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hi-v-rocknroll

1,522 karma · joined April 18, 2024

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hi-v-rocknroll··on Cargo Airships Are Happening
Unrealized futurism predating both in magazine form was Popular Mechanics and Popular Science hype of Moller skycars as the original goat, and virtual reality being a close second.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Cargo Airships Are Happening
Vaporware hype.
hi-v-rocknroll··on World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating
Just another brick in the wall.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Florida's disaster-proof community withstood yet another hurricane
Ideally, only sufficiently sturdy homes should be allowed in risky areas. The absurdity of the current situation is subsidizing risky behaviors of people who choose to live in hazardous areas and socializing the inevitable costs onto everyone else when FEMA and/or insurance step in to rebuild in the same risky locations with the same substandard construction and expecting a different result.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids
hi-v-rocknroll··on Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence
Procedures make money, and a nonzero fraction of dentists are all about selling more procedures and add-ons that offer negligible value because they want $$$.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Capture less than you create
It goes back much farther than that as it's a practice of successful business people since time began. One much older example of it in written form would Napoleon Hill 1928 "Lesson 9: The habit of doing more for than paid." What it comes down to is cultivating customer goodwill by offering additional value that doesn't cost a lot to encourage more sales via network effects as referrals, and in the modern era, 5-star ratings and shares on social media.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
Reminds me of a plot of device of the 90's movie Shooting Fish where they were scamming businesses selling an AGI computer but were actually controlling responses with a human in another room.
hi-v-rocknroll··on A dictionary of single-letter variable names
While some people argue for verbose, semantic-meaning variable and function names, I believe taking this to the extreme is counterproductive, especially for internal code that could otherwise be far more terse. Like antipatterns in Java, C++, or Rust, the more stuff there is at a lower density on the screen, the harder it is to follow. For internal bits, single letter variables should be favored.
hi-v-rocknroll··on The state of GNU/Linux and a case against shared object libraries
No, you're being unreasonable because that's not the goal at all. The goal is to minimize variations while still allowing the possibility of variations that traditional distros like dnf/RPM Fedora/RHEL disallow without jumping through hoops such as renaming/prefixing or alternate toolsets like scl.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power
Insurance and regulatory hurdles are far higher than contracts selling future electricity customer purchase agreements and likely to doom almost all new nuclear projects in the US as they have for the past 50 years. I don't see why an amoral customer would care about the specific source power as long as it's cheapest, but even a socially-conscious customer would probably be okay with renewables if and when they are generally the cheapest option. Perhaps there are a handful of specific datacenter locations and requirements in particular areas that would be better suited to geothermal or nuclear.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power
> This term has lost whatever meaning it ever had if we're using it to refer to binding contracts.

If a technological solution is optimistic and remains vaporware possibly forever, then it maybe "virtue signaling" is if there more nonfunctional desire for it that outstrips practical or economic utility. A better term would be "vaporware" when there is less social puritanism involved, and I don't think coal or nuclear signal anything of redeemable greenwashing value compared to cheaper renewables combined with PES and distributed grid storage.

hi-v-rocknroll··on Trying Out a Far Infrared Heated Poster
I'm still a little worried about the toxicity of graphene-based products that they might turn out to be another "asbestos".
hi-v-rocknroll··on Busy Status Bar
It should supplement and facilitate improved office dynamics and less interruptions rather than supplant interaction with proscribed, transactionalized objectification of people. Not everything more efficient should or has to be dystopian.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Busy Status Bar
Jerks and dorks disrespect others, with the differentiator being intention. If they don't get the hint, then it's probably time for a teachable moment or assertion of boundaries.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Busy Status Bar
This is an excellent idea. A similar approach, simpler, and cheaper solution for a non-open cube/offices environment is a microcontroller-controlled Andon stack with color-codes for "focusing/DND", "working", "away", "socialization desired", and possibly "about to leave". This makes it possible to scan statuses simply without disturbing people by having to be in visual range of their desk.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Tesla Motors Linux Kernel
The gold standard deep and certain vulnerability remediation requires A/B test exploit sample code.

