The unimportant news thread

[greg]

Gyms are now open in my area, so first day back in months (though did small amount of home workouts)...

having to wipe every single piece of equipment you use is a minor pain. Also, had to go to a completely different branch of Gold's Gym, since the one I was going to was sadly closed forever due to corona virus.

Workouts are a weird thing... they are so incredibly boring, yet feel so good.

(also remembering some New Year's thread about this year, me mentioning to work out more, and then this shutdown happens). 

     Don't stop, go slower if you have to. Always be adding. One person I've known for almost 40 years finally started in 2013. Now she has a nest egg Albert Brooks would be proud of. If I ever let her retire she'll be all right.

Yeah. 

[drogulus]

     Instead of getting a new TV I bought one for my brother, a newer version of the one I have. I set it up in his apartment and it looks very good. I turned off as much of the offensive A & V adjustments that are set as defaults as I could find. In particular I set the picture to "cinema" instead of "standard".

     The soundbar just arrived. I'll use the HDMI in on the bar for a box that does 4k discs and USB files well. The Roku will go into the TV. I don't use smart features built into TVs so I choose them for PQ and leave other stuff to devices best suited to their respective functions.

     

[MusicTurner]

Divers & staff did the yearly cleaning of Copenhagen's harbour and canal waters yesterday.

Here are some of the things they found:

- 181 bicycles
- 144 electric rental scooters, the ones you stand on
- 47 traffic cones
- 47 café chairs
- 18 shopping carts
- 9 tyres
- 5 signboards
- 4 partial scaffoldings
- 4 trash bins
- 3 café tables
- 3 mobile phones
- 2 cages on wheels, for goods
- 1 parasol
- 1 pennant
- 1 knife
- 1 advertising board, 6 m wide
- 1 ladder, 6 m
- 1 umbrella
- 1 stroller for babies
- 1 safe

[greg]

No dead bodies?
And what was in the safe? No bodies, illegal porn or drugs?

[MusicTurner]

No dead bodies?
And what was in the safe? No bodies, illegal porn or drugs?

No, but at least I included mentioning the found knife, for the thrill of it. But then, it could also be just a cafe knife.

There wasn't any mentioning of the content of the safe, maybe it's been sent to a deposit, if anyone should ask for it ... 🤣

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Divers & staff did the yearly cleaning of Copenhagen's harbour and canal waters yesterday.

Here are some of the things they found:

- 181 bicycles
- 144 electric rental scooters, the ones you stand on
- 47 traffic cones
- 47 café chairs
- 18 shopping carts
- 9 tyres
- 5 signboards
- 4 partial scaffoldings
- 4 trash bins
- 3 café tables
- 3 mobile phones
- 2 cages on wheels, for goods
- 1 parasol
- 1 pennant
- 1 knife
- 1 advertising board, 6 m wide
- 1 ladder, 6 m
- 1 umbrella
- 1 stroller for babies
- 1 safe

Reading stuff like this makes me want to cry!  Though a huge pat on the back for the volunteers who hauled up this stuff!  Actually, were they all volunteers?  In any event, glad that they did it.  I could see a few items accidentally coming lose and blowing into the water or accidentally doing something like dropping your cell phone over the railing of a boat/ferry, but the rest?!  For one thing:  all of those bikes and rental scooters?!      Any idea how long it took people to haul up all of this stuff?

Would be nice it there were a couple of trillion kroner in their to help the Danish government and people, but not likely!

PD

[MusicTurner]

Reading stuff like this makes me want to cry!  Though a huge pat on the back for the volunteers who hauled up this stuff!  Actually, were they all volunteers?  In any event, glad that they did it.  I could see a few items accidentally coming lose and blowing into the water or accidentally doing something like dropping your cell phone over the railing of a boat/ferry, but the rest?!  For one thing:  all of those bikes and rental scooters?!      Any idea how long it took people to haul up all of this stuff?

Would be nice it there were a couple of trillion kroner in their to help the Danish government and people, but not likely!

PD

Yes, though some of all this 'dropped' stuff is no doubt due to accidents and storms, the majority must be ascribed to either drinking, partying gone wild, having second thoughts after a theft, or downright hooliganism. I'm a bit surprised how many bicycles there were, but also that smaller items were relatively scarce. The harbour waters are really clean and used for swimming, we have many public baths opened there in recent years, and polution isn't generally a problem. As regards the electric scooters, they were in the main introduced just over a year ago, and the large number of them created chaos, so luckily there are now considerably less of them. I've seen myself how users would park them at not very secure spots directly above a canal etc., and they are very easily tilted or moved. The companies have later made it impossible to park them right next to a canal, via a GPS device, but there is still a lot of critique from the authorities, that they aren't good at fetching collected, damaged ones, etc.

I think the collecting is partly voluntary, partly paid. Cleaning by volunteers have become much more widespread here in recent years, but also the carelessness of just dropping stuff on the ground etc. Fines etc. for this aren't really applied within the city; salaries for employed people with such a job could surely be paid for easily, via fines.

[Christo]

Divers & staff did the yearly cleaning of Copenhagen's harbour and canal waters yesterday.

Here are some of the things they found:

- 181 bicycles

In Amsterdam, the number of bikes hauled from the canals on a yearly base is around 15.000: https://www.timetomomo.com/nl/feiten-over-fietsen-in-amsterdam 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

In Amsterdam, the number of bikes hauled from the canals on a yearly base is around 15.000: https://www.timetomomo.com/nl/feiten-over-fietsen-in-amsterdam 

Wow!  Any idea how many of those are rentals vs. privately owned?

[Christo]

Wow!  Any idea how many of those are rentals vs. privately owned?

Wild guess: 98 percent private bikes, not so many rented (it will cost you). 

