tom jennings

https://tldr.nettime.org/@tomjennings

I make things.

Bite the hand that feeds you shit.

Not real keen on chauvinists, tech or otherwise.

West Coast, Norte Americano.

PS: I filter out/will not see any post with any of these words: AI, LLM, chatbot.

website: https://www.bleeve.me
website: https://www.sensitiveresearch.com
website: http://www.wabiteksabi.com

Public Key

npub1h7a5g39aukwykgy3jnznlynlwz2rmu5vh7m4uarkg5d5jcrw3ceseqm2up

NIP-05 Address

tomjennings_at_tldr.nettime.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstlw6ygj77t8ztyzgef3fljflhp9pa72xtld67w3my2x6fvphguvcpqq9azx9h

Publishing to

Author Public Key

npub1h7a5g39aukwykgy3jnznlynlwz2rmu5vh7m4uarkg5d5jcrw3ceseqm2up

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-09-04 23:14:17 UTC

Lol, nitwit dipshit christians kicked out of burning man. Honestly, out there, I would punch someone grabbing my hand over their invisible sky magician nonsense.
Even the reno paper isn't very kind to them in spite of the headline.
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2026/09/02/burning-man-christian-camp-says-they-were-kicked-out-after-complaints/91588273007/
Newbies, they likely expected it to mean "NO RULEZ!" lol.

2026-09-04 22:22:14 UTC

- reply

Dammit. Does a pre-takeover version still exist?

2026-09-04 17:42:17 UTC

I did not know this!
Wikipedia page sbout the image orthicon tube:
"The image orthicon tube was at one point colloquially referred to as an Immy. Harry Lubcke, the then-President of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, decided to have their award named after this nickname. Since the statuette was female, it was feminized into Emmy.[97] The Image orthicon was used until the end of black and white television production in the 1960s.[98]"

2026-09-04 16:32:10 UTC

- reply

Hmm. The link draws the screen then goes blank. On mobile Vivaldi and Firefox both.
But i moderately know wu ming, and Luther blissett, before that. And the latter's novel Q (1999) is quite amazing, and remains a good allegory for many machinations around the internet.

2026-08-31 16:57:16 UTC

- reply

Yes. The US is a very hostile place.
@npub1jsl…93xu @npub1ucv…5a8g

2026-08-31 05:24:00 UTC

- reply

I don't remember that, indicting me and the rest of us white folks who don't.

2026-08-27 03:07:11 UTC

- reply

Setting up services is far too much. "No one' has servers on rhe net outside of privileged users, and setting up nextcloud is on real work. I found it difficult enough to maintain that i eventually abandoned it.
All of these services are far too rarefied.
And honestly i dpnt know enough to be responsible for the security required.
@npub1n3c…r9t3

2026-08-26 18:00:06 UTC

- reply

Too nerdy unfortunately. Thanks though.

2026-08-26 16:41:57 UTC

I have a group of people doing important work on the ground, who are very smart but are not nerds.
They want to use Proton to share files amongst the group. Im not convinced its a good idea.
How does their encryption work? I can look later offline (sic) but wondering if anyone had any experience.
Or can share experience with smaller scale sharing systems?

2026-08-23 23:33:11 UTC

- reply

grapheneOS has been great for me.
But somehow Google Play Store today has eaten 57% of battery usage, i have not explicitly launched it, and i have its background services turned off.
I had turned off all permissions except sensors and networking. I have since turned off both. Ill see what that does. I suspect some other program is launching it or using it, i need to go ask on a grapheneOS forum.
Pernicious code!
I may do what i do with other little used services; disable the app, in settings, then enable it before use. I do this with things like Lyft, which abuses notifications amongst other things.
I see zero advertisement except on firefox. Zero.
Its funny that Pixel phones are best supported.

2026-08-17 22:04:57 UTC

- reply

Depends on how rich you are.

2026-08-17 20:59:35 UTC

- reply

I used ratpoison, in a car computer setup early oughts, since it didn't require a mouse. And sway (under wayland) does this. I just found it limiting; sometimes I need a really wide xterm for some log something or other, or a tiny window for odd cut'n'paste jobs.
ctwm is wonderful on the laptop -- where the virtual workspaces shine. The screen size is small and fixed, so I do different tasks on different workspaces.
A "tile windows on the screen" command would be nice though! But my solution to crowded screens is virtual workspaces -- partitioning tasks by "type" (whatever that means) solves it for me.
(I keep typing "desktop" when I mean workspace...)
My (semi-)final battle is to get a lemonbar to build a status line to hold various modern krap. I have it sort of sketched out but need to sit down and implement it.
Configuration around the traditional wm's is scattered, and with weird syntax. lemonbar accepts stdin and displays it on a bar top or bottom, so shell script to feed it. But I prefer disallowing other windows to overlap it, and that's not even mentioned so I suspect "oh, everyone knows" nonsense.

2026-08-17 13:41:56 UTC

- reply

Oh i actually like and prefer the old window managers! Desktops are annoying, shit collects on them and you have to move windows around to see it? Wrong part of the paradigm for me!
The objectionable part is configuration of stuff you want on s mobile computer. On a desk top workstation screen, clock suffices. Laptop, i want network status and clock persistent; setting up persistent windows is a pain, config in multiple places, .xinitrc, .ctwmrc, . Xdefaults, never mind font sizes for each program... still, 30 years later!
But its all so thin and light! ctwm does virtual workspaces, my major requirement. Zero clutter. Configuring menus is so easy!