You're really going off into the weeds about other concerns rather than covering and ensuring known flaws don't exist than can be checked automatically and mechanically given proper infrastructure that don't need significant or constant human attention. There is a place for human attention, but it isn't going to scale to check 10 million machines.

hi-v-rocknroll··on I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman
Worrying about dying by meteor impact is a waste of life because you can't do anything about it, and so is this. Internal locus of control has boundaries of what is and is not worth worrying about. And this clearly isn't except for other people tend to be fixated on victimhood/oppression Olympics, tend to be unreasonable, and disinterested in accomplishing anything of positive social change.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
Anything can be stolen given unreasonable dedication, but that's not the point. The point is to deter by making it not worth messing with. Unlocked QR wheels will be stolen or vandalized in most major US cities in an instant.
hi-v-rocknroll··on The state of GNU/Linux and a case against shared object libraries
This is a "Unabomber"-style prescription to the problem. The problem isn't shared libraries and the solution isn't static linking everything because that's wasteful for repetitive binary code duplicated N times consuming disk and RAM pointlessly. The problem is solved by management and cooperative sharing of shared libraries that don't rely on a fixed, singleton location or only allowing a single configuration of a shared library, but allow side-by-side installations of multiple version series and multiple configurations. Nix mostly solves these problems, but still has teething problems of getting things to work right especially for non-code shared file locations and dlopen program plugins. I think Nix is over-engineered and learning-curve user-hostile but is generally a more correct approach. There is/was a similar project from what was Opscode called Habitat that did something similar. Before that, we used Stow and symlink forests.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
Unlocked QR wheels and seats get stolen and vandalized. QR should generally only be used where transportation space is limited or for stationary security, but otherwise prefer permanently-installed ones at the expense of having to carry a wrench with the tire patch kit.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
Rim/v-brakes just need proper adjustment, replacement pads when worn, and clean rims. They're also much easier to control with finesse than disc brakes which tend to lock and require brake fluid and pads service. In rain though, I'd want disc brakes because rim/v-brakes can fade rapidly depending on material and coating of the rim.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
Back in the day, even on a low-end steel Miyata mountain bike, I had to have QR wheel and QR seat post keyed locks because of theft. They consisted of an epoxy-coated offset plate with a hole at each end and a miniature luggage lock. In general IMO, it's not worth having an expensive bike because it's just going to get ripped-off and likely lacks significant benefit over a middle-market one. (A friend of mine had a $8k USD road bike stolen in downtown Mountain View right in front of every passerby in the busiest area where cops pass every 10 minutes.) Also, the only time I ever forgot to lock my (undersized jacked up with very long seat post and handlebar extensions) Miyata in the rack at home (apartments) in Davis CA was the very time it was stolen.

For dry climates: wax lube. Wet lube is only for rainy climates and attracts dust like mad. Chain guard is a must for non-leisure riding.

And if you don't like changing tires very often and don't mind the extra free exercise of added rolling resistance, kevlar armor bands are a must have with green snot slime. Still have to carry a vulcanizing patch kit, levers, and a pump because goatheads are pure evil.

hi-v-rocknroll··on I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman
This belongs to a category of rabbit holes of the human condition that are entirely pointless to argue or worry about.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Boeing to lay off roughly 10% of workforce
The reality is that it's a slim gradient cabal of uber rich vs. everyone else. Everyone who isn't obscenely rich should seek solidarity to end the tyranny of and oppression by this group of greedy, selfish, antisocial criminals.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Are retrocomputers best left on or off?
Turbo was all about slowing down a 486-/Pentium-class machine to work with programs and some ISA cards that required a slower CPU and/or XT bus speeds.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Are retrocomputers best left on or off?
Real hardware is still necessary to verify functional equivalency and correctness.

Also, there's no way you're going to emulate an interlaced or noninterlaced analog SVGA display, especially the sounds of mode changing, tearing, proper vsync, palette cycling, or setting the border color. Or MIDI music as it came from an AdLib, Roland, SB, or a GUS.

hi-v-rocknroll··on Should I Use My State's Digital Driver's License?
Within the next couple of CCC there will be a talk: copying and cloning everyone's nearby DDL with a long range NFC attack.

On the balance, even Apple's implementation seems like a privacy invasion nightmare for the minor benefit of convenience of not having a wallet+phone case.

hi-v-rocknroll··on Tesla Motors Linux Kernel
Not necessarily. The problem with clipboard audits using version number matching alone is they don't account for patching. The proper way to do a vulnerability audit is by building and running code under test in sandboxed environment, and running each CVE-indicative sploit against it. For example, RHEL would be a Swiss cheese exploit magnet if they didn't regularly patch the heck out of every CVE for every component that came down the feed.
hi-v-rocknroll··on Why do systems fail? Tandem NonStop system and fault tolerance
A hypervisor (software) approach is one way to accomplish it far cheaper and much more configurable and reusable than having to rely on dedicated hardware. VMware's virtualization method of x86_64 fault tolerant feature runs 2 VMs on different hosts using the lockstep method. Either fails, then the hypervisor moves the (V)IP over with ARP to the running one and spawns another to replace it. More often than not, it's a way to run a critical machine that cannot accept any downtime and cannot otherwise be (re)engineered in a conventional HA manner with other building-blocks. In general, one should never do this and prefer to use always consistent quorum 2 phase commit transactions at the cost of availability or throughput, or eventual consistency through gossip updates at the cost of inconsistency and potential data loss.
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