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.

--

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.)

I have an old gmail account. I stopped actively using this account many years ago, but I'm still keeping it open for various reasons. I just sign in once a year or so, delete a few bits of spam, then log out.

Yesterday when I tried to log in to do this, Google wanted a phone number to verify my identity. It would not allow me to log in without a verification code from a phone. I tried to find a way around this. I clicked 'try another option', which then asked for the 'last password I remember'. I tried the current password, and the previous password that I had before that - but just told me that this was not enough to verify my identity.

I checked the Google help centre. Following its chain of questions basically told me that the only reason Google would do this is if I had activated two-factor authentication, or if someone else had got control of the account (and then activated two-factor authentication). ... I'm sure I didn't do this, and I very much doubt someone else had the account.

Reluctantly, I put in my phone number (which I know Google has had in the past, because I use to use this as my main account). The first time, I left off the area code, and Google told me that the number wasn't registered with the account. But then with the area code, the phone number worked and I was able to log in. So clearly it did have that number on record.

The very first thing I did was to try to remove any mention of this phone number from the account. But it wasn't mentioned. There were no phone numbers listed as registered to the account, and two factor authentication was turned off. I couldn't find any mention of that phone number anywhere in my account, nor find any way to delete it. Nevertheless, it was required when I wanted to sign in.

So I'm somewhat concerned. I don't want this number registered to the account in any way. I don't want to ever have to use it to verify my identity. I don't want it to be associated with my identity. Google doesn't show me that the number is associated with my account, but obviously it is - because it was required for me to log in!

Google has lots of 'helpful' pages about what personal information they store, and how you can delete it. But this experience highlights that they definitely store more than is shown in the profile page, and that there is no built-in way to ask for it to be deleted (or to even know what the information is). It makes me wonder what other personal information they have secretly stored. Probably a lot.

I'm wondering what steps I should take to have this personal data removed. I'm under the impression that there are GDPR laws which might compel Google to delete personal data if I request it to be deleted. But it isn't clear what data they have; and it definitely isn't clear how to contact them.

I'm intending to buy some gloves to use for commuting on cold days. I'm looking for something wind-proof, fairly light, and hopefully a bit water resistant.

Here are three sets of gloves that I've been looking at:

• Outdoor Research, commuter windstopper gloves
• Arc'teryx, Venta gloves
• Rab, Vapour-Rise gloves

I don't really know if any of those are good options. But they seem roughly what I'm looking for.

I'm wondering what gloves other people wear, and if you have any recommendations.

[edit] Although the primary purpose of the gloves is for commuting; I'd also like them to be my general "go to" gloves for whenever they are needed when visiting cold places.

tl;dr : Does Office 365 work well on Linux via winapps?

longer version:

At my work, I'm currently using my own (Windows) laptop. But its getting a bit long in the tooth, and my tolerance of Windows continues to drop... So I'm considering my options.

One option is to buy myself a new laptop and use Linux. The main barrier to this is that I use Office 365 stuff a lot for work. (Specifically: Word, Excel, and OneNote).

In my brief look around, my impression is that the only reliable way to get those products running on Linux is using winapps; which, as I understand it, basically runs the apps in a virtual machine but tries to make them look like they are running on the host OS.

(The alternative option is that my work will lend a Windows laptop to me indefinitely. But I generally like my stuff to be my own, and I don't like to create waste by accepting cheap and crap laptops with short life-spans.)

I'm writing here to ask if anyone has any experience using winapps. Does it work reliably? Is it easy to open and save files without any weirdness? Will I be able to use a stylus to write notes in OneNote?

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).