sxan

sxan, 2 days ago

The last 4 computers I’ve bought have not been Intel, and two of them have been AMD. They’re doing fantastic things, and I love their CPUs; their GPUs always work flawlessly under Linux for me. It’ll be interesting to see what they do in the NPU space.

That reminds me, I need to get more AMD stock.

sxan, 3 days ago

So, they’re essentialy claiming they’ve found a way around Amdahl’s Law?

sxan, 3 days ago

Look at the front steps, and where they meet the white step. The whole house is crooked.

sxan, 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

This is why you don’t get nuts when traveling on an airplane carrying a passenger with a nut allergy. Allergic responses vary wildly. You might have a mild allergy that gives you a rash if you eat too much of something. Or, you might go into anaphylactic shock if you breath air that’s had nuts in it.

My wife has an autoimmune disease that’s triggered by foods. Some foods more than others, and there’s some tolerance to each. She shouldn’t eat capsicum, but she loves spicy food, and she can eat some, but it she eats it too often, she gets a response flare. OTOH, she can’t have any amount of dairy: the response is rapid, and severe, and she has to take steroids to get it under control. Luckily, she’s not sensitive to anything (that we’ve found, anyway) that triggers a response from the molecules in the air.

Oh, there are two things you may have forgotten: first, when you smell something, you’re literally tasting molecules of that thing; second, your skin is your body’s largest organ, and you can absolutely ingest stuff through your skin. That’s how Novichok, and other nerve agents, work.

sxan, 3 days ago

Oh, hey @MissJinx; I haven’t seen you in a while.

I don’t think it was a stupid question; frankly, it’s not something I find intuitive. I have to stop and think about it. Also, living with someone with allergies makes you more aware of them, since your brain tends to purge knowledge you don’t use. I’d think it’s a curse - especially since my memory is shit to begin with - except that I know a couple of people with eidetic memories, and that can present its own problems.

I know one guy with an eiditic memory who has a problem with information that he learns wrong the first time. He has to build a sort of linked-list model in his brain for corrections, and then do a sort of very slow O(n) crawl of the list to end up with the right result. So say he’s introduced to you and they say your name is Becky; that gets stored in his memory. Then you correct them and say your name is “Susanne”, so he makes a “correction” link. But because someone coughed when you said it, he heard “Susan”, and that was w what got stored; so he has to make a second correction. From then on, whenever he runs into you he has to go through this “Becky” -> “Susan” -> “Susanne” process, and he says it’s real slow and can take a couple of seconds, and longer if there are more corrections. That seems a poor trade-off to me for being able to glance at a page and then repeat it back verbatim by reading the picture in his memory.

sxan, 2 days ago

I admit, I made that assumption when I read “gluten”, too.

Thing is, back in oelden days, people with these sorts of allergies wouldn’t survive long enough to procreate. We’re breeding a species of increasingly fragile people - but that’s what is best about us, IMO: we take care of our weak. With any luck, gene editing will get to the point that it doesn’t matter what genetic defect you were born with; we’ll just tailor a cure, and everyone will have a chance.

It surprises me there’s a non-cyliac gluten allergy; gluten is what allowed us to create agricultural societies - I thought that’d been bred out long ago.

“Bred.” Ah-ha. Ah-ha.

sxan, 3 days ago

Bonus if it can exit .sc files, a-la the best spreadsheet editor, sc-im.

sxan, 4 days ago

Lucille Ball would have made a fantastic captain.

sxan, 3 days ago

I’m hoping the fanfic will start flowing. Not with Ball in her “I Love Lucy” persona, but more “The Dark Corner.”

Although, I think Janeway was directed this way, with Lucille’s dry wit. It wouldn’t surprise me if the scriptwriters weren’t paying homage to Ball with the Janeway character.

sxan, 6 days ago

Use an OS for 20 years and still learn about new command every once in a while.

sxan, 6 days ago

finger, yes, but IIRC I just manually edited a .finger file - I don’t remember chfn.

Also, I haven’t used finger in such a long time; since soon after the eternal September, probably. So many contacts never had finger info, it became not worth the effort to even check for it.

