Identify this battery

2 years ago
Is this battery a mass market thing that I can buy somewhere, or was it some custom job?

It's for the bike lights that I have been using for many years, but today the USB charging port snapped off, and there's no way I'm going to be able to solder this surface-mount piece of shit back on. The company went out of business several years ago, and even their domain has been squatted, so I can't ask them. (So their "lifetime guarantee" turns out to have meant "three years".) I would rather buy a new battery than switch to a new model of bike light.

(By "battery" I obviously do not mean the battery part, but the whole assembly.)

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nginx hls shenanigans

2 years ago
Dear Lazyweb, is it possible to configure nginx so that when my RTMP source has disconnected, HLS clients continue to get video (e.g., looping colorbars) instead of 404?

The goal here is so that when there's a network glitch, the user doesn't have to hit reload, it will just come back to life eventually. (I have tried accomplishing this on the client-side with various Javascript tricks, but the browsers' autoplay restrictions and the general shittiness of the <VIDEO> element conspire to make that mostly impossible.)

Phase 1 might be to convert a 404 on "/live.m3u8" to an internal redirect to a static HLS directory of colorbars. Maybe "try_files" could do this. But phase 2 would be to make the video loop, and a static m3u8 file can't do that. So something would have to fake up an m3u8 with new timestamps on the old TS files, I guess?

Previously, previously.

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Flip-digit fluids

2 years ago
These are glorious. Sound on!

Motus Art:


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Vampire bats 'French kiss with blood' to form lasting bonds

2 years ago
Vampire bats establish friendships by sharing regurgitated blood with their neighbours in a "kind of horrifying French kiss", a new study says.

It found that when the vampire bats became isolated in a roost, pairs unfamiliar with one another - but in close proximity - would begin grooming, then "mouth-licking" before swapping food.

"We go from bats starting as strangers from different colonies to groupmates that act to save each other's life," said Prof Gerald Carter, author of the study and behavioural ecologist at Ohio State University.

"They have this 'boom and bust' foraging experience, so they either hit it big and get a large blood meal or they're starved for that night.

"Food sharing in vampire bats is like how a lot of birds regurgitate food for their offspring. But what's special with vampire bats is they do this for other adults," Prof Carter said.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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