2026-08-17 04:42:52 UTC

I have my freeBSD laptop in decent working order. A bit of a throwback, using ctwm. Widgets for it require meddling with all the old stuff, but it's going OK.
Lol wifi and roaming AP selection is, let's say, primitive. The easiest seems to be to use the interface to scan, then edit wpa_supplicant,conf, and restart the device. Mmmm ok...
I found a forum thread about it, and it seems to be the way things are. Not only, there's some barbarians gatewaying, of the general form "all you need is a sharp stick and the command line, the device does what you need" goons, one of whom vaguely threatening someone who suggested they might make a project out of a script to semi-automate it. Like, really bad behavior.
Well this is not good.

2026-08-15 23:44:05 UTC

We were gone for a week, got home last night. Dogs always want everyone to be together 100% of the time.
This afternoon i biked to the store for a bag of groceries. This happened ss soon as i left:
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/117/102/176/623/651/480/original/a64d04daf52fb821.mp4

2026-08-15 21:00:58 UTC

- reply

I hope it is obvious I am not in favor of authoritative single person model of documentation, as an end. That's how many projects start; that's organic, eg. XMODEM. But XMODEM outgrew one person -- to Ward's great credit.
Here's the official FTSC doco repo:
http://ftsc.org/docs/
While the below is a detailed discussion of the FidoNet protocol, there's a thorough description of XMODEM and related protocols embedded in it:
http://ftsc.org/docs/fts-0001.016
http://ftsc.org/
https://www.fidonet.org/

2026-08-15 17:44:41 UTC

- reply

What's interesting to me about it is that its emblematic of good early amateur work. First, there is no "authoritative" repository or institution to which one can go to find a standards document. There are no standards documents! (The FidoNet did build such a thing and it was Good.) There are only authoritative documents, traceable to an authoritative person. When things were this small, it worked, partly, but recall that, without widespread well known communication infra (eg duh web) smart attentive intelligent folk could be islands of ignorance of others' work, still, though this declined with time.
Also no one knew how to draw state diagrams. They were new to me, mid 80s. This spec is adequate, just, for these protocols but barely or not really.
But these problems were one step from near ideal fixes, eg widespread (FidoNet) and legible (state diagrams introduced to FidoNet by rbush). Early 90s, this was all completed and the FSC--- docs were fairly revolutionary.
There is a lot of this sort of cultural practice that was finely developed that really needs a serious look at by someone(s) with writing/publishing skills. Theres a world here that should not he lost, because we need it again now, this ability to create a rechnical culture, not beholden to corporations.

2026-08-14 21:35:26 UTC

This is a great document.
http://moscova.inria.fr/~doligez/zmodem/ymodem.txt

2026-08-10 22:23:23 UTC

Memories (fantasies) of the early, empty internet, open to any possibility.
Make a rule of to not use any corporate service: now you are back in 1995 but with modern hardware.
Now what do you do?
Its not "personal boycott" to not use amazon or facebook. Literally anything you can think of to buy on it or similar are sold elsewhere. Finding them requires persistence. What do you think you'd be doing if it were 1995?

2026-08-09 23:46:56 UTC

Every inch of space defcon and its visitors occupies or visits is publicly traded corporate owned and controlled.

2026-08-03 19:59:07 UTC

Our rental unit has a recently done marble bathroom (don't ask...). Marble needs to be "sealed". OK fine.
One of them has come up with the idea that they needs this $1000 (!) service to come do it. They're not rich, neither are we. Seems to me all we need is to clean it (there's no stains or damage) and wipe on a sealer.
I believe this "service" is a bullshit ripoff. I have no experience with this stuff. But I can't find online anything convincing, since it's a negative-information I need, it's difficult to search for.
What possible thing need be done to marble, other than clean and wipe on a sealer?!!

2026-07-31 01:10:31 UTC

Ok! I got 12 of the 25 Friendly fZ80's assembled and tested. 4 (and the 13) awaiting batteries to arrive. Will do the other 13 next week. Software release about ready, gotta test the packaging script. Then a bit of burnin-in time.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/117/011/915/741/038/826/original/1c31d8c3decc83b3.jpg

2026-07-20 04:44:32 UTC

- reply

I'm enjoying your posts even though your photographs continue to be colorless.

2026-07-16 15:33:06 UTC

- reply

DI.fm if you like techno and trance. Private corp. I cutnpaste track names into beatport to buy.
No ads no bull. Real DJs, many channels. Been around for years.
@npub1xse…lgk3 @npub1x08…469m

2026-07-05 19:22:37 UTC

I had forgotten just how fucking tremendous Dr. Dobbs Journal was. Check out Volume 7.
(The Volumes contain all of that years' monthly issues.)
https://archive.org/search?tab=all&query=dr+dobbs+journal+vol&and%5B%5D=collection%3A%22dr_dobbs_journal%22

