bilegeek

I'll do my duty and provide some links as a fellow spelunker (apologies if you've already seen some of these):

http://textfiles.com/directory.html (https://archive.org/details/textfiles-dot-com-2011 or use rsync for a local copy), plus he made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary with the full interviews available (https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5289)

https://breakintochat.com/collections/messages/fidonet/index...

https://www.ipingthereforeiam.com/bbs/msgs/

https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/ (https://archive.org/details/bbsarchives_2017 for a local copy)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955294

https://archive.org/details/boardwatchmagazine

https://defacto2.net/bbs

https://web.archive.org/web/20241210143429/http://sysopshub....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klBD-U-9PIg

> i was reflexively cynical

...bb-but I thought cynicism was the same thing as experience![1]

No but seriously, I agree it is primarily "we can't be arsed to change our methods".

"Primarily" is not everything; the other 10-20% is the long tail of everything else. Europe is getting much harder on filesharing[3][4] because of business interests, and - despite the much better regulation - there's probably some "you shouldn't be hosting things on a residential connection anyways, pay us for a business connection peasants" like in the US[2].

Of course, all these ready-made restrictions are then easily adaptable for abuse (when's the next Chat Control proposal anyways?), so there's not much pushback from above...

Cynicism is easily a thought-terminating cliche, but it is unfortunately earned nowadays, especially as a coping mechanism for a feeling of helplessness against the usually stupid, sometimes malicious forces at play (Hanlon's Razor doesn't account for weaponization of stupidity).

[1]https://youtu.be/v0VA6u8cTxE?t=540

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18238827

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...

[4]https://torrentfreak.com/?s=europe

Because it gives them control. Market segmentation foremost, and likely also because it makes self-hosting services or doing P2P harder.

The biggest problem with BTv1 was the lack of per-file checksumming, and swarm merging (i.e. individual files have shared seeding pools across torrents). BTv2 specs the latter, but I think only BiglyBT actually implements it. Having both of those features from the get-go would've gone a LONG way to fixing the dead torrent problem.

> we should help them rather than let suicide become the way they escape from it.

> the answer should be to help them, change their circumstances where possible, and help them find another way through it.

You left that part out originally. You meant it implicitly, so I may seem pedantic, but this kind of thing must be said explicitly.

For example: the asylum system. Abolishing it's ubiquity was unarguably good, but then they just... stopped there, leaving many people in the lurch.[1] To paraphrase and oversimplify MLK, "presence of justice is much harder than absence of tension."

[1]https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-defunding-abusive-in...

Generally the only account that keeps even with inflation is a CD, but of course that locks up your money for that duration, which would suck in an emergency.

> when it was the last time that I felt it to be slow

I only have an issue because I set a big disk cache (because data cap). 8gb is fine IIRC, but 24gb causes slowdowns on startups and new tabs. (Also much more of an issue on my older laptop than my newer desktop.)

Doesn't outweigh anything tho.

Plenty of synonyms[1] for groups of animals to choose from. I'd recommend the one for Ravens ("unkindness" or "conspiracy", seriously).

[1]https://www.britannica.com/science/Animal-Group-Names

> If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted.

The spying may have started with free products, but it has metastasized into every aspect of life, free or not. It always does.

> choose to be willfully blind to the spying

Many don't. They also, by and large, don't have a choice. Data brokers, Flock cameras, WiFi-based radar[1]. You really can only do so much as an individual before the only escape is being a hermit in a cave.

> The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance

Which then gets distilled into the only drivers of corporations. Corporations that then destroy all moral options for individuals.

[1]https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...

If they eventually support Snow Leopard or Tiger, that would fill the enormous emulation donut hole of PowerPC Mac.

Everybody from OpenAI to Micron to the US Government is actively colluding to keep things going. I would love for you to be right, but I'm cynical from the decades that have been spent insulating these companies from consequences.

The auto-translation especially bothers me. Kinda cool for casual viewing... but the inability to disable it gives me an immediate skeptical "this entire channel is probably AI slop" response before I recognize what's happened.

Also worth going through the references of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

> Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still?

New x64 systems? Probably not. But since it still supports x86 and a whole slew of other architectures[1] still that don't always, it probably wouldn't make sense to stop.

[1]https://www.netbsd.org/ports/

Different lineage[1] as (partially) mentioned above; the ukulele evolved from small Portuguese instruments[2], and is tuned about 3 full steps higher.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenor_guitar

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele#History

That's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good!

I see your added frets, and raise "add frets on the fly using Lego":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCEImSfCwc

For plucked instruments, besides ease of use, it adds clarity and sustain. Orchestra AFAIK only has Pizzicato where that would matter.

Is it legally better? Absolutely. But all they have to do is say "they did this as a legal workaround for that" and you're no better off, at least not without spending the same amount on lawyers. You can't out-tech your way around a corrupt system, they will find a way to get you.

IMO: It's not learning that's the problem. It's learning and verifying you actually learned. I'm not saying "unless you can solve homework problems you haven't learned", but... kinda? With a complex generally-theory subject like Physics, the amount of effort you need to put into verification grows exponentially faster than the "learning" part; it's tough for many to get a "feel" like you could for chemistry or programming or electronics or mechanical stuff, difficult as those definitely can be.

At least until a prosecutor tries to charge them with a sex crime, and you get caught in the trouble.

I like btop, but there are downsides:

1.) No zram/zswap statistics. (Though htop only supports zram also.)

2.) No ZFS statistics breakdown.

3.) Doesn't support Arc GPU yet.

4.) I can't disable the disk fill bars, which makes the I/O rate graphs extremely squished unless the console window is very large.

I wish they'd make it easier to adjust individual engine's weight, ideally right from the UI instead of a config file. Personally, after bumping up Google/Wiby and bumping down DDG/Presearch/Startpage (and disabling Bing altogether), results became much better. It still displays some results that only the latter engines turn up, but IMO there's noticeably less cruft.

> There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.)

I meant just the broadcast band 148.5-283.5 kHz. (Though I'd love if 2200m and 630m were just a bit wider.)

> and NDB beacons.

Good point[1]. So 148.5-200 kHz in ITU Region 2 (and keep LowFER allowances on 160-190kHz as a consolation prize.)

[1]https://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

> Memory manufacturers are going to ramp up

Given the prior boom-bust cycles, they are essentially slow-walking expansion to whatever plans they had prior to the AI boom. Don't expect things to let up for awhile, even if AI crashes tomorrow they'll keep supply controlled as long as they can.

Looks like a 980B. Pic from a DC-8 sim for reference.

https://i.imgur.com/b3py96N.jpeg

https://imgur.com/gallery/dc-8-simulator-xY7eS

Unfortunately, pre-Domain/OS AEGIS is basically lost. One person popped up with talk of imaging their 9.6 floppies, but I haven't seen anything since then.

[1]https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputers/posts/7062462...

I hope it won't be this bad forever, but RAM companies are currently slow-walking any booms (not fast-tracking new fabs, etc.) in hopes of avoiding a bust. Seems it'll be more of a slow decay to still-inflated pricing.

Especially when pretty much all modern political and economic systems are fundamentally incompatible with population decline, and leadership fights changes tooth and nail.