cats j4k3 • 3 days ago • 100%

I'll be up all night with this little minion. The other cat is wearing a tin foil hat look at this new fashionable attire.

Casual Conversation j4k3 • 3 days ago • 69%

external-content.duckduckgo.com

I was asking myself what makes for good reading. Perhaps it is relatable acumen, technical prowess, or a philosophically well defined notion brought to sharp focus from beyond the edge of my conscious awareness.  What do you appreciate, about others? Is it ultimately their moments of showpersonship, albeit based on any realm of thought? From kindness to empathy, from technical knowledge to relentless dependability; are all spaces ultimately a platform of performance and success or appreciation correlated with the show one is willing and able to perform?

HistoryPorn j4k3 • 4 days ago • 100%

Major Taylor was Black and one of, if not the first, true international sports celebrities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Taylor Just to contrast: >From 1893 to 1900 Benz sold the four wheel, two seat Victoria,[19] a two-passenger automobile with a 2.2 kW (3.0 hp) engine, which could reach the top speed of 18 km/h (11 mph) and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893, and was produced in a four-seated version with face-to-face seat benches called the "Vis-à-Vis". > >From 1894 to 1902, Benz produced over 1,200 of what some consider the first mass-produced car, the Velocipede, later known as the Benz Velo.[20] The early Velo had a 1L 1.5-metric-horsepower (1.5 hp; 1.1 kW) engine, and later a 3-metric-horsepower (3 hp; 2 kW) engine. giving a top speed of 19 km/h (12 mph). > >The Velo participated in the world's first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th, after covering the 126 km (78 mi) in 10 hours 01-minute at an average speed of 12.7 km/h (7.9 mph). > >In 1895, Benz designed the first truck with an internal combustion engine in history. Benz also built the first motor buses in history in 1895, for the Netphener bus company.[21][22][23] > >In 1896, Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first flat engine. It had horizontally opposed pistons, a design in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thus balancing each other with respect to momentum. Many flat engines, particularly those with four or fewer cylinders, are arranged as "boxer engines", boxermotor in German, and also are known as "horizontally opposed engines". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benz

Casual Conversation j4k3 • 5 days ago • 89%

I've been modding a game for a few days and not on here as much. What's your excuse friend?

Asklemmy j4k3 • 1 week ago • 97%

As one of the most hardcore types of roadies, I've experienced many of the extremes of human endurance. Like the need for sodium, magnesium, and potassium from massive leg cramps, or calorie crashes when it feels like your tank runs so empty you hit a massive wall where your body all but quits. One of the things I'm only just becoming self aware of is the need for iron/protein as a direct craving, not some common indirect theoretical knowledge. I've been on the same basic daily diet for a year with very little variation. I've noticed times when I crave eating *extra* stuff. I used to be massively overweight, so I'm super aware of avoiding binge eating and most junk food. However, I've found a pattern where sometimes I need a fresh fruit, and others–I need something with protein and iron. If I go straight to those resources at the right time, the cravings stop. If I get it wrong, I feel hungry again and crave something more in a short amount of time. I get the impression I was overweight when I was younger because I lacked the awareness to connect these dots... along with a nutrient poor base diet. It is just a thought I've been mulling over in the back of my mind for a few days. I wonder if others are either more subconsciously able to *crave* a better available food that meets their needs, or if I just failed to RTFM when I was born and most people are aware of this kind of connection. So... are you self aware of different types of hungry where eating a small amount of the right thing can make the issue go away when you would otherwise eat too much?

LibreWolf j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 100%

If I want to know if my version is up to date without issues, I should be able to find that information very quickly and plainly on the website as an external verification source. It could be on a page or on something like the menu or landing page footer. I just checked all of these. Finding this information is not obvious to me. I want to know this directly and without in-browser, distro, or other influences.

Linux j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 98%

I've made the effort to secure mine and am aware of how the trusted protection module works with keys, Fedora's Anaconda system, the shim, etc. I've seen where some here have mentioned they do not care or enable secure boot. Out of open minded curiosity for questioning my biases, I would like to know if there is anything I've overlooked or never heard of. Are you hashing and reflashing with a CH341/Rπ/etc, or is there some other strategy like super serious network isolation?

Hardware j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 100%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb8AB8bsQSk

Linux j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 87%

My old man has a bunch of .dox stuff saved. He has complicated large files saved that are not supported by any of the FOSS conversion tools. I've tried Libre office, Abi Word, and every command line tool and converter I can find. These are entire book sized files. I have a W10 machine with Word. Is extracting the .exe and running it with wine feasible without making an epic mess or massive project of this?

Privacy j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 93%

I just went to use nvcc for the first time and this nonsense hit my firewall. Make won't compile but it has to do with my unwillingness to use the proprietary toolkit. This network activity only happened once on startup.

Emacs j4k3 • 2 weeks ago • 100%

I'm coming across stuff on the emacs wiki like [Project Buffer Mode](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ProjectBufferMode) and [SLN Mode](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SlnMode) Are these old packages like everything else in Linux; not relevant or usable any more? I'm not sure if "just try them" is the right idea here, or even how to go about doing that (yet). Do you have any other suggestions or options? I'm trying to see the project view of the open source game Cataclysm DDA. They seem to be using a Windows system for development now and I'm seeing several little elements that are not getting compiled the same between their builds and what make produces with GCC. Perhaps the stuff in the project files would reveal more detail. (learning, but this is over my head and outside of my comfort zone)

Emacs j4k3 • 3 weeks ago • 100%

I figure I would share this one more time. The thing is so handy I put it on my desktop but the original is blinding white and 1.5:1 aspect ratio. This is a quick recolor and resize to 16:9. There is a 90px margin on top that is sized for the GNOME header so that the content remains visible. Sorry if this post seems redundant. For me, having this reminder to keep trying to use Emacs is just the motivation I need to open a file in Emacs instead of just using gedit quickly. ::: spoiler bonus tip! On Fedora 40, if you have darkmode set to the default in GNOME, GNU Emacs does not follow the darkmode styling directive for the menu bar. I spent forever trying to make this work in darkmode. If the app is launched using `$ GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark emacs` it will start with the menu bar set to dark mode. However there is a script that actually launches Emacs in `/user/bin/emacs-desktop`. If you open that file and modify it by adding `export GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark emacs` just before the last line, it will launch with darkmode enabled. This is the entire contents of that file: ``` #!/usr/bin/sh # The pure GTK build of emacs is not supported on X11, so try to avoid # using if there is an alternative. if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" = 'x11' ]; then case "$(readlink -f /usr/bin/emacs)" in */emacs-*.*-pgtk) if type emacs-gtk+x11 >/dev/null; then exec emacs-gtk+x11 "$@" elif type emacs-lucid >/dev/null; then exec emacs-lucid "$@" fi ;; esac fi export GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark emacs exec emacs "$@" ``` I'm not claiming it is the right way. It just worked when I tried it.

