>>455484

It's annoying because OLEDs are, otherwise, the perfect technology for flatscreens.

It can't be that hard to find something that does the same thing without the inherent lifespan problems, surely.

>>455484

> I get the feeling nobody knows any more than the Tesco employee who stacks the same shelves there

They seem to have a tendency of hiring lads who think they know a lot more about tech than they actually do. Which probably doesn't do much harm as long as they've got tech illiterate customers, but as soon as you need something very specific that you already know a good bit about, it's easy to catch them out.

Bought a graphics card off ebay a couple of weeks ago, but the lad used Hermes/Evri for delivery, and inevitably the package was flagged as damaged, then they told him it was missing, then according to the tracking it has been sat in a depot since the 28th. Apparently their customer service is awful and they have basically been ignoring him. Anyway I requested a refund today and it was accepted almost immediately. I feel bad for the lad, but then again he did use Evri.

I hope the thing arrives at some point so I can ship it back, but honestly I'm glad it went missing after it was initially flagged as 'damaged' - it would probably have died on me with zero recourse sooner or later.

>>455487

I had a seller (small business so hopefully it didn't hurt them too much) with much the same story. Ordered item, it got sent with Evri, it just sort of vanished (god knows what you could do with a package of, essentially, large cubes of wood) and he had to send out a second one.

Think I'll take the postal strikes over that shitshow.

>>455488

For a business, it's a fairly straightforward economic calculation. "Free" delivery isn't free, so for low-value consignments it's often worth accepting a certain level of loss. Even with a reliable courier, you'll still see a relatively high level of shrinkage due to fraud. It's just a cost of doing business.

Truth be told I think staying up to watch Dune was a mistake. Incredible sense of humour from whoever it was at Film4 that decided to wrap up their David Lynch mini-season with it though. I don't know what I'd think if my first exposure his films had gone Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet and then this nonsense

>>455547

There's a well known fan-edit that is quite good, I'd highly recommend watching that if you want something more coherent, plot-wise. It's broken up into distinct acts and is a bit easier to make sense of. I think some of the character narration is removed, as well.

Some of the effects are very poor, but most have a lot of creative flair and pleasantly bizarre elements, like the pictured.

I'm aware on an objective level that the newer, slicker version of Dune is probably better, but watching it I found it charmless and bleak, and I think this is largely down to the script. In the original, the characters have a heightened, fantasy-genre emotional earnestness about them, it's very "space opera". The newer version takes such pains to portray every one of its characters as a cynical, snarky, mean, unfeeling arsehole that I just didn't like any of them. Contrast the dinner scenes between the protagonist and his mother in both films and you'll see what I mean.

How safe and/or legal is it to do your own repairs on your central heating system?

There's a broken water pressure gauge on the filling valve where you top up water into the system. It is located somewhere next to the furnace in the basement. I called someone and they said they normally replace the entire filling unit that the gauge sits on top of, and it would cost around £500 including parts and labour. Let alone that they wouldn't be able to do it before about mid-January.

The gauge itself can be had for around £30 over the Internet. It seems to me like all I'd have to do would be to shut off whatever valves are in front of and behind the filling unit so that there is no pressure in that part of the system, and then unscrew the pressure gauge and put the new one in.

There's a digital system pressure readout on the furnace's control panel display, so even without that analog pressure gauge on the filler, you always have a way of knowing what the current pressure is. It's probably best to replace that broken pressure gauge, but I'm not sure it's worth 500 quid to me.

>>455552
> How safe and/or legal is it to do your own repairs on your central heating system?

Are you renting? If not and you have the lease hold you can do almost whatever you like when it comes to the leccy or gas. Make sure you thoroughly understand the task ahead and then go ahead and touch anything that's past the meter. Just bear in mind that gas can blow up your house, if you have a mate that knows his stuff get them to do it. £500 or not, this is explosive air that you can barely smell to heat your home and water. It smarts, but get it done right.

>>455553

I'm a homeowner. I wouldn't have to mess with the gas side at all, this would only affect the water circuit(s).

