Re: So long and thanks for all the fish
Yeah, I love all the R&D and innovation that Aliexpress does.
5744 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
So a 3,5mm socket that isn't there and you have to solder back on "is still present"
Only in the sense they did an incomplete job of ripping it out and some of the software happens to still be there.
This is the same bullshit where I no longer have a headphone jack in my Android phone and have to use a USB adapter, so I have to choose between hearing my meeting and running out of battery, or charging so I can stay in my meeting, or using a Bluetooth headset that randomly disconnects and is out of battery anyway.
So no, I still only buy 3B+s and won't buy anything newer.
Where's that article on enshittification again?
YES.
"Netflix password crackdown fuels jump in subscribers" - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66240390
So instead of people saying "this is ridiculous and expensive and I'm tired of being abused like this" they double down and throw Netflix more money.
Me, I tossed my TV 15 years ago when an hour of TV was 20 minutes of commercials and maybe 40 minutes at most of content, and everything even remotely interesting got canceled.
Then there's Amazon putting ads in Prime video. People I talk to shrug their shoulders and don't seem to see a problem with that.
Me, I tossed my expensive Sirius XM radio 10 years ago when they started putting ads in music I was paying for.
I have never ever understood why Microsoft killed their phone division out of the blue like that.
They're willing to invest billions in Xbox back when it was a very distant third, but they toss their phone business in the garbage like last week's milk.
There was a time when I would have bought a Windows phone simply because it wasn't Apple or Google. As it is, Android is utter shite, but Apple is worse. And there really isn't a third choice.
> Or maybe because Linux developers are command line gurus, who do not use the mouse at all.
Bingo, we have a winner. I spend at least 50% of my time in xterm or emacs. My window system doesn't even have widgets, it's all function key driven. F3 to make a window full-height, for example.
Then you have Windows. That consistently ignores Ctrl-C to copy. If I had a dime for every time Windows pasted an old clipboard item, I'd have retired long ago.
> OMG! Imagine the horror if Micro$haft became the biggest code contributor to Linux, usurping RedHat from the No.1 slot. Oh, wait...
That would be fine. RedHat has managed to be even bigger dicks about Open Source than Microsoft. And Microsoft has apparently reformed from the Halloween documents days.
Microsoft didn't try to conceal their ire back in the day. RedHat (IBM) are being far more insidious, saying "We're Open Source" then penalizing anyone that tries to be Open Source with their product.
> The correct way is to crouch down with your back to the bike, one hand on the bottom handlebar, the other on the bottom passenger grabrail. Then lift using first your legs, and then once its a bit up you can lean your whole weight into pushing it back. Arm strength can help but not usually necessary
LOL. Good luck with that. If the bike lies flat like say, a Yamaha Tenere, or an Energica SS9, you're screwed, unless there happens to be a couple beefy police officers nearby.
If the bike has luggage or is a BMW with large cylinders and a crashbar, it'll be upright enough for the above technique to work. That 30 degrees or so makes a big different.
The Energica is especially bad, as being Italian[1], it sits near to vertical as makes no difference, and I had to chop 10mm out of the kickstand to get it to lean and not fall over in a stiff breeze.
[1] could be worse. A lot of Ducatis have a SPRING-LOADED kickstand that flips up if you look at it funny.
> For instance, it's not unusual for people to use different names, or variants of names at different times in their life
Entire families change their names when they immigrate, or a war happens and their old name is too German or something, or they don't like the old way it's spelled. There are entire genealogy communities devoted to tracking such stuff. Yes, they do their homework. It's basically what they do with their spare time.
> Most of that data isn't online
Wrong. A LOT of it is online. There's the official census to start with, military records, other official archives, findagrave, newspaper obituaries, various announcements of life events such as promotions, the marriage, birth, death, church, and court records mentioned above, etc are online.
And as per the first part, there's a lot of people going through old microfilms and other offline archives and putting them online. You can buy info like the entire Florida driver's license database on a CD and put that online.