Programming j4k3 • 3 weeks ago • 68%

What is the CS / uni goto course for this, or what really clicked for you?

Showerthoughts j4k3 • 4 weeks ago • 92%

... except nonmetals... maybe dark matter Technically, dihydrogen... but then hydrogen is an exception... over thinking it...

Emacs j4k3 • 4 weeks ago • 97%

Seems helpful for noobs like me.

Unfinished Proje j4k3 • 4 weeks ago • 100%

     Early wannabe EE aspires to stuff too much into too little and gets carried away. I actually got sidetracked with a dumb idea of making complex animations on a character display, called the thing "Juice Box," set it up to play the Mario theme song on a piezo and did a whole intro thing that kinda took away my motivation to program the voltage monitoring and digital potentiometer, or something like that. I forget what the hiccup was exactly. This was back when I was still willing and naively going through massive physical ups and downs with disability from my broken neck/back. I probably put it away in one of the 3-6 week stretches without much sleep at all and never managed to come back to it. It is the same story with most of my hardware projects, and why I may seem quite capable, but will readily admit I'm pretty much useless in my physical shape overall.

Emacs j4k3 • 1 month ago • 85%

I felt clunky doing NVIM and could never remember hotkeys for once a week -ish in-situ functional learning. Like I jump in FreeCAD for a few days, come back, and I can't recall a hotkey combo I only used once. I think I can use Emacs lisp for some actual project goals with AI and other microcontroller projects involving FORTH, that I've never been able to figure out, and code complexity management issues I've never overcome. I still want the menu bar and am really unsure if the evil key bindings are for me. I would probably find it useful if I knew the vim bindings in situations like OpenWRT with busybox only, but it was the extreme complexity of navigating nvim help and key bindings that I found so useless to learn in-situ. Help me navigate this please. I'm being indecisive in a bad way about how to make this pretty, and get it configured.

Unfinished Proje j4k3 • 1 month ago • 100%

 I never did fit it into the final enclosure despite ridiculous plans that were almost as overcomplicated as my etch mask art.

Unfinished Proje j4k3 • 1 month ago • 100%

  Printed button details for good engagement and function are hard. Didn't have an *ideal* wiring multi conductor available. Solid proje is maturing well with 2 years of dust.

Casual Conversation j4k3 • 1 month ago • 100%

Edit: made it !unfinishedprojects@lemmy.world I don't mean work in progress stuff. I mean a place of glory for the unshareable, the embarrassments, the failures, the projects you shelved years ago but won't restart or let go of entirely; preferably with a humorous meme twist or mascot. Am I the only one that would find this therapeutic and interesting? Ideas?

