Posts by jake

Re: pizza is the perfect food

After a little trial and error, we figured out how to set a 40 foot multi-zone belt furnace (nominally used to cook hybrid circuitry) to make chocolate chip cookies. Including the mandatory cooling time ... when they came out the far end they were just warm to the touch, and ready for eating :-)

Elfin safety can kiss my pasty white butt; I don't need protecting from myself.

Hey, hold my beer & watch this! ::sweeps cookie crumbs off floor with liquid nitrogen::

Just to clarify (was: Re: Why would one ...)

Just to clarify, this is a toaster oven:

https://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Beach-Countertop-Toaster-Roll-Top/dp/B06WGNC8Q4

And this is a toaster:

https://www.amazon.com/Mecity-Countdown-Functions-removable-Stainless/dp/B09V7SZK2X

Completely different beasties.

Re: Freaks

Relax. It'll never happen anyway. The Texas Legislators are all mouth and no action.

Re: Freaks

"The "right hoops" being starting a second civil war and winning it. There's no other way for a state to leave."

Nope. It can be done peacefully. But the hoops they would have to jump through make it exceedingly difficult.

See the the U.S. Supreme Court's 1869 ruling in "Texas v. White", which concluded that a State (or States) could secede by gaining approval of both houses of Congress and then obtaining ratification by three fourths of the nation's legislatures.

The other option is Revolution (there is absolutely nothing civil about war) ... and even that might be settled peacefully. The theory goes that If enough people are pissed off at the Federal Government and civil unrest becomes inevitable, and probably extreme, the State(s) and the Nation might simply agree to part ways to minimize the damage.

Re: Florida.... Hold my beer

"MAGA" == Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans

Re: Where is the clamour for internet companies to stand up to this censorship?

They can't read, at least not for content. They have to have their so-called "good book" explained to them.

"I am an ISP"

I'm not. I am human. I own a couple ISPs, though ...

Re: Freaks

"Except those who do this for power and/or personal gain."

That's part of the definition of "Texas Politician", Shirley.

Re: Freaks

Texas claims to be the only State that can secede from the Union (which in itself is Yet Another Lie from the Texans ... ANY State can secede, if they jump through the right hoops). Most of the rest of us wish they'd stop babbling about it and get on with it. Mexico doesn't want 'em, either. In fact, Mexico would probably happily join the rest of us in building a wall.

_{Sorry, bub. The Cajuns are not negotiable.}

Re: Er?

I think "destroyed" is the wrong word. It has already been invented, so that particular pile of milk can't be swept back into the worm can.

I think instead it should be pulled from general use (sequestered might be too strong a word), and studied in far more depth than it has to date. There are probably bits and pieces in it that will be useful to humanity. Regardless, I see little use in keeping it generally available, and a whole lot of negative use cases that it WILL be put to, because humans as a group are a bunch of ignorant shitheads who can't see past their next beer.

Re: "What else would ChatGPT do to protect itself from being discovered as a liar?"

"doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about what it "wants""

But it doesn't "want" anything. It is incapable of wanting. Trying to anthropomorphize it is counter-productive.

What we should be asking is "What is(are) the probable outcome(s) of allowing the program to continue running?".

Instead, myopic narcissistic management and marketing are asking their mantra "what's in it for me?".

Re: Moon time?

"Wait, the moon doesn't rotate"

Yes, it does. The rotation ("synchronous rotation") just happens to match it's orbit around the Earth, which is why we only see one side (plus a bit, for the pedants).

Re: Famous for a photo of herself kipping on the floor ::snip for brevity::

Just for the record, sleeping in the office is a long-standing tradition in Silly Con Valley.

Admittedly, it's usually only during the final push on shipping a new or vastly improved product ... or when attempting to meet sales projections for a quarter-end's last second hocky-stick sales profile (sales weasels are notorious for this).

Re: It just got worse (again)

I guess the whack-jobs gotta support the bat-shit crazy in a kind of twisted variation on a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario.

Re: GOT TO BE HUMAN TO ENJOY COPY RIGHTS?

To be offended, being tightly linked to emotion, is quite illogical.

Re: Don't get me started...

::sighs::

Remember back when schools bothered to teach basic physics?