2026-07-04 20:21:13 UTC

I've long hated traded corporations, and it's only focused more tightly with time. If I'm a crank, that's fine, but I'm not the first and I haven't forgotten, even if it's mostly lost in time.
Lol, read this 1982 editorial from Dr. Dobbs Journal. And they're being polite.
We have lost so much. And we're doing it again, right now, with F/OSS.
1982 Dr. Dobbs Journal VOLUME 7
Their bylines:
for users of small computer systems
a reference journal for users of home computers
Published by the Peoples' Computer Company.
Volume 7 Editors Preface
This is the “Blue Period” volume. Even the most casual observer of the microcomputer scene in 1982 knew the year belonged to IBM. It began with the Justice Department dropping a longstanding antitrust suit against “Big Blue” and ended with the computer newsweekly InfoWorld selecting IBM’s first personal computer as Product of the Year.
IBM had introduced the PC the preceding August and by January 1982 the entire microcomputer software industry was already in IBM’s long, blue shadow. By March the PC-compatible hardware products were multiplying. Before Christmas, IBM had driven a wedge between Microsoft and Digital Research, caused a half-year delay in the release of a new version of w hat had been the industry-standard operating system, and made Apple Computer, Inc. revamp its entire marketing strategy. In short, the billion-dollar multinational corporation, with firm notions of corporate secrecy and a reputation for letting other companies take innovative risks, made very big waves that year. Those waves altered an industry that had been created from nothing over the preceding decade by a bunch of hobbyists and wild-eyed dreamers accustomed to openly sharing technological ideas.
...
https://dn721801.ca.archive.org/0/items/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_07_201803/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_07.pdf

2026-07-04 18:51:40 UTC

I'm doing a bit of research on early computer magazines and of course (if you know that world) Wayne Greene is everywhere.
Hs earliest computer magazines had those old fashioned (1970's for "misogynist") ads with bikini-clad women holding computer components, so he's a bit of mixed bag, a bit rough (that part I appreciate) and a droll damn yankee from New Hampster and quite funny.
His business practices were a bit wild. An ex-wife physically stole BYTE magazine from him one night. He'd put it all in her name for tax reasons.
"... Then the publisher, who is not a HAM either, bought a yacht, got overextended and got a year behind on paying my salary, so he fired me. I said, "Well, this is so much fun."
73 magazine (amateur radio) then he founded BYTE, 80 Micro, CD Review, Cold Fusion, Kilobaud Microcomputing, RUN, InCider, and Pico, and a bunch of books.
Greene may be an asshole but I'd take 100 of him over the tech bros. He'd probably have punched mElon.
https://www.computingpioneers.com/index.php/Wayne_Green

2026-06-23 15:56:21 UTC

- reply

Its pretty great, except its filled with people.

2026-06-21 22:29:44 UTC

- reply

Instead of looking at platforms and programs as things needing alternatives or competition, I think we need to lift way up and look around.
We are not gonna "compete" with them in a world of their making. Writing a better insta isn't a solution.
We know public transportation, ebikes, new ideas in constructing neighborhoods, open space, changes to access to food, etc, are the solution to "automobiles" -- the problem is complex and "electric cars" are not the solution.
Us weirdos are good at what we do, and we do that, and should do that. But we can't force people to see what they can't see (though we can help).
Here in Los Angeles, there is a huge, invisible, revolution going on with two-wheeled electric things, ebikes, one-wheels, more scooters than I would ever imagine, and we even have bits of infrastructure built around them (the LA River-front bike path with it's restaurants, housing, parks). This is one of the ways things will go.
My sample size is small, "young people" are not doing what we're doing with the internet. They don't build website, which have only got HARDER and MORE EXPENSIVE. The net is cumbersome, fraught with surveillance, complexity, etc. I see paper zines, stickers, occasional tapes. And something like advertising on instagram.
We'll not know how insta and FB are doing because they lie. And who wants to waste energy fighting a thing with such resources? The few people I know that use them don't like them; "that's where my friends are".
The answer to instagram and facebook is likely not to be online. All those zine/music kids use computers and phones. Less so the internet.
The internet itself is owned by assholes. We're unlikely to free it from the assholes. I'm not suggesting we "give up", but I am suggesting the seemingly obvious frontal assaults are a waste of time.
Think askance, as Harry Hay said. Just go over ---> there and do something novel.

2026-06-19 13:45:49 UTC

Oh for fucks sake, this shitbag is on the fediverse. Seems real.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/777/072/400/309/094/original/fceef3429e004118.jpg

2026-06-15 16:56:21 UTC

- reply

Davx is great. Ive been using it for s while.

2026-06-14 21:40:53 UTC

- reply

FairEmail is very good!

2026-06-11 02:42:50 UTC

(Post based on finding this photo in a folder 20 deep.)
Wynn Wagner III, author of Opus, the FidoNet BBS and network interface. More or less the head of the Texas Mafia, Wynn and I had a problematic relationship; I liked him, the other out and loud gay FidoNet programmer (he was also very religious and ended here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Christianity
"According to Archbishop Wynn Wagner of the former North American Old Catholic Church, inclusiveness and acceptance is the basic posture of progressive Christianity.[14][page needed]"
The Dallas folk were weirdly (to me) competitive, but since I'm quite strongly anti-competitive, mostly oblivious that people think that it is occurring, it ended up just being puzzling.
But Opus was very good software (and Wynn and cohort fun people -- mostly). He/they pushed the protocol, sometimes annoyingly, lol, came up with the YOOHOO/2U2 handshake scheme instead of my original one (TSYNC) from FTS001. https://brainpatchworkdx.com/viewtopic.php?t=6 Opus was much slicker and featureful (I really kept up support for the low-end of the hardware market) than my FidoNet program, about 1990? I ceded it all to the FTS and my my code fall to 20% of the net.
He'd do things like have Opus calculate and display absolute best-case file transfer speeds, vs mine doing pessimum calcs (eg. including file operations) and so an Opus xfering files between, Opus was always faster! Lol and sysops would complain fido was slow, sigh. Annoying, but always done with glee.
Imagine this guy with his very queer thick texas drawl talking me into doing some crazy shit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160210034936/http://www.rxn.com/~net282/fidonet.wagner.echomail.txt
He was a complicated person and has little presence on the net that I can find. Bummer.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/727/716/415/908/714/original/77d1875578f7acaf.gif

