blind3rdeye

I recently watched Mad Max I, II, and III for the first time; since I know they are hit movies that influence a lot of popular culture. I've already seen Fury Road a couple of times, and I reckon that's an excellent movie - so I figure I'd give the others a shot. Here are some of my thoughts:

I found that MM1 is surprisingly basic. The world is not yet 'post apocalyptic'. The story is clean and simple, and there is very little world-building. It actually reminds me of Duel. A decent movie, but no really big ideas.

MM2 is what people really mean when they talk about Mad Max. This sets the post apocalyptic scene that so many things are now inspired by. The plot is more involved than the first; but it is tight and believable. I could nit-pick at this, but It's a very good movie; and it is a cultural touchstone for wasteland post-apoc type settings.

MM3 is trash. Don't bother watching this unless you're a super-fan who just needs more content. It feels like the writers were told to make another MM movie, and so they had a good brainstorming session to get some good ideas for what could happen; but then that's all. The movie is a grab-bag of inconsistent junk, just lurching from one setting to another in ways that don't really make sense. They've got about 3 movies worth of story arc, but only half-a-movie worth of details. It does have some alright visuals and action scenes, and a couple of novel ideas, but overall it is a bad movie.

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Fury Road feels a lot like a refreshed and modernised version of Mad Max 2. (There are a lot of things that I like about Fury Road; but I'll save those comments for another time.)

source: https://tech.lgbt/@AzulCrescent/113993024339444481

This is a problem that I've given out many times as an example of an easy-to-understand but unsolved problem in maths. ... So it's slightly disappointing that I can't do that anymore! (But cool to see that progress is in fact possible in weird problems like this.)

I've just discovered this maths magazine (online, and in print). What I've seen so far looks good, and I'd never heard of it before - so I figured I'd share it here.

I've recently realised something about Pythagorean triads; a topic which very few people I know would be interested in hearing about... so I'm posting in here - a ghost town maths community. (But I'll also post on mastodon.). Anyway, the realisation is related to complex numbers.

If I have two complex numbers, I can multiply them like this: (x₁+y₁i)(x₂+y₂i), or like this r₁r₂cis(𝜃₁+𝜃₂). So then, if I represent a Pythagorean triad as a complex number, x+yi, with r as the hypotenuse, then multiplying two of these together is guaranteed to produce another triad. The rectangular method of multiplication guarantees integer real and imaginary components, and the polar method guarantees an integer hypotenuse. For example, (3+4i)(3+4i) = -7+24i. And 7²+24²=25².

So that's a bit interesting. But I have more. Since the polar angle in these triads is always an irrational multiple of 𝜋, repeatedly multiplying by the same triad will never return the angle to where it started. You'll just get new triads every time. But of course, if we are multiplying different triads together, its easy to come up with different ways of producing the same triad product. Following this line of thinking, we can view the Pythagorean triads as either 'prime' or 'composite'. Any triad can be written uniquely as a product of prime triads - just like with integers. (For this to fully work, we must allow 'flat' triads such as (1, 0, 1), (2, 0, 2), etc.)

How can we tell if a triad is prime? Well, I don't know - other than trying to brute-force the factorisation. If the hypotenuse is a prime number, then the triad is definitely prime. But if it isn't... I haven't thought much about that yet, but my current answer is to just check to see if a triad can be made with the factors of the hypotenuse.

Anyway, that's all I've got on that for now. No doubt there's some fully fleshed out details somewhere on a wikipedia page citing some well known facts from 2000 years ago or whatever. But discovering is more interesting that knowing. So I'm not going to check right now.

I'm looking for discussion and suggestions about the best way to play games from GOG on linux.

My current method is that I've got GOG Galaxy installed with bottles, and then I use GOG Galaxy to install and launch the Windows games. That's working alright so far. One downside is that won't install Iinux versions like that, so for games that have a native linux version I have to decide if I want to install it separately, or just run the windows version with the others. So that isn't perfect. Another minor thing I don't like is that since I'm installing games via GOG Galaxy via Bottles via Flatpak... I end up having very little idea of where stuff is being saved. It's difficult to find save game files for example; and if there is some junk installed or left over from something, there's very little chance that I'm going to notice and delete it. It just feels very opaque. (I guess that's mostly just about my personal lack of knowledge though.)

Anyway, I'm mostly just wondering how others are choosing to handle their games from GOG.

I just think it's cool to when indie developers are an active part of the gaming community.

I'm vaguely interested in having a few different encrypted folders on my computer, with different passwords on each. I don't have any particular strong requirements. It's more of a velleity; mostly just to try it so that I know more about it.

That said, when I search for encryption options, I see a lot of different advice from different times. I'm seeings stuff about EncFS, eCryptFS, CryFS; and others... and I find it a bit confusing because to me all those names look basically the same; and it's not easy for me to tell whether or not the info I'm reading is out of date.

So figure I'd just ask here for recommendations. The way I imagine it, I want some encrypted data on my computer with as little indication of what it is as possible; and but with a command and a password I can then access it like a normal drive or folder; copying stuff in or out, or editing things. And when I'm done, I unmount it (or whatever) and now its inaccessible and opaque again.

I'm under the impression that there are a bunch of different tools that will do what I've got in mind. But I'm interested in recommendations (since most of the recommendations I've seen on the internet seem to be from years ago, and for maybe slightly different use-cases).