Posts by Gene Cash 5755 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
> until we actually see widely available hardware that people actually can use for development and deployment
You mean like the half dozen Raspberry Pi I have doing various things around the house?
I think multiple active different architectures makes the kernel more robust and avoids the monoculture that I think is hurting Microsoft and Apple.
Thinking "Everything's a IBM 360/DEC VAX/PDP-11/x86/SPARC" is bad.
Considering how well NASA done with putting people in space recently, or indeed doing much original rocket research at all, I'd say they should STFU and get back in their rocking chairs. Tell me how many new engines NASA has qualified in the past 30 years.
OTOH, I'm going to have to be up at 2:30am to watch the fireworks, sigh.
You'll get a similar look if you do View -> Page Style -> No Style on a page.
> people were quite happy to write HTML by hand
Most of my technical notes are handwritten HTML, as it's a universal format that's read by anything including my phone, an xterm, or a Raspberry Pi when things are deep in the shit and I need to figure out how to do GRUB commands and make my main box boot again.
code/bold/italic tags are just enough style/distinction to get it done.
I do remember seeing the first version of Mosaic that did image tags. I think it just did gif and that was it... or am I senile already?
If you use Magisk Manager, it bypasses the checks, so Google Pay, my banking app and that pokeymans crap runs.
I think of rooting a device as a test to see if you're technically competent enough to use the abilities that root gives you. It's a hurdle that keeps the average joe from ballsing up his phone at every opportunity.
Sure, but perhaps one section is competent and the other is not?
I've seen this a lot in national chains in the US... one store couldn't find a bomb if it blew their foot off, and the other one is polite, knows what's in stock and where it is, and can make intelligent recommendations.
Usually the better store is then closed.
There's also the manpower and downtime involved in just doing the patches, even if they're effective and functional. With Windows patching, considering it takes a crap about every other session, requiring me to Google obscure error numbers and deal with it, that's a non-trivial level of effort.
I asked for "the service manual" when I bought my '82 Tercel, and they tossed me the Haynes. That was a very nice intro to the series.
Haynes was hard to find in the US, being overshadowed by Clymers, but Clymers had horrid "pictures" which were usually an illegible puddle of ink, and the Haynes was either a diagram or a well-done photo, so they were worth the extra effort to track down.
I remember a bookstore clerk giving me a Clymers, and being miffed that I wasn't satisfied with it, and arguing "what's the difference!?" - that was quickly settled when he did get the Haynes and compared them.
I stopped using Garmin because the maps are STILL about 15 years out of date in my area, and the company is a complete Apple-style we-know-better-than-you dick.
I stopped using TomTom after my device with lifetime maps stopped functioning because the maps got too big, and the response from TomTom support was basically "sucks to be you, buy a new device" and they refused to re-section the maps to fit... so "lifetime" ended up being about 11 months.
This is very illuminating by a guy that was there.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1088503510184927233.html?fbclid=IwAR1-Bks1rX4xpoQ9JmuSSlrrBc1gcjV-khvF5Ri_7FobvrsAU3--pNR2JuY
Look at the original Twitter thread for corroborating tweets by other journalists.
> A carabiner makes an excellent keyfob, and can easily be clipped to a belt loop.
And has the advantage of keeping you out of jury duty, as it's apparently a huge security risk.
When I asked what I should do with my keys, I was ordered by the security-droid to lock them in my vehicle.
Seriously.
So I said "I'm riding a motorcycle, I don't have any doors to lock"
Security-droid was stumped. And I was ordered out of the building. With police escort.
When I called the court clerk next day, she was sufficiently annoyed at the shenanigans that she let me out of jury duty entirely.
Well, actually native 64 bit code ensures 32 bit cleanliness. You don't have the opportunity to use upper "unused" bits for flags'n'stuff and other nasty hacks.
The major reason is that "stuff doesn't fit in 32 bit"
For example, Kerbal Space Program dropped 32 bit because textures and object models were getting too big to fit, especially with all the hi-res art rework going on.
(The funny thing is that KSP was the sole reason that I converted my Debian box to 64 bit in 2013, because it ran so much better than all the other versions, including the Windows versions.)
> When things get too complicated
It's nice when we can work on small and simple things that we have complete control over everything, including code style, isn't it?
Some day you'll work on a real software project where other people just don't give a shit except pumping out LOC and management does not enforce its own style guidelines, and when you reformat things, you get beat up for too many code changes. But they pay well, so I just have another bottle.
I try to pay all the taxes we're legally required to pay. I'm not rich enough nor are my finances complex enough to have a staff accountant looking for loopholes.
But a loophole is a loophole. If they didn't want it there, they shouldn't have left it open. I think it's unfair to essentially change the law after the fact. Passing new laws to close the loophole is fine. Being "subjected to the current proposed tax backdated ten years" is bullshit.
I hate Apple for many, many reasons and will never again own one of their products (I was stupid enough to buy an iPad once) but this is not something they should be stuck with.
Bluetooth has gotten better... but it still really sucks.
Stuff still has limited (or no) ability to pair with multiple devices - what?! I might want to use this expensive Bluetooth keyboard with something other than my phone?! You mean I might want to pair my $900 motorcycle helmet communications with more than one phone? Heretic!
Stuff still sort of assumes it'll be paired with stuff from the same manufacturer.
I tried setting up a Bluetooth beacon on my motorcycle, to activate my garage door app when I got on it. Never got it working after weeks of coding.
> One colleague, was questioned at gunpoint by security
At uni, some students (AKA cheap labor) were running network cables.
We discovered the hard way that the robotics lab had silent ceiling sensors to protect the very expensive robots, and these went straight to the uni police department.
> The UK has the dubious distinction of being the only country to have successfully developed, then dumped, the capability to launch satellites
Well, we tossed away the ability to put people on the Moon, so there ya go...
In 40 short years, this country went from landing on the Moon to "This Bag Is Not A Toy"
Well, sometimes the 1960's Morris Minor is the only thing with the right connections to get the job done.
You don't like it much, but you sit and deal with it.
Unfortunately, I can only use Firefox 43 because later versions dropped a ton of features I depend on. So did Pale Moon and Waterfox, so there's no alternative.
> it literally doesn't work on Chrome at all
Hm, I don't consider this a problem.
I use FF 43 (because 44 removed fine-grain cookie control) and Pale Moon 27 (same reason) and I just update the user-agent until the bank or whatever quits whining. I've never seen an issue with that.
I ran into a Mozilla developer at KSC the other day. I said "how can you be a developer if all you do is *remove* features?"
For some reason, he never spoke to me again. Good riddance.
Eh, my garage door unit died. It's an '80s-era unit, with a beefy motor the size of a hatbox, and the H-bridge stuff still worked, so I hooked up a Pi plus some magnetic travel sensors, and optical beams to detect stuff under the door.
The current units have motors the size of a soda can and take something like 8x as long to raise the door. I tried one and returned it because it was shite.
I then proceeded to hook it up to the local network, and made it accessible from my phone, with TLS client certificates. Now when I get to 65 meters of my door, it magically opens and I just ride in. It detects me riding in, then automatically closes the door.
I've looked, and "controlling your garage door" is basically the HELLO WORLD of Raspberry Pi
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