2026-06-09 01:03:15 UTC

This was a very cool project in 1997! It still is!
Analog video on a vinyl disk ("LP record") using a needle in the groove...
https://gebseng.com/03_vinylvideo/

2026-06-04 01:35:49 UTC

- reply

I DUNNO MAN THAT SOUNDS KINDA EDGY

2026-05-31 19:45:23 UTC

Yeah i know its rhe fkn insta but its eorth watching a few secs off.
I wont be an AI slave! Kids these days.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYkdaXivZe5/

2026-05-30 20:16:22 UTC

- reply

I was thinking of monetization in that, every (&$%)*%^_) fkn thing on the net has been monetized, ads, data theft, all of it, and that brought a lot of opportunities to do nefarious and annoying things like spam.
I do remember spammers and cranks from the day; it seems to be what happens when the number of humans N exceeds a smallish number.
But the characterizations of undesireable posters will or may change if there's simply no money to be had from doing so.
Usenet was of that early era that [believed that] it did not need social design. We now know everything does. In 1990 it was all or mostly nerds, what, 1000X fewer users? A million times?
But today forums, for example, mostly have solved these things, for example; and a forum/BBS could form the source root to a particular newsgroup, and could form the control and social center of that group. Forums are old and well-tuned, we know what kind of controls works (and most of them are smallish cohorts). What happens when or if they expand to a group? There is FidoNet echo experience here, but not from me, where many echo conferences (== newsgroup) spawned from a particular BBS.
FidoNet was also known as Fight-O-Net for good reason. There's no magic solutions there, just a pool of experience to see how things unfolded and dealt with.
@npub1t0z…fz20 @npub1dl7…vggz

2026-05-30 19:24:21 UTC

- reply

A key design feetch of newsgroups is that they predate the Internet; they are store and forward networks. Posts can persist on a host overnight, for batch send at night, etc, solving problems we no longer have.
Usenet once gatewayed with the FidoNet echo conference system, both have similar structures.
@npub1jmv…l7za @npub1t0z…fz20

2026-05-30 19:20:54 UTC

- reply

No user auth or id, so that can lead to wild spammers. TLS between servers. Its all pre security mindset.
I wonder how the low threshold for entry plays out vs inherent lack of monetization, today. Not as its a "fix" but 30 years of corporate internet has changed the stakes.
Ive forgotten what little i knew: can a particular group be housed on a particular host, where that host can restrict membership and posts to keep quality high (or ruin it, as the case may be)?
@npub1jmv…l7za @npub1t0z…fz20

2026-05-30 19:06:21 UTC

- reply

OMFG how did i forget Usenet! I know how, back whenever you needed uucp or internet and i didnt have those things then, but i did have a usenet feed to home in 1998, thrn its kinda got lost...
But yeah command line readers for the mostly chat snd support and such is just great.
Why is no one talking about usenet? We fkn need to. Its loosely decentralizable, i would have to go rtfm. Maybe you have already.
Theres the alt. heirarchy too.
Oh hells yes lets talk about this!!!
Revive and adapt to new circumstances. Our tech is so much better now! Dammit im gonna seriously consider this.

2026-05-24 21:41:57 UTC

Took Devo to Spoke (cafe) this morning. I've had a nasty headcold, first time I've been out in days. Cold enough for a nekkid dog to need a jacket and tshirt.
He loves his silver puffy coat. Now that it warmed he's more in danger of heatstroke than cold but I hate to take it off.
We bought two new dog toys so he's walking around with the favorite one. Selected apparently by color as we got two identical favorite additions, he likes this on over the orange one. Who knows.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/631/723/188/320/970/original/bc8ce54a17470b29.mp4

2026-05-20 22:28:25 UTC

Here's a cool show in LA! Downtown.
https://www.thesedaysla.com/pages/fishworm-pia-paulina-guilmoth-jesse-bull-saffire

2026-05-17 19:32:34 UTC

"computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

2026-05-15 01:16:54 UTC

- reply

It's all just so terrible. I feel sorry for every participant and nothing but hatred for the ruinous corps.

