tomjennings

tomjennings, 2 months ago to random

I have a very small number of old white guy car friends, who are civilized enough to at least STFU (most seem at least marginally better-behaved than that, but we're talking low standard here). I make it a point to let them all know I'm gay/queer.

This is the sort of thing that crowd is passing around. Just FYI.

I take it as a nice temperature-taking from scenes-not-this-one. No one is happy with this shit.

A man calls Pizza hut to order a pizza...
CALLER: Is this Pizza Hut?
GOOGLE: No sir, it's Google Pizza.
CALLER: I must have dialed a wrong number, sorry.
GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month.
CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir?
CALLER: My usual? You know me?
GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.
CALLER: Super! That’s what I’ll have.
GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?
CALLER: What? I don’t want a vegetarian pizza!
GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir.
CALLER: How the hell do you know that?
GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.
CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetarian pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.
GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once at Lloyds Pharmacy, 4 months ago.

1/2

tomjennings, 9 months ago to random

Do hard links work on macOS? I need to do

$ cp -al A B

where A is a folder of files and B is empty.

I get "bad file descriptor" and usually but not always no files. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it does not. The error message happens regardless of success.

Trying to implement the rsync/cp -l rotating backup scheme but macOS doesn't like it.

Using zsh.

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

Post-lunch snooze on the squirrel highway. Old piece of gutter I put up as egress.

This old lady crosses a busy street multiple times a day, and for years now. I guess some squirrels do figure out the trigonometry of moving vehicles.

tomjennings, 4 months ago to random

Is it true that bicycle "spoke POV" display systems have... disappeared?

There's some little toy blinkies from china, but none like Adafruit's "SpokePOV" from 2008. Then, this stuff was still work to make go. Today, I'd expect bluetooth and low-rate video, whatever serial-addressed LEDs ("neopixels") can do.

I can find none.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov/

tomjennings, 4 months ago to random

What kind of communication scheme for phones without mobile network service might we come up with? There's bluetooth and wifi. Would need to be store-and-forward. Address-less.

Why don't we have one? Doesn't have to be so damn chatty. "Here's that song/document I mentioned" (transfer). Bump, face to face auth. No more, no less.

tomjennings, 8 months ago to random

I am disappoint.

I installed ownCloud on a remote server to use with my Android phone and hope laptop to share small text files, what I had thought was a pretty modest ask. What a shit show.

Can't find a single android editor that works reliably. Few work with the extended storage scheme. The one that does so tolerably ("editor") has complex issues managing files that I think are related to a problem I today found is an ownCloud misfeature -- can't create zero length files. A file "foo.txt" ends up with multiple copies "foo (2).txt" etc.

Worse, android doesn't really have a concept of "text", which on every computer I've known back to 1960s is a privileged primitive concept and for good goddamn reason.

Has anyone successfully setup a simple cloud like system like this? I don't need simultaneous edit. There's only me.

The one feetch it would be hard to live without is the "offline" feature... I plan on writing text on the phone regardless of net connection.

tomjennings, 7 months ago to random

We are not in a good place.

The Onion parodied more or less the cruelest thing you could say, then CBS actually said it.

tomjennings, 25 days ago to random

The corporation is the worst idea humans have ever had and it will probably literally kill us.

Corporate growth is insanity and perfectly normal and I don't care that this view seems overly simplistic.

tomjennings, 15 days ago to random

@liaizon

I signed up to Quiet, and see your post and a few others in # general but I'm unable to reply. Is it working for you?

I tried to read # offtopic, and got s thermometer saying "loading messages" but it never changes.

I can try rebooting phone or restarting app but it looks s bit rough.

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

1994 websites: WPS.COM and CHRISTIAN.ORG.

Coincidentally re-found on the 30th anniversary of this backup snapshot. I doubt I have older, but it's not impossible; and maybe gopher contents.

Well given file size and complexity it too more time to write the wee bit of contextual description than it too to republish the site.

It's so damn small its laughable.

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/old-sites/index.html

tomjennings, 11 months ago to random

I'm just not really convinced that "social media" is a worthwhile pursuit.

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

I found (...) an April 1994 copy of my website, complete. I'm moving off my Mac Powerbook to a Reform (going well except for me ruining things) and as the rsync was flying by I saw it.

I'll post it soon, but here was the hardware I had at the time.

I do recall that the 386/BSD installed from some 24 (each) 1.44 mb 3.5" floppies (sic) and took a couple days to compile. honk, honk, honk, ... And failures required restarts.

"I have two machines. One is a 40MHz 386, two IDE disk drives (540MB total), a mediocre color monitor, and my one "luxury" (sic), 16MB RAM. It runs 386/BSD unix, and X. It is connected to the Internet via the services of The Little Garden, which would cost me $70/mo (we're talking 24hr/day TCP/IP not dialup) 'cept for the fact that I'm the one that runs TLG on a daily basis. The link itself is a pair of ZyZEL U-1496E 16,800baud modems. This is the machine that the Web and Gopher servers run on.