☹️

sxan, 6 days ago

I seem to be the minority here, but, while I’d press the button, I wouldn’t mash it or press it a bunch of times, or eagerly press it… because periods. And PMS. And misogyny. But, mostly periods.

I think being a girl has some pretty sucky parts that is guys completely avoid, and for which I’m really grateful. And I think a lot of dudes who fantasize about transitioning sort of skip over, although I guess with no ovaries trans women get to avoid the worst of it. Although they still have to deal with the patriarchy, and that’s pretty shitty.

So, yeah. I’d press it, but with some trepidation.

sxan, 5 days ago

That’d take some of the fun out of it, I guess.

sxan, 7 days ago

I’m a little bitter that my wife’s Better Than Milk foams better than my whole milk; it makes better-looking latte’s, with perfect foam.

Comes in boxes exactly like that, which made me think of it.

sxan, 7 days ago

We really liked the flavor of Elmhurst, but it doesn’t foam at all, so for mocchas I use Better Than Milk. We tried the Elmhurst Barista blend and it tasted… bad. As in, it had gone bad. Elmhurst sent us a replacement, but that tasted just as awful. So I’ve been avoiding those; maybe other brands would be better.

My wife has an autoimmune disease that’s triggered by a laundry list of random foods - from cabbage and carrots, to hazelnuts, to any dairy product. She can eat any meat; it’s truly bizarre. But luckily, oat milks are OK, and they work well in recipes and don’t add any odd flavor, like coconut milk does.

Anyway, Better Than Milk is easy to find, it foams spectacularly, and it tastes good. I’ll try their barista blend, though; thanks for the recommendation.

sxan, 9 days ago

Beautifully summarized.

I think another factor will emerge: people are starting to realize that they’re paying $60 to rent a game. They don’t own it, and the game developer can shut it down at any time, and even if they don’t, it probably requires some online access for something, and the game stops working once the developer turns off those servers.

I don’t think we’ll see a revolt, but companies will be forced through competition to allow rental models with less or no up-front cost. I think people will simply become less willing to pay $60 for a rental. At this point, I don’t know what happens to development studios, because they need seed funding to get to market. I think it’s already happening; as a very casual gamer, most of what I hear from the industry is pure-play game studios shutting down, or being acquired by corporations like Sony or Microsoft, who have other revenue streams they can redirect into speculative game development.

sxan, 10 days ago

Personally, I care about these factors for my desktops as well. CPU, GPU, memory, and (and this surprised me) SSD temps - how many fans do I need? At least three in a proper tower-style desktop. I feel like the Grinch: “all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise!” And fans take power. Everything takes power.

So I’ve been running a micro-PC for a while: a Ryzen 7, integrated GPU, little 6x6x2 enclosure. It still has a fan in it, and I’ve got it in a space in my desk made for hiding computer devices and wires - I had to build a fan into that because it was getting warm in there and raising average temps on the computer.

My point is that these battery-optimized architectures are also pretty important for the desktop market, too. Gaming rigs with GPUs bigger than the entire rest of the motherboard notwithstanding, average desktop user would be fine with one of these micro computers. As long as you stay away from the hog software like Electron and Java applications, they’re perfectly capable; heck, even rustc burns through compilations pretty fast, and that’s not exactly an efficient compiler. And Go programs compile in no time on a Ryzen 7, or even 5. I suspect it’d even handle my mom and her Firefox with 200 tabs.

sxan, 9 days ago

They’re still also statistically pretty young compared to other rich people who got wealthy in their young adulthood. And male. Give young men access to a bunch of money, and the results tend to not be pretty. Day what you will about old men, if they’re reaching peak income near or after 50, they’ve already blown the worst of their testosterone out of their systems - that still leaves ego, which is its own problem, but suddenly coming into money in your youth I believe badly skews your perspective of reality. The culture they obtained wealth in is also important: guys (and gals) who gain sudden wealth in their youth through, say, competitive snowboarding are also going to have a skewed perspective, but their peer group and the lack of the negative influence of Wall Street and investors mitigate the worst of the effects.

sxan, 11 days ago

I think you have to cut off one of your fingers every time that happens, out something.

sxan, 11 days ago

Seriously. Never a bad one.

sxan, 11 days ago

What’s the theory as to why all Borg end up with such an unhealthy skin tone? How are they keeping the skin alive without hemoglobin?

sxan, 12 days ago

But the mycels are what make it go fast…

sxan, 16 days ago

I didn’t read the article; the CBS news site isn’t the worst, but it employs some of the common, horrible site design patterns, and is painful to read.

