tom jennings

There were once lots of books on tricks and techniques for problem solving with slide rules. I should get one!
Abebooks.com was really great for finding old tech books but Amazon bought it and ruined it. But might be worth a look should such a thing be interesting.

2024-08-09 23:03:14

- reply

How is this news?
Did WaPo just notice?
Gimme a break.

2024-08-09 22:08:00

- reply

Well it's not worked out well for citizens any number of times!

2024-08-09 22:07:21

- reply

I like the physical proportionality of them. I don't like having to keep track of all the decimal places! Lol. Or managing cumulative errors.
But they're pretty amazing even though we have insanely good pocket calculators (I've got an HP 16C I've had since new).
I have only three slide rules, one a K&E 3 inch plastic circular one. Crazy small!

2024-08-09 22:02:23

- reply

Yeah but this shit isn't new.
Politics is when there's three or more people.

2024-08-09 21:17:40

[@oliphant](https://oliphant.social/@oliphant )
Hi -- I've seen your posts in reply to others, clicked "follow" cuz compatible politics probably, also I'm host/yard matron to a squirrel clan, years now, also dogs.
I am not new to online stuff. The recent bouts of antiblack racist behavior out of my fellow white folks pisses me off, made so much worse by side effects of federation and follower-only posts.
I was thinking wtf can this old white guy do here, I thought maybe block lists etc but appears block lists in mastodon apps and servers is problematic. So what the fuck.
Anyway I hope to annoy you minimally. That's all I can honestly offer.

2024-08-09 19:50:57

- reply

Slide rules are very cool. Their history is amazing. So much human knowledge in a stick of bamboo and plastic.
Hmm maybe I will dig one out and revisit. I'm just old enough to have caught the tail end of them, I can multiply and divide, that is about it.
Your photo is tantalizing. They're so nicely tactile.

2024-08-09 16:59:08

- reply

Oh that guy Yunus is the Graneen Bank guy -- OK he's badass. That small idea (sic) seemed so revolutionary and so doable I was surprised it didn't take off more. Or maybe it did and I just never hear about it

2024-08-09 16:52:10

- reply

Oh shit. History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
OK many things are different now, but this electoral shit is ruinous.
Voter registration, electoral college, the whole rotten system, needs to go ASAP.

2024-08-09 16:38:20

- reply

wow. Where'd you put it all? Not another unit I hope, lol.

2024-08-09 16:34:58

For a thing I'm making I needed momentary switches of good quality, there's a ton of craptacular "popular" switches, tl;dr I ended up choosing keyboard switches because I can get translucent caps so I can backlight and lo! this primordial nerd site is just wonderful:
https://switchandclick.com/cherry-mx-guide/
(HOME for the full experience of course.)
It's hard, in any technical subject, to get overview and technical detail, there's so much low grade blog-with-ads garbage out there.
Umm this mammal hates clicky keyboards, but his discussion of them is filled with h8 but also if you want them, is still useful.
Humor throughout.
Too bad they're only on about keyboards.

2024-08-09 16:21:41

- reply

Yeah dogs are disgusting aren't they.

2024-08-09 15:44:31

- reply

They're called gauge marks. Popular constants in various fields....
http://www.sliderules.info/a-to-z/gaugepoints.htm
Probably Wikipedia.

2024-08-09 15:27:14

- reply

Very! They still are, but "Nixon" conjures little juice of course. As is appropriate.

2024-08-09 05:14:15

- reply

I still have one! And stamp!
Ok I old, sigh.

2024-08-09 04:56:02

- reply

"I never hung out with fags before. You guys are cool."
-- some suburban kid at a Gilman St (punk) event, 1980s. We made word choice suggestions later. Don't wanna get too scoldy.

2024-08-09 04:48:44

- reply

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-longest-Wikipedia-article#:~:text=As%20of%20July%202019%2C%20Wikipedia,Yemen%20(at%20443%2C091%20bytes).

2024-08-09 02:31:17

- reply

"Available now" matters. I fear once threads passes through this early stage the screws will tighten as corp growth requires.
Those side effects of federation and follower-only etc hide the bad actors too well. I had no doubt racism is present here, but after a recent debacle, the scale of it is appalling. And the lack of interest in new tools is too.
I was looking for a way that white folks like me could contribute, all I can up with was working on collating and compiling shit behavior, but there seems to be no such coordinated lists. Bummer.

2024-08-08 21:54:26

- reply

THIS! Dammit this needs to be pointed out in 1st grade.
I long ago stopped worrying about left right dem repub (lol, mostly) instead asking, in effect: are you kind? Cuz that underlies everything.
Ok it's not enough but it is the minimum to have a conversation.