2026-05-14 23:54:54 UTC

- reply

This last paragraph of yours is the core of it i see. It IS unethical to contribute free labor to profit making corporations. And the software licensing applied pretty much guarantees you won't be.
Think of FOSS minus the corporations. That's the part that works as the popular vision of it says. Its not grounded in any reality.
The Internet fostered this particular kind of (technical) file sharing, and all but a tiny number of those original corps contributed back in any significant way i could ever see.
There are other models of openness. Open standards mostly works.
Certain projects work; compilers and languages. They're too large to capture I suppose. Compiler libraries work.
Is there any user/programmer organization looking at these breakdowns?
Why aren't there programmers unions?
Why do programmers so resist self organizing?
[@miss_rodent](https://girlcock.club/@miss_rodent ) @npub1hzv…lzy3

2026-05-08 17:12:50 UTC

- reply

"Omnicorp does not provide security per se, but a complete concept of security"
(The CEO of Omnicorp, Robocop)

2026-05-04 19:51:50 UTC

Pi, as calculated and printed on a Babbage machine, 1906.
His kid finished the Mill sufficient to calc and print this.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/518/038/507/232/865/original/c2fbbeca79608a89.jpg

2026-05-03 16:38:22 UTC

- reply

Heres the split as i see it: crazy people like me/us see beauty in computing (less so in computers) but everything but tiny amateur stuff is the means of corporate power and profit. My crazy person choice is to write code for myself, as now it seems 99.99% of even amateur computing is entangled in some corporate system or other.
Lol, i realize this fundamental amateur/professional split exists in very many technical fields. But most of them are no so dire!
@npub1qae…xq6d

2026-05-03 16:31:22 UTC

- reply

It seems grim. The endless reliance on profit-taking corporations has to end. Corps have driven the scale, the sheer size bulk and complexity, to levels few amateur groups/orgs could do.
What's necessary?
And the way so many open source projects have become reliant on each other makes it hard to extract projects.
Im not in that business. But it seems that a lot of that is due to speed, schedule, what's the fastest way to get this job done? And less of, what's the best way to get this job done.
If code is to be basically for making money, its already hopelessly entangled with structures like this. Some deeply basic questions need asking.
@npub1qae…xq6d

2026-04-23 17:13:04 UTC

This is the absolute best description or definition of religion -- all of them, the human phenom itself -- i have ever read. I read it a week or 10 days ago, just reread it, it stands up.
The article is nominally concerned with the shitbag in office; I'm less concerned eith that aspect here and tbh, im gonna have to go read the anthropologists paper to see.
Someone here posted it, i don't remember who; apologies.
https://complexsimplicity.substack.com/p/ten-years-of-religious-hypocrisy

2026-04-22 21:28:33 UTC

- reply

Another photo of the RF box guts, minus ugly green lines.
The aluminum reflector, the wire heatsink, and the diode detector block I can identify because it was pointed out to me; this is all F.M.
Oh yeah, each one of these boxes streams 4 gigabytes/second for long periods, generating petabytes of data.
Everything here is completely insane and looks like nothing else I've ever seen! It all just sounds like Tall Tales. 345 GHz? 4 GHz bandwidth data?!
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/450/458/896/433/337/original/47494a819ddb1a91.jpg

2026-04-22 21:22:29 UTC

- reply

Here's the RF box and its vacuum pump for testing/ I have no idea how this is operated in the lab, as its supposed to be cooled externally. I'd have to ask.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/450/428/239/738/464/original/7c9f0bf3a088dd35.jpg

2026-04-22 17:14:51 UTC

Visited my friend David while visiting tucson last week. He works on tadio telescopes for UofA. Currently building the 4GHz bandwidth zillion channel AtoD system for one of the EHT (event horizon telescopes). This shit is nuts.
Heres the RF front end. About 24 inch square. Inside runs under high vacuum, and cooled to 4 degrees Kelvin (liquid helium). The outside of the box cooled to 40K.
Upper left circle is a twisted pair from a chassis feed through to one of the electronics clusters housed in gold plated massive heatsinks. Theres s meter or so of twisted pair wound sround a post; thats a heatsink to keep the heat from rhe 40K box to rhe 4K electronics.
The RF input is 345 GHz, fed from the aluminum dishes mirror, feeding rhe crazy hand made diode in the middle hestsink.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/449/481/946/862/583/original/875022b436d0fb87.jpg

2026-04-21 20:37:34 UTC

- reply

Someone posted a link to https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-favorite-brands-got-worse-on-purpose
and I went to reply, and it disappeared. The list of shit brands is appalling! The idea of brands has been stupid for some time anyway.

2026-04-21 20:27:35 UTC

INAUTHENTICBRANDS.COM domain is available for registration.

2026-04-14 17:11:14 UTC

* It is amateurs that bring (and had brought) *all* of the joy into computing.
* Students, if they are very lucky, retain some of this joy.
* Professionalism ruins joy.
There you go, that's my thesis.

2026-04-13 23:35:45 UTC

Yeah, the clowns involved may be done for, then the rest us right after.
Americans of any stripe will be unwelcome anywhere you'd like to go.
Israel as a pariah state would be very ugly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIUdCjzSMEA

2026-04-11 20:52:29 UTC

So histories on the metaphors used in computer editing of text have been done, no surprise.
Only skimmed these myself, will read later.
In the timeline I'm in, there were coding sheets (recognizable; but never used though I did some hand coding), then the paper tape editors themselves (teletype reader, punch, edit one line at a time), then the "ed" family (that incorported the P.T. editors but had the crazy idea of a "screen"; includes ed, teco, emacs), then the widespread deployment of meece when it all ends and turns to shit with far too many options and our documents all looking the same "professional" (sic).
Pretty page, totally misses all points:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/evolution-text-editors-word-processors-miguel-rivas-perez-ilwbc
Oh, this one has much clue. And one of the few writings that makes it clear that the creation of jaquard loom cards was solidly "programming", in that it required fairly arbitrary transformations of data. It would not surprise me to find a loom that could count, and stop or something. Also: "women's work", an important story itself in computing generally.
https://lug.ncsu.edu/presentations/2019-11-13-text-editor-history.pdf
This idiosyncratic wiki isn't analysis or anything, but a good survey, emphasis in the early micro era. But digging out anything from the 50s and 60s would be serious work. Clearly a work of love here.
https://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HomePage

2026-04-11 16:33:27 UTC

“But to micromanage the president with 535 CEOs of the country doesn't make a lot of sense to me—doesn't make a lot of sense to the American people.”
(Congress.)

