Clifton Royston

Me:
Reading SF&F since about age 9, friends with LGBTQ people since age 16, working in software/tech since I was 16, practicing Zen since 17 or 18, on Internet by late 1980s. I helped invent modern credit card terminals at Verifone in 1980s, founded small ISP LavaNet in 1994, back to sw dev from 2005 on.

Usenet (talk.bizarre), Making Light, Twitter.
"I'm normal by Cubetown standards."

Mostly here to chat, banter, & boost my friends & favorite writers.

Cis/bi, he/him, relaxed about it.

Public Key

npub1ej7hekvn4y55sxwljrfz6hth2jkf3wan95grdw4xq4u7ndecp36skrlss8

NIP-05 Address

cliftonr_at_wandering.shop@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsve0tumxf6j22gr80ep53dt4m4ftychwej6ypkh2nq270fkuuqcagpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmc00s036

Publishing to

nostr.wine

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1ej7hekvn4y55sxwljrfz6hth2jkf3wan95grdw4xq4u7ndecp36skrlss8

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Last Notes

2026-05-30 20:16:51 UTC

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Awww, that gives me the warm fuzzies. I'm happy just to hear people still use it.
I wonder if I could set up a little Usenet node in a jail on my file server... (No, Clifton! That way lies madness!)

2026-05-30 19:53:36 UTC

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I have very fond memories of tin.
Back on Netcom (anybody else remember Netcom?) I was maintaining my own copy of it. I was also making a number of bug fixes and small UI enhancements and sending them upstream to the author, mostly threading enhancements.
I think those were my first OSS contributions.
Ah, the old days when you'd just email the author a patch file and then get into a nice conversation.

2026-05-09 21:33:37 UTC

I think it's getting rapidly to "underground railway" and "hiding Jews in the attic" time in the US. (We don't actually have an attic, unfortunately.)
So I just asked my wife if she's willing to shelter people in our house and she said yes.
I'm putting it out there, if any trans person needs to get out of where they are fast, but can't get out of the US for whatever reasons, we will take you in until our house is full.
Will other cis people step up to say the same, please?

2026-04-26 19:39:27 UTC

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That is the most gorgeous pie crust I have ever seen. The rose design is incredible.

2026-01-18 09:50:16 UTC

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I'd reject the phrasing that the United States is "slipping towards civil war" - it's not something that just happens by accident or that the public is being careless about.
But yes, it certainly seems to me we might be within a few days of Donald Trump's government launching a war on most of the United States.
It was clear last year that Trump wanted Hegseth in charge of the military because he would be happy ordering them to fire on American citizens.

2025-09-29 00:26:28 UTC

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After a couple years working in tech support and sysadmin work next to a gay man, meeting his very likeable husband, attending company social events together, and so on, Mike had become an equally ardent supporter of full civil rights for gay people, full marriage equality, all of it.
It was a permanent change.

2025-09-29 00:23:48 UTC

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Back when I was running an ISP, I had one employee Mike who was an extremely earnest Christian brought up in the Plymouth Brethren sect (the guys who made up the Pilgrims, after they were kicked out of the Netherlands for their intolerance.) He firmly believed that homosexuality was evil, gay marriage was a sin against God, etc.
That didn't last past a year or two working side-by-side with a gay man.
+

2025-04-28 01:44:46 UTC

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I definitely don't recall any search engine called 'General Search' and I don't remember ever seeing something like that offer for lifetime dialup Internet either.
This was during the period when I and friends were operating a small statewide ISP, so I think it would have come up in discussion.
There were a lot of computer deals with bundled Internet access, but it was usually X months free with AOL, Earthlink, or other national ISP, hoping to hook people on a monthly account.)

2025-03-31 06:27:17 UTC

OK, something small and relatively trivial in what's going on generally:
Now that I've ditched Kindle, what ebook vendors other than Amazon/Kindle are other heavy users buying books from, and which are easiest to strip DRM from?
I particularly want to hear which is best for buying ebooks from authors with traditional publishers. I know some of the ebook-only sellers like Smashwords and Weightless, and at least some of the small presses selling ebooks directly (Subterranean, etc.)
[For U.S.]

2025-03-16 08:04:17 UTC

"Over 50 years ago, NASA was able to get its Saturn V, a rocket nearly as large as Starship, to fly without ever having a failed launch over its 13-launch, six-year operational lifespan. This was a rocket designed with computers less powerful than a Casio watch, built with far less accurate techniques and materials, with check systems and procedures infinitely less sophisticated than anything today. Yet, engineers were able to ensure it never had a launch failure [...]"
https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/spacex-has-finally-figured-out-why

2025-02-16 20:33:26 UTC

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You're responding as if it's a real concern, rather than a pretext allowing them to commit atrocities with the camera off.

