Posts by Gene Cash 5772 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
Well, no. It's also a tech suited for keeping your computer from being a horribly noisy monster. I've watercooled my PC (and installed SSDs) for the last 4 years to avoid going deaf.
D5 pumps are incredibly quiet, especially compared to a Seagate drive.
I've only been down once to replace a failed pump. I had a spare, of course.
they can't put a price on genuine service
Bingo. I've never heard it better stated.
I have several friends^Wacquaintances that buy the cheapest shit, then moan incessantly that it's the cheapest shit and now broken the next day. These are the people that buy Ryanair tickets and then bitch they have to pay for luggage and their knees are tucked up under their chin.
If I had one wish, I'd wish all these people would have instant heart attacks. They're ruining the world.
Well, I imagine the PR types would have it for posting job-related bits, but I can't imagine many job related bits.
Everybody sucks user data, but Tiktok is a bit extreme, and it goes beyond "mere" monetization.
Can we ban Facebook next? Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on it?
I'm so tired of trying to find info on restaurants and other businesses where all they have is a Facebook page, which I've blocked.
Hermey knew it was still taped to the underside of the step-stool
Ok, that one was gold.
Anyway, I remember one of those Adam Savage "ask me about Mythbusters" sessions. Someone asked if there was any pranking on set.
He said that he and Jamie thought about it, then they realized that considering how inventive and creative everyone was, it would quickly and seriously get out of hand. Plus a lot of stuff was too dangerous to be fooling around.
There was one time - the ancient battery episode - where an assistant producer decided to make things more like "American Choppers" where there was major reality-show "cast drama". So he electrified the "battery" to 120 volts (edit: over the objections of the rest of the crew) and Adam got seriously shocked when he touched it.
You can see it in the episode. Kari & Tori have serious "it's not funny - shit's about to hit the fan" expressions beforehand and Adam is FURIOUS and quickly walks off.
That AP was quickly fired.
Don't forget Youtube. When Gaggle bought Youtube, they shitcanned all the Youtube accounts and forced everyone to get a gmail account.
That screwed up my gmail account so much, I moved to a paid service. My gmail/google account is just for Google Maps and my Android phone now, and the actual gmail app is disabled.
Also (and it just did it again today) Google Contacts likes to randomly "link" contacts where it mashes several together into one contact. You can unlink them, but like all things Google doesn't like you to do, That Is Quite A Process.
I get the feeling you can't toss it in the dishwasher for a cleaning...
I do have to admit I liked the "lightning coming from the keys as you type" effect. And I have to admit I'm impressed by the technology behind it. If it's real. I reserve judgement on that.
Soooo.... are they going to have Linux drivers or whatever the software you need for it is called? Steam would make me think yes, but the cynic says this is Windows-only, as usual.
They say you can monetize the effects, but then they say you can share them. Which is it? Can you only share the free ones, or does the effect become your friend's property and no longer yours? Or do they have to buy it as well?
I expect it runs Crysis?
Edit: Where are the buzzwords of AI and NFTs and blockchains?
Are they actually making a profit at $350 or is this a loss-leader and they'll make it up in volume?
(Those of us who've had a play with Chat GPT will never believe a news article or press release again...)
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect:
Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.
You read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
Or even how about telling where they're shipping FROM?
I recently ordered a $12 silverware basket for my dishwasher.
It's being shipped via Royal Mail, which tells me my piddly little $12 plastic piece 'o crap is being shipped all the way across the Atlantic. And it still hasn't arrived. I ordered it mid-November, and it isn't supposed to arrive until next year.
Now I expected my A4 paper to come from Europe, but not this.
locate an object on the horizon, shoot an azimuth, and duplicate the process to get a triangulated location.
I thought about it, and there aren't any apps that could take a bearing from two landmarks and show the resulting fix. You'd actually have to use a paper map.
If I'm wrong, I'd sure like to have that app... assuming it's Android compatible, of course.
I remember replacing a light switch in the wall as a kid. I clicked off the breaker for that room beforehand.
I did it carefully with insulated pliers as I was just paranoid, put it back in the wall, flipped it, and the light came on!
That's when I learned nothing in the breaker panel was truthfully labeled.
