Lethal humanoid monsters, weird voice acting (likely not AI though) and “telephone”-distorted audio (it’s not just because I limited the bitrate to 20 kb/s to fit under 10 MiB, the YouTube video is like that). It’s an artistic choice but not a very rare one, so likely not directly inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s audiobooks.

You are right, QR codes are very easy to decode if you have them raw, even the C64 should do it in a few seconds, maybe a minute for one of those 22 giant ones. The hard part is image processing when decoding a camera picture - and that can be done on the C64 too if it has enough time and some external memory (or disks for virtual memory). People have even emulated a 32-bit RISC processor on the poor thing, and made it boot Linux.

Some of them use bismuth, which is as weakly radioactive as it gets, but why? It’s still a heavy metal and might be poisonous if parts of it shed off.

Yeah, I’m using Joplin over Nextcloud and it would absolutely be compatible, the Markdown syntax is the same after all.

In almost all microwaves, the control circuitry or mechanical switches only ever switch 2-3 power circuits: motor+fan(+bulb sometimes separately) and the heating (transformer+diode+capacitor+magnetron) high voltage circuit. It can therefore only switch the heat between 0 and max, usually in a slow (15-30s period) PWM cycle (that hopefully does not coincide with the tray rotation period). The inputs can be manual only, or sometimes there is also a scale, moisture sensor and microphone, along with thermal fuses for safety.

I think the pizza setting is just generic medium one with short 50% cycles to allow the heat to spread. The popcorn setting can be much more interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Limpr1L8Pss

If it’s a joke, the website is way too committed to the bit. They appear to also have less ridiculous articles with no obvious signs of satire, host Sunday and Friday service, sell books etc. The “New Month” is probably just something to fill their WordPress template’s calendar widget that they never figured out how to delete.

This is GRUB’s final warning before you dig too deep in the OS list. Never hold ⬇️ for more than 45 minutes. If you do, make sure you have punch tape with a bootloader available or you’ll have to manually enter machine code instructions to get your computer back up.

• Do you think developers have any say in this?
• They have Reddit Premium for free, and most likely an internal version too.

I am not aware of any receipt printers using lasers - thermal printers have an array of resistors that get hot when necessary. I know how a laser printer works and it is hard to explain in 12 or so words. Inkjets are way easier, you can just say “squirt squirt oops”. Anyway…

1. A photosensitive drum gets a negative electrostatic charge.
2. A laser shining through a rotating prism scans lines across the drum’s surface. This removes charge from parts of the drum that should not be covered in toner.
3. A high-voltage corona wire inside the toner reservoir charges an amount of toner positively.
4. The charged drum rotates past the corona wire, getting covered in toner where its negative charge remains.
5. Paper is pushed against the drum and the powdery toner is transferred to it.
6. The paper continues into a fuser, a little oven where a heating element briefly makes the toner so hot that it melts, its powder particles making a permanent bond among themselves and with the paper. (The heater is usually stationary and heats the paper from below. The fuser drum that pushes paper against the heater can get sticky and pick up some of the toner, making images repeat down the page. This is the most common failure mode that cannot be resolved through regular maintenance such as replacing the toner cartridge and printing cleaning pages. However, almost all laser printers have a cheap fuser module or its drum available so it is usually worth replacing.)

Laser printers more accurately “bake paper so that number powder sticks to it”

Here is the auto-generated transcript (for research purposes only)

oh isn’t it a beautiful day how cutie
the sun’s bright the birds are singing
nicely it’s a good as day as any to go
and touch
grass yeah I I know I know um it’s
important though I need to go to the
store it’s been a while and you know
replenish the
pantry um it’ll be okay though I promise
I’ll be back soon it shouldn’t take too
long and no no you don’t you please
don’t come with me I can touch enough
grass for the both of us and I promise
I’ll be back soon okay nothing bad’s
going to
happen but in case I don’t come back
please feed
mocha and take care of her for
me
no I’ve got to go now before I check it
out I’ll I’ll see you later okay you
just stay nice and safe inside
okay good
cutie all right that was easy got
everything I need yeah okay I’ve got to
hurry home now uh I’ve probably got to
switch out the cuties
bandages maybe we refill the ice pack
and ah goodness oh I didn’t see that
puddle it was surprisingly deep and now
my boots are
muddy that’s okay though once I get home
I can wipe them huh holy goodness
gracious why is no one watching where
they’re going right now I almost dropped
the eggs all right well that’s okay
anyways it’s that a car please bra
out think I’m okay oh no not another one
the in my
ankles no please stop this way please no
happens I need to get
home if I can make it
home