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Lammy

19,737 karma · joined July 30, 2008

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Lammy··on Steam Machine launches today
You're the one being dishonest and ignorant comparing defeating DRM to something that is open from the start
Lammy··on Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers
I'm surprised they didn't just write it out as GNU IMP in the website, documentation, and about boxes. They could just leave the code alone and save themselves the trouble.
Lammy··on The brain was not designed for this much bad news
It's a math term whose meaning depends on the qualities of the other people around you, not a reference to any one particular set of characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
Lammy··on 'We had to get out of the way': The backlash over delivery robots
Those are not comparable at all, because cars also have humans inside.
Lammy··on 'Digital Circus' Google easter egg
Click the Pomni eyeball at the bottom center of the page. Screenshot for posterity: https://i.ibb.co/rJkpCWL/Screenshot-2026-06-19-at-18-07-55-d...
Lammy··on McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)
> but when it comes to a tasteless house, criticism is elitist gatekeeping?

In the middle of a housing crisis, yes, it absolutely is.

Lammy··on McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)
> Uhh, these are not humble middle class homes.

You misunderstand; the target audience for ”McMansion Hell” is not the people living in a ”McMansion” but those who have less than that and would aspire to more.

Lammy··on McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)
“McMansion” is just a way for The System to shame the middle class for daring to want some space to live in, and I'm disappointed when I see anyone propagate it.
Lammy··on Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly
The problem with web apps isn't that they're slow but that they enable the Room 641As of the world to spy on you, just by virtue of making network connections. Encryption doesn't even matter. Just behavior patterns are enough.
Lammy··on What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
RE: Start Menu, the article does not mention or show the obnoxious “Personalized Menus” feature which is the one and only ‘must disable’ when I use Win2k. It triggers after some number of days and hides infrequently-used programs from the Programs submenu as a workaround for the menu growing large and unwieldy when many programs are installed, but IMO I think it's even worse than what it claims to fix.
Lammy··on Humiliating IIS servers for fun and jail time
Whoops, seems like that's related to their naming scheme change, and `ReleaseId` stopped incrementing after Windows 10 “2009” (2009 September) got renamed to “20H2”: https://vxtwitter.com/bytenerd/status/1395071115072966656

  PS> (Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').ReleaseId
  2009
  PS> (Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').DisplayVersion
  24H2
Lammy··on Humiliating IIS servers for fun and jail time
> to "increase protection" for unspecified reasons

Everything old is new again https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041116-00/?p=37... (2004)

Lammy··on Humiliating IIS servers for fun and jail time
> IIS has a legacy behavior inherited from the old DOS 8.3 filename convention.

Is this exposing the underlying OS's behavior coupled with the fact that the IIS document root is `C:\Inetpub` by default? Eight-dot-three filenames are enabled by default on the C drive but disabled by default on all other drives on Windows 10/11:

  PS> (Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').DisplayVersion
  24H2

  PS> fsutil 8dot3name query C:
  The volume state is: 0 (8dot3 name creation is ENABLED)
  The registry state is: 2 (Per volume setting - the default)
  Based on the above settings, 8dot3 name creation is ENABLED on "C:"

  PS> fsutil 8dot3name query U:
  The volume state is: 1 (8dot3 name creation is DISABLED)
  The registry state is: 2 (Per volume setting - the default)
  Based on the above settings, 8dot3 name creation is DISABLED on "U:"
Lammy··on Honeypot Design
Check back in 12 hours and my explanation will be here for you.
Lammy··on Honda Civics and the Evil Valet
This is a good thing because it means I can sign something that will work if I own that hardware
Lammy··on Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases
The end-game is that people will willingly surveil themselves 24/7 on behalf of The System because that will be the only way to prove what they didn't do.
Lammy··on You can power on a Mac remotely
Yea verily, although it was a free street find in 2014 and not something I sought out because it was in the movie. Here she is: https://i.ibb.co/1YkhpHzv/Quadra700-Stack.jpg
Lammy··on You can power on a Mac remotely
My Quadra 700 has this too
Lammy··on Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles
> and in 2000, [Dreamcast USA, Planetweb] Web Browser 2.0 released with better JavaScript support and support for Macromedia Flash. It also added support for uploading and downloading Dreamcast save games, downloading and playing MP3s, and included a full copy of the puzzle game Sega Swirl.

There was a time in my life where this was the only web browser I had access to at a certain physical location, and I used it constantly along with the E-mail and IRC components.

It was cool that the whole package of WWW+Mail+IRC was small enough (~10MiB in its final version) that it could come on other discs without being a space burden. I had a 9/99 Dreamcast that came with the 1.0 Planetweb originally, and it was great to get a fresh version on the Official Dreamcast Magazine disc every few months.

Article also fails to mention that a ton of games came with the same browser built-in, like there would be a main menu item to access the game's official website that would pop open the bundled Planetweb and dial using the globally saved connection settings. Gotta get your Y2K New Years Sonic Adventure DLC! https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Adventure_Downloadable_Eve...