I just opened the valve unit for a bit and it seems to work fine, the furnace's digital display gradually climbed from 1.4 to 1.6 bar water pressure, which is bang in the middle of the 1.4 to 1.8 that the user guide recommends for the heating circuit. So it appears that it's really only the analog water pressure gauge that's gone bad.

The HVAC specialist I called tried to tell me something that by the time that gauge goes, the rest of the filling unit is usually ready to replace anyway. I called them back and told them I saw the exact gauge on its own for 30 quid online. But they only said that normally it comes as a package, that those gauges aren't meant to be sold separately, and that they can't vouch for the origin of those parts.

Seemed like a bit of a brazen money grab.

>>455553

>If not and you have the lease hold you can do almost whatever you like when it comes to the leccy or gas.

This isn't true. I don't know about gas, but Part P of the Building Regulations requires electrical work to be signed
off by a competent person. Installing a new circuit requires a notification to be made to the local authority by someone who is officially registered. There's a maximum fine of £5,000, but you're unlikely to be caught; the more pressing problem is that unauthorised work will invalidate your home insurance.

>>455555

I installed two new surface mount mains outlets plus around 20 feet of surface mount wiring in the garage two years ago. I looked up the relevant regulations beforehand and then installed everything accordingly. I doubt anybody will ever notice. And I also doubt there will ever be a problem.

>>455556

I always wonder, who exactly is going around enforcing this stuff? Surely it's more to do with commercial homebuilders than DIY stuff.

Or is it something that an eagle eyed solicitor will spot and cause your sale to fall through in twenty year's time?

>>455557

If electrical installations were carried out to applicable standards by you as a layperson, then very likely not. And in the absence of that, they will not have a case, even if something was done by somebody who wasn't formally qualified.

Also, if somebody asks me in 20 years who did my additional wiring in the garage 22 years ago, what's to stop me from saying that some electrician did it who's either long dead or out of business now. Or I'll just say I completely forgot what they were even called.

I bought a tin of mustard powder. Apart from using it when making cheese scones/straws what am I supposed to do with it?

>>455564
Add it to stews or use a bit to season a roast. It's quite versatile.

This isn't healthy is it? I can't afford to heat the place and the broken roof is causing so much black mould.

>>455566
Temperature is OK, but humidity is no bueno. Get a dehumidifier
(dessicant drum, not a peltier), they eat about 300-600W but good news is that's basically expelled as heat so double action.

>>455566
Same temp as my bathroom, where the radiator doesn't work properly. Thankfully I can close 2 doors between the bathroom and living room, but it's still pretty cold in here. 3 pairs of socks today, plus longjohns and a coat.
I'm usually fairly autistic regarding heating, come seasons change, so this isn't exactly unusual, but it still sucks.

I've actually found myself warmer when out walking. Obvious really that if you're sat indoors you're not gonna generate any body heat.

>>455566
Martin Lewis says running a dehumidifier costs 7p an hour, if that helps.

>>455573

And you can use the condensate to water your plants.

If you still have any indoor plants that don't mind 9°C.

>>455573

How long before people are visiting Martin Lewis to offer him gifts of turnips and asking him to bless their first-born child and shit? There would probably be people carrying him around on a platform like Xerxes in that film, and he would travel the impoverished towns of the country dispensing sage money saving wisdom.

>>455566
I bought one of those things recently, and then realised I had no idea what number humidity should actually be. It starts to get bad at 70%, so you are only just in the danger zone. I feel for everyone here who thinks 9.7 degrees is okay; the usual recommendation is a minimum of 16 degrees. Obviously you can go below that, but I'm one of the house-buying posters here and a couple of my radiators are fucked and I get pretty upset when it's colder than 12 degrees. I came home to 9.8 on Thursday, and immediately switched on the gas fire that I had previously not trusted, because I was willing to risk domestic armageddon to get back up to 14-15 as soon as motherfucking possible.

