• sloonark
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    2422 years ago

    I’m a high school teacher and I recently was discussing this. Protip: don’t talk to 14 year olds about how if something is in between hard and soft, it’s firm. 🙄

    • @CascadianBeam
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      1092 years ago

      There’s a surprisingly more expansive demographic that pro tip applies to.

      • the_itsb (she/her)
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        332 years ago

        I’m 41f (going on 13 at times), and this is why my husband hates(loves) having me around the shop - all the mechanical everything is full of euphemisms and innuendo. “mating surfaces” 😂

      • @MudSkipperKisser
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        72 years ago

        Are emojis acceptable here? Because I’d like to insert the hand raise one here

        • Deez
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          132 years ago

          I think yes, let’s make a new culture of restrained emoji use 🙌

      • TheSaneWriter
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        62 years ago

        Yeah, that tip is applicable for a lot of people who understand what sex is, this isn’t something that really goes away with age in a lot of cases.

    • @kog
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      162 years ago

      I feel like you should really have seen that one coming.

        • @Sixner
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          62 years ago

          Not for lack of trying! He got that ropeware bug

    • @TwanHE
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      42 years ago

      Half-chubware

    • Doug [he/him]
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      22 years ago

      I had a physics teacher who measured something against his hand in front of class and started to say, “You should try to…” then stopped before telling us he almost said “you should try to use your body to measure whenever possible” but stopped because he remembered he was talking to a room full of high schoolers.

  • @kog
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    852 years ago

    Firmware is just software that runs in a different place.

    Source: me, I write firmware sometimes at work.

  • @jantin
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    462 years ago

    Wait… It’s not “firm” as in “company that made the stuff”? FIRMware = the official software a firm pushes to patch things they make

  • @fubo
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    432 years ago

    By the way, “joystick” was kinda rude back in the day, but nobody even notices now.

    • @cybervseas
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      142 years ago

      What was more acceptable? “Control stick”?

      • @fubo
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        402 years ago

        No, “joystick” was the original term. Everyone in the past were a bunch of perverts.

        • ChapolinColoradoNZ
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          22 years ago

          It could have been worse. It could have been named enjoystick…

          • @fubo
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            62 years ago

            It was named by pilots. It’s in the, um, cockpit.

            • lorez
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              22 years ago

              Nowadays it’s analog stick, where did all the joy go, I say?

      • @axtualdave
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        182 years ago

        Disco stick, as in

        “Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick / I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”

      • @FightMilk
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        52 years ago

        Wikipedia seems to suggest it was an original term, first recorded use in 1909, and mentions nothing about alternative terms or controversy. I call BS

        • @Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          42 years ago

          He means rude as in people made a sexual innuendo out of it.

          I remember in late 90s my brother bought a joystick. The brand was ThrustMaster. Literally, that was the name. ThrustMaster Joystick.

          We still laugh about it sometimes.

  • Max_Power
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    422 years ago

    TIL! I have never even wondered why it is called that. Just took it as a fact and went along with it.

    • El Barto
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      92 years ago

      I actually never tried to find any meaning to it. I thought it was just software for the BIOS (which it is), and that’s it.

      But this half wat between soft and hard? Whoa.

    • Ends
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      182 years ago

      200+ Shareware games on a CD, played the shit outta those. And they came in magazines or were given out completely free.

      I believe demos for games should still be the norm.

      • @WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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        32 years ago

        I think demos are coming back. I have a bunch on steam recently, and Nintendo has a ton of them on thier storefront.

        • Ends
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          22 years ago

          That’s good news. I hope that trend persists then.

      • J.M.
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        32 years ago

        And they arrived (because I don’t want to use ‘came’ given this thread already) on cereal boxes.

        • Ends
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          42 years ago

          I had never heard of that around here (Germany). Got my first PC '99, so I should have noticed; was looking everywhere for cheap Software deals. But there were some other companies which gave out free CD-ROMs as advertising with shareware and demo games. Some of those games were never finished, lol.

          The Internet Archive has those Nestlé CDs btw :)

          • J.M.
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            12 years ago

            Happened in Canada for sure. The post made me go dig through boxes in the basement and try to remember where my old cdrom drive and cable that would connect to a new Mac would be found. Good times and worth it.

            • Ends
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              22 years ago

              Got no “vintage” hardware sadly. In a VM it’s not the same. I still have a Floppy drive, but those disks were all corrupted eons ago. I wonder how long my heaps of gamer magazine and bundle-box (bought at Aldi for practically nothing _) CDs are still gonna last…

              They were the best of times, that’s for sure!

    • @Odo
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      62 years ago

      Oh man, Doom. Getting 1/3 of the whole game was incredible. Also Deus Ex years later. Some people hated the Ellis Island level, but I spent so much time exploring everywhere.

      • Ends
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        12 years ago

        I fucked around so long that I failed the mission. It gave a prompt that I had 17 minutes left to do the last thing, and ran out by 20 seconds or sth.

        Gotta give that game a whirl again soon, with proper textures & mods & fool around with ReShade for hours until my back hurts and I gotta lay down after an hour of actual gameplay, muhaha.

  • @irkli
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    32
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    2 years ago

    deleted by creator

  • @tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk
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    272 years ago

    Then there’s wetware (people).

    I miss some of the older ones from my college days (1990s)… million logical instructions per second (megalips), and measuring mouse speed in mickeys/pixel.

    • @WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
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      32 years ago

      Of course there’s people, the ID-10-T module needs to be installed somewhere!

    • Nakari Lexfortaine
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      32 years ago

      With the advent of lab grown animal neurons interfacing with parts, we need to expand the definition of “wetware”.

      It’s meat. Doesn’t even need to be people meat. Just meat that can be trained to react to stimuli, which opens up some options depending on complexity.

      • @WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
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        22 years ago

        So technically, the Pigeon Bomb means wetware predates both software and firmware.

  • @TechnologyClassroom@partizle.com
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    262 years ago

    Extra firmware cannot be modified.

    Firm firmware might be able to be modified, but documentation is largely unknown.

    Silken firmware is easily modified by the user.

    These names are taken from tofu packaging.

  • @21trillionsats@infosec.pub
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    252 years ago

    My non-tech wife tried to tell me “obviously that’s why it’s called that” when I’ve been writing software (and even some minor firmware hacking) for 30 years.

    Is this the real life?