2024-08-08 21:44:36

- reply

Metoo. I have a number of admittedly smallish perl scripts that I wrote for windows 7, then 8, 10, then debian, then macos, and now debian again.
Have to change the shebang each time, and occasionally command line arg stuff because sometimes I write shitty single use scripts that become heirlooms.
I have no problem writing readable code in perl. But then I was taught to write readable structured code in FORTRAN4. Discipline matters (even when I ignore it).
I used to be a clever programmer, I learned to get over that.

2024-08-08 21:34:00

- reply

A million years ago I was trying to decide on which newfangled script language I should use. A friend used tcl but that scared me.
I disliked python's FORTRAN formatting oddities (indent for blocks) but ok.
Then v2 I think changed unsigned arithmetic in an annoying way and I thought, ok, that's that.
Perl it is.

2024-08-08 21:24:00

Oh Devo. He's puked on me three times now. Twice when I was paying on the bed, on my back in the daytime, to have a dog break. All four rush up and vie for the best spot to lay with me. It's very dog fun.
So Devo stands over me, two feet on my chest, a small fuzzy toy in his mouth and with no warning -- barfs through and over the toy, and me.
Third time was 230am, in bed, under the covers. On me. That was fun.
Yes, were gonna watch the vomit thing, another time and vet he goes. But he's a trash eater. He ate part of a cardboard tube, had a small piece of tape in his throat -- why does he eat those -- he coughed it out. On the sofa.
He and his boyfriend eat poop, of course. For the sheer joy of it.
Fkn dogs.

2024-08-08 02:16:42

- reply

Hmm no. We have a political party that is intentionally undermining and destroying public systems to root out anything given to black or brown folk. It's not "education" or secularism or not, it's intentional cruelty and bigotry. It is white bigots and rich people and ruthless out of control corporate power and corruption. It's not some abstract difference in beliefs.

2024-08-08 00:19:47

- reply

Wow that's been a while. I had to go look it up!

2024-08-08 00:13:04

- reply

My bet as well.

2024-08-07 16:19:43

- reply

Sadness is no pie.

2024-08-07 05:08:15

- reply

I forgot, there's an old phrase for this: creeping featuritis.

2024-08-07 05:01:41

- reply

But what about the lotions!

2024-08-07 04:57:55

- reply

Ouchie! Bummer. Glad it's dealt with. Hope it sticks!

2024-08-07 04:56:43

- reply

First make sure it's really plugged in.

2024-08-06 18:10:22

- reply

OK that video (and man) is great.

2024-08-06 17:47:55

Neato story in 404 media about how AI generated spam on Facebook works. Shrimp jesus etc.
I'm fine with it. If a bunch of folk in india or uzbekistan can make money off nitwit americans clicking on spaghetti jesus, more power to 'em. FB is a cesspool anyway, who cares?
https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
"Some of the bizarreness of the images is caused by prompts that are written in Hindi, Urdu, and Vietnamese, which are underrepresented in large language model training data. Other bizarre outcomes arise because people are using Google Translate and speech-to-text to say a prompt aloud in Hindi, translate it to English, and are using that often poorly-translated prompt to generate the images. "
Facebook to me feels like a huge sumptuous banquet that's been going on for some time, everyone's just about pigged out, and will walk away from soon.
>BURP<

2024-08-06 14:58:46

- reply

I was at a hackers conference with him once. Complete and utter ego turd.

2024-08-06 04:51:12

- reply

Oh they be hateable.

2024-08-06 03:32:45

- reply

Depends on what their goals are.
It's certainly not "health".

2024-08-06 03:11:54

- reply

Oh yeah that shits infuriating! We need a name for this phenom. It's sadly common.
Spreadsheets do too much of this but at least those you can turn off (if you can find them).

2024-07-31 04:44:42

- reply

DAMMITALL.

2024-07-30 20:12:19

- reply

FORTRAN would be my choice. Pick an early one, for nationistical compliance. FORTRAN 4, who needs objects, we have common block! Butch up peoples!

2024-07-30 20:09:23

- reply

ADA! Department of Defense. May have some "inter" national (gasp) later taint, I spoze.

2024-07-30 15:36:54

- reply

easy to change.
One thing I know is, the human relationships need to be designed in, top down and bottom up. Clever has nothing to do with it.
@npub1nau…d9fd @npub1z40…s3fq @npub19u8…pjzk

2024-07-30 15:36:53

- reply

you're the chum that attracts the sharks, that are then blocked from view by the rest of us.
Our shared experience needs to be more deterministic, socially. Technically, it seems not possible.
I'm not using any other platform for broader social stuff like this because not one corporation involved is trustworthy. I was hoping it would be different here, foolish me. The intent is there, I think I hope, but code at this scale with these resources are not @npub1nau…d9fd @npub1z40…s3fq @npub19u8…pjzk

