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"Fans of 3D printing will no doubt be pleased to note that some of the parts (notably one of the large gears) came from a printer, but only because buying missing bits online tends to take longer and cost more. A real-world version of the model was designed and built first to make sure it worked. Stud.io was then pressed into service to create rendered versions."

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/05/lego_ideas_turing_mac...

jlv2on A Working Turing Machine Hits Lego Ideas

This is the better link!

jlv2on Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars

I owned cars with an AM radio for 30 years. I never used it.

I've now owned cars without an AM radio for 10 years. I don't miss it.

jlv2on Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars

I had a new car that also came with a Sirius radio and 3 months free. I tried it, but found it often dropped out while driving through forested roads in my area. That made it annoying to listen to. I stopped using it.

jlv2on Apple tries to rein in Hollywood spending after years of losses

It is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro, arguably the newest current Android device.

jlv2on Things you didn't know about GNU readline (2019)

"Tens of thousands of people probably use it every day without thinking about it."

Probably tens of millions at this point.

jlv2on Watch SpaceX Starship FLIGHT 4 launch and reenter LIVE [video]

Not just someone, but rather Tim Dodd, aka Everyday Astronaut.

jlv2on How Amazon Became the Largest Private EV Charging Operator in the US

When making the comparison, don't forget to tally the effects and emmisions of drilling, pumping, refining, and delivering oil and gasoline to the point-of-sale.

jlv2on The dangers of single line regular expressions

More like "the danger of thinking you can trivially validate user-supplied input" before evaluating the string.

jlv2on Tiny World Map

I see this is improved in today's Nightly Demo link, but I still find the result too low fidelity.

jlv2on Tiny World Map

I noticed that all of the New York City metropolitan area was replaced with a single angled line, cutting off several large islands supporting a few million in population.

jlv2on An electric new era for Atlas

That link is CGI.

jlv2on I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

Looks like the peices from the game Ploy. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1591/ploy

jlv2on 6174

Yes, the List of numbers page is inadequate.

When I give a monetary gift, I like to make it start with an interesting number. And then I ask the recipient (e.g., my kids, or neices/nephews, etc) if they can figure out what the number is.

e.g., 986.96 is based upon π sqaured.

jlv2on The roots of an obscure Bourne shell error message

Sorry, that's not obscure!

jlv2on Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application

I kept the installer for the last free version of SketchUp around for exactly this reason.

jlv2on Tesla recalls 360k vehicles, says full self-driving beta may cause crashes

There really needs to be a distinction between an actual recall (my Model S had one to change the latch on the frunk) and this type of "recall" that is nothing more than an OTA software update.

jlv2on IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

I have a big problem with FreeTaxUsa... I don't want my tax return data on their server. I want to have something I can run on my own computer.

(and it really bothers me that taxhawk.com and freetaxusa.com are mimics of each other... why have two sites with different branding that are under the cover the same thing?)

jlv2on Jean-Michel Jarre’s ‘Oxygene 4’ Recreated with 19KB of JavaScript

and here's the real original on JMJ's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSIMVnPA994

jlv2on Not Your Grandfather’s Perl

I spent the last 16 years of my career using Perl for about half of what I wrote.

And I read the article.

The title makes no sense. The article show anything meaningful as to why Perl has improved and is "not your Grandfather's Perl". Most of what the article talks about has been around for over a decade. If anything, it shows that Perl really still has under it the same old decrepit beast it always been hiding away.

jlv2on Tesla Virtual Power Plant

Interesting how in California you get to set your reserve.

Here in Massachusetts, when VPP has an event, it drains my Powerwalls down to 20% no matter what my reserve is set to. And Tesla's "Storm Watch" feature isn't triggered by the typical summer thunderstorm that causes power outages here in the north east. The result is that during the heat waves 2 weeks ago (8 out of 14 days were over 90 degrees F), we had several severe t-storms that caused power outages right after VPP had drained our Powerwalls to 20%. Thankfully all of them were short duration for us (an hour tops), although half our town was out of power for 12 hours after one storm.

jlv2on HeyWhatsThat – Calculate viewshed and panorama for any point on Earth

I used to use PeakFinder, but then it was withdrawn and the free version disabled. Now it costs $5.