You Should Know j4k3 • 1 month ago • 98%

Why YSK is because this is where my ultra detailed intuitive perspective shines and I can tell you how to generate revenue on demand using eBay the old school way that still works. This was a reply to someone a few days ago about how to sell a large gaming collection. That post was deleted, but this info was popular, so here it is as a post that will stay up. I ran high end bicycle consignment on eBay professionally. It was a side thing when I was a Buyer for a bike shop chain, and what I did part time for nearly 2 years after disability. In total I sold $139k on that account. You must be established on eBay in the first place. You need an account with at least 60-100 feedback first. Make purchases to get some of that, sell a few low value (to you) items at a really good deal for others and across different categories. You're trying to show that you are a real person and imply your country of origin. Ship everything you sell the same day that payment clears, and get a receipt from the logistics handler every time. When you package any item, take a picture of the item in the box, and keep a scale on your packaging table to take a picture of the boxed item with the weight on camera after sealing the box. You are going to have 5-10% of customers that are scammers. This combo will save you from their scams. You can use the imaged weight and shipping weight from the logistics carrier receipt to dispute the photo of empty packaging scam. Shipping insurance is a complete waste of money. The most expensive thing I sold was a $14,900 Felt IA FRD without the Zipp wheels for $9600 on eBay after 1 season of use. That was a major outlier. Most bikes were $1k-$3k, but I was dealing with some pricey stuff that represented substantial risk. I had to deal with major issues a few times despite using better shipping practices than anyone else I have ever encountered. If you own the merch, you own the risk. I didn't have that luxury. I developed the strategy of finding the advertised cost of the cheapest insurance option I had available and I paid this amount of the sale into my *insurance* account separately. That account went *negative* once near the beginning, but stayed about even with incidental drains occasionally. The hassle and time it takes to go in circles with the third party shipping insurance companies is the intentional obfuscation built into their scam. You will be able to recover any lost amount simply by working a minimum wage job for the same amount of time it will take you to get money out of these scammers. You could probably panhandle the amount quicker than the amount of time you will spend trying to get them to pay. It will be nearly impossible for you to keep track of all of the fees and costs of eBay. I tracked everything as fees; taxes, logistics, insurance, supplies, everything. In could not close monthly books until 3-4 months after the sale. The total cost to actually sell items was 39% of the total sale as of April of 2017 with an account in perfect standing ~98% of the time. The lowest I ever got was 37% in a month and never topped 40%. When you post items, have them boxed in advance and post the last picture of the item boxed. Add a unique number to this box, have it in the picture, and add it in the description of the item so that you know what is in each box to match with the purchase. Don't count on your descriptions or listing. Don't package whatever sold in the last few days after the listing is ended. You WILL screw this up and send the wrong things to the wrong people or forget something no matter how diligent you try to be. It is much better to have a label that prints and includes the listing details with the unique number matching the box; like today I sold: "K4R3N," "IAN123," and "JK1337," and must match these values to boxes that say the same. Like, if you are selling video games, do not do: Brombus Brzezinski bought Final Fantasy VII Special Edition (6/10), Bambi Blowater bought Final Fantasy VIII Special Remastered Edition (7/10), and Blumbus Bluewaters bought Final Fantasy VII (7/10). If you package what sells after the fact, you'll be slow and when problems with logistics happen your delay is only going to make the problems much worse. It does not matter that you have *x* days to ship items in the system or described in your listing. Ship it the same day that payment clears as a point of pride. When you have real problems, that is the only time to use your shipping window. This is the only way you can keep an account in prefect shape long term. The price others list items at is a joke. Ignore this nonsense and only look at the sold history for items in the last 60 days. If you can provide better information and images than anyone else in this sold history, you are likely worth 10-15% more than the rest. Keeping a listing up costs money and is a loss that must be accounted for. Low demand items without substantial sold history are worth less in this market. Emotional attachment is worthless, sold history is everything. This is the key to doing well with generating revenue on demand: eBay has the most traffic of customers willing to make purchases on Sunday evenings between 9-11pm Eastern time as this will bridge the entire continental USA so that it is 5-8pm in California. The trick is to list your items with ten day auctions and time your listings so that they end in this time window on Sunday. In other words, you schedule ten day auctions that start Thursday evening in this time slot. Stagger your listings around 10-15 minutes apart so that a person can bid on and watch multiple items. Now, this is where the real hack happens **and the details matter**. You list these items to start for $0.99 with free shipping if possible, and with no reserve. This is not optional. Your conservative fear and desire to list the starting price higher will kill traffic interest and volume of initial views. The item must have an active sold history for this to work. An active sold history means there is demand. The initial traffic of a real no reserve auction on eBay will max out your visibility priority for suggested and *relevant* cross posts. This is more powerful of a tool than any other form of promotion. You're going to get a several messages from all the crazy stupid people that want you to take their special offer of $2 to end the item. You love this stupidity because these idiots flock to this kind of fantasy listing in droves and are the reason this trick is so effective in the first place. Be nice to them and they'll view the listing hundreds of times. A few might even go crazy with a sub $5 bidding war, which is even better for the listing visibility. I did this with $1k-$4k bikes all the time. I almost always set the max sold history value for similar items, but I also did detailed listings unlike anyone has ever done before or since with high end bikes on eBay. I documented every scratch, bearing, and part, along with detailed wear descriptions where I was downright negative by typical salesperson standards. I also used my automotive painting background to photograph cosmetic issues before and after I did minor touchups and fixes to really high end stuff. You must think like a skeptical buyer that is afraid of getting scammed when you're creating listings and reassure them in a way that would satisfy yourself. Like prove that your games actually work in pictures, etc. There is only a minor element of sales pitch to tell what the item is and its intended use. The majority of your listing should be about telling the informed buyer every detail they are not even aware of questioning and gives them confidence to take the listing serious. Only start your no reserve auctions to end on a Sunday that follows the 15th of the month, and only when there is not a holiday or major sporting event in the USA. People pay rent/mortgages on the 1st of the month. The largest pool of people with excess funds to spend a little more or get carried away with bidding are the people on the Sunday after the 15th of any given month. Never list items that are competing with themselves in auctions that are ending on the same night. Make your listings Buy it Now for a good price in the interm then convert these to no reserve auctions when you're ready. Avoid giving any excuses that might indicate the person can procrastinate and get the same thing later or for a better price like mentioning you have more of these, or even listing the same item in another listing with Buy it Now while an auction runs. Overall, this is how you dominate eBay and get your stuff in front of the most people, most often, and that is how you make sales conversions. No matter what you do, you're going to have overburden that will not sell in any single market. This is why I was the Buyer for a bike shop chain that ran eBay and did swap meets too. Pick a number and and strategy for handling this. Like when you have sold $xx,xxx amount you're giving the rest away to *N* and quitting. You will never experience a day when the last item sells. Last thing I didn't mention before, if eBay still has 1:1 images in the primary scrolling feed, absolutely make sure to photograph your leading image to make it as large as possible and fill the entire frame. Use a white infinite background or a low light studio photography setup. The background needs to be either 0x00 white or 0xff black, and the item itself needs to look real like it is not a stock photography image. The other images should be professional looking, but can be more flawed. The lead image should be edited using gimp with filters for contrast and saturation to make the thing pretty.

Showerthoughts j4k3 • 1 month ago • 92%

> Under the Third Geneva Convention, prisoners of war (POW) must be: > - Treated humanely with respect for their persons and their honour > - Able to inform their next of kin and the International Committee of the Red Cross of their capture Allowed to communicate regularly with relatives and receive packages > - Given adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical attention > - Paid for work done and not forced to do work that is dangerous, unhealthy, or degrading > - Released quickly after conflicts end > - Not compelled to give any information except for name, age, rank, and service number Just a thought. I'd rather be a POW than a homeless disabled person in the USA. I'd have more rights, respect, better support, and better care. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war

Ask Lemmy j4k3 • 1 month ago • 97%

Something feels different about people's reactions to an OP in comments IMO. It is not always a thing, but more of a broad pattern. How do you personally view this? Do you see it too? Do you have some clear picture in mind as to why this difference exists? I have a few ideas, but don't want to taint your takes on the subject.

Asklemmy j4k3 • 1 month ago • 97%

Science is "empirically complete" when it is well funded, all unknowns are constrained in scope, and (n+1) generations of scientists produce no breakthroughs of any kind. If a hypothetical entity could encompass every aspect of science into reasoning and ground that understanding in every aspect of the events in question, free from bias, what is this epistemological theory? I've been reading wiki articles on epistemology all afternoon and feel no closer to the answer in the word salad in this space. It appears my favorite LLM's responses reflect a similar understanding. Maybe someone here has a better grasp on the subject?