2025-02-15 21:02:23 UTC

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That's OK, that would have been icing on the cake.
I've worked out a good-enough system for that part as I have bought a surprisingly usable switchable-host USB 3 switch to switch my keyboard between devices, my 4K monitor supports multiple inputs, and I have an Logitech MS Master 3 mouse which can be configured for 3 different hosts, 2 Bluetooth.

2025-02-15 20:20:11 UTC

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These docks aren't Mac specific, right? Both I and my wife have been looking for something genuinely solid for use with arbitrary laptops or even desktops.
I have a weird setup where I am switching devices between my main desktop system, my work-mandated HP laptop (and its dock) and sometimes my personal laptop; she has an office setup where she sometimes has to use her work-issued laptop and sometimes her personal laptop, each of which have basically a single Thunderbolt port.

2025-02-12 20:11:37 UTC

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Here's someone else I respect, talking about the same thing from a slightly different angle:
https://mstdn.social/@Npars01/113992464219763119

2025-02-12 19:43:13 UTC

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We have, for now, lost our most crucial war before 99% of the country was even aware we were fighting one. And, mostly, we still aren’t.
Edit: I may have more to say later, but for now just let me add that I'm not advocating defeatism. We have nothing to lose by finding ways to fight back, and everything to lose by not doing so.
A crucial part of fighting back must be to recognize that hatred and bigotry was our big exploitable weakness, and eliminate it starting with ourselves.

2025-02-12 19:40:17 UTC

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Among those, the disastrous effects the “banned word” list will have on the NSA or CIA, by banning words used technically in computer security, are fully intentional. If it wasn’t the primary reason for it, then they (and the FSB) would view it as a highly desirable secondary effect.
The US government has been effectively overthrown and subverted in ways we are particularly vulnerable to, through playing on our longstanding bigotry and prejudices, as our CIA did in so many other countries.

2025-02-12 19:34:16 UTC

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As for Musk, he’s likely one of Putin’s assets too - he’s praised Putin repeatedly, he’s said he thinks Ukraine should just fork over their territory to Russia, and earlier in the war he personally ordered Starlink service cut to sabotage a Ukrainian drone mission using it for navigation.
My conclusion from these openly available bits of info:
Every bit of disruption their activities cause the US, the collapse in US science research, all the deaths they are causing, are intentional.

2025-02-12 19:15:26 UTC

I don’t understand how anybody could be surprised that Trump has appointed a suspected Russian intel asset as head of US national intelligence, or that he’s preening himself about getting to be Putin’s errand boy in demanding Ukraine surrender.
Have they forgotten his first term?
Have they forgotten that over 12 years ago, even before he was first nominated, GOP politicians were talking in private about how Trump was probably working for Putin and treating it as a big laugh?

2025-01-22 19:48:23 UTC

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It was just some loser replying to a couple of your posts with a boilerplate request for *somebody* to help him move some funds out of this great big trust account he can't access...
I happened to notice it when I hit the "Report this as spam" on someone else he replied to.
I thought it was pretty funny who he'd pick as his potential sucker.

2025-01-22 19:44:14 UTC

I think somehow that choosing @npub1lcc…lcye
as one of your initial test cases for a 419 spam could be seen as a poor choice.
But regardless of what's coming to that poor sucker, I reported him anyway.
At this point we all need to put some heavy pressure on mastodon.social.
Spam is ramping up and almost 100% of what I see is coming from there. If I personally block it, however, I'll lose a number of people I am following and really value.
This really is the Usenet spam story all over again.

2025-01-18 19:55:38 UTC

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Can we count two-tone Ska in there with the voices of punk rock?
Because it would be a real shame to leave out the marvelous Paula Brown.

2025-01-01 21:44:50 UTC

Y'know, I was wondering how the media and FBI could be so quickly and confidently describing the New Orleans attack as 'terrorism'. Other instances of crazies - usually right-wing crazies - driving trucks into parades, pride marches, or pro-Black rights rallies have instead been met with extreme caution and warnings not to assume it's terrorism.
Then I saw the suspect has an Islamic sounding name.
I'm so damn tired of this shit.

2024-12-01 19:56:00 UTC

Hey everybody, remember when Kristi Noem put into her memoir and then very vocally told the world that she'd wantonly and pointlessly shot a puppy to death, and "everybody" was horrified?
Everybody except for a few people who pointed out that she was advertising her qualifications for a major role in a fascist government, by clearly demonstrating her willingness to do anything regardless how morally and viscerally repellent?
Proposed Head of the DHS, how about that, huh?