>>455584
Around 60% is good. More than that and it's mould time, less than and your skin starts to suffer. The precise value depends on what kind of building you live in, 1850s red brick has different requirements from 2010s insulated for example.

Purely music-focused game shows are so strange. The Hit List on the BBC always feels strange, because every contestant is so superhumanly brilliant at it that they identify every song instantly and I barely get to play along, but at least the celebrity episodes are fun because the celebrities are shit. I've just seen another very similar programme called That's My Jam, and that was a celebrity one and I was hopeless at it. I love music rounds in pub quizzes because I do consider myself pretty good at them, so if I couldn't do it, there will surely be a lot of people with absolutely no hope at all. If there is ever a non-celebrity version, it will be unwatchable because the musical Rain Men who enter these things will saunter through it while the viewers just give up.

In other news, all you freezing povvos need to get yourselves a £4 snood from your local B&M Bargains. I bought one a couple of days ago and it really has been miraculous. I'm reluctant to wear it outside, but until my heating is fixed, it's becoming a fixture around my cold neck.

I broke my girlfriend's nose while we were shagging earlier today. We were having a bit of a rough one, I was pulling her hair and all that, and I decided I'd shove her up against the wall, but she just smacked into it face first.

I feel a bit bad but it serves her right really. She always leaves me bruised somewhere. She once bit my neck so hard I couldn't feel the left side of my face for a week.

>>455576
Dunno m8, he's soured his name a bit by appearing with Ladbaby.
he's already backtracking as much as he can publicly do on Twitter by telling people that yes, you can donate direct to the charity and they get more money.

Maxi Jazz has died. Fuck. Christmas is ruined. I spent most of the 1990s and 2000s wondering how old he actually was, but I only looked it up a year or two ago. He was 65.

>>455730

Fuxache Lad, you could have learned WEB5.0 or CSS4 in that time.

Or if you wanted to do something useful, learn python.

>>455731
I tried learning Python. I'm not cut out for programming. I am the proud owner of teach-yourself books for Python, Java, C, and PHP, and Python was the one I was best at but I still can't do anything useful in any of them. I think there is knowledge required that isn't in the books that you only get told once you have a job in the industry, because I refuse to believe I'm actually that much thicker than the mugs I've met who claim to be good at it.

On a side note, I suspect you've got me mixed up with another poster here. I'm the autist who gives totally sincere responses to replies that I don't understand.

>>455732

That's unusual, because I am >>455731 lad, and I actually fucking HATE Python. Curly braces beat indents every time. Just thought I'd chum the waters a bit. I only learned Py (and Tkinter) to speed up my workflow in Poser 2012. Even when getting fed up with doing repetetive things by hand in Windows, I'd rather use PHP-GTK or PowerShell.

>>455739

Haven't tried Python. All the script kiddies rave about it because it's so easy to learn and so powerful, but I just haven't had anything to do with it. Most of my recreational coding these days is in JavaScript, PHP, a bit of MySQLi, as well as the odd bit of C(++) and Arduino. Not sure in which areas Python could replace what I've been doing in other languages so far.

>>455732
>>455739

To expand, and not be the cunt I am scared of being: if you want to learn a progrsamming language, there are two important questions:

1) What do you want to make
2) What (platform / system / audience) do you want to make it for

If you can answer those two, then the language or even the target platform won't matter so much, especially if you want to make Websites or Games (there are frameworks like Unity and Unreal). It's more important to have a small goal or a series of milestones to work for. Learnng programming for the sake of knowing how to do so is absolutely the wrong approach. You don't learn how to to use a hammer just to be able to say that you can. But if you have a great idea and the time to make something of it, there are lots of good resources at your disposal.

>>455740

Yeah, I think the main draw of Python is the portability, community support, mostly great integration with other heavy workflow-oriented software systems, and it runs pretty lean - PHP for example loads every function library at runtime, whereas Py must explicity load modules for working with arrays (lists) and advanced maffs (which actually tends to make it a bit annoying, but faster if you don't need the functionality) plus, it is a very different syntax if you are used to C / Java / PHP.