I specifically 'member lusting after the Power Mac G4 and G4 Cube in the Apple online store via Dreamcast browser in 2000 lol

Lammy··on Smudging the game disc to make speedrunning 'SpongeBob' faster
White lithium grease for the rails (but don't get it on anything plastic), silicone grease for the plastic gears, and sewing machine oil for the motors :)
Lammy··on Smudging the game disc to make speedrunning 'SpongeBob' faster
This is why I keep my optical drives' moving parts clean and well-lubricated and freshen them up every few years
Lammy··on Cybersecurity researchers aren't happy about the guardrails on Anthropic's Fable
I really hate the term “guardrails” for these limitations, since the purpose of a guardrail is to protect me, but these limitations exist to protect Anthropic.
Lammy··on I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
Related to this is one and only thing I would say I hate about my Framework Laptop 12: its Airplane Mode key.

I keep Fn-lock enabled at all times and use the Fn/LCtrl-swap option in the UEFI just like the one on ThinkPads, but if I ever accidentally hit non-Fn-locked F10 the key code is interpreted by the EC instead of by the OS, so there's nothing I can do in the OS to disable it.

Even worse is that it's adjacent to PrintScrn, so it's the “oh fuck I wanted to take a screenshot and just dropped myself from the match” panic panic panic key.

Lammy··on WWDC 2026: Apple is Folding
> On the other side of the pond, Android foldable owners have spent seven years discovering which of their apps work and which ones don’t.

Funny how this thing isn't even announced yet and the fanpeople are already glazing Apple over it :p

I daily a Surface Duo 2 as my car-relegated phone, running Android 12 (which I kinda regret upgrading from 10) and loaded with offline maps and plenty of cached music, and it has never been an issue when an app doesn't gracefully handle being stretched across both panes. Some of them aren't ideal to use that way with the bezel in the middle if they put interactable UI elements there, which is what the SDK support update is surely about, but I have never ever seen an app fail to work like this blurb is worded to claim.

There's a toggle in the application manager for whether or not an app should open dual-pane, and single-pane is the default anyway because why wouldn't one want to multitask?

Lammy··on Apple WWDC 2026
Zune HD was itself based on the UI design of Windows Media Center: https://www.redmondpie.com/windows-media-center-in-windows-7...
Lammy··on The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)
Here's a counter-example, too: Metabones EF↔MFT speedbooster that has its own USB port and update+config app: https://i.ibb.co/t7mDFLJ/image.png https://i.ibb.co/PsSH2M3R/image.png
Lammy··on The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)
I suppose it depends on the system? I have updated Sigma, TAMRON, and XiaoYi lenses on my Panasonic and Olympus MFT bodies, as well as Panasonic and Olympus with each other: https://support.jp.omsystem.com/en/support/imsg/digicamera/d... (Sadly not an exhaustive list. I have firmware for several more lenses stashed away in my archive, but the upgrade mechanism is the same.)
Lammy··on India's surprise baby bust
No need to gender this, and I feel like people would be more receptive to the issue if it wasn't. Everybody ages: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12801554/
Lammy··on The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
> May 26, 2011

> No publicly recorded NANU announces a fleet-wide event of this kind in the surrounding window.

I do remember living through this one in February 2011 which was very strange at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20111015232120/http://navcen.usc...

“SOUTHEAST ATLANTIC COAST: GPS Testing Information THE GPS NAVIGATION SIGNALS MAY BE UNRELIABLE FROM 20 JAN 2011 - 22 FEB 2011 FROM 0000Z - 0245Z DUE TO TESTING ON GPS FREQUENCIES USED IN SHIPBOARD NAVIGATION AND HANDHELD SYSTEMS. GPS SYSTEMS THAT RELY ON GPS, SUCH AS E-911, AIS AND DSC, MAY BE AFFECTED WITHIN A 150 NM RADIUS OF POSITION 30 49.09N 80 28.18W. DURING THIS PERIOD GPS USERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO REPORT ANY GPS SERVICE OUTAGES THAT THEY MAY EXPERIENCE DURING THIS TESTING VIA THE NAVIGATION INFORMATION SERVICE (NIS) BY CALLING (703) 313-5900 OR BY USING THE NAVCEN WEB SITE'S GPS REPORT A PROBLEM WORKSHEET AT WWW.NAVCEN.USCG.GOV.”

I specifically remember it because I was trying to navigate to the Atlanta IKEA but my phone showed me as being, like, south of Macon; ~100mi of error. That timeframe could fit if they were testing something like key availability in a spoofing scenario before enabling real key material transmission.

Lammy··on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model
Big fan of this thing. It's one of my favorite places to take friends who visit the Bay Area.

Something that's not mentioned in the article is that the building they occupy is a former warehouse of Marinship, a World War Ⅱ shipyard that made Liberty Ships and T2 oil tankers used to supply fuel in the Pacific Theater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship

The Bay Model building has a Marinship museum in a front room. For anyone who wants to see Marinship's full story in motion, here's my HEVC encode of ‘“Tanker” — 1942–1945 War Time History of Marinship Corporation’ https://mega dot nz/file/lgtmlKIA#asrzuwGOxi6l8I5BmgyAxfKkm1zFcxvY4SYS1SxqtZk

See also Marin City, which is the remains of Marinship's on-site worker housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_City,_California

e: the Bay Model building is the big square one that is center-frame starting at 04:30 in the video, Marin City at 09:23, and some beginnings of modern-day international oil politics at 12:28.

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