you managed to turn the engine off in time to save the bearings.




  • There’s not really much need for swearing in most comments/posts I come across on lemmy/kbin, so I’m not surprised it’s uncommon.

    I don’t see a problem with bringing out the occasional swear word for particular emphasis or humour, but when someone can’t write regular posts/comments without cursing it’s pretty likely they’re just a kid trying to be edgy on the internet.



  • Auk@kbin.socialtoTechnology@lemmy.worldWhat DID Apple innovate?
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    2 years ago

    LMFAO at Apple inventing laptops that don’t have weird keyboards

    They weren’t saying the keyboards themselves were particularly good, they were saying Apple’s keyboard placement was a step forward (and it was). This page has a couple of pictures of early laptops - note where the Powerbook keyboard is compared to the others.





  • There’s no way to drive safely above the speed limit on a public road.

    If you’re driving a well maintained regular car in good conditions you absolutely can drive safely above many speed limits. If the speed limit was set at the true limit of safety nothing but the best handling vehicles in the best of conditions could drive at said limit safely, and this is clearly not the case for the vast majority of speed limits. Instead most traffic can travel safely at the set speed limit in less than ideal vehicles and in less than ideal conditions, so logically there are going to be situations where it would be safe to drive above said limit.

    Consider too speed limit changes. In my area there have been a few roads recently which have been lowered from 100km/h limits to 80km/h. Nothing changed about these roads except the speed limit signs. Why was it possible to drive safely at the 100km/h limit one day but not possible to drive safely at the same speed on the next day? Another road several years back had its speed limit changed from 80km/h to 90km/h. Again only the signs changed, so why would it be unsafe to drive 90km/h there one day when that would be the speed limit the following day?




  • GPS tech is definitely decades old, I could dig out a couple of handheld units I have in a box that would qualify for that distinction (circa 2000) and those were a few models into what was available to consumers let alone unis and governments.

    Using that specific application for decades is more of a stretch, but technically possible if you count all Mapfactor navigation and they first used it on a PC (released 2002 apparently). Even on mobile devices it’s not that far off qualifying as possible though (released 2007 on Windows CE so 16 years).






  • Currently reading Van Diemen’s Land by James Boyce, covering the early history of Tasmania (as a European colony). About a quarter of the way through and interesting so far.

    Before that I went through:

    • A LitRPG series called Apocalypse Tamer by Maxime Durand - standard LitRPG stuff with people gaining game like powers and the end of the world approaching. Wouldn’t say it really stands out but easy reading and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

    • Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, a young adult aimed urban fantasy story about saving an alternate London from a self aware cloud of pollution. Plays around amusingly with various chosen one and saving the world tropes, pretty quick read.

    • Reread Brass Man by Neal Asher - part of his Agent Cormac series in his Polity sci-fi universe. Interstelllar agent tracking down a criminal who has gained various powers, along with a few side stories. I find the Polity universe interesting, albeit somewhat grim for sci fi universes.

    • Through the Storm by John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer - another one aimed more at young adults, a continuation of a near future sci fi series about teenagers playing a augmented reality game that is turning out to secretly have real world implications. I like the premise but it did seem like this book focused more than the first on inter character drama rather than action or progressing the behind the scenes story.

    • Reread a few Discworld books, they’re basically all worth a re read every now and then.




  • Thanks for the idea, looks like converting them might open up some more options for viewing. I’m only intending to view already created maps rather than creating data so I don’t need GIS suite functionality once I get the maps on the phone (really only need geolocation, marker points etc are nice but not necessary), viewing as an OsmAnd layer sounds promising if I could get that to work easily for multiple files.