Posts by jake

Yelp sues Texas for right to publish actual accurate abortion info

Re: Pure performative politics

Sadly it will never happen. Politicians will never pass a law that potentially costs themselves any money.

HOWEVER, it is perfectly possible for a political opponent to guestimate the costs to the general public of any given sitting politician's work. For example, I wonder how much money that bint Green has spent at the government printing office to get her porn pictures (and the like) to wave about in the House? You know damn day well that didn't come out of her own pocket.

Re: Pure performative politics

Paxton's issues are far more damning than home renovations, but as usual the ultra conservatives choose to ignore the damning in favo(u)r of the trivial.

Note also that you can accept a bribe to be delivered at some point in the future (such as kitchen work), and then, when the heat is on, stop the work being done before it even gets started. Doesn't alter the acceptance of the bribe, as the intent is clearly there.

Re: Pure performative politics

The US is a nation of over 340,000,000 people. Most of us are not corrupt.

Remember, what you hear/see on "the news" is stuff that is considered "newsworthy". The vast majority of us don't act like the senile Trump and his sycophants, nor like the Menendez crook ... but our day to day mundane lives are not fit for your entertainment, so you don't hear about us. All you hear about is the extremes. For the most part, the current batch of shenanigans will be self-correcting within the ebb and flow of the coming election cycle(s).

_{Might want to ask yourself if you're whistling past the graveyard ... glass houses & all that.}

Re: Pure performative politics

"Paxton keeps getting reelected"

That was before Trump. People are getting tired of the ultra right. Even in Texas, from what I hear from folks who live there.

We shall see.

Re: Pure performative politics

The gerrymandering is there, undoubtedly.

However, try to remember that Texas was pure blue for almost its entire existence before the current crop of shysters started coming into power in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (The Governor alternated between red and blue for the 20 years prior to that). There are plenty of Democrats still in Texas. The only question is if they have to cojones to take their State back at the polls.

Time will tell.

Re: "acquitted by his party in a Texas Senate trial"

Typically, actual Texas voters number under half of the voting population. If the Democrats get off their fat asses and actually get to the polls in Texas, they have the numbers to turn the state blue. Will it happen? We'll see. I wouldn't put money on it either way ... but if the existing governors rulers of the Great State of Texas continue to make the wrong people mad ... Well, the numbers ARE there, despite all the obviously racist gerrymandering.

Same goes for Florida, BTW.

Re: Pure performative politics

"The point is to be seen to be fighting, in order to get social media points in their favorite echo chamber, nothing more."

FTFY

The daft thing is that the morons seem to think those social media points equate to real world vote ratios.

Re: Florida and Texas...

The major problem is that the party known as "the right wing" here in the US doesn't want to govern.

Rather, they think they have the god given right to rule. The Founding Fathers are spinning. Furiously.

Hopefully the American voting public tells the republicans to fuck off, in no uncertain terms, in the coming elections.

After failing at privacy, again, Google is working to keep Bard chats out of Search

Google's failing at privacy AGAIN?

Shirley you mean STILL.

Alphagoo's only raison d'être is privacy invasion. It's what they do.

It's why I actively shun them, and have been for almost a quarter century now.

Unions claim win as Hollywood studios agree generative AI isn't an author

'The Writers Guild of America has ended its 148-day strike"? Eh?

They were on strike?

Huh. Who knew?

Did it matter? Did anybody care? It's not like they've done anything new and/or useful for 40+ years ...

Long-term support for Linux kernels is about to get a lot shorter

One wonders where this leaves ...

... the Civil Infrastructure Platform.

cip-project.org

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: Dirt

Toasted, as any fule no.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

You're too invested for your own good. Spit the hook before you do yourself an injury.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

Pour yourself a beer and re-read mine. I think you'll find I am in agreement ... if typing in two different decades simultaneously.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

"Gandalf's experience of mines was less than positive, so probably wouldn't have worked."

The books are not the territory.

_{I just could not let that one pass ... Have a beer.}

Re: Ah, the 80's...

In '82 and '83 I was in a 9-5, with some field service as needed. The internal advert called for "unmarried and childless for two weeks overseas work. Field service experience a must. Standard Field pay, +long-term overseas pay, +hazardous duty pay, +6 weeks paid vacation and HUGE bonus at completion!" (their CAPS and !). Being young and stupid, I jumped on it. I managed about 4 years pay for the half dozen trips I made over there in those two years. And an adventure to tell the grandkids.