Word of the Day j4k3 • 1 month ago • 100%

- interregnum - the time between two reigns, governments - hemimillenial - half millennium; every 500 years (took me a min. hemi- as in hemisphere/not in most dictionaries/from Asimov's Foundation's Edge ch1) - lemmatization - in linguistics is the process of grouping together inflected forms of a word so they can be analyzed as a single item, identified by the word's lemma, or dictionary form; (eg. walk [lemma], walks, walked, walking)

Neovim j4k3 • 1 month ago • 58%

Is there some intuitive menu mode that is simple to initiate? The packaged setup with dnf on F40 only has the colon help menu enabled. I don't care about mouse Luddites or the remarkableness of people with total recall. I need something like gedit level tools to just work without Planck scale resolution help, or learning career to make a useful hobby tool that is free from stalkerware nonsense like an electron based IDE.

Linux j4k3 • 1 month ago • 100%

This is something that perplexed me a few years ago with Flash Forth on a PIC18/PIC24/Arduino Uno. I was using the Python serial emulator S-Term because it is simple in the source code and worked. I really wanted a way to load more structured Words into the FF dictionary with bookmarks in a way that made sense structurally. That lead to a desire to execute code from the uC on the host system, but I never wrapped my head around how to do this in practice. As a random simple example, let's say I set up an interrupt based on the internal temperature sensor of the PIC18. Once triggered the uC must call a Python script on the host system and this script defines a new FF word on the uC by defining the Word in the interpreter. How do you connect these dots to make this work at the simplest 'hello world' level? I tried modifying S-Term at one point, but I didn't get anywhere useful with my efforts.

Asklemmy j4k3 • 1 month ago • 93%

This is a deep meta question; not the response you give others. When you ask yourself, "how do I feel," is that answer you synthesize, the answer you draw from the edge of your conscious and unconscious self; is this answer a reference to the immediately preceding past of your inner experience, or is the answer from some self aware inner entity that exists in the ever changing experience of right now?

Newpipe j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

The hardest part of Odyssey seems to be content discovery. If you find anything recent and good please share here. https://odysee.com/@whatdamath:8/bizarre-new-discoveries-about-neutron:d https://odysee.com/@ScottManley:5/where-will-astronauts-go-after-the-iss:3 https://odysee.com/@whatdamath:8/another-intermediate-black-hole-found:a https://odysee.com/@AlphaNerd:8/crowdstrike-bug-crashes-billions-of:8 https://odysee.com/@clough42:7d/the-3d-printed-test-fixtures-i-use-for:b