2026-04-04 21:18:04 UTC

- reply

If you could fill a room with cheese hole air, could you breathe it? I really need to know.

2026-03-30 17:33:19 UTC

"In 1994, the largest company in America by market capitalization was Exxon, valued at $34 billion. Today, Google is worth $3.7 trillion."
Technofascism is what we have achieved.

2026-03-27 01:09:49 UTC

- reply

Holy fucking garbage world. North korea we become.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0425

2026-03-22 15:30:51 UTC

Peter Gibson, a spokesman for Keep Britain Tidy, asserts that Banksy's work is simple vandalism.

2026-03-22 15:19:28 UTC

Banksy's been outed?
I hope he remains ok. I fear for them.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

2026-03-19 01:53:00 UTC

- reply

Lol.
Am I doing something silly? They do the multi-registrar searches and all the hard work, it's their job...
I'm usually thinking "hmmm is WORD available?", so it's not like I'm abusing them with a million searches, and the few times I've done this, I actually register it with them, so it's all win for them.

2026-03-19 01:38:54 UTC

- reply

I go to my registrar and simply try to register it. "FOO.COM is not available try FOO.XYZ..." etc

2026-03-15 23:29:58 UTC

OK I just re-created the reason I got in trouble with libreoffice writer in the first place.
I'm making a printed book, so I need left and right pages.
The front part of the book, maybe a dozen pages, preface, index, colophon, etc, I want no page numbers.
About a dozen pages in, I want to start page numbering, with 1.
Libreoffice can''t seem to do this. Each page style must select "next style" which means the first N pages need to each have style N, where style 1 "nexts" to Style 2, 2 to 3, ... n-1 to N.
Style N then links to "Left page" which links to right which links to left.
It's a disastrous design. I'd done all this and somehow it broke.
Lots of other folks have similar issues with style and the answer from the org is "LO is designed around styles" which is a non-answer.
I will probably punt, break the book into pieces, have the front matter book use one set of alternating styles, then the rest of it another, produce PDFs, and assemble in PDF.
OH WAIT I CANT: the table of contents requires it to be one document.
What a shit show.

2026-03-15 20:33:13 UTC

Fkn Libreoffice has corrupted my 150 page book, and it's been damaged for over two weeks, in a section I wasn't working in.
None of the recovery features I find in web searches exist.
There's a page (8) that is a black hole -- page 7 is OK, page 9 OK, but between is a blank page 8 where inserts or deletes that would wrap text over the page boundary essentially delete the text.
Can't DEL can't backspace, can' select over it and cut or delete, fkn damaged file.
150 pages of months of work. What a fucking disaster.

2026-03-15 19:07:36 UTC

#Permacomputing is about the future. Old CPUs suck (but can be fun). Permacomputing has little to do with #retrocomputing, except insofar as we can examine our past solutions for synergies and such. And pre-enshittification versions of current software. The rest is nostalgia.
Used gear is the future too. There are so many "adequate" systems made in the last 10 years, alone, that meet most peoples needs.
The only non-enshittified OSes today are *nix OSes; freebsd, netbsd, derivatives, and the various linux.
I run Debian 13, as vanilla as I can get for the least effort involved. But linux/etc today are essentially server-class installs used on the desktop/laptop. OK lots of folk on the fedi lurv to wield complexity for it's own sake and that's fine. And eg. Debian is shockingly, wonderfully reliable and given the underlying complexity, surprisingly easy to install and maintain -- if you have the skills.
But I keep wondering about how much could a linux distro be pared back to cut size and complexity? A brutally stripped distro that runs Libreoffice and not much else; and a fancier one with networking (browser memory hogs).
Is there/are there super low end linux distributions I'm not aware of?
I'm not seeing a lot of traffic about permacomputing that aren't entangled with retrocomputing. I'm hoping that's just a feature of my feeds and follows!

2026-03-14 00:21:38 UTC

- reply

The Epson LX 350 is still sold, is a classic brick-shithouse, has serial, parallel!, usb interfaces. 9 wire dot matrix
Sheet or tractor feed.
The brand name ribbon is 6 us bucks rated for 4 million characters. Print head rated at 40 million or 400 million characters.
It has a really effective standby low power mode.
It is an example of what happens when a technology is allowed to actually *mature*.

2026-03-12 16:37:47 UTC

- reply

Lots of old tucson mexican houses/ranches have an inside kitchen, and an outside kitchen under a ramada.

