jcs

jcs, 1 month ago

I always heard it pronounced as “Jean Co.”

jcs, 1 month ago

Well, I was in middle school in the late 90s when these were popular, so I suppose I’m in the demographic. I dunno, the difference between “jean” and “gin” is somewhat subtle when you say it quickly, and I never gave it much thought.

jcs, 2 months ago

If you like this aesthetic, perhaps check out the Tangara on Crowd Supply. www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara

It’s fully open-source, too, so anyone can contribute to making improvements and a company can never discontinue it.

jcs, 2 months ago

I used to work for the U.S. Department of Defense and can confidently approve of massive defense budget cuts and merging of several military branches. This is only a single and relatively minor anecdote, but it is a small piece of a much larger problem and is one I can share from personal experience:

I used to be the government lead for a highly successful defensive capability that only consisted of myself and 2-3 defense contractors. We outperformed several long-standing projects that had 10x the staff, 100x the budget, and had been around for approx 10 years without going operational (“operational” in this case meaning that intelligence analysts are authorized to provide actionable intelligence derived solely from the tool). My team released 3 operational releases within 1 calendar year from the start of contract.

I don’t say this to disparage the staff of the other project(s), but rather to highlight how the government can afford to cut long-standing under-performing projects and become more lean and efficient. The government funding allocation is often in the realm of $300k/yr for a single FTE. Multiply that by a team of 20-30 that works on a project that is shelfware after 8-10 years.

My same project was approached by numerous branches of the US and FVEY military community. Branch A offered tons of money to put it on a ship; branch B offered even more money to put it in the back of reconnaissance aircraft or fighter jet; branch C offered money to make it man-packable for ground troops. US taxpayers already paid for this capability once (my team and myself) and we made it as unclassified (i.e. disseminable) and modular as possible (it was literally designed to run on a general host computer running Linux), yet each branch was willing to fork over tens of millions of dollars for something they could have installed on a $2k computer using some internal software repository. And that’s what I suggested they do.

Again, this is just one minor anecdote. How often does this happen where taxpayers are forced (being that they have absolutely no control over how the defense budget is organized) to pay for the same (perhaps MUCH more expensive) tools e.g. 5-10 times because military branch A, B, C, etc, want their own flavor of the same thing? Why does the military often have pissing matches of authority when there is so much overlap between some of them? Take away their stick by taking away some of their funding, and force them to share and cooperate.

jcs, 5 months ago

Sometimes a trash bin is located near the door, so I’ll use the same paper towel I used to dry my hands to open the door, hold the door open with my foot, then throw the paper towel in the bin. But these make hygiene so much easier:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/eaab6374-ba89-4e19-8644-faf24b9fbef6.jpeg

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/eb28644c-e03b-4fb3-8ebd-ce60a1913971.jpeg

jcs, 6 months ago

Turkey pesto sandwiches and combo pizzas - this must be a pre-pandemic photo.

jcs, 6 months ago

By Arch, do you use SteamOS on your gaming rig? And if not, what would be the determining factor?

jcs, 6 months ago

And the sysadmin said “well done, good and faithful servant.”

jcs, 6 months ago

“Do you feel like a hero yet?” - Spec Ops: The Line

jcs, 6 months ago

Well, safer and better in the driver’s mind until they fly too close to the sun and realize following the accident that there was a puncture or that the rubber delaminated off the belt during the commute. This happened fairly regularly at the track I worked at, though that was more from folks running their slicks too long.

jcs, 7 months ago

I have a very hard time believing that an internal combustion engine would sustain significant damage prior to stalling. An engine could run, albeit very poorly, with extreme backpressure (say, an exhaust blockage but perhaps some leaks elsewhere in the exhaust system). If the exhaust was perfectly sealed, there would be so much backpressure that the mixture would be starved of air and there would simply not be any explosion in the cylinders. I have limited knowledge of diesel engines but would expect a similar result.

Here’s a video where an exhaust pipe is plugged. You can see how quickly the car stalls (at 10:00): piped.video/watch?v=jnoW0skAChA

jcs, 8 months ago

We’re just normal men.

jcs, 7 months ago

Louis Rossmann provided a video announcement of Grayjay today, describing the product as paid open-source software with a custom/restrictive license.

• Website: grayjay.app
• Announcement: youtu.be/5DePDzfyWkw
• Source code: gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

jcs, 8 months ago

Imagine a world where we can adopt a scalable, secure, open communication protocol where users can use whatever app they want. Imagine humanity moving past the diaspora of special-snowflake chat apps and on to better things.

jcs, 8 months ago

It’s a valid point that it could potentially create some confusion when a user assumes that everything in Signal is secure. Unencrypted SMS threads could contain an open padlock icon and even an ominous red window border, but someone inevitably will not understand the difference.

However, my frustration has been how both convenience and security is reduced by removing SMS from Signal.

Many people will continue to use SMS for a variety of reasons, necessitating the use of an additional app. So now we have people continuing to communicate over this insecure protocol, but with the additional target vector of potential vulnerabilities in the supplemental app.

jcs, 8 months ago

Do you mean the original BeagleV Starlight board? Yes, I do have one. IIRC, it did not have an OS pre-installed, but it’s been years since I received it, so don’t take this as fact. Debian and Fedora were officially supported while the project was in active development. I’d have to look deeper or reach out to Beagleboard, but I cannot locate a Debian image for it at this time, as all links seem to redirect to the current BeagleV-Next board.

forum.beagleboard.org/t/beaglev-comparison/…/6?u=…

jcs, 8 months ago

While not a physical radio, a Linux phone such as the Librem 5 in conjunction with an RTL-SDR dongle and external antenna may be a good candidate for a mobile software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver.

SDR frameworks such as GNUradio or REDHAWK are well-established by this point. Newer versions of REDHAWK are designed to run on CentOS/Rocky Linux, however, and they don’t (AFAIK) come with a mobile-friendly UI.

I do know that there are some web-based SDR tools in the wild. I’m not very familiar with them, their system requirements/capabilities/limitations, but they could be worth a look to jump-start a Progressive Web App for mobile devices.

jcs, 8 months ago

Yeah, I really wish people would avoid using that phrase in general…

jcs, 9 months ago

I can’t say that I’ve ever used a single Megalixir in several Final Fantasy games due to them being limited in supply.

jcs, 9 months ago

My experience living in the USA has also illustrated that, in order to benefit from certain assistance programs such as income-based discounted rates on internet services (namely Xfinity in my region), you must first be actively receiving public assistance. In other words, to receive aid, you must already be receiving aid.

I have not found consistent work for over 15 months but earn enough money to pay rent, utilities, and cover basic meals. However, I don’t want to receive public assistance as it would make me feel like I am “officially in need” or “poor” rather than overcoming a temporary obstacle. I say this because, for the average person, there may be very little blocking the temptation to pursue the maximum amount of public assistance possible, as corroborated by supplemental internet service rate programs. I simply wish to accept only what is needed and nothing more.

jcs, 8 months ago

I don’t use a dedicated app at all to use Lemmy on my Librem 5 daily-driver. I access it via Firefox. To do this, I created a dedicated Firefox profile for Lemmy and created an app icon for it in the app gallery. More details here.