However: 34 counts. Each with a maximum possible 4 years incarceration sentence. It increases the odds of some jail time, for at least one or two counts.

The judge is said to be taking a lot of factors into consideration; I hope one is them is the unusually unanimous verdict on such a large number of counts.

sxan, 15 days ago

Should the Secret Service be a consideration?

Let’s say Trump brutally tortured and sexually abused some pre-teens in a basement in Texas, was tried and convicted and given a death sentance. Does the fact that hrs under the protection of the Secret Service have any bearing on the judgment? Should it?

That said, you’re probably right. He’ll have to spend a couple of years playing golf at Mar-a-Lago, a truly unjust and extreme punishment 🙄

sxan, 16 days ago

Really? Because of anybody could benefit from some years in prison, it would be Trump.

OTOH, Hitler spent time in prison, and look how he turned out.

sxan, 16 days ago

I can’t stop giggling at the thought: 34 counts, each with a maximum 4 year penalty.

I know, I know… no judge is going to issue the maximum penalty on each of those counts, especially in this case. But a man can dream.

136 years. happy sigh

sxan, 16 days ago

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Attributed (but debated) to Samuel Clemens.

sxan, 17 days ago

Software is easy. It’s the hardware backdoors that are hard to find, and those have been being built for at least a decade. They were pretty simple to start; I can’t imagine what they’re capable of hiding in 5nm process chips.

sxan, 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

You know the best way to analyze a submission to the OCCC? Compile it, then run the result through a disassembler. You get back far more readable code than the source.

But you’re right; reading code isn’t easy; I meant relatively. If you have government-level resources and can hire a bunch of experienced software developers to review source code, armed with a bunch if static analysis tools (<cough>NSA), you have a decent chance of finding malicious code in software. I know of no similar tools (and the automated software analysis tools are the important factor) for finding backdoors in hardware.

sxan, 17 days ago

Good riddance, Felicia.

sxan, 17 days ago

Isn’t the major controversy that they’re trying to argue that there were benefits for the slaves? Not benefits for the nation, benefits for the state, or even benefits for the plantation owners… but they’re forcing teachers to teach that the slaves themselves benefited - right?

These people are so fucked up, I just can’t. I can’t figure out how they’re in office.

sxan, 19 days ago

This cannot be emphasized or repeated enough. Before the acquisition, Boeing was led and run by engineers. After the acquisition, MBAs and Finance people were put in charge.

This happens at all large companies, eventually, and it’s why they all inevitably shit the bed. It’s just in this case, it’s killing a lot of people in the process.

sxan, 18 days ago

Loved that novel; it was one of the first Discworld books I read. And Pratchett had a great way of representing the fundamental truths of governments of whatever structure, except that we should be so lucky to have as brilliant (and, perhaps ironically, benevolent in that he mainly just wants things to function smoothly, despite his Machiavellian ethics) a statesman as The Patrician in charge.

sxan, 18 days ago

People seem to hate the concept of enshittification for some reason

Probably because it makes everything more shitty for everyone but the shareholders. I don’t believe that CEO’s like knowing that that everybody hates what they’re doing: their customers hate them, their employees hate them, and they know it. But I’d they don’t satisfy the shareholders, they get fired - just as you say.

The infuriating thing is that it isn’t about profit; it’s about maximizing profit. Companies can be profitable without enshittification. It’s the sin of gluttony that drives profit maximization, and the best thing these people can hope for is that the atheists are right and there is no heaven, because they’re for sure going to hell for bald-faced greed.

sxan, 21 days ago

The Russians are desperate for Biden to lose; they are funneling so many resources into buying media time and messaging.

sxan, 20 days ago

I agree that his team has been extraordinarily incompetent, for months.