The two trips I made in '79 I was a consultant with my own company, a trifle older and maybe wiser, and made quite a bit more money than I did in the first 6 trips. They called me in because I already had experience with the site and most of the equipment. Except I didn't ... but that's a story for another day.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

"DV BC: Run a terminal video signal 100s (likely 1000s) of meters? In an heavy industrial setting? On a shoestring budget? Not likely."

Video signal? For this kind of thing? In the '80s? Not bloody likely.

A VT100 (or similar) fed by a standard RS-232 would have been pretty much normal (although as several people have pointed out, a 20 mA current loop was also an option). Even something as primitive as a VT220 would have been considered luxurious down a mine (and thus unlikely), and they weren't released until 1983.

Re: "......the mine had closed."

Have to bring it up to properly dry it out. Those mines out under the Atlantic are 100% humidity.

Re: Ah, the 80's...

"I don't know whether I'm more sad that school children would never have the opportunity to do any of those things today because of risk-assessment disorder, or that only one of those things still exist."

In my case, while I have a different list than yours, I'd say I;m equally sad.

_{Risk assessment disorder. I like that. Have a beer.}

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

"Wow. Do you also go on random forums about star wars and periodically remind them that it's just fantasy stories that didn't actually happen?"

Of course not, don't be silly.

But if some deluded fan of star wars posted here on ElReg, I might comment.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

"Did they have the RS-232 repeater/extenders they have now, back in the 1980s?"

Yes. From the early-mid 60s.

About once per quarter ...

... I clean out the computers in the barns, whether they need it or not. It's amazing how much dust and hair can accumulate in a desktop PC without affecting it noticeably. The one in the main barn office gets especially bad when we are clipping horses.

Not particularly filthy, mind, just good clean dirt.

Re: "......the mine had closed."

Leaf-blower in a nice sunny corner.

Re: Dickensian

Worse than ink is paper dust, the bane of print shops everywhere. I've seen it literally ankle deep in places (both the Peninsula Times Tribune and the Palo Alto Weekly, circa 1980ish).

A lung irritant, carcinogenic, grinding compound AND a fire hazard! Woo-hoo!

Re: Dirt

"Another reason - aside from a sensible layout - to use my own keyboards all the time."

Layout? Shirley you just remap keys that are located in the wrong place, right?

Re: Dirt

"Just takes two days to dry out and it's all good!"

If you use a dishwasher, don't use added detergent! The residual soap left behind from last night's dinner dishes will be plenty. Also, do not use the heated dry option.

I use a Makita cordless leaf blower. The thing has a throttle, simply set it to about as low as it'll go, point it at the keyboard and walk away. It'll be dry in under an hour, unless you're unfortunate enough to live in very humid conditions.

DO NOT USE A HEAT GUN! No, it wasn't me, but naturally I got yelled at for it (how was I supposed to stop the kid? I was at lunch!)

A hair-dryer will work, but keep it set to low heat and keep the thing moving.

There are a zillion HOWTOs on keyboard cleaning available online. Check out a few before trying to clean your own, just so you don't make the same mistakes that have been made thousands of times in the past.

The above is for well made keyboards, like IBM's legendary Model M. Modern flimsy keyboards are one-time use crap. Just toss and replace.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

"the maximum cable length for the terminal wasn't enough to reach"

That's why the line driver was invented. It was a solved problem as early as the mid 1950s, perhaps earlier.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

To collect them again, we would first have to have collected them previously.

Tall tails invented to frighten the children aside, reality would suggest we haven't.

Re: Ah, the 80's...

"A company isn't likely to send their tech into a warzone to support a computer"

I was sent to Beirut a couple times in '82 and '83, and again in '89. Got to keep the money flowing, regardless of anything else going on.

"I'm surprised they were willing to send him down a mine which is equally dangerous!"

Nah. Mines are a lot safer.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

Gandalf was selling what was then called "line drivers"[0] specifically for this kind of thing in the very early '70s. Their trade advertising included mining. No carrier based solution involved, assuming you had right of way for the wire. I assume a tin mine in Cornwall would have that.

They cost far less than calling a tech out from London to Cornwall. Or, as in my case, from Palo Alto to a cinder operation outside Baker, California (about 900 miles round-trip).

[0] Kind of an extension cord for serial communications.

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

Re: Electronic Cat

No need to steal cat; As part of the Core Utilities it's freely available under GPLv3+.

Re: Tell your friends

The *real* annoyance is all the xenophobes cluttering up the comments section.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

"What is this "engine" you talk about?"