[MusicTurner]

In Amsterdam, the number of bikes hauled from the canals on a yearly base is around 15.000: https://www.timetomomo.com/nl/feiten-over-fietsen-in-amsterdam 

Impressive - but you do have a lot of canals, by comparison.

[SimonNZ]

Climate crisis: alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia

"A prolonged heatwave in Siberia is "undoubtedly alarming", climate scientists have said. The freak temperatures have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.

On a global scale, the Siberian heat is helping push the world towards its hottest year on record in 2020, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

Temperatures in the polar regions are rising fastest because ocean currents carry heat towards the poles and reflective ice and snow is melting away.

Russian towns in the Arctic circle have recorded extraordinary temperatures, with Nizhnyaya Pesha hitting 30C on 9 June and Khatanga, which usually has daytime temperatures of around 0C at this time of year, hitting 25C on 22 May. The previous record was 12C.

In May, surface temperatures in parts of Siberia were up to 10C above average, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Martin Stendel, of the Danish Meteorological Institute, said the abnormal May temperatures seen in north-west Siberia would be likely to happen just once in 100,000 years without human-caused global heating.

Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at C3S, said: "It is undoubtedly an alarming sign, but not only May was unusually warm in Siberia. The whole of winter and spring had repeated periods of higher-than-average surface air temperatures.

"Although the planet as a whole is warming, this isn't happening evenly. Western Siberia stands out as a region that shows more of a warming trend with higher variations in temperature. So to some extent large temperature anomalies are not unexpected. However, what is unusual is how long the warmer-than-average anomalies have persisted for."[...]

[Carlo Gesualdo]

Written while tired  to be follow in next post more intelligible

[Carlo Gesualdo]

Once I Fought  nazism whit hatred and  bigger nazism, I said ''White power'' and I give him a white power salute  all crooked hand like Hitler and the nazi cops from France Paris I yelled vlaams blok belgié, and said are you Sure your white Sure (since Sure was is name and said: are you're white Mr.Sure even he was covert whit skulls and shit on his harm he panic and felt scarred when I WAS there I once called him mon poussin ou mon chou afterward, he look totally dizorganised and scared to death and I said go to hell kermitian sub-genre,lol

He had a lesson and Im not nazi  but bully him like I was, a straight flush vlaamse collaborator, I gave him the secret paws of nazi  Flandria SS, so in the procces the neo nazi cops felt like a subhumans and piss in is pants, I was a genuine flemish= than had vlaamese will kill yah oi! and started to laugh whit a satanic little laughter  like startling image evil laughter like if Hitler laugh at him, he was like oh NO... very scared and worried when he seen me afterward, eventually he quite is nazism. So I break something in him, he paranoid I was in a secret flemish nazi order whiteout neo toss in it.

But whit all said it was to give him a lesson and it work. lol not a nazi, simply use nazism on him like he did on me but better, to is  utter horror, like a nazi of death  on the bonehead, using fire against fire... end of story

[greg]

Sounds more like nightmares than news. 

[drogulus]

     I have a hard drive that was clicking furiously while I was doing video encoding from files on it while doing something else on it, too. Then it slowed way down as I moved data off it. I did some research and tried out something I discovered. I uninstalled the drive in Device Manager and restarted the PC. After that the drive resumed normal function and only clicks a little. Still, I don't trust it and I bought a replacement. I think I just bought a little time, and I'm definitely not going to do any video encoding on it.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

     I have a hard drive that was clicking furiously while I was doing video encoding from files on it while doing something else on it, too. Then it slowed way down as I moved data off it. I did some research and tried out something I discovered. I uninstalled the drive in Device Manager and restarted the PC. After that the drive resumed normal function and only clicks a little. Still, I don't trust it and I bought a replacement. I think I just bought a little time, and I'm definitely not going to do any video encoding on it.

I wish I knew as much about computers as you do drogulus!  At least I have Apple's phone support which 99 times out of 100 is excellent.  At some point I'll need to get a new Mac (or at least a more up to date used one), but so far in any event it's still working quite well.  Out of curiosity, may I ask what kind of videos you are working on?

PD

[greg]

     I have a hard drive that was clicking furiously while I was doing video encoding from files on it while doing something else on it, too. Then it slowed way down as I moved data off it. I did some research and tried out something I discovered. I uninstalled the drive in Device Manager and restarted the PC. After that the drive resumed normal function and only clicks a little. Still, I don't trust it and I bought a replacement. I think I just bought a little time, and I'm definitely not going to do any video encoding on it.

Pretty sure I've heard the clicking before years ago at one point. I have two external drives but am trying to replace them by putting stuff on flash drives. No moving parts, no clicking, much safer. I would have done this a long time ago but it has taken so long for really large capacity flash drives to either exist or be affordable. Of course, there's also SSDs, but cables suck.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Pretty sure I've heard the clicking before years ago at one point. I have two external drives but am trying to replace them by putting stuff on flash drives. No moving parts, no clicking, much safer. I would have done this a long time ago but it has taken so long for really large capacity flash drives to either exist or be affordable. Of course, there's also SSDs, but cables suck.

Any idea roughly how large the flash drives can be these days?  And what kinds of prices for a reliable brand?

PD

[drogulus]

Out of curiosity, may I ask what kind of videos you are working on?

PD

     I do discs and downloads of movies and TV. Often the files are very gigantic, and instead of choosing from available smaller ones I like to squinch them myself. It's a hobby of sorts, and a way of learning how to manage the total size of the archive without losing quality.

     I ripped the BD box set Of The Wire which is 598 GB. Now I'm working on the project of slimming it down. Even saving 100 GB of HD space is a good thing, and I should be able to do that without any noticeable degradation in VQ. In some cases getting rid of foreign subs and alternative soundtracks saves lots of space, too.