Word of the Day j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

- effulgence - the quality of being bright and sending out rays of light; radiance - quonset - A prefabricated building having a roof of corrugated iron and semicircular cross section. (Very WW2 aesthetic, place name of manufacture, colloquial US, quonset hut; Nissen hut is UK equivalent) - spurious - plausible but false - hagridden - tormented or harassed by nightmares or unreasonable fears ::: spoiler The Life Watch - by Lester del Rey (1954 exp. Copyright) This is only the first 2 chapters due to Lemmy comment limits. It is a good read. The entire story is at the link below. Norden could not trust his own darkly terrifying thoughts and impulses. Yet he kept a life watch over the whole human race. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe September 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The spread of an alien culture across wide wastes of space, with its almost inevitable, remorseless destruction of human life, has chilling implications even for the literal-minded. When mirrored in the bright, adventurous prism of modern science fiction it offers unparalleled opportunities to a writer of Lester del Rey's stature. We're sure you'll agree that he's scored a triumph in this brilliantly imaginative yarn. Norden could feel dread knot his mind as he watched the tiny blue speck against the black sky. It was a senseless, unnatural emotion, and he knew it. The searing blue point of flame could only mean that the approaching ship was powered by atomic rockets—and the Aliens drove their ships in some mysterious manner, without any kind of reaction motor. The object coming down toward the tiny asteroid could only be of terrestrial origin, powered by a human device. Yet his fear grew worse. He shook his head, wondering again how close to insanity he had drifted. His eyes darted sideways, scanning the wreckage that had been his laboratory, then back to the descending ship. Mercifully, he couldn't remember most of what had happened. He only knew that it had been sufficiently bad to drive any human close to the brink of madness. It would have been torturing enough to be left alone for days in a wrecked and airless dome while the oxygen tanks were used up, one by one. But to have seen Hardwick's face when the Aliens caught him.... He tried to stop thinking about it. The Aliens were only vague shadows in his mind now—the picture of what must have happened as remote and unreal as his memories of struggling free from the wreckage. Somehow, he'd survived against incredible odds, undetected by the Aliens. He'd dug out the emergency transmitter and tried signaling for help. Now apparently, before the last tank of oxygen on his back had been used up completely, rescue had come. He should have been ecstatic with relief. The fear remained, some twisted reaction left over from the days of terror and hopelessness. He lifted his hands and studied them. They were steady enough; the fear was having no outward effect. Already the ship was close enough for Norden to see glints of weak sunlight reflecting from its metal hull. The pilot must have been one of the best, for there was no wavering, or side-jetting to correct the course. It was coming straight down, slowing to a drift. As Norden stared the exhaust hit the jagged surface of the asteroid and splashed out. Abruptly it cut off, and the ship dropped slowly the few remaining feet, to come to rest less than half a mile away. Norden knew he should start running toward it, and stood up. But he couldn't give the order to his legs. He stared toward the ship, then back at the ruins. Maybe there was something he should take with him. He had air enough for another hour. Surely there was no need to rush things. Men would be coming here for him. And it wouldn't do any harm to put off meeting them a little longer. He didn't want to be subjected to their questions yet. He started hesitantly toward the ship, trying to force himself to move. Men began to emerge and head toward him. He dropped onto a mess that had been a super-speed tape instrument recorder and waited. His mind was running a rat-race inside his head, and there was a gnawing tension. He cleared his throat and reached for the switch on his suit radio. The men were almost up to him. He got to his feet again, fumbling frantically with the little switch. Then the harsh beam of a flashlight picked him out, and a gruff voice sounded in his headphones. "Dr. William Norden?" He nodded, and rehearsed words stumbled to his lips. "Thank God, you got here! I was afraid the transmitter wouldn't work!" There was a hint of something like kindness in the voice. "Take it easy, Dr. Norden! It did work, and we're here. What happened to Hardwick? Where is he?" "Dead, I hope," Norden answered. "The Aliens got him!" He shuddered, glancing at the spot where it had happened. The man wearing general's insignia nodded, while sickness spread over his face. He motioned to one of the others. "Get pics of the wreck, and collect any records you can. The rest of you give Dr. Norden a hand. And hurry! They may have spotted us already!" The man with the camera went resolutely to work, flashing his shots with a strobe light that blinked twenty-four times a second. Two others began unrolling a stretcher. Norden shook his head in feeble protest. "I can walk. And I've already collected Hardwick's notebooks." They set a pace closer to a run than a walk, bouncing ludicrously in the slight gravity of the asteroid. Norden kept up with them easily enough, trying to make sense of his reactions. Most of the fear and tension had left him, as if he'd passed over some hurdles, and was experiencing a resurge of confidence. The military efficiency of his rescuers had also a bracing effect. Maybe he hadn't believed in his rescue until now. But he did feel better, though his eyes went on studying the others cautiously, as if looking for any reaction that might inadvertently betray them. They reached the ship, and began pulling themselves through its flexible hatch. The leader jerked off his helmet and suit, exposing iron grey hair that contrasted rather startlingly with an almost youthful face. It was the face of a man who hadn't let himself grow soft during the years before the Aliens came. He swung toward Norden. "How much gravity can you take, Dr. Norden?" he asked. "Six g's?" "In a hammock, for a few minutes," Norden answered. They were already heading up the ladder toward the nose of the ship. The general ripped a sling out of its case when they reached the control cabin. He snapped it to its lugs, motioned Norden onto it, and bound him in place in less time than he could have ordered the job done. Then he dropped to his own control seat. "Six g's for five minutes, then hold her at four until I order. Up ship!" Norden didn't black out during the first five minutes, though the pressure was enough to drive the sling to its bottom mark and make its cables groan in protest. As they switched from six to four gravities, the pressure eased a little. An hour crept by, and another. When the general finally ordered the drive cut, Norden estimated that they had been under acceleration for nearly five hours and were doing about two million miles an hour. Either the general was crazy, or the ship must have been stocked to the last bin with fuel. They were making more than five times the normal emergency speed. Then the leader came back and began releasing Norden. "Sorry to give you such a beating after what you've been through, Dr. Norden," he said. "But we'll still be lucky if we have enough speed to slip past their detectors before they can trace our orbit and overhaul us. They've been getting worse lately." He sighed, and his lips thinned. Then he shrugged. "We'll talk about that later. Right now you need food." He managed a smile. "I don't have to tell you that the doctor and psychiatrist will be biting their nails to give you the works. Oh, I'm Armsworth." Norden felt the chill touch his mind again. He'd expected a doctor, and had been bracing himself for one. But the psychiatrist.... He forced calmness into his voice. "I could eat a horse!" "You probably will," Armsworth told him with quick, automatic humor. "This is the Space Service!" The little cabin to which Armsworth took him was crowded alarmingly. There were the two men waiting for him, with their specialized equipment. In addition, there was the forbidding bulk of a large recording machine ready to take down every word he uttered. He acknowledged the introductions, and downed a glass of some over-sweetened fruit juice which the doctor held out. "It will get you ready for some real food," the physician told him. "Would you like to clean up while I look you over, before the main course comes?" Norden seized on the chance. It would give him something to do beside tormenting himself, and it was obvious he needed grooming. His dark hair was matted, his face marked with dirt that had sunk into every wrinkle and line, and there was a thick growth of stubble on his skin. It was a thin, fairly good-looking face, as unfamiliar as if he'd just seen it for the first time in a photograph. He seemed to have forgotten himself, even. While he washed and shaved, the doctor was busy. But the examination was less detailed than he had expected it would be, and finally the man stood back, nodding. "For someone nearing forty, you're in excellent shape, Dr. Norden," he said. "You had a rough time of it, but I was sure you'd be all right physically when I heard you hadn't blacked out under high acceleration. Okay, go ahead and eat." He moved toward the door, but showed no sign of leaving until his curiosity could be satisfied. Norden had to force himself to eat, for he had no apparent appetite. The psychiatrist leaned forward casually, watching him. "Would you like to tell us about it, Dr. Norden?" he asked. "Precisely what happened to Hardwick?" Norden shook his head, while the tension mounted again. The man would be on the alert for hidden meanings in his words, and he wasn't quite ready for that. Yet he was afraid to risk putting it off. "I'm not sure I can tell much. I—well, everything's pretty foggy. A lot of it I can't remember at all." "Partial amnesia is fairly common," the psychiatrist said reassuringly. "In fact, everyone has touches of it. Try going back a bit—say to your childhood—to give you a running start. We've got plenty of time." Norden had little interest in his childhood, and he skimmed over it with a few words. He'd done nothing unusual until he'd drifted into