The other machine is a 386SX with 4MB RAM and an older 140MB ESDI drive. It runs DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. The graphics tools on unix are basically non-existent, as far as input tools go. It is linked to the unix box via Ethernet and some TCP/IP software (about to change). This machine has the $99 handheld scanner. The biggest limitations are 256 level monochrome, and the 4.5"/11.5cm width. Otherwise, the quality is limited by how careful you are. "

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

Here's what would seem a mundane ask:

Where to buy good quality USB cables? Amazon is out. Reported problems too frequent serious (shorting, melting).

I need dumb old USB A to USB B's, a couple short USB A to USB C.

Monoprice? They're cheap, too cheap really.

EDIT: possibly Digikey. Quality supplier at least!

tomjennings, 14 days ago to random

Seeing chickens operate a machine is frankly mind-blowing.

tomjennings, 7 days ago to random

Hairless dogs are vigilant about where they plant their bald butts. It's funny to watch them inspect the ground before dropping back. Sometimes they get lazy and plant their butt on something unpleasant and suddenly leap up with a shocked face when they land on something unpleasant.

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

So I have (I anxiously admit) a facebook account because the group of psytrance folk I like to dance with are exclusively there. Three "friends" and I generally click on nothing, just scroll for events....

But there was a post allegedly from NASA that showed a super res/contrast past eclipse, with moon detail and sun corona. Pretty. Could be real, could be fake, don't know, don't care....

But comments were "turned off" so I had to look...

OMFG the crazy. It's breathtaking. NASA deniers, that can't be real, the eclipse hasn't happened yet, rational but misguided folk trying to explain time zones, there's more than one eclipse? no!

Wow.

I was tempted, but did not, click some of the posters' profiles to see if they were russian trolls or something (probably). It's a bit fascinating... but no.

The level of crazy was AMAZING.

tomjennings, 8 months ago to random

I'm trying out outdoor wifi webcams. I bought an Adorbee C2-S2, which works shockingly well.

It requires an app (Android here). Umm ok... and it punches a hole in my wifi, eg. the phone can see the cameras from outside my WAN.

Right now I have one on my household WAN.

Is it possible to reasonably isolate exposure to things like this? A parallel set of wifi APs and rules at the router?

I'd be fine blocking external access, so they're usable only within the WAN.

Web searching finds literally zero mention other than marketing noise.

tomjennings, 2 months ago to random

Mastodon question: where do I find an editable list of people I have blocked?

I can see in EXPORT that I have blocked 2 people. But how do I edit that list?

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

I'm selling my roadster. It's an odd thing.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204740507882

Not mentioned, but if anyone was interested, I'd include the complete electronic cooling system I designed for it. It's pretty goddamn cutting edge, no one has one AFAIK. 100% electronic control of engine cooling, 1-degree accuracy under all conditions, consumes 50 watts (really, not multiple horsepower), software and two pumps, no thermostat.

Also the redundant multiprocessor controllers. I ran that stuff for years, aircraft reliable (no not Boeing).

Presently installed is a conventional belt-driven pump for sale's sake,

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

You may die, but you'll still work for them.

Not a joke.

“HI EXCUSE ME, I just found out the the prof for this online course I’m taking died in 2019 and he’s technically still giving classes since he’s literally my prof for this course and I’m learning from lectures recorded before his passing.” In a follow-up tweet, he wrote, “I mean, I guess I technically read texts written by people who’ve passed all the time, but it’s the fact that I looked up his email to send him a question and PULLED UP HIS MEMORIAM INSTEAD that just THREW ME OFF A LITTLE.”

https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/dead-professor-teaching-online-class.html

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

Climate change at a high level is quite simple: it is the major side defect of coal and petroleum use. Alternative power blah blah -- until petro use is severely reduced climate will worsen (not that AE is not necessary).

Halted tomorrow, the existing carbon in the atmosphere will still increase heating.

So we need to first essentially halt petro production, then some magic futuricians will figure out how to remove carbon.

But we have a planet full of corporations that already do terrible things to us if rate-of-increase of growth/profit isn't upward, never mind stop.

Am I reading this wrong?

tomjennings, 1 month ago to random

I stumbled on this 1994 FidoNews, 14 mar 1004, 11/11 it's kinda hilariously amateurish. I really liked Sylvia, she was a great editor but you can imagine the old white guy crowd wasn't induced to write.

FidoNews came out weekly, for over 20 years, had a large readership, in the dialup BBS days. I don't think many not-for-profit newsletters had that duration.

They are not rare; there's archives all over. I think.

It's pure ASCII formatted text file, raw, not html, and firefox renders it great.

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/temp/fido1111.nws.txt

tomjennings, 8 months ago to random

Electric cars could not exist without without petroleum.

Harder to discern is the amount of petroleum consumed vs built in, in building and operating gas cars vs EVs.

EVs are great and all but not a solution to any problem we have. We need systemic solutions and we get new products to buy. Great.

tomjennings, 9 months ago to random

It was obvious to me that things like this (assaults on fedi stuff) would happen. Here we go.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/24/twitter-rival-mastodon-rife-with-child-abuse-material-study-finds/

tomjennings, 7 days ago to random

No publicly-traded corporation can be trusted.

Prove me wrong.