Not exactly true. Debian has "popularity-contest" which tells what packages you have installed.
Of course this is 100% optional, and I believe there's an install-time switch for it, but it's been a while since I installed a Debian variant from scratch.
All snarks aside, telemetry shows their flight computer actually mostly compensated for the frigging LOSS OF AN ENGINE NOZZLE and still touched down gently enough to avoid RUD.
This is far better than Chandrayaan-2 that came out of attitude hold and went "roll rate?! WHAT! I CAN'T DEAL!" and cratered.
OK, then "'splain it to me, Lucy!" if 5G is so damn luvverly compared to 4G...
Why have I gotten twice as many dropped calls? Chatting away and then "hey, where'd the other end go?"
Why do I now get calls where the other end just fades out, or goes all garbled, or is interspersed with buzzing and other injected noises?
Why do I have SMS messages with nothing other than plain text just sit there for 25-30 minutes "having trouble sending"?
This is a Pixel 7 Pro on T-Mobile, if anyone's counting.
A while back, just for the hell of it, I ordered water heaters through Amazon. These are the large cylindrical things about shoulder height and maybe a couple feet in diameter.
It showed up in a bare cardboard box. No packing. Lots of holes and beat to hell.
I took a picture, and Amazon arranged for pickup. refunded it, and I ordered another model from another company.
Rinse and repeat about 5 times (It wasn't costing me anything) and Amazon finally apparently removed water heaters from purchase.
Absolutely none of the water heaters were in anything other than the manufacturer's box.
It was fun and I was bored.
So what exactly does that mean? I assume they mean he can't use a browser, but when assuming can land your ass 10 years in jail...
So most phones use a WI-Fi connection over the internet to make a call when they can.. does that count?
But then I assume using a smartphone is right out. No Google Maps, for example. But what about Google Maps in his car? That seems to be "always-on" in my friend's Honda.
Does using a smart TV count? Or even just a smart refrigerator or washer? Or an Alexa device?
Actually, it's usually Congress that slashes NASA's budget.
Historically, the president asks for an increase and Congress says "fuck you"
And not that I support Trump, but he asked for the biggest NASA budget increase since Apollo.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-nasa/white-house-calls-for-biggest-nasa-budget-in-decades-to-reach-the-moon-mars-idUSKBN2042J9/
So get your facts straight before popping off at the mouth.
Manpower was suddenly of much greater value, meaning kings and dukes now had to bargain with their laborers over working conditions and compensation. Wages doubled in some places in just a year.
Prices fell because there was fewer people to buy stuff.
1 & 2 meant lots of middle-management(cough) mid-level lords had to sell their estates.
This pretty much killed serfdom and feudalism.
Towns repopulated faster than the countryside, so things pivoted from agriculture to industry.
And of course, it helped develop medicine and sanitation.
So as long as **I** don't die, I DGAS about everyone else. I'll be vaccinated and wearing my mask, TYVM. Ya'll anti-maskers & anti-vacciners do whatever you want. Evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up a fraction of a percent.
In 2020 I did an update and when it updated elogind, it killed my X11 session & xterms, which killed the update. The elogind update also killed the console, and I couldn't ssh in, so I rebooted.
And got "kernel panic: can't find root filesystem" - it had installed a new kernel but hadn't gotten around to updating initrd yet.
Of course that's something GRUB could deal with, but it was still a pain in the ass. I did "dpkg --configure -a" and everything was happy.
So one screwup in about 15 years? Yeah, I can live with that.
VW Is Putting Buttons Back in Cars Because People Complained Enough
https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-is-putting-buttons-back-in-cars-because-people-complained-enough
Refreshed Mk8 Golf With Real Buttons Will Be Revealed in January
https://www.thedrive.com/news/refreshed-mk8-golf-with-real-buttons-will-be-revealed-in-january
VW CEO Admits ‘Frustrating’ No-Button Interiors Have Damaged VW’s Reputation
https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-ceo-admits-frustrating-golf-id-4-interiors-did-a-lot-of-damage
(I don't have a car, VW or otherwise, so I have no dog in this race - and no, I would not buy a touchscreen-only vehicle)
> modern optimisation technique
> compilers have gotten so good
> with modern compilers
May I remind people this was 1985ish which was nearly FORTY years ago?