I have several diesels that are so purely mechanical that they will survive an EMP from the Nuke of your choice. They will happily drive through as much water as you can throw at them ... just as long as the air intake is above water. If they suck in enough water, they will hydrolock. (Gotta keep water out of the fuel, too, but that's a different issue ... the vent tube is tiewrapped to the intake, just in case.) Your lithium powered clusterfuck will be a total write-off in such a scenario. To say nothing of the EVs catching fire in junkyards all over Florida after taking a salt water bath in a hurricane.

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

Let's not forget that Blighty is also has its share of dunderheads.

https://www.theregister.com/2009/03/25/satnav_mishap/

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

"I'm not sure if the US has an equivalent of the UK 'public right of way'."

No, not really. The rules and regs are quite different regarding who owns what, who can travel where, and who is responsible.

Amusingly, it doesn't keep the armchair lawyers from pontificating, though.

"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." —Unknown

Re: Process failure at Google

" I've always been very cautions about following GM directions since."

And people wonder why I don't trust self-driving cars as far as I can throw one.

Re: Pointless to complain.

Perhaps HP donated a bunch of computers to google when they were working on that section of map?

Re: Pointless to complain.

Perhaps they can't help you because you don't bother to mention the jurisdiction(s) involved?

Re: Where is the liability?

To be fair, nobody around here thinks of modern Jeeps as being particularly reliable, especially when taken off-road.

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

"but it's standard practice in cases like this to make everyone who might have liability a party to the lawsuit."

Especially if they have money.

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

"But maybe if they have other sources of data that keep insisting the bridge exists"

Like backups, for example.

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

"I know that leftpondians hate rules and regulations, but one would have thought that mandating a "bridge closed" sign be displayed is rather obvious common sense."

As a Left Cost leftpondian, I quite agree with you. I know of several bridges, maybe a dozen, that were washed out in the last year[0][1]. Every single one of them was blocked on both sides by a police car, 24 hours per day, until a more permanent (and solid) solution was applied. Usually said solution's only option for vandalism was graffiti. Most of these bridges have been rebuilt or replaced already.

But we're talking about a place called Hickory, North Carolina. Things are a trifle ... uh ... slow in them there parts.

[0] The weather last winter was rather wet, at least for California.

[1] This does not include bridges recently washed out by flash flooding down in the desert

GNU turns 40: Stallman's baby still not ready for prime time, but hey, there's cake

Poettering doesn't work on Linux. He works on the systemd-cancer, which is one of many init options and completely unnecessary to Linux. Truth be told, you don't need any init to run a working Linux system. Might need a few functional braincells, though.

Re: RMS contribution

And of course the original Mach kernel started life as 4.2BSD, but re-written with the message passing concepts originally experimented with in the Accent kernel, also from CMU. This allowed Mach to use the tool chain and userland from BSD pretty much unchanged, and also port it to various processor architectures pretty easily. I played with all the above throughout the '80s as an interesting side diversion to what I was doing with BSD.

Fun times.

Re: A Complicated Man

"Why distribution of “free” software has to get all legal is beyond me - it’s nonsense"

Because hierarchies of paper-pushers bring in the big bucks ... even, it would seem, if you have no actual product to sell.

Re: 1991

I wouldn't know. I stopped supporting products from Redmond nearly 14 years ago.

Re: 1991

When you consider how the FOSS world uses version numbers, nothing surprises me anymore.

Re: A Complicated Man

"like literally standing behind students and dictating the code they should write when his carpel tunnel got so bad he couldn't do it himself"

rms has never battled with CTS. He did, however have typists hired by the FSF to do some of his typing for him due to non-CTS related hand pain. Some or all of those typists were undoubtedly students. (I'm pretty sure I got that info straight from rms, but I can't for the life of me remember when, where or how. Might be on his stallman.org site somewhere ... not that I'm prone to read his ramblings, mind.)

_{Gut feeling? He should have stopped using EMACS and switched to vi years ago.}

Re: A Complicated Man

To be fair, nowhere did I suggest rms would be easy to live with.

_{Note: The guy with the bathing issues was the young Steve Jobs. Ask anyone who attended the Homebrew Computer Club.}

Re: Don't Forget gcc

GCC, while extremely useful, was not strictly necessary.

Linux could have been developed with PCC (as shipped with BSD, until 4.4BSD in 1994). It was nearly ubiquitous in the tool sets of the kind of people who drift into working on things like Linux.