In my "new" house, I flipped all the breakers off, then on one-by-one to map everything. Imagine my surprise when the back bedroom lights came on... along with a cupboard in the front kitchen. Or when the garage lights came on... along with the second-bathroom lights.
No, because if the battery is 2x as good, it can be half the size and weight, which actually improves range/kW by making the vehicle smaller and lighter.
Me, I'm just happy to see one of the thousands of "BREAKTHROUGH NEW BATTERY TECHNOLOGY!!!1111oneoneone" that I've heard about might actually be making it out of the lab and into production.
Heck, speaking of ancient data... my banking details on my phone range back to 1999, when I was strongly encouraged to buy a Palm III by my boss, who thought it would help get my life somewhat better arranged.
I've since ported the data from that initial banking app through the Palm range to the Tungsten T5 and TX (I went through Palms like candy) then to a Nokia N810, on to my Motorola Droid, and to my current Pixel 5a (and I've gone through Android devices like candy, too)
Man... that N810... Nokia had NO CLUE what the hell they were doing. It was not an upgrade from the Palm, but by that time, Palm had fallen on their sword.
I remember having the Adobe "blue book" -"PostScript Language, Tutorial and Cookbook"
There was also "PostScript by Example" by Henry McGilton and Mary Campione
My first exposure to PostScript was a friend getting a "zine" from an FTP site written in this newfangled "display language" that was supposed to be the same no matter the printer. I don't even remember the subject matter, but I do remember the struggle to get it printed and the awe at the clean, fancy, and pretty final product.
Why the hell doesn't El Reg support the <u> tags for underlining titles?
I don't agree. I do feel nostalgia for my old computers, but they were ancient crap and modern crap is much better.
Workstations were just high-end personal computers, before IBM co-opted "PC". I learned UNIX on an old Sun pizza box. That machine was a beast at the time, but it's tiny compared to my current machine. SGI did awesome graphics, but my middle-level nvidia card blows it away.
I don't pine for old tools. I might want to keep around an old hammer, but that's because my Dad owned it. I do watch Vintage Machinery on YouTube, but that's because the old kit *is* demonstrably better than current stuff, and Keith Rucker is rescuing and refurbishing it to modern standards.
Of course old UNIX kit is worth a ton! So are old toy cars and Star Trek model kits! That's how nostalgia works. I had a roommate in college that kept a PDP-11/34 running, complete with a couple of RL-02 drives. He spent more time chasing up broken point-to-point wiring in the backplane than he did being logged in.
Linux has the same Windows-ish desktops all over, because that's what the developers know, and they don't know anything else, so that's what they write. CDE had the "advantage" there wasn't anything to crib from.
Fucking Sun NeWS. That was so very nice, but Sun decided to smother it under a blanket. It's one of the few computer things I feel a genuine loss for. One of the many reasons I'm glad Sun died horribly.
I still have to use Solaris at work. It makes me so happy I have Devuan at home. With Solaris, I feel like I'm using sandpaper wrapped around a block instead of a battery operated high power orbital sander. They do the "same thing" but one is so much better to use and does such a better job.
And YES, at least once a month I regret giving away my TRS-80 Model I (my first computer) and huge range of Atari kit. But that's just nostalgia. So is keeping track of the fact I'll have gotten that TRS-80 43 years ago this Christmas.
And if anyone's in doubt, Big Clive on YouTube entertains himself (and us) by buying crap off AliExpress, disassembling it, engineering the circuit schematic, and showing how poorly done, or even dangerous it is.
A recent one had a "fresh air ionizer" where the little ionizer brushes on the front were directly connected to mains voltage. It also had a random opamp just soldered in, in an attempt to look like a real circuit.
I had a friend try ordering lift chain from China. He ordered 20klb stuff, and the Chinese contact asked if he wanted them labeled 20klb or 40klb!
Look on Amazon, and search for a cheap commodity like an automotive fuel pump. You'll get hundreds of results, all with the exact same product image and alphabet-soup manufacturer names, all sold from China.
We need to protect ourselves from this garbage.
Not much in the way of details, here...
Is there an interest charge?
How long is the term?
What happens if Ultium goes TITSUP (Total Inability To Support Usual Payments) or otherwise defaults?
Did Ultium put up any collateral or other repayment guarantee?
Edit: in other words, is this really a loan? Or just the usual money thrown in their general direction with some fancy wording to make it palatable?
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