2024-12-01 19:27:04 UTC

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Your second paragraph is an interesting perspective I haven't heard before.
I'm not sure I agree with you on that - I think a lot of other factors went into it - but it's definitely something to think about.

2024-10-28 21:18:45 UTC

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Or how his generals felt about him, either.
After Trump's "I need generals like Hitler's generals" outburst in office, some of his military staff have claimed to have told him how Hitler's generals had tried to assassinate him at least three times.
Trump just refused to believe them.

2024-10-28 10:35:18 UTC

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From my reading, 18-bit and 36-bit architectures were popular through the '60s and early '70s. Computer designs didn't really settle down to power-of-2 word sizes until the mid-70s.
There were weirder sets of numbers in use too - 24-bit, 30-bit, 48-bit, 60-bit, etc.

2024-10-26 20:13:41 UTC

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People are worried about what inches of sea rise will do, but it could be a lot worse.
I am concerned that global warming has reached the point where we may have already locked in the melting of most of the Greenland ice cap (7 meters sea rise) and maybe parts of the Antarctic ice shelves (another 5+ meters.)
If that happens we lose every coastal city.
We are on the brink of completely exiting the global climate that existed for the 2 million years of human evolution.

2024-10-24 06:22:25 UTC

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21? Hot damn! I'm impressed.

2024-10-24 06:21:32 UTC

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Only 6 on this list - it's always been hard to get bands out here - but seen some others that should probably be on the list, including Violent Femmes (twice), Dead Milkmen, Porno for Pyros, Shonen Knife, and The Selecter (Paula Brown, OMG.) I can't remember who I saw at the Warped tour, haha.
Probably the best punk show I've ever seen was Social Distortion - wild show, incredible mosh pit - followed by Dead Milkmen and Violent Femmes.

2024-10-14 07:14:08 UTC

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I am *very* fond of his translations of Han Shan (Cold Mountain.) I have his translation of the Platform Sutra, too.
(Also good, but I have loved the Cold Mountain poems since I was a teenager long long ago.)

2024-10-13 01:13:38 UTC

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I think his real mission is to make trains look awesome by comparison with cars and driving.

2024-09-02 23:27:49 UTC

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It always fascinates me that cats can get self-conscious when they realize someone's watching them do something.
Does Pica start washing herself after that happens?
In my experience a lot of cats will start grooming themselves when they're "embarrassed" or discover they're observed, to restore their sense of dignity.

2024-08-22 00:39:12 UTC

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I got to get me a 3D printer one of these days.
My old go-to trick for fixing things like this has been epoxy putty. For something like this you can knead it together, form it into the shape of a knob, and just push it onto the shaft to form-fit. When it hardens it’s like rock.
There’s no way to make it nice-looking like this, though.

2024-07-03 22:21:05 UTC

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It should not be surprising that news media overwhelmingly owned by the ultra-rich serve the interests of their owners, not the public. If they don't, the owners change that.
NY Times <- Arthur Sulzberger, who has turned the paper into his expression of personal grudges against Biden.
Washington Post <- Jeff Bezos, enough said.
Bezos recently got rid of most previous Washington Post mgmt and editors, replacing them with right-wingers from the UK Telegraph.

2024-06-21 20:09:23 UTC

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I used to follow Linda too. 💔
Something I haven't yet seen mentioned about her:
On Twitter, late at night, she would regularly invite anyone who was struggling with severe depression or mental health to just call her up and talk. She'd give them her personal # and talk on the phone with them as long as they needed to get back on the ground - even after her partial blinding.
I'm 100% sure that she saved lives doing this. That's how amazing a person she is.

2024-06-20 05:12:43 UTC

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Somehow I feel this whole broader discussion relates to some of the points discussed in this excellent thread, in a way I can't quite articulate.
https://wandering.shop/@vaurora/112626301770195183
https://wandering.shop/@vaurora/112626321473109003

2024-06-12 22:06:29 UTC

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The catch is that it will change the script into the directory, but that’s running in its own separate process, doing its own thing, and your shell process is just sitting there basically unaffected and waiting for the result.
If your shell process is running bash, and you want to change the state of your current process, as reflected in your prompt, you can run it with the “source” built-in command (or synonym “.”)

2024-05-03 20:21:00 UTC

I had thought for decades that it was just not going to be worth switching from Windows to Linux for daily use.
Windows was just too ingrained in my habits and too easy for me to stick with.
This year, I've been introduced to a new product that's completely changed my mind about that:
Microsoft Windows 11
Microsoft, you've disregarded 10,000 rules of user interface design, and broken every trained movement of my fingers on keyboard or mouse. Windows is easy no more. Fuck you.