dr2chase

dr2chase, 7 days ago to random

It is a little amazing to me to see people who have been rendered incapable of seeing any difference between Biden and Trump because Biden has taken the slow-centrist-Democrat approach to Netanyahu's destruction of the Gaza strip. There's a lot going on there, Netanyahu is barely in power, the best goal is "how quickly can the atrocity stop?" not "how quickly can we claim we're no longer involved in the atrocity that has not stopped?" There's a difference. And yes it is awful./

dr2chase, 8 days ago to random

Yesterday morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJZLrkHGMU (Cambridge Bike Bus + Band, me with a photographer sitting backwards on my longtail). The ride was slow and nearly technical, given the low speed, load, kids to not hit, and the parked cars that I managed not to scratch.

Apologies if it comes with advertising, I'm over my weekly upload quota at Vimeo so that will happen next week if I remember.

#bikes #bikebus

dr2chase, 14 days ago to random

I have a modest fucking proposal. When the subway is down and shuttle buses must connect the stations instead, BAN CARS ON THE ROUTES BETWEEN THE STATIONS. We've been stuck in traffic behind a clot of lazy fucks who can't be arsed to do anything other than roll around in their armored rolling sofas and block the roads. WTF are they protesting, anyway? If they're going to block traffic like this they had better have a good reason. Can they even articulate their demands?

dr2chase, 1 month ago to random

Technical sysadmin-ish question. We've had our family mail hosted at a bullshit rinky-dink server since forever, we pay too much, and today we had a mail glitch because some bullshit automated IP address filter triggered.

So, what's the process for transferring a domain name, plus all the IMAP mail on those servers? We have ssh access to a server, even. I researched this once, I think something like "Dovecot" is part of the answer. Not sure if I should look at bluehost, fastmail, ???

dr2chase, 2 months ago to random

"LLM Prompt Injection Worm"
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/llm-prompt-injection-worm.html

This is so, so fine. Also good to see RTM getting recognition he so richly deserves, "Morris II", that's an audacious name for their invention.

dr2chase, 2 months ago to random

It makes me downright queasy that private equity bought 1Password. I'm sure that's an overreaction, private equity has never bought companies and fucked them up just to turn a quick profit, have they? It's so tempting to put 2FA in there too, but, SPOF, that would suck.

dr2chase, 2 months ago to random

Because spouse is out of town, I decided it was time to upgrade the (Tomato) router. What a clusterfuck. At every turn, you are exhorted to "clear the NVRAM settings!" without a clear description of what that will entail when you do it. Fortunately, my expectations were almost set low enough, and because I had access to the internet over my phone I could find out what the default router password would be when it woke up completely wiped. Seems like a really important thing to mention, BUT NO!

dr2chase, 2 months ago to random

Saturday at the beach (in FL), saw a (very) fat-tired wheel chair. Not sure this works for self-propulsion, but given the sand, wheels that large seem necessary. Maybe a hovercraft wheelchair (and eelchair!) would also work.

dr2chase, 3 months ago to random

May have hit upon a winning argument for the NextDoor crowd: because we let housing get so expensive, it is now financially interesting for developers to buy any large lot that is on the market, and do a "hostile" MA-40B affordable housing development with as many units as they can fit on that land (a recent one I think resulted in 12 units, 3 of those affordable, replacing a single-family home. It wasn't a great place to add 12 units, but state law and the invisible hand put them there).

dr2chase, 3 months ago to random

#GoPro released new software recently for editing on a laptop/desktop, their software still sucks rocks. Does not display camera GPS or camera highlights. WTF is the point of these hardware features if the software loses support for them?

dr2chase, 3 months ago to delhi

Lovely #traffic at Harvard Square today because of the buses run to replace the temporarily shut down Red Line. People in cars just take #masstransit for granted, think it should pay its own way, don't realize how much that subway relieves surface congestion.