2026-03-07 17:27:48 UTC

- reply

Dave had more living energy in him than anyone around. And he then looked just like that photo you or Larry posted!
@npub1rqt…jfr2

2026-02-27 01:41:21 UTC

This amazing, snd terrifying and maddening article my Douglas Rushkoff
https://rushkoff.substack.com/p/my-dinner-with-jeffrey
There's a parallel with my life in here in a small way, though i grew up poor, queer, in an abusive household, muddled through highschool then no further education. I was sharp, worked my ass off in entry level electronics because i loved it and was dependable, then i ran with every opportunity that came my way, never for the money, somehow.
I wrote some great code and took wild chances on innovative crazy projects that somehow worked out, and even made one bit of money that mostly paid for a house. Ive got no complaints.
When the microcomputer folks started making money very many of them revealed themselves to be scumbags. Drugs money and boys; i left (i was almost one of those boys). I left.
Dot dot dot in the middle of the FidoNet days i thoight id get a job for money, got hired at apple, OS/ROM group. I hated it, they disliked me. Lasted 9 months. Nothing overtly untoward, just aggressive male dicks, and snobs (me white trash).
My involvement tl;dr with san Francisco punk anarchist stuff, hones my abuse-derived skills of smelling bullshit from a thousand yards, and sealed my commitment to what i think now of a tiny thread of folks "illuminating manuscripts" while the tech world turned onto this shit we know now.
I did not forsee it but i smelled it, essentially, every time i had to deal with the mundane world. FidpNet was filled with them but there, i had power and i fucking weilded it and FidoNet as an institution never went normal.
For the 15 years leading up to trump1 i had been wondering, fearing, i had made bad life choices about work and livelihood, though jobs etc in fact had worked out ok.
But what i sensed, smelled, my bullshit detector firing constantly, is that computer/software/electronics had got rotten, long ago, with almost no exceptions, and those exceptions never had money, and so the mundane world never took them seriously.
1 of 2

2026-02-20 20:31:48 UTC

I just scanned and put online the original Fido and FidoNet manual, 114 page PDF. 2nd link here:
https://www.bleeve.me/
It was written by Scot Kamins, the author of Apple's Hypercard book (which was excellent also, as was Hypercard.
It's still a great manual, succinct, and drily witty here and there. Almost no one's seen it, because it went out, print only, to folks who bought my shareware. (The code was free, but not the manual).

2026-02-20 20:27:00 UTC

- reply

"HTML"? That thing will never catch on.

2026-02-20 19:00:00 UTC

RE: https://social.wake.st/@liaizon/116102789652461052
Yes it seems that way. As soon as i saw the suthors fedi page it was fairly obvious. And to some extent a priori i trust the folks who apply it in their work.
Scam detector I'm just writing off as noise. Thanks for this History!
#note1kwq…kvad

2026-02-20 03:11:19 UTC

Anyone know what the story is about cryptpad.fr? A local ICE watch group is using it, and scam detector gives it a very low rating.

2026-02-17 21:16:58 UTC

Mouse or lizard tracks left on the cast off front fender of an early 1960's Rambler. Joshua Tree CA.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/088/037/882/463/888/original/b9fbbe79158aa9e0.jpg

2026-02-04 18:59:54 UTC

Here is a "FidoNet Onboarding" extremely analogous to fedi onboarding.
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/FidoNet_New-Sysop_Orientation_Information
There's more than a little revisionism etc going on here...
There were a lot of really awful people back then. The RC system ("Regional Coordinator") was a nothing volunteer post turned into coordinated power-trip-centers by 1) my naivete defining the RC function and 2) people who will fuck up anything if it gets them power.
(ZCs (Zone coordinators -- inter-continental generally) were also politically fraught, but that post and function was actually somewhat complicated (recall the Berlin wall was still in place) and getting packets into Poland and Hungary, then Bosnia, etc, earlier South Africa under apartheid (one anti-apartheid university connected to FidoNet via a party line (US telephony)!) were actually dangerous for some people.)
As an onboarding doc, at this late date, it's a good description of how it worked/was supposed to work.
For the record John Madill from Baltimore, Fido #2, dew the ASCII Fido dog and was always acknowledged as the author and maybe it's possible he donated it to IFNA, but I suspect not.
#FidoNet #BBS

2026-01-20 05:30:14 UTC

- reply

I was drinking bagged oolong for a while, now loose green sencha. And coffee. We have a gaggia espresso machine, but french press too. For that I'll try lower temps.
20 years ago we were at Arcosante, at the cafe, the coffee was amazing... when I asked they said it was some cheap canned ground coffee... they made it by mixing the ground coffee with tap water and left it in the fridge overnight, this made a strong concentrate. It was diluted and heated for serving. I never did try this...

2026-01-20 05:24:20 UTC

- reply

Zojirushi! We have their small (1 lb) breadmaker and its really great.
We just bought an electric kettle, from Costco, it too has temperature settings and coffee seems to be less acidy with 195F water. I just started experimenting with temperature for tea...
176! I'll try that!

2026-01-10 17:16:37 UTC

Squirrel ate this much of an orange. Sliced the bitten part off, the rest went into my yogurt. Seems legit.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/871/932/680/949/781/original/35a17bbedad3ff1e.jpg

2026-01-02 20:20:27 UTC

- reply

And there was a nice FidoNet echo conference::Usenet/uucp gateway. Bidirectional.
@npub1d3n…5g8h @npub1q67…4xez @npub1fdr…lvhs

2025-12-27 19:12:13 UTC

Tim Yohannan vehemently denied that 924 Gilman St. Project was ever called the "MAXIMUMROCKNROLL WAREHOUSE" but I have a flyer produced by Tim's crew, very early, calling it just that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Yohannan

2025-12-22 21:10:34 UTC

- reply

It was nearly 40 years ago when I quit Apples OS ROM group, my last pro coding job in that sit at desk in office mode. I hated the corporate structure then, and disgusted by half (only half) of the people I worked with. And I know they thought poorly of me (totally accept that).
It's obviously only become worse, on all fronts.

