I just updated to the newest Ubuntu LTS, which puts pip into system managed mode so you can’t easily install packages outside of a virtual environment anymore.

If you (or anyone who stumbles upon this comment in the future) run into this problem, the new recommended way to install yt-dlp through pip and keep it in your path and up to date is via pipx (sudo apt install pipx). The syntax is a bit gnarly for pre-releases, so I figured I’d post an update:

To install the nightly: pipx install --pip-args '\--pre' yt-dlp

To update the nightly: pipx upgrade --pip-args '\--pre' yt-dlp

I alias the update command and run it before every download session.

The main problem with Java (or garbage collected languages in general) as a first language is needing to unlearn the bad habits it ingrains when you move to a systems programming language with manual memory management. Other than that it’s a pretty good first language, though I’d suggest learning a bit of C at the same time just to get a basic grip on things like pointers and stack vs heap.

Edit: it occurs to me that C# would be the perfect learning language. It’s very similar to Java and an easy first language, but you’d also learn about stack allocation through structs, and can teach pointers using unsafe (though I think unsafe code is still GCed, so this wouldn’t help with the memory management side of things. Haven’t touched C# in fifteen years so I’m not sure how it works anymore).

That could take a lifetime!

I’ve seen code with binary data (such as icons) baked into constants. I can’t wait for the three hour narration of base64 encoded pngs.

It’s fixed in the development versions. If you installed yt-dlp using pip, update with the prerelease flag: pip install --upgrade --pre yt-dlp. If you manually installed it, run yt-dlp --update-to nightly or grab the latest dev from their nightly repo.

In pog dog form!

Genie was locked up at 20 months old. I don’t think they locked her up because of her mental illness. They locked her up because of their mental illness. I reference Genie because she’s the most documented “wild child,” which is a completely disgusting term.

I was going off old college memories - after looking it up, it sounds like her father thought she was mentally disabled and began/increased his neglect because of it, despite her only outward health issue being delayed walking due to a hip problem.

Also re: “wild child”. I agree, and thanks for pointing it out. That’s what they were called in my books, but catchy rhyme aside it’s a horrible way to refer to a victim of such abuse. I’ll edit my original comment.

Language is universal to all humans, even though it is multifaceted. Humans also have massive brains that require extra care to bring to fruition in comparison to other animals. Language is one of those things. You can learn other languages at any age, but you first need learn a language.

It would be fascinating to know what inner thoughts look like without the construct of language to frame them in. Unfortunately there’s no ethical way to find out, short of uplifting a non-sapient species and asking them.

There was an old study showing that London taxi drivers develop enlarged hippocampi, the part of the brain used for navigation, to deal with the labyrinthian London streets. The growth continued over several years even in mature adults as they used those navigation and memorization abilities. I’d like to see a study of the brain of an adult prospective language learner over a long period to see if any similar plasticity exists for the brain’s language centers.

(I’ll admit I’m horribly biased. I was exceptional at picking up new languages as a teen, but let that knowledge decay into nothingness as an adult. I’d hate to have wasted such a useful talent.)

Given the success of foreign exchange students, I’m willing to bet the age factor is much less important than people claim.

People bring up the abused or abandoned children that had trouble learning to speak when introduced to society later in life, but usually fail to mention the reason they were neglected/abandoned as children was due to mental disabilities, so they aren’t really a viable data point.

Only 99¢ to recollect your blood echoes remotely, or $20 to never lose them again! Pay $5.99/month to unlock an extra co-op slot!

Shinzo Abe vibes.

The best sandwich I ever had was a panini I randomly threw together for a snack at three in the morning. The next day I went to make it again since it was so delicious, but realized I’d forgotten some of the ingredients I used. I was in the middle of a sandwich-making phase at the time so I had like a dozen types of bread, meat, and cheese to pick from.

This was a decade ago and I’ve never been able to recreate that perfect sandwich despite several attempts. It’s my culinary white whale. The only ingredients I am sure of are the spread (light mayo in one side, applewood-smoked bacon mustard on the other) and the meat (honey-smoked turkey), and that it was only a simple meat-and-cheese. The bread and cheese continue to elude me.

To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.

Three things in CS meet the qualifications for arcane runes: complex regular expressions, pointer arithmetic, and bit shifting.

Hear, hear! You can burn out at anything, even your most beloved hobbies.

I was a video game modder for most of my life, but burnt out on the hobby completely after several years of maintaining a dozen or so mods for an early access game.

Making new features was great, and hunting down reported bugs in my own code was enjoyable. Constantly fixing compatibility issues due to updates (and having to rewrite perfectly valid code due to shifting or deprecated APIs) wasn’t.

I love modding, but even things you enjoy get old after a while, and the feeling of obligation to continue (even if only not to disappoint your fans) wears at you.

The first recommended video when I searched for them was this one. Very cool, and confirmed for me that even though I don’t have claustrophobia, cave diving is definitely not for me.

Ponder Stibbons inserts another punch card into Hex. Ants flow through tubes and gears begin turning.

Megumin’s other problem is she only specced into things that would improve her explosion’s damage output, neglecting basic mage things like mana capacity and efficiency. So she can only cast one (stupidly overpowered) explosion spell before all but passing out from using more mana than she actually has. It’s why no other party would take her, because even in situations where the spell would be useful she becomes a massive liability after casting it.

“Exploration is one of the central pillars of our gameplay. That’s why we’re offering this handy little DLC to instantly fill out your map!”

I’ve seen that kind of DLC a few times for open world games and it’s always jarring.

We could also have “karma” on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

It’s strange that they removed total account karma visibility a while back but are now thinking about making votes public.

I think a good compromise (since Lemmy already tracks that data) would have been to show the upvote/downvote ratio a user receives on their profile page, without showing their total karma. That’d help you spot toxic users without incentivising karma whoring.

Similarly, a display of how often a user upvotes versus downvotes others would help spot bots and trolls without completely obliterating privacy like their suggestion would.

(But ultimately none of this solves the problem of privacy on the Fediverse being one federated bad actor away from nonexistence)