Thankfully, I was on a #bike. As usual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w2RSJcl66c

dr2chase, 3 months ago to random

New from the home county, a little hard to figure out exactly the scope of the injustice but it sounds like the default plan in St. Pete FL is to kick blacks off their land to build a SportsBall arena, and when the first arena is "old", do it again. Arena is important enough to receive public subsidy, but affordable housing, not. Priorities, I guess. Fuck Sportsball, if it cannot survive without a subsidy.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2024/02/02/tropicana-field-gas-plant-district-redevelopment-residents

dr2chase, 3 months ago to random

How do we report vaccine misinformation posts? I could not find an obvious button to do so, I asked a search engine. Maybe this is a phanpy.social UI problem.

The offending post is https://mastodon.social/@geogodley/111794967243381201 (I have blocked the account, no idea how it looks to others then).

dr2chase, 4 months ago to random

I sure do wish these dipshit billionaires would get obsessed with something practical, like indoor air quality or malaria or mitigating climate change, instead of bullshit like plagiarism and Mars.

dr2chase, 4 months ago to random

Saw this unfamiliar tree in the FL yard, looked it up with image search, it is a "Chinese tallowtree". The following is per wikipedia -- on the one hand it is incredibly invasive (23% of ALL trees in Houston area) but on the other hand, it could be an interesting crop, second only to algae and oil palms in per-acre oil production (wikipedia says "citation needed") at 4500 kg of seeds per hectare-year. The oil/tallow would need refining, there's some poison in them.

dr2chase, 6 months ago to random

New-ish invasive plant, seen in parents' backyard. It's a solanum, the fucker has spines everywhere, they're transparent (so you can't figure out what to pull out), they break off easily, and they hurt for days.

dr2chase, 6 months ago to random

Green screen and black background for the spouse-cave, on recently installed Ikea ceiling track. Waaaaaaay better than what it replaced. Installation was fiddly.

Yes, her job now involves a ton of remote video presentations, and the quality has to be relatively high.

dr2chase, 6 months ago to random

This is sort of an experiment, I subscribe to some newspapers, and thought I would see how easy/hard it is to share links. LA times, I could not get the link, also could not find a place to complain, so sent an email to billing (a bug report w/ credible threat of cancellation). Houston Chronicle, I got this far: https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/houstonchronicle/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=HHC%2F2023%2F11%2F10&entity=Ar02101&sk=C4263984&mode=text

I picked this article because it mentioned something I did not know, estimates of electrical grid growth in coming years (and problems reaching that).

dr2chase, 6 months ago to random

Get your fucking COVID shots (yelling at the choir, I am sure): https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/review-estimates-69-3-dose-vaccine-efficacy-against-long-covid
(Via the most excellent blog of @mikethemadbiologist )

dr2chase, 6 months ago to random

There's a delivery service in NYC using Tern HSD bikes towing Carla trailers. Operator is Dutch Express, 212-717-5555
https://www.dutchx.com/ I think.

dr2chase, 7 months ago to random

Why DuckDuckGo and not EgretEgretEgress?

dr2chase, 7 months ago to random

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/we-dont-actually-need-conservatism

dr2chase, 7 months ago to random

I may have mentioned this once before, but it's always "fun" what doesn't make it into the news:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7346

"The analysis of long-term tide gauge records identified an extreme sea-level rise (SLR) event during 2009–10. Within this 2-year period, the coastal sea level north of New York City jumped by 128 mm."

Definitely got to keep on worrying about those parking spaces.

dr2chase, 7 months ago to random

After demoing and helping at the cargo bike demo, it's pretty clear that I should (in my copious free time) offer "longtail 101" to give people a chance to practice carrying loads that they are more willing to drop than their own children. Use 4 5-gallon water containers, compare a pair loaded front, a pair loaded rear, and a full (160lb) load of all four.

Achievement unlocked: towed a trailer with two bikes on it behind the Big Dummy, with an adult also riding on the deck.

dr2chase, 7 months ago to random

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40750-8
(via the excellent blog of @mikethemadbiologist )

TLDR: even if you're vaccinated, wear a good (N95-ish) mask in crowds and/or places without known-good ventilation, your vaccine "leaks".