2025-12-21 03:11:09 UTC

- reply

Lol I did exactly that, here: https://www.bleeve.me/fZ80/index.html
[@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 ) has one... It is very intimate in that way. It's tight to the hardware. The emulated z80 performance is about 10x (50 to 100mhz estimate) but modern ideas hardware and techniques makes the difference.
There is no encroachment from the modern container, it *is* a z80. With very sweet peripherals (serial, disks, screen, all buffered). It's a classic black box.
We know so much more now, half a century of experiences and probably 1000x participants.
#fz80
[@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 )

2025-12-19 21:58:48 UTC

A succinct speech from Jacques of THE YES MEN on what artists can do in the current shit storm.
https://news.theyesmen.org/p/one-joyful-shit-ton-of-work?triedRedirect=true

2025-12-15 19:21:34 UTC

@npub14un…aw96
The American Internet should have been handed to the postal service. They were the sole entity with a compatible mission.
I think there's no point wasting any time, us peeps battling the gargantuan transnationals that own the Internet. Seriously they don't listen at all.
I'm not wasting my time. This is not "giving up". We will make our own systems. They will not look anything like anything we know now. They might not be electronic, or not entirely so.

2025-12-15 04:53:56 UTC

The Internet is already dead.... I got to talk to a number of queer and/or punk young people (teens and 20s) who are fairly prodigious makers of media stuff, all print and music, are clever with phones and computers, but don't put their stuff on the net.
Not only has it become difficult and expensive (shit hosting services, all of them) but once they put things up on the net, none of the promises come true -- none of its features work really at all. Search engines are dead. Absolutely no fucking human is gonna do the promotional bullshit that doesn't even work any more anyways.
I had a world changing experience at this Pretty Gritty show. Sold/gave away 90 or so of the 100 anthologies (so didn't have to cart them home). But mostly networking or the human kind, preparing for the long haul in front of us.
This Internet has been declining in relevance for me for some time. Soft nothing on my websites are searchable, and I know they're cleanly indexable. And I too find little of interest these days.
Technology on and of itself is fucked fascist crap I've long lost interest in. So no loss there.
My short term future is in print, and in computing machinery I can put my hands on, and put into the hands of others.
The net has become a bag on the side. I still deeply love computing, the mechanization of thought, the rigor and experimentation, but this corporate shit im utterly done with.

2025-11-29 20:20:03 UTC

Law without power is meaningless
Power without law is terrorism.

2025-11-15 05:50:25 UTC

- reply

They are lovely aren't they! In so many ways its jus awful, probably 50 characters on the card and refrigerator sized readers. But the tactility of them is great. I like physical media.

2025-11-15 04:23:24 UTC

I've had this lovely cup for 20 years, maybe more. Given to me by a friend, a thrift store find. Someone bonked it bad, the steel was caved in and I used it for pencils etc.
Now I'm thinking I might try to rejuvenate it.
I carefully reshaped it (old ball end pushrods are great) and lots of citric acid got the rust off.
I don't have an enameling setup. I do have two really good hot air tools. Is there "spot" enamel?
I'm more interested in function than perfection. I could just JB Weld it I suppose.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/551/790/576/621/287/original/29b76f63612a3776.jpg
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/551/790/576/032/974/original/57d3c462237dfdf2.jpg
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/551/790/572/652/885/original/9cb2d24315c3edb8.jpg
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/551/790/585/127/787/original/3cd542d2b925ae55.jpg

2025-11-11 17:01:44 UTC

- reply

A corporate informant won't let me watch it.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/532/133/739/939/933/original/f39e3b44befc63ce.png

2025-11-04 15:57:58 UTC

So he's officially dead. How could they tell?

2025-11-03 19:38:10 UTC

I fkn lurv aria
https://aria.dog/barks/forklift-certified-license/

2025-10-28 04:50:01 UTC

- reply

Yeah I read that too. It seemed an odd mention.
I think I sounded more defensive of status quo then intended.
It's just that at this point, here in the US, I'm tending to think differently about comms and their survivability.
Signal is what it is. I do trust them, but they have this very large semi central system that has features, and vulnerabilities, and those won't structurally change in the short term. And no one knows if we're gonna have a long term here, just now.

2025-10-28 03:10:25 UTC

- reply

Mastodon doesn't need to manage isochronicity at the milliseconds level.
I *trust* the Signal folk to do their own right thing. Which isn't the same as "believing".

2025-10-24 20:39:44 UTC

Oh look I made up a stupid meme!
No I didn't.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/431/069/062/495/302/original/bb283d53afc5df60.jpg

2025-10-22 05:27:08 UTC

- reply

Notes and sketching while thinking is advanced cognition. Hand eye word. The hand moving is part of the cognition.
We're not meat machines with a ghost driving. That mind body separation thing is a groundless religious concept from another age, and needs to be extinguished from the world. It's fkn harmful.

2025-10-21 02:47:40 UTC

Internet archive has this, 1996, well into gopherspace' demise.
https://web.archive.org/web/19961205055944/http://wiretap.spies.com/
Of course THIS IS NOT WHET WIRETAP LOOKED LIKE, at all, this is a web simulacra that includes some of the contents but has a lot of meta crap.
#gopher