jdblair

12 ms·

121.
by jdblair 3y ago
Tinkering on my camper van, traveling in the van, paddle boarding Amsterdam's canals (taking a break for the winter!), writing embedded code for a kinetic sculpture.
122.
Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack(washingtonpost.com)
4 points by jdblair 3y ago|2 comments
123.
by jdblair 3y ago
It has been instructive to experience banking in the Netherlands after living in the USA most of my life. Transferring money to any other IBAN number, even large sums? Ridiculously easy, and available immediately in the recipient’s account.
124.
by jdblair 3y ago
I also loved to read these catalogs when I was a kid. I never ordered anything, I didn't have any money!
125.
DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs(cabel.com)
185 points by jdblair 3y ago|45 comments
126.
by jdblair 3y ago
They're different appliances, no? The rice cooker cooks at atmospheric pressure, and stops cooking when all the water is evaporated. The instant pot is a pressure cooker. In the end, it depends on your use case. If you cook a lot of ri
127.
by jdblair 3y ago
This a great list. I worked as a computer lab attendant in the early 90s while I was a student in university, and this reinforces my own experience. The most important things I learned about helping people: 1) Treat them with calm respect.
128.
by jdblair 3y ago
Wouldn’t it be worse in checked luggage? In the cargo hold a fire would have time to build up a serious level before detection. I think this is why you aren’t allowed to pack lithium batteries in checked luggage.
129.
by jdblair 3y ago
Ok! Thanks for the correction!
130.
by jdblair 3y ago
Roundup isn't a pesticide, or an insecticide (as the charts above are labeled). Roundup is an herbicide, which is why it is so useful to combine with GMO crops. When you spray a field for weeds with Roundup, your crop doesn’t die becau
131.
by jdblair 3y ago
I once wrote a static site generator in m4!! This was about 2002, and I discovered m4 while picking apart GNU autoconf. It was anachronistic (to say the least) even then.
132.
Why I Decided to Live on a Houseboat in London (2015)(bloomberg.com)
3 points by jdblair 3y ago|0 comments
133.
by jdblair 3y ago
The no accompanies the short explanation of a nuclear planetary transfer vehicle that never lands on earth. A lot of conceptual work has been done on these designs, and Andy Weir’s The Martian features one. Nuclear powered space tugs is a p
134.
by jdblair 3y ago
Ah yes, the "works on my machine" testing technique
135.
by jdblair 3y ago
Sounds great until someone says the warehouse full of computers out back is their "local machine."
136.
YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet(404media.co)
152 points by jdblair 3y ago|302 comments
137.
by jdblair 3y ago
I remember when I built a new PC, with some socket 370 pentium or another, around 2002. I ran an i2c probe to find the addresses to read the fan tachometer. The scan wrote some bits that irrecoverably messed up the firmware, the board would
138.
by jdblair 3y ago
SID was an "expert system with over 1000 hand-written rules" Wow.
139.
by jdblair 3y ago
ken/ken There are others documented on the landing page.
140.
A microfluidic transistor for automatic control of liquids(nature.com)
5 points by jdblair 3y ago|0 comments
141.
by jdblair 3y ago
To the memorandum? No! That would be fun to track down.
142.
by jdblair 3y ago
It was a different world in 1975: After determining requirements, Wooddell examined possible hardware and software tradeoffs. In an insightful memorandum, John Morecroft explained the concept of "soft logic" as a complement to
143.
by jdblair 3y ago
If you want to learn about how the Voyager flight data system is designed, read Nasa's historical document Chapter 6: Distributed Computing On Board Voyager and Galileo [1]. The whole read is gripping, but the most interesting part for
144.
Marcel the Shell(marceltheshell.org)
217 points by jdblair 3y ago|198 comments
145.
by jdblair 3y ago
Wallpaper paste.
146.
by jdblair 3y ago
We're heading into a future where text is generated by language models, then other language models are used to generate summaries for human consumption. We will drown in AI bullshit and then use more AI to try and extract the meaningfu
147.
by jdblair 3y ago
A hexayurt with a standard window air conditioner powered by a generator is glorious. Ours was tall enough to stand in and also had designer wallpaper. A 12V-powered filtered ventilation system meant the AC didn't need to be turned on
148.
by jdblair 3y ago
I generally avoid public USB chargers, not because of security risk, but because they are typically 5V and less than 2A. If there is mains power then I can use an adapter and charge at a reasonable rate.
149.
by jdblair 3y ago
You could make a multi-tasking os with no memory protection (kind of like AmigaOS), and with a partially posix api. Is that still Linux?
150.
by jdblair 3y ago
Fun fact, the English name is a translation error from 'frijoles refritos,' which is closer to "well fried" in meaning.

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