jbqueru

mntmn, 2 months ago to random

yesterday i brought up the first production MNT Pocket Reform motherboard (no problems so far) and the team started assembling the first devices :3 i'm a bit behind on the software and docs side but crunching as fast as i can

a black production mnt pocket reform motherboard on a wooden surface, with charger cables and a usb-c plug connected to it. the red led signals that it is charging

jbqueru, 10 months ago to random

If you're worried that temperatures are several degrees above the 1980-2010 average, keep in mind that they're several degrees below the 2030-2060 average.

jeffjarvis, 2 months ago to random

You go to hell. For that's where we will be if you don't do your damned part to defeat Trump. Since you asked, New York Times.

jbqueru, 1 month ago to random

My wife @eugenialoli has been working on installing Linux on various old computers for which a lot of other options are now unsupported.

She's been finding that machines with 2GB or RAM or 16GB of storage tend to struggle, whether while installing the OS, booting, installing common apps or running those apps.

2GB of RAM is an incredibly large amount. As is 16GB of storage.

WTF are we software people doing as an industry that makes us consume so many resources?

jbqueru, 12 days ago to random

"We value your privacy" and "1556 partners". Probably not even a record.

E_OVERFLOW

Look, I can understand a dozen partners, one for analytics, one for telemetry, a few for logins, a handful of privacy-respecting ad networks. But I challenge anyone building such a site to convince me separately about the need to involve 1556 other companies.

jbqueru, 7 months ago to random

Typical corporate behavior is to push everyone toward some sort of career growth. In lots of ways (whether microaggressions or explicit policies), employees are pushed out if they want to stay at their current level.

And, promotions happen when people have been consistently demonstrating work beyond their current level.

Which means that, deep inside, people are expected to do more work than they're paid for.

Pressure toward career growth is a capitalist trick to underpay employees.

jbqueru, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to random

#CDCSays the faster you drive, the fewer risks you take, since you spend less time on the road.

jbqueru, 8 months ago to random

I'll happily work from the office if you build an office that I can reach from home with a few minutes of walking, biking, or driving.

jbqueru, 1 year ago to random

Covid-19 being over as an emergency essentially means that you can be guaranteed to die from covid in a hospital bed instead of dying from covid at home waiting for a hospital bed. Except if you're in the USA, of course, because you can't afford a hospital bed and you'll die at home even if there's a hospital bed available.

jbqueru, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

I just gave ChatGPT another chance at helping me write some code. I pasted some uncommented chunk of assembly (not trick code), and asked it to comment that code.

The most it was able to guess "intelligently" is that the code had to do with graphics. Beyond that, though, it was quite useless. It tried to comment instructions one by one with their literal meaning, and even got that wrong. It also couldn't group sequences of instructions into logical groups.

(1/4)

jbqueru, 1 month ago to random

Everyone: "Do not use the shadow registers in the Z80, they are reserved for the operating system."

Me: "I am the operating system, and I will use the shadow registers any way I like."

jbqueru, 8 months ago to random

I look forward to web sites that intentionally only work with an ad blocker active.

jbqueru, 8 months ago to random

Hanlon's razor, rephrased: "Maybe they're not actually an asshole, maybe they're just an idiot."

jbqueru, 7 months ago to Trains

I'm crossing fingers that Europe continues to improve its rail service.

Selfishly, I'm looking forward to taking the ferry and train between Greece and France (the enabler being the night trains between Milan and Brindisi).

Further, I hope that the rail network continues to grow in Greece. First, Athens to Patras, and then Thessaloniki to Igoumenitsa.

And, as a dream, services between Greece and its neighboring states (Bulgaria first, hoping that they enter Euro and Schengen soon).

#train

jbqueru, 1 month ago to random

I'll be a lot more impressed by AI-based code-generating tools when I can tell them something like "port the game Solaris from the Atari 2600 to the Amstrad CPC" and they output something that works.

(I'm currently studying the theoretical possibility of such a port. It might be feasible, but it's not a simple task).

jbqueru, 2 months ago to random

When your hardware has off-by-one errors, how do you expect your software to make sense?

At least that's an area where Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System agree, both have an (understandable) off-by-one error in their sprite coordinates.

jbqueru, 2 months ago to random

At times, I tell myself that I'm not qualified to think about the xz situation.

Also, I remind myself that I've architected some major build system (and been scared by complexity and the security implications), that I've been tech lead for a major Open Source initiative (and got burned out in the process), and that I've had a production server breached when an attacker exploited a flaw in ssh that exfiltrated my sudo-enabled password.

Sadly, I've been there...

jbqueru, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

So, in a nutshell, the pressure to bring white-collar workers back into offices is a pump-and-dump scheme by commercial real-estate investors who are looking for a scapegoat for their bad investment decisions.

jbqueru, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

As I'm unpacking after moving, I'm still missing one computer I'm looking for... but my BeBox is out!

jbqueru, 1 month ago to random

No matter how I look at it, I can't get myself to call the TI 99/4A a computer in its default configuration, because 256 bytes of CPU-accessible RAM doesn't make a computer in my personal opinion. As shipped, it's a game console with a keyboard, with the same graphics chip and substantially the same sound chip as the ColecoVision and the SG-1000.

In turn, that makes it one of the early consoles to have a 16-bit CPU, possibly the first one.

pulkomandy, 2 months ago to random

Mh, so the discussion on use of automatic code formatting in Haiku went from "automatic code formatting is bad, I want to format my code manually" to "-Werror is bad because it may break the build on unsupported compilers"

So let's continue ignoring compiler warnings and spending hours making potential and current contributors exhausted by having a dozen back and forths in code reviews just on fixing coding style problemsthat could be entirely automated. Cool.

😭

jbqueru, 7 months ago to random

The things you find when you're moving: H0BBIT BeBox motherboard, serial number and dates indicate 1993.

futurebird, 11 days ago to random

What is the best explanation you’ve heard for 1 not being a prime number? For me it’s “because it breaks everything in my programs since the loops won’t terminate” but that’s obtuse. “Because the God of math decrees it so!” is compelling, but shallow.

“it can only be divided by 1 distinct number” is contrived.

1 “feels” prime— it has the fewest factors. (Primeness being about NOT having factors) ruling it out for having too few? eh.

“it’s the zero of multiplication” is better… thoughts?