the new investigation of radiation outside the electromagnetic spectrum in his post-graduate college work. Then he'd suddenly developed, caught fire, and become something of a genius. He was the first man ever to prove there was more than theory involved. He'd been called to Mars for the Widmark Interplanetary Award for his brilliant demonstration of protogravity after he'd floated two ounces of lead with a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment that used twenty kilowatts of power. In fifteen years at Mars Institute, he'd discovered four new types of extraspectral radiation, become a full professor, and had almost discovered how to harness nuclear binding energy. Then the Aliens had come. They had appeared abruptly near Pluto, apparently coming at a speed greater than that of light, in strange globular ships that defied radar detection. Without provocation or mercy, they had sought out and destroyed every settlement between Pluto and Saturn, and had begun moving inward, systematically destroying all life in their path. Nobody had ever seen an Alien—they invariably exploded to dust before they could be captured—but the horror of their senseless brutality was revealed in the hideous human corpses they left behind them. Norden had been drafted while there was still optimism. Men could build a hundred ships to the Aliens' one, equally radar-proof, free from danger of magnetic or electronic detection, and nearly invisible in space. In anything like an even battle, men were certain to win. But they soon discovered it wasn't an even battle. The Aliens had some means of detecting human ships accurately at distances of millions of miles, and blasting them with self-guided torpedoes, while remaining undetected themselves. And behind the torpedoes would come the dark globular ships to spray the wreckage with some force that left every cell utterly lifeless. Hardwick had been a quasi-scientist, mixed up with certain weird cults, who maintained a private laboratory on an asteroid near Jupiter's orbit. And in the desperation that followed the first foolish optimism, his theory that the Aliens could detect life itself, or the presence of the questionable mitogenetic rays that were supposed to radiate from nerve endings, was actually taken seriously. Surprisingly, the tests indicated that remote-controlled ships which had been completely sterilized went undetected, while ships carrying rats or other life were blasted. Norden, as the expert on all strange radiation, had been sent to work with Hardwick in attempting to devise a screen for the hypothetical life radiation. He never learned whether Hardwick was a wild genius, or an even wilder lunatic. While he was wearing Hardwick's improvised shield during one of the attempts to test it, the Aliens had landed and broken in. "What did they look like?" the psychologist asked casually—too casually, Norden felt. "Well, they—" He frowned, trying to remember, but a clamp came down over his mind. "I—I can't remember. And they did—something—to Hardwick. I—I...." Armsworth brushed the other question aside. "Never mind. You were wearing Hardwick's shield. Didn't they notice you?" Norden shook his head doubtfully. "No, I don't think they did. It's all horribly blurred. I think I jumped for the spacesuit locker when they breeched the airlock on the dome. I must have gotten into a suit, and been hidden by the locker door. And I must have run out after they took Hardwick away." At least he hadn't been hurt when the Alien bomb ruined the dome. He'd dug out the transmitter, sent the message, and then had spent the agony of waiting in trying to decipher the cryptic code in Hardwick's notebooks. They went over his account several times, but he could tell then little more. Then there were tests, some of which he could understand and answer without trouble, while others left him taut with uncertainty and etched worried lines into the face of the psychiatrist. But at last the man nodded doubtfully. "I think he'll do," he reported hesitantly to Armsworth. "A traumatic experience always leaves scars, but...." "But or no he'd better do," Armsworth said gruffly. "No wonder they ordered us out to pick him up! He was within fifty feet of the Aliens, and they didn't locate him! Dr. Norden, if that shield works and you can duplicate it, you'll be the most valuable man alive!" "And the tiredest and sleepiest," Norden suggested. His eyes narrowed, and his mind darted about, seeking some sign of the wrong reaction. Then he relaxed as the doctor and psychiatrist picked up their equipment and went out with advice he hardly heard. Armsworth lingered, and Norden searched about in his mind for what seemed to be a safe question. "How long until we reach Mars, general?" he asked. "We don't!" Armstrong's voice was suddenly thick and bitter. "We've abandoned Mars. The Aliens have moved inward. We—oh, hell, we'll reach our new laboratory on the Moon base in about four days! And you'd better start praying that shield works, or my value to you won't be worth salvaging." He shrugged abruptly and left, closing the cabin door quietly behind him. Norden slumped down on the bed, not bothering to remove his clothes. Automatically, he lifted his arms until both his hands were pressing against the nape of his neck, settled into a comfortable position against the automatic straps, and began reviewing all the events of his rescue carefully. And bit by bit, the worry in his head quieted. He'd gotten away with it. What "it" was, he didn't know or even remotely suspect, but the horrible tension was gone. II It was a short-lived respite, for no sooner had Norden reached the base on the Moon where the frenzied activity of the new laboratories went on than the tension returned. The taped interviews had been signaled ahead, together with Hardwick's notebooks and Norden's suggested list of equipment. Apparently, the information on him hadn't been satisfactory. He was rushed to a small, rectangular room where three men mumbled and complained unhappily as he was given tests that served no purpose that he could see. And finally, he was forced to wait in the corridor outside for nearly an hour while the three conferred, before he was given an envelope of papers and led to the office of General Miles, head of the entire Moon base. Miles skimmed through the reports and reached for the hushed phone. He was a man of indeterminate age, with a young voice and old eyes. There was a curious grace to his gaunt body, and a friendly smile on his rough-hewn face, despite telltale marks of exhaustion. Norden watched him tensely, but his reactions were not revealing until he turned back abruptly, and extended his hand. "You're in, Dr. Norden," he said. "What you urgently need is rest. You've had a devil of a time of it, and you show it. But we can't afford to let you go." He nodded grimly. "You're no more psychotic than I am, since you're able to work. And we need your work. The last settlement on Mars was just wiped out before we could evacuate it. Hardwick's notes are pure gobblede*removed*, so we have to depend on your help. Come on." He stood up and led Norden through a narrow door, and into a tunnel that connected GHQ with a large Quonset-type building to the south. "We've secured everything we could for you," he explained. "We even got you an assistant, and the exclusive use of our largest computer." He threw open the door to the laboratory, and gestured. "It's all yours. I'll be around from time to time, but if you need anything extra-special don't hesitate to ask for it. All of our work is important but you have top priority here." Norden closed the door firmly as the general left, studying the equipment—more than he'd dreamed they could provide. To them, he was probably off balance. But at the moment, he was convinced they would have given top priority to a man who could do the Indian rope trick. It seemed like a careless way of running things, particularly since they hadn't put a guard over him, or hinted at a penalty for failure. He moved back through the laboratory, studying the equipment. Again, there was the disturbing sense that his experience had blanked out whole sections of his mind, until he had to puzzle out apparatus he must have used a thousand times. But it was still obvious that the laboratory had everything he could possibly want—and more. He wandered back and around the big computer, and almost collided with a small, brown-haired girl in a lab smock who looked up at him with eager interest, her slender hands busy with the keyboard. "Dr. Norden? I'm Pat Miles, your assistant. I hope you won't let the fact that the general is my father disturb you. I had three years of extraspectral math and paraphysics at Chitec, and I'm a registered computer operator in my own right, grade one." She smiled at him. He knew at once that she was the guard placed over him—an extremely attractive guard who would keep the general informed as to his progress. But a known factor was always better than an unknown one. He offered her his hand, and she took it quickly. "Glad to have you, Pat," he said. "But until I can decode Hardwick's notes from what little I've learned of them, there won't be much to do." He'd decided that it was a reasonable job, and one which would take up enough time for him to orient himself. After that... his mind skidded off the subject. She pointed to the work table by the machine where the notes lay spread out. "I've been systematizing it already. If you can supply half a dozen keys, the computer should be able to translate the rest." It rocked him for a second. He hadn't thought of the possibility, and it meant an end to stalling, long before he could be ready. But there was nothing he could do about it. He picked up the notes, and began pointing out the few phrases he had learned, together with the only clear memory he seemed to have of his time with Hardwick. "The last page covers the final test," he told her. "Hardwick had some cockroaches and mosquitoes left over from an experiment with various vermin, and he put them in a glass case. I stood at one side with the screen he'd made on me, and he stood on the other. Apparently he figured the things could sense the human aura, and the roaches should move toward my absence of one, the mosquitoes toward him for food. But there was no statistical evidence of its success." She began feeding information to the machine, and reeling out the results, checking with him. At first, he begrudged the work, but then he found his interest quickening in the puzzle and its untangling. She was good at