Re: Don't get me started...

Do kids today even know what a map is? They certainly don't seem to know how to walk, much less hike ...

Re: Don't get me started...

"and certainly not utilised"

My Big Dic[0] mostly prefers the "z" splelings, damn your ise! What are you, French?

Ah, well. It's all Greek to most people. As long as the meaning is obvious, does it really matter in a forum like this one?

[0] OED, second dead tree edition.

Re: Don't get me started...

"to try to make themselves sound more educated than the hoi-polloi"

That should be "than hoi polloi". The "the" is implied in the Greek, and thus redundant in English.

"would have had a lot more French speakers, than the UK."

Yes, but we saw them for what they were (Canadian), so we stuck to proper English. Thankfully ... You can see what would have happened had we not by talking to a Cajun.

"Americans try to make out that they single-handedly won WW2"

Don't be daft. Only idiots think that. On either side of the pond.

"At one school, another girl came up to her and said ::snip::"

The words of a child still in school do not reflect those of the population as a whole. Except, perhaps, in England.

Re: Don't get me started...

"But make sure it's a proper British pint, not one of your inferior small U.S. versions ....."

You mean like this?

Yes, the standard American unit of measure called "the pint" contains 16oz, However, almost all bars that serve pints of beer serve it in standard, British made (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), 20oz pint glasses. At least the bars that I've been in over the last several decades. I have also noticed in the last ten or so years that many bars are keeping 22oz glasses on hand to decant the 22oz bottles which many/most micro/craft breweries ship at least some of their brews in.

This might be a West Coast thing. I haven't been in a bar East of the Rockies in decades.

_{Note that Fred's, AKA "Building F", is the local dive where much of SillyConValley was invented.}

Re: Don't get me started...

Ah yes, "utiliz(s)e", another place where the Yanks use proper English, and the British use the French variation.

Re: Don't get me started...

I've heard many more Brits say "innit".

Re: Dell's help desk script

That's why I never pay top-dollar for new-on-the-market, bleeding edge hardware. I give it a year or so for all the fools to rush in and pay a premium to debug the hardware and drivers. After about a year and three-four hardware revs, and half a dozen minor driver revs, the new kit is finally ready for use. And roughly a third of the price it was when it was first offered for sale.

Re: Don't get me started...

"Don't give me that "Normans were French" crapolla either - they were Vikings!"

Norman-French only contained about 150 words of Norse origin. The rest was French (plus a few loan-words from elsewhere), although with a bit of a Northern accent.

Re: Dell's help desk script

"If the VDR can understand speech rather that just touchtone, try screaming at it. I've been told that some systems do, in fact, try to judge caller frustration level, and this is surprisingly effective."

If I were programming an IVR, I'd put the screamers on-hook immediately. No way I'm intentionally subjecting my front-line staff to irate morons who think screaming at the equipment will somehow help the situation.

"When that doesn't work, spout random gibberish."

Or you can just use English, "I'd like to speak to a human", "I want to talk to an associate", etc. You'll eventually fall through to being transferred to a human regardless of what you say. Your way, the tech on the other side who listens to what you had to say earlier will probably think you are a loon, and his interaction with you will be colo(u)red by this.

Re: This is old news ...

"Mind you, Poettering's done a fairly good job at extinguishing Linux all by himself."

What colo(u)r is the sky on your planet? None of my computers run anything built by him, and none of them ever will. I seem to get on with what I need to do with Linux quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.

Re: This is old news ...

And again the attempted degradation. Hysterical.

Next we're going to be told to get lives, watch :-)

Re: It's not WHO is contributing, it's WHAT they're contributing

"Apple don't use Linux"

But Apple do use BSD.

"so developing a Kernel stack to run on their hardware is utterly irrelevant to them."

Totally, utterly and completely wrong.

Re: All I can see

"Cities are more fun"

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Re: YouTube doesn't deserve section 230

You would be very hard pressed to find a bona fide Email Systems Administrator who would agree to any definition of "spam" that did not include the word "bulk" (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Likewise, you'll be equally hard pressed to find one who agrees that spam has anything to do with content.

You are free to disagree ... but experience suggests that changing technical terms to suit yourself is a fool's errand.