2024-07-30 15:36:53

- reply

dumb old clueless white guy.
But between good admins (eg dair-community, and mine, nettime) there is filtering, of the desired kind; then there's the to-me-opaque way activityPub inherently works, it's accepted we don't, can't experience the same stream.
I'm not seeing what you are seeing.
I thought this was odd, experientially, but I now see it as plain old harmful. The way control is handled here, only the target of harassment sees the harassment, @npub1nau…d9fd @npub1z40…s3fq @npub19u8…pjzk

2024-07-30 15:36:52

@npub1nau…d9fd @npub1z40…s3fq @npub19u8…pjzk
Increasingly, I wonder at the structure of the fediverse. We each literally do not have the same experience within any given thread such as this one.
I see nearly zero of the racist or problematic posts you talk about. Oh believe me I believe you, I'm not new online, spent time on 4chan (early!), ran BBSs and wrote code. I know what people can do, even as a

2024-07-28 06:04:41

- reply

Oooh didn't know that! I have a 2004 or something CA state. Ill go look for a newer one.

2024-07-28 02:48:11

- reply

There's a good paved route through there.. cima road, kelbaker road, just drove it last fall. Just make sure you have gas for the whole route plus margin. Absolutely no services but it is the Mojave.
Literally every driver should have a paper map for the area in the car. Five bucks takes up no space rarely used doesn't matter, it's that one time you need it... Costs you nothing otherwise.

2024-07-26 21:36:41

- reply

D'oh! My bad. Looks like these folks using it too...
https://pablodraw.en.softonic.com/
You're right, duh, github.

2024-07-26 21:31:10

- reply

Looks good, but windows only. I've got an arm64 linux box...

2024-07-26 21:26:45

Anyone know of an ASCII drawing program, that works in, or at least easily exports, plain text/ASCII/unicode? for linux?
Monodraw for MacOS is GREAT. Gladly gave them money.
https://monodraw.helftone.com/
There's some web apps that do it, which suffice in a pinch.
https://asciicanvas.app/
https://asciiflow.com/
I swear I had one for *nix years ago but no record of it.

2024-07-25 00:01:17

- reply

Humidity in needles is usually high; it's a river valley. Few of my cars have had AC, it's a hell of a trip to drive east, get through the Mojave and scurry through Needles.
I no longer do this in summer. It was never a good idea (lol) but now it's completely nuts. 10 years ago it was better.

2024-07-24 23:57:24

- reply

40 Barstow to (gulp) Needles is a dangerous drive.
I once saw (in cooler weather) someone getting gasoline for their Prius from a AAA truck... And a huge RV out of gas on that road from 29 Palms to Amboy. The utter cluelessness of the physical world displayed by too many people is just appalling.

2024-07-24 23:42:26

- reply

Red?! You spent extra on that! Think you're better than the rest of us, huh? Well!

2024-07-23 02:36:09

- reply

"Scolding" lol.
3 years? At my kung fu studio if you were extremely diligent and skilled that would get you brown belt maybe. Another two for black again diligent etc.
Full of shit, sounds like. Bragging about accomplishments like that is red flag behavior anyway.

2024-07-23 00:28:15

"We don't provide security per se, but a complete *concept* of security..."
--Dick Jones, CEO of Omni Consumer Products, movie ROBOCOP, 1987.
I think I need to rewatch... One of my favorite movies! Privatization of Detroit police, corporate corruption, cost cutting, a couple Consequences. Etc.

2024-07-22 21:07:27

- reply

Try using one with your left hand!

2024-07-21 19:04:47

- reply

Oh yeah! Every time I got a raise my life... wait gimme a sec I can make this work ... well there must have been some downside. So yeah.

2024-07-19 01:08:10

- reply

I used proton for about 5 years. I got that survey, it asked "where" not "if". I had already been reassessing email and other net services in light of Current Political Conditions and getting services out of the browser.
The AI thing was the final straw. I've moved my email to a traditional port based service, via thunderbird. A bit of a step backwards in spam filtering but I don't think I spend even 5 clock minutes a day on that.
Glad I stepped off that sinking ship.

2024-07-16 23:20:13

- reply

Wow. I had no idea.

2024-07-16 21:34:02

- reply

Wow. Crazy, man.
Virgin birth! ITS A MIRACLE!
Chicken Jesus.

2024-07-15 22:36:49

- reply

You're very wise to have physical diversity for backups.
Buckets are pretty much public-open, aren't they? I use Google Cloud (GCS) for my websites, which are by definition open and their names are part of the URL.
For a few months I did a complicated fuse mount of a bucket and ran an encrypted filesystem in it, but it was so slow as to be unusable. And more costly, in that there's a lot of file thrash (read, write, read, write) and for GCS, at least, write and storage costs are nil, but *download* costs (modest) money.
How's AWS structured pricing? I thought they were competitively similar but I honestly have no idea.
I am using https://www.rsync.net for machine backups, using the rsync tool in linux. MacOS has it too. Windows is S.O.L., and honestly one of the reasons I ditched Win was its lack of rsync.