the work, though she found it hard to believe that the cult-inspired nonsense could be a correct translation. He began trying to anticipate the problems of her programming, and to scan the results, cross-checking to reduce errors from his own confusion. Finally she nodded. "That's it, Bill. The computer can cross-check the rest itself. All I've got to do is cut the notes on a tape, and feed them in. Why don't you go to lunch while I'm doing it? Dad has you scheduled for his table, down in the GHQ basement cafeteria." "What about you?" he asked. She shook her head. "I want to finish this. Go on, don't keep Dad waiting." Norden found most of the seats filled, but Miles saw him and waved him over. There was a round of introductions to names that were famous in their fields—famous enough for even Norden to recognize, though he'd stuck pretty closely to his own specialty. "How's it shaping up?" Miles wanted to know. "We should have the notes decoded tonight," Norden told him. "After that, it's a matter of how useful they'll be." Miles grunted unhappily. "They'd better offer a more promising lead than the others we've had. And soon! At this rate, in two more weeks at most, the Aliens will be taking over the Moon—and if that happens, we may as well stay here waiting for them." He turned to the head psychologist, while Norden was still hunting for the meaning of the implied threat he thought he could reed into the words. "Jim, what about Enfield?" "No dice," the psychologist answered. "He's obsessed with xenophobia—he hates the Aliens for breakfast, lunch and between meals. I can't treat him here. Of course, after what happened to his wife...." Miles put his fork down and faced the group, but his eyes were on Norden. His words had the ring of an often-delivered but still vital lecture. "Damn it, we can't afford hatred. Maybe the mobs need it to keep them going. But we have serious things to do that take sound judgment. Why not hate disease germs or any other natural enemy?" His voice hardened. "They don't kill for the pure love of evil. They're intelligent beings, doing what they believe has to be done. I think they're wrong, and I can't understand them—though I wish I could. I consider poisoning bedbugs a wise move, though no intelligent bedbug would agree with me. This expedition of theirs would be a major job for any trace, and they're going at it just as we would—if we had to exterminate the boll weevil. "Emotions haven't a thing to do with it. We're in a battle for raw survival, and we haven't the time to indulge our animal emotions. It's a scientific problem that has to be solved for our lives—like a plague." Norden added another intangible to the puzzle—either Miles was setting a trap for him, or it was hard to understand how he'd gotten the five stars on his insignia. An enemy was an enemy! He decided on silence as the best course, and was glad when the others began to leave. He watched them moving out, shocked again at the pretense that was going on. Did they really think war to the death was a game? He started to follow, then hesitated, swayed by a sudden impulse. Surely it could do no harm. He located one of the waiters and asked for a package of food to take to Pat. To his relief, the man showed no surprise, and he soon had a bag in his hand. Pat was still sitting at the machine. She took the food with a pleased smile that told him he'd done the right thing. "Why so glum?" she asked. "Frankly, I'm puzzled," he told her. On a sudden impulse, he mentioned the lecture and how it had disturbed him. "Dad!" She smiled, then laughed outright. "He always talks like that to a new man. Bill, did you ever see a little boy fighting a bigger one, wading in, crying, whimpering, but so mad he couldn't stop—couldn't even see where he was hitting? That's hate-fighting. And it's senseless, because the other side may be just as right. Professional fighters don't really hate—they simply do everything they can to win, coldly and scientifically." She touched his arm. "Bill, be sensible. You act as if we couldn't win." "What makes you think we can?" "The computer thinks so. I tried it. We'll win because we know how to be efficient. We'll experiment a bit, because we don't have a set pattern—because we've kept individuality. The Aliens act like a preset machine. Like a crew killing pests. "Start at the outside of a circle and exterminate inwards! Nonsense! They should have hit Earth at once, even if they had to retrace their steps a few times. But they aren't trying to find out whether we act like the enemy they planned on. No—what's the proper way is the proper way. A lot of our nations attempted that once—and look where they are now." He shook his head, not believing her, but it left him uncertain and disturbed. The fact was that the enemy was closing the net—closing it so fast he'd be a dead man in two weeks, if he couldn't find the solution. As to hatred.... He shook his head, and went into his office. There were copies of his own published works there, as well as magazines he hadn't yet seen. He dropped down to fill in the flaws his memory had developed. Paraphysics was tricky stuff. For a long time men had known no other spectrum but the electromagnetic, running from heat up through cosmic rays. When atomic particles moved from one energy level to another, they produced quanta of energy in that spectrum, which was limited to the speed of light. The kinetogravitic spectrum began with gravity and moved up through nuclear binding force toward some unknown band. Apparently it was the product of the behavior of some sub-particle finer than any known, and its speed of propagation was practically infinite. Other spectra were being considered, but no order or logic had fitted yet. He found an article by a Japanese scientist that suggested there might be a spectrum related to the behavior of atoms in the molecule—with crystals in some cases acting on one level due to the electron drift, and on another due to atomic strains within the molecule. Colloids, polymers and even the encephalograph waves were dragged in, but the mathematics seemed sound enough. Norden caught his breath, and began digging into the equation. The third manipulation suggested that magnetism might somehow be involved, and that would mean.... He couldn't dig the idea out. Just when it seemed about to open before him, his mind shied away and drifted off to other things. He was still working on it when Pat came in, and dropped a sheaf of papers on the table. Strips of tape had been pasted together to form a crude book. "The whole thing," she reported. "But most of it's nonsense. There's a page or two about some secret asteroid where the survivors of the fifth planet are waiting for men to mature before bringing the Great Millenium—or pages where Hardwick worked on the numerology of your name before he discovered your middle name had no H in it—or little notes to himself about buying a gross of Martian sand lizards. I had the machine go through it, strike out all meaningless matter, and come up with this." It was a clip of five sheets. Norden skimmed through them, and groaned. The shield he had tested for Hardwick had been made of genuine mummy cloth, ground mandrake and a glue filled with bat blood. "Yet you did live," Pat pointed out. "And he was right about their being able to detect life. We sent out sterile neoprene balloons loaded with live rabbits, and others with dead rabbits. Every balloon with the live rabbits was blasted—and none with the dead animals. We could use the same test to find out whether any one of those things worked—or any combination of them." "We'll have to," he decided. "And then it may have been the closet instead of the shield—or an accident to their detector that saved me. Pat, have they got some kind of library here?" It was already quitting time, but she went with him while he persuaded the library attendant to let him in, before the next shift came on. Mummy cloth, it seemed, might become infused with a number of aromatic preservatives, products from the mummy, and such. It was ridiculous—but hardly more ridiculous than using the byproducts of mold to cure disease must have seemed. Anything dealing with life was slightly implausible. And when he phoned in the order for the materials to Miles, there were no questions. "Thanks, Pat," he told her after she'd shown him where his sleeping quarters were located. She shrugged. "Why? If we don't find the answer, I'll be as dead as you in a few weeks." He shuddered, and then put it out of his mind. Worrying about death wasn't decent, somehow. He found his bunk, stretched out with his hands behind his neck, and tried to review the serious events of the day, without the problem of hatred, over-efficiency, or Pat and her father. He saved those to worry about in his mind after he rolled over on his side, and gave up all ideas of sleeping. Then abruptly there was a yell from down the hall, and lights snapped on. Norden sprang out with the others, to see the outer lock click shut. In the glare of the overhead lights, he could see a figure running desperately for the edge of a further Quonset—running in the airlessness of the exposed surface without a spacesuit! More lights snapped on, and a guard in a suit came around the corner, throwing up a rifle. There was a tiny spurt of flame from the weapon, and the running man pitched forward. The guard started toward him just as a few men began to dart out of the huts in hastily-donned spacesuits. A greenish-yellow effulgence bloomed shockingly where the runner had fallen, and the floor shook under Norden. The guard was thrown backwards, and the others stumbled. When the explosion was over there was no sign of the man who had run. "Alien!" somebody muttered. "A damned Alien! They always blow up like that before you can get near them! I've seen it out in space!" And Norden remembered the bomb that had wrecked the dome on the asteroid—a bomb that had flared up with the same greenish-yellow color. Guards came up to drive the men back to their huts, but Norden seemed to have high enough rating to stay for a while. He learned that one of the workers was missing, and that it had been his badge which the Alien had worn to enter the sleeping sections. Either the Alien had killed and destroyed the worker for his clothing or else he had been the worker! And he had been discovered forcing the lock on the sub-section of the hut where Norden had been sleeping! (End of Ch II; continued in comments posted below) ::: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/74095/pg74095-images.html