He has handlers. They all do; they employ strategists to plan and coordinate getting them elected. Biden has a full time job being president; he’s not managing his election campaign directly. His failing is employing completely incompetent campaign managers.

sxan, 21 days ago

Everyone remembers his irascibility in the film but ignores that, for the three original years, he transported without complaint in nearly every episode. And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.

sxan, 23 days ago

OK! You’ve sold me; I’ll give it a try.

sxan, 24 days ago

I feel as if spheres are more boring than cubes, especially in space. The universe is filled with spheres; not so many perfect cubes.

sxan, 24 days ago

The sphere is the most efficient use of volume in space. Rectangles are only convenient for humans, and the Borg should not be concerned about convenience.

If the Borg were really about efficiency, they’d build spheres. But spheres are more boring, which comes back to my original point.

sxan, 26 days ago

This seems like a pretty good measure of the quality of lawyers Trump can afford, or who are willing to represent him.

sxan, 27 days ago

For all the Dr McCoys who don’t want their molecules scattered all over the Universe.

sxan, 26 days ago

Dr. McCoy has (had? Will have?) opinions.

sxan, 27 days ago

I have to say, I’ve yet to come across this meme where it wasn’t actually clever.

sxan, 27 days ago

They should get their assess back in the kitchen, and let their husbands do the voting. Uppity women.

/s, just in case

sxan, 27 days ago

In good faith: did you hear anyone actually say this? Biden’s a Clinton Democrat: more friendly to big business than to the working class. He was never going to be a class-leftist, and nobody promised he would be.

But he has been socially liberal, and he didn’t need any nudging. He was always socially liberal.

And those are your choices, for better or worse: an economically right-leaning, socially left-leaning old white man; or an economically hard-right, socially hard-right old white man.

The only way to fix this is to get rid of the electoral college and implement something other than first-past-the-post voting. Not voting is not going to fix it. In the meantime, you try to get the guy elected who isn’t trying to instigate a dictatorship.

sxan, 24 days ago

I tend to use tap-dance for modifiers, like my thumb Esc is also Alt, because one I tap (and never hold) and the other I always hold (and has no use taped). Having (e.g.) a key only dedicated to Alt is a wasted key; Alt isn’t a good key to have on a layer; and it would be not only annoying to have to tap a layer switch key to get to Alt, and even then there’d be a chording issue where you still need to have access to all your keys and Alt so you can type chords like Ctrl-Alt-X.

How do you manage the four(-ish) modifier keys without tap-dance, or having dedicated, single-purpose keys for them? On a 36, that’s 11% of the keyboard dedicated to modifiers (Ctrl, Shift, Meta, Alt) at best, or 19% if you make use of the fact that there are left/right distinctions for three of those keys (is there a Right Meta?).

Honestly, I’d be happy with a different solution. Modifier keys are hard enough; I still have trouble with accuracy with only three thumb keys. I had an ErgoDox for years and never really used all twelve of the thumb keys; it was just too hard to reliable hit that inner column.

For that matter, how do you do layer switches without tap dance, or dedicated keys? Are you using momentary layers, or layer switch? Are they dedicated layer keys, and if so, where are your modifiers keys and things like space/return? Can you post your config so I can load it in Vial and look at it?

sxan, 24 days ago

Oh, Yeah. I’m just calling it what Vial/QMK calls it. I don’t think the *Dox’s use vanilla QMK - they have their own proprietary firmware and configuration format (ZSA), although I think it is based on QMK. I did a bunch of research on this once because I got tired of having to use Oryx and wanted to use a desktop app like Vial, and eventually found out they’re incompatible.

Tap-dance in QMK terms is different behavior of a key based on whether it’s tapped or held; there’s a hold timeout where it can go into repeat if no other key is typed while it’s held, and it can also be configured to have different behavior on double-tap and tap+hold. I haven’t yet set up any double-taps, but I used them a lot in my ErgoDox because of all of the extra in the middle.

Thanks for the screen cap!