2024-07-15 19:42:23

They watch me from the palm and know my every movement. Seriously.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/112/792/209/633/379/683/original/0eec814bf11f7ca4.jpg
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/112/792/210/144/512/266/original/b758512b65f6c3b1.jpg

2024-07-15 17:44:58

- reply

You met Shulgin! Wow!! I too was curious about his lab after reading PIHKAL. Discussions about science and procedure outside of the usual monied labs would have been really interesting. Obviously he was sufficiently rigorous.
Oh me too, lol, you can guess my preferences I'm sure.
I had the privilege of ingesting some 2 c e some years back. It was hilarious and wonderful.

2024-07-15 16:08:09

- reply

That's a line from the final section of the oral history DER KLANG DER FAMILIE, about the birth of German techno. (I didn't know Juan Atkins and friends had gone to Berlin, there's some interesting tales of that).
Written in the punk oral style of a series of conversations from participants without introduction first (they're all described in an appendix of people and places).
It took me a month to read though it's a very small book; circumstances etc.
Of course the quote isn't really or simply true: that particular subculture got subsumed but spawned many others including the one(s) I'm trying to maintain contact with (various trance and psytrance here in LA).
The book was written in German but translated or maybe English written at the same time.
When the drug of choice moves from E to C (cocaine) it's time to leave, is a pretty good rule of thumb. The former, everyone wants to move, dance and commune; the latter, sit around, get paranoid, do more lines. The corporate drug of choice (don't think it isn't).

2024-07-14 22:02:44

"Every subculture that becomes a culture has run its course."

2024-07-10 15:15:01

- reply

I suppose they just pour cubic money on them. The mil budget is pretty high.

2024-07-10 14:57:24

- reply

Damn not a surprise but still shocking.
Poor Needles, no one wants to be there.
Poor Barstow, people need to be there.

2024-05-29 19:45:25

Ugh, here was a weird tank of a computer, a Gridcase 1535 EXP, with plasma display (that did not look all that much better than this awful photo). It was unpleasant to use. No idea what I did with it, probably gave it away.
It ran DOS. I think was used in some network field maint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GridCase
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/112/526/089/368/406/144/original/ed5aff1412f1238e.jpg

2024-05-17 17:44:03

UC Irvine within the last few days. The POV of this photo means that it's official, or sanctioned, or something, comfortably behind or within the massed police.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/112/457/654/441/154/849/original/025f646fb59ce506.jpg

2024-05-15 16:12:57

- reply

To me, it seems like every online provider of services is like this, it's just a matter of degree. It's foolish to "trust" any of them.
Internet-only services are ideology driven -- they believe (or at least act like) tcp/ip is the world. It's not. All of it is for people, us. The tech obsessed will kill us all.
When all else fails, which is not rare when you have millions of users, you must have some out of band service; phone or a walk up counter.
Animals in the wild usually don't explore new spaces without seeing an exit other than the one they came in on. That's smart. For Google, I maintain multiple Gmail ("Google") accounts, one per critical function. Separate ones for web buckets, phone, two separate recovery email. Mail forwarding within each, to others. Non Google email recovery.
DNS in Germany. Cloud storage in Zurich. My own hard drives and one NAS. Minimal but thorough encryption keys.
I do nothing unusual, nothing of value beyond my life's computer work. I think this is a minimum for passable daily use.
I'm often shocked when I hear peoples standard practices. Saving infinite email or texts on provider services -- anything they have will get used against you or exploited, extract your value and store it yourself and delete it.
Have we learned no lessons?

2024-05-05 18:27:33

- reply

I worry too what Quiets "continuous liveness" requirement implies. Briar has no such issue. (Item 6 in "technical overview" on the tryquiet git page).
I suspect this is relying a persistent TOR connection to do their connectivity. That seems a bad idea.

2024-05-05 18:20:36

- reply

Welp, apparently I uninstalled Quiet. I used "disable app" thinking I'd just stop it from using data until I got a chance to look at it.
Check out Briar Project. https://briarproject.org/
It works, nicely. Uses TOR also but can do direct phone to phone.
With one friend used it while I was in LA and he driving to the eclipse in TX. Worked great with signal, no signal, mobile and WiFi.

2024-05-04 04:05:10

@npub1xse…lgk3
I signed up to Quiet, and see your post and a few others in # general but I'm unable to reply. Is it working for you?
I tried to read # offtopic, and got s thermometer saying "loading messages" but it never changes.
I can try rebooting phone or restarting app but it looks s bit rough.

2024-04-26 22:56:39

- reply

Apolitical programmers (and all workers) are right wing workers by default because money is right wing.