3DPrinting j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

odysee.com

Very nice practical example of printed test jigs for PCB assembly testing. Newpipe is down ATM, so if you're looking for something to watch, this might burn 32 minutes. I found it mildly inspirational to get making/designing some stuff again.

Word of the Day j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

- spesious - (adj) seemingly well-reasoned, plausible or true, but actually fallacious - eristic - (noun) one who makes specious arguments; one who is disputatious - disputatious - (adj) of or relating to something that is in question as to its intent or value; inclined to argue or debate - ad hominem - (noun) - Short for argumentum ad hominem: A fallacious objection to an argument or factual claim by appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim; an attempt to argue against an opponent's idea by discrediting the opponent themselves - interlocutor - a person who takes part in a conversation - myriarchy - a government of 10k people - detumescence - shrinking genitals after sex, male and female contexts - tumescence - enlargement of genitals for sex; tumesce - pastiche - a work of art that imitates the style of some previous work; a musical composition consisting of a series of songs or other musical pieces from various sources

Asklemmy j4k3 • 2 months ago • 96%

I'm curious what it takes to do furniture upholstery. And in a completely different scope, what it takes to sew Lycra in clothing like cycling bib shorts. I mean the secret to doing it right. For instance, if you want to paint cars, I can tell you all kinds of levels, but the secret sauce is sticking to a single paint system from primers to clear, 3m imperial sandpaper used wet with a drop of dish soap, block sanding with guide coats, degreaser for reflections tests, a reliable air drying system for compressed air using an oilless compressor and very large tank, a full set of Sata spray guns, the best pneumatic DA sander your paint jobber sells. Then you'll also need a variable speed buffer, fresh cut/medium/finish pads, 3m Perfect-it 2 and whatever fine finisher they sell now that does not contain oil fillers. Tape, paper, all all that is a given. Perfect automotive class paint is 99.9% prep and sanding, and only 0.1% painting. The number one rule is: when you think you should be done, step away for a break, when you get back acknowledge that you are only halfway done and get back to work. Your emotional state is irrelevant; the only truth that matters is in sanding guide coats and degreaser reflection tests. All that said, with all of my experience, I can mix paint systems to get cheaper combinations between systems, I can spray with a $20 harbor freight gun, and polish with a sock and toothpaste in a zombie apocalypse pinch. Does anyone here know sewing on this level? In a (coco) nutshell, what are the machines and standards to *do it right*?

History Ruins j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

[Scenic Routes of the Past - YT - 3m:21s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t7vBwsDkwM)

Casual Conversation j4k3 • 2 months ago • 81%

Let's say there are consequences where all genetic alterations are difficult to sandbox and largely irreversible during an extended, but still finite lifetime of around half a millennia. ## Rules: - changes will be passed down to your offspring - any change may make you sterile, but large changes will always make you sterile - alterations are most effective when done under the age of 20 and do not fully manifest for decades - if you screw up your code it might be deadly - biology as an engineering corpus is several orders of magnitude more complex than computer science was in the 21st century – screwing up is very easy - any adaptation present in evolutionary life is technically possible to someone dumb enough to try and brilliant enough to pull it off These are the rules, what do you change?

Hardware j4k3 • 2 months ago • 100%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervuwSwKu18 Nice example of real reverse engineering at a low level in a ten minute dense summary, including die level comments on structures. Also, why Broadcom sucks in engineering terms (NDA nonsense).