You kno what nobody uses anymore though? RUBY ON RAILS. Haha fuck that.

>>455743
It's a dead language now, but 15 years ago every cunt and his dog was learning it because it was the default easy way to build a content-driven website and the kind of framework you could pick up in a couple of weeks.

That said, there are still significant companies out there using it; many of them based on Heroku - it was only the large-scale hack of Heroku earlier in the year that has caused people to move off it, and RoR.

What about bash? I have an interest in learning Linux, and using bash to make useful things. But I’ve no idea how career viable that is or what use it is.

>>455772
Bash scripting is useful to know. There's not much to it, you can learn it in an afternoon or a weekend. It would be good if you had some terminal heavy task you wanted to automate.

This looks pretty good:
https://github.com/awesome-lists/awesome-bash

>>455772
Bash is very useful to know and often a quick 15-20 lines of bash can get you out of trouble. It's particularly useful if there are existing unix tools or programs with well formatted output you can string together using bash a glue, or for automating a few steps that only require simple decision making. There's no career option as a "bash programmer", but plenty of jobs in the industry take it as given that you know your way around a shell.

That said, the moment you get into serious string manipulation or hashtables/associative arrays/dicts/whatevers it's time to change to a "proper" language. Bash can do all those things but its error prone and quickly gets arcane, requiring deep knowledge of bash's quirks to avoid bugs. If you must use it in anger like that, "shellcheck" becomes non-optional.

The rat zinger is dead.

Doesn't warrant its own thread.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64107731

>>455851
I'm in a Facebook group with some friends where we each predict celebrity deaths over the coming year. Pope Benedict was on my 2023 list. I hate him so much. I could have scored some points if he'd lasted another 24 hours.

>>455852
I'd put David Jason on an each way for 2023.

>>455852
He died 90 minutes before the first place on Earth celebrated the new year, and he could arguably have been claimed for 2023. What an absolute cunt.

>>455854
Scathing documentary exposing his supposed carpet-baggerry for January 2024 then?

My sister wants a birthday present that can only be bought via Amazon. I found the same thing on Etsy, but it had reviews complaining that "I bought this item from Etsy to support local businesses instead of Amazon, but it arrived the next day in an Amazon box anyway" so I just bought it straight from Amazon.

I really hate Amazon. Not only are they big and powerful and therefore automatically bad, I had to refuse a free trial of Amazon Prime twice in one purchase, and I had to accept the cookies to pay. But at least I got to use the remaining £10 from the Amazon gift card I got a couple of years ago. No more seeing my own money be invested by Jeff Bezos to make further money for him while I don't spend it (I cynically assume this is what Amazon do with unspent gift card money, because why wouldn't they?Banks do that).

Of course, this is now my big chance to buy anything else I haven't been able to buy elsewhere and consequently decided I didn't want. I bet the bastards have it, however much I despise them.

>>455936
Etsy is appraoching the way of ebay and amazon to being a general store front to all comers, and sod the buyer.

They've fast turned from a craft seller to allowing all and sundry. In some cases that's OK, someone who hires 2-3 people to make stuff should still fit in, I think. But it's also rife with drop-shippers and re-sellers now, people who would be right at home on ebay or amazon (and often are).

With some sluicing you can often work out if the seller is legit, but good luck ith that.

>>455936
I bought some wall hangings from Etsy, page said made in UK. Then a couple of days later I get an email saying they've been shipped from China, so it lied to me.

>>455939
I bought a gift for my cousin's bain that said it would be made and shipped from Portugal, but the seller immediately messaged and said "please don't cancel your order but I'm from Ukraine so it'll take a bit longer than Etsy said". I have noticed a few Ebay parcels being fulfilled by Amazon recently, which is disappointing.

I can go years without seeing Mark Bonnar in anything and then he seems to be in everything I watch for a while.

I've just put on Babestation for the first time since I was a teenlad to find some of the same women still working the late night chat circuit. That's a little bit off-putting.