C compilers back then were mostly described by the technical terms "crap" and "shite"
GCC wasn't even released until 1987, and to quote Wikipedia: "by 1990 GCC supported thirteen computer architectures, was outperforming several vendor compilers, and was used commercially by several companies"
So back then, rewriting C in assembly was a valid path and all the moaning about how stupid that is, are way off target.
> Your average business doesn't have the time, money or expertise to implement such a thing
Bull. Shit. Securing your computers on the internet in this day and age is no different than knowing how to drive your delivery van.
If you can't drive your van, hire someone to do it. If you can't afford gas/maintenance/licensing, then you shouldn't be in business.
"Can't be arsed" is not a valid defense.
It's no different than putting your cash in a safe or the bank at the end of the day. If you don't, do you really expect people to cry tears when someone takes it?
I am an almost complete spaz. I was so frustrated about it in early college that I started riding a motorcycle in the hopes it'd cure me or kill me. It did at least give me enough coordination to play video games after crashing 40 or 50 times. I still can't carry something fragile across the garage without dropping it.
I'm now in my late 50s in the same position as Andy Non.
So I'm not a big fan of Fromsoft or Dark Souls because I just don't enjoy getting my ass beaten soundly and repeatedly with no recourse. This means I gravitate to something like HALO that has a bit of lore and no real bosses. I do enjoy watching someone else play them... someone with skill and coordination. I've watched Ellen's Souls Academy where she was guided through Dark Souls 1
Of course, I've played Kerbal Space Program for almost 10 years.
I saw a 5 hour stream of Tears of the Kingdom, which (FIVE HOURS) was enough for part of one side quest. This got me to buy a Switch and TotK.
As the streamer (Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions) says, THERE IS A LOT OF GAME IN THIS GAME. I've been playing since early December and am still on some of the first main quests, and maybe 5% through it.
One excellent feature is if you run up on a boss, and you don't have weapons or whatever, the game gives you a fast-travel point so you can nope out and easily come back later. THIS IS JUST THE BEST FEATURE IN A GAME EVER. One reason I hated HALO Infinite was you'd hit a boss and there was nothing for it except die over and over and over and over and over and over until you beat him. And the TotK bosses are actually beatable if you put some thought and strategy into it, which gives you hope instead of utter "do I gotta do this, mom?" despair. And with the regular enemies, you can just avoid them.
The only bad bit is you have to grind a little for "batteries" but I've actually found instead of doing the farming/mining for it, there are times in the quests where you run across large chunks of it. So it's not totally grindy.
There are actually 3 maps: the usual ground, bits of stuff to do in the sky, and an underground level.
There are lots of shrines with puzzles, but this is the internet, and I didn't really spend a moment dealing with frustrating puzzles, I hit IGN and Google for pointers. I've also watched a lot of the "you want to do these things early in the game for the most fun" videos as I don't care about spoilers.
I might like Baldur's Gate 3, but I don't really like RPGs because you have to do a lot of dealing with people, so probably not.
The F-104 has tiny widdle wingies, so it has REALLY high wing loading, and it uses blown flaps when landing. These are flaps with engine bleed blown over them for added lift and lower stall speed due to less separation at higher AOA.
Standard procedure for an engine-out landing in an F-104 is "eject"
There was a lot of smoking holes and dead pilots in Germany before they realized "eject means eject, no matter how studly of a pilot you think you are" and the joke used to be "how do you get an F-104? you buy a hectare of land in Germany and you wait"
There was ONE guy at Edwards AFB that had multiple engine-out landings under his belt.
This is a test program I'll be following closely. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, especially in all the "off nominal" situations.