rootbear

15 ms·

211.
by rootbear 6y ago
I love True Names, it is an absolute gem. I got Vinge to sign my copy of "True Names and Other Dangers", a collection of his short stories.
212.
by rootbear 6y ago
This is a great list. Given my limited attention span, I've always been drawn to short fiction. I'm familiar with a number of the stories mentioned and some of the "runners up". And now I've got a list of new storie
213.
by rootbear 6y ago
I dislike how snap clutters up my df listings. I have to pipe them through grep to get rid of the noise: df -h | grep -v /snap An option to ls to suppress all loopback mounts might be a nice option.
214.
by rootbear 6y ago
I used to do something similar when a site I visited demanded an email address. I just used "mm@disney.com" (Mickey Mouse). Eventually, sites started verifying the given email address so that didn't work anymore. Now I just h
215.
by rootbear 6y ago
I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...
216.
by rootbear 6y ago
Scope creep is my biggest problem with systemd. I'm not excited about the recently announced homed, for example. I'm not sure it's the right solution, nor am I sure that there is an actual problem to be solved.
217.
by rootbear 6y ago
Thanks! That's new, I haven't used Radio Garden in months and the previous version didn't have that.
218.
by rootbear 6y ago
I came across this a while back and had hours of fun randomly sampling radio stations around the world. The one feature I wish it had was the ability to "lock" the current station while still being able to wander around looking fo
219.
by rootbear 6y ago
My Hungarian friend has often complained about how poor English is in comparison to his native Hungarian as a language for swearing. From your example, I'd say Hungarian swearing is stylistically similar to Romanian. He also told me ab
220.
by rootbear 6y ago
I love that room. It would be right at home on the original starship Enterprise.
221.
by rootbear 6y ago
I’ve toured the Savannah. It’s docked at Baltimore, MD, and they do tours one a year (but not this year). And yeah, the control rooms are very retro.
222.
by rootbear 7y ago
I had no idea! I would have guessed it was a contraction of "bird-oid", or something like that.
223.
by rootbear 7y ago
I used to use mm@disney.com (Mickey or Minnie Mouse)as a fake email.
224.
by rootbear 7y ago
Oh, that looks like an interesting book! I read a lot of Niven back in college and I wondered if he invented the word "Belter", for Asteroid Belt dwellers.
225.
by rootbear 7y ago
I, too, have concerns about how well humans will thrive in low gravity (the moon, Mars, etc). Over time, we could evolve a branch of humanity, "Homo ares", for Mars, but it won't be easy. Venus is just a tragic waste of a pla
226.
by rootbear 7y ago
Interesting, that was exactly my reaction to it. It's unbalanced in a way the old one wasn't.
227.
by rootbear 7y ago
Yes, this is my problem with such “warp drive” articles. They rarely address the causality issues with ALL forms of FTL travel.
228.
by rootbear 7y ago
Many years ago I learned that the size of the specialty publication industry was just enormous. I don't know if that's still true, but the existence of "Valve Magazine" isn't too surprising to me. We had fun at work
229.
by rootbear 7y ago
+1 on Brother printers. I'm on my second Brother laser printer and It Just Works. I also have a Canon Ink Jet that is mostly harmless. My sister's HP printer, however...
230.
by rootbear 7y ago
Justine and I have a mutual friend. I sent him this link and he talked to her and she said she's been overwhelmed by the attention it's getting. I saw it on the Adafruit blog and I'm wondering if that's what started the
231.
by rootbear 7y ago
That's hilarious. They had the best beef and bean burritos...
232.
by rootbear 7y ago
Yes, frequently it is. We were at UMCP at the same time, by the way.
233.
by rootbear 7y ago
I saw a presentation about Go and PenPoint in the early 90s, probably at a Usenix conference, and I was very impressed. I was sorry it never went anywhere. My other PenPoint story comes from a business trip I took to Japan in 1994. One week
234.
by rootbear 7y ago
When I first learned about these OP (Original Pronunciation) productions of Shakespeare, from a BBC news article on-line, they commented that it sounded like the English of North Carolina! If you are interested in this, I recommend "Pr
235.
by rootbear 7y ago
And shortly after the code for the Apollo Guidance Computer was put up on Github, someone found a bug!
236.
by rootbear 7y ago
This is the same idea as waiting to buy a computer until they're faster, on the assumption that the faster computer will give you the answer sooner. About twenty years ago, this idea was quantified and published in the paper "The
237.
by rootbear 7y ago
There are a couple of interesting looking Freemason facilities in the Washington, DC, area. I keep meaning to take the tours. My great-grandfather was a 33rd degree Mason. He was the whole classic stereotype: a civil engineer of Scottish de
238.
by rootbear 7y ago
I'm tempted to suggest Babbage's Analytical Engine, on the basis of shear audacity alone. Babbage was just amazingly ahead of his time.
239.
by rootbear 7y ago
There is a fascinating series of videos on YouTube that describe the US Navy analog fire control computers. I had no idea such things existed until I came across those videos.
240.
by rootbear 7y ago
I share your love of the Sun keyboard layout. I cut my Unix teeth in part on Sun systems and really miss those keyboards. I would get one of the modern copies, but in my job as an admin, I'm always on Someone Else's Computer and i

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