somat

38 ms·

721.
by somat 1y ago
Think early 90's computers, and everything required to run a X server well. lots of memory, nice graphics, a nice cpu to move those graphics around. despite being technically thin clients, Dedicated X servers were not cheap. It is sort
722.
by somat 1y ago
The tricky thing about justifying an X terminal is that it requires a nice graphics system and probably a nice cpu to drive that graphics system as well, so really the only thing you don't need is storage. basically it is hard to save
723.
by somat 1y ago
The alpha centari manual was a beast, a regular novel at ~250 pages. Your comment stirred a memory in the back of my head and I jumped up to check, and I still have it! I found it on my book shelf! Baldurs gate 2 had a similarly impressive
724.
by somat 1y ago
This is X11 centric but I mapped the largely useless context menu button to the compose key. where it actually gets used. For those unfamiliar with the compose key it is a superior input mechanism for rare characters that maps a mnemonic se
725.
by somat 1y ago
You are not wrong, however in a pot calling kettle black moment have you seen what it take to make a windows bootable usb drive. if you are on windows it is possible but involves ether going the hard route and downloading special tools from
726.
by somat 1y ago
jpeg artifacts mainly show up on drawings. where they seriously degrade masking operations. which is a hobby of mine. so I always appreciate it when a drawing is a png. rather than a bunch of jpeg goop.
727.
by somat 1y ago
I assume it is the same reason that women have stripey skin. at ~ 100 cells, if the embryo has 2 X chromosomes the cell shuts one of them off, which one is random, those cells continue to multiply bringing their specific X chromosome with t
728.
by somat 1y ago
Speaking of ipsec, ipsec was supposed to be "the" encrypted interchange on the internet, basically used for random secure connections like we use tls today. I like to imagine an alternate past where ipsec "won" and how t
729.
by somat 1y ago
sqlite is pretty great, but I have to admit the main reason I keep using postgres, even in situations where sqlite would probably be a better fit, is that I like the postgres standard function library better. But I also use postgres as a so
730.
by somat 1y ago
Is the serial number even in base 10? the other parts of the number allow letters, the article does not say, but it could easily be base 36. which is close to 3 trillion serials. Plus a bonus rant: this is one of those things that looks lik
731.
by somat 1y ago
My natural first question is. If it is coming out of the pole, why is it sweeping? My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole. A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially alig
732.
by somat 1y ago
Dangle-trains are one of those things that appeal to me for unknown reasons, they just look so cool. But I am unable to really quantify the appeal, so here is my attempt. Advantages: keeps your electrical plant out of the weather allows the
733.
by somat 1y ago
Yes, this adds a couple of nice features, it is easy to go back to any version using only normal filesysem access and because they are hard links it only uses space for changed files and you can cull old versions without worrying about loos
734.
by somat 1y ago
I use rsyncs --link-dest abridged example: rsync --archive --link-dest 2025-06-06 backup_role@backup_host:backup_path/ 2025-06-07/ Actual invocation is this huge hairy furball of an rsync command that appears to use ever
735.
by somat 1y ago
It's engineering humor, a silly overly precise way to say everybody likes the fire nobody likes smoke in their face. So not really funny, I guess except to engineers giggling at the absurdity of what piltdown man would do with modern s
736.
by somat 1y ago
but bf is nothing like c, bf is a stack language, I would say it's closest real language analog is forth. Anyhow, This is far too clear and straightforward, the bf analog to scheme would probably be unlambda, an implementation of the l
737.
by somat 1y ago
My favorite conspiracy theory involves the invention of the economic aluminum process. It is not really a conspiracy but there are a lot of very strange coincidences involved. A short summary. Charles Martin Hall worked out the electrolytic
738.
by somat 1y ago
I was going to guess linked lists/graphs as that is my goto for extremely flexible local structure. But the sparse array is probably better, relational databases hate linked lists.
739.
by somat 1y ago
Oh man massive nostalgia hit. When I was younger I was trying to learn the traditional unix tools, so I sat down with a copy of openbsd and made a wiki using only what was found in the base system, and perl was cheating. The templating engi
740.
by somat 1y ago
It is a shame. I think the tipping point was newegg the store vs newegg the marketplace. Newegg "the store" was pretty great, newegg "the marketplace" not so much. And unlike amazon at least newegg tells you who the sell
741.
by somat 1y ago
Additionally, as a final turd on the manure cake that is free fileable forms, if you watch your web requests you find out it is some sort of Intiut product. Or at least it goes through Intuit servers. Honestly I don't even really mind
742.
by somat 1y ago
Salutes for using the term piracy correctly, well done.
743.
by somat 1y ago
Isn't hexdump the modern punk upstart. In my day we had to use od, and were happy to have it, now get off my lawn. Full disclosure, I am one of those "modern punk kids" but my first boss was firmly in the od generation. and a
744.
by somat 1y ago
I find the windows registry a fascinating mystery, why does something that sounds like such a good idea (hey lets put all the config into one place, a database for configs.) end up being so miserable to be around in practice? As a good unix
745.
by somat 1y ago
How hard is it to get the infernal engine to work for you? "Belphegor-2 go wade through the search results and discard the low quality machine slop, I only want results linking to curated human generated pages."
746.
by somat 1y ago
Unexpected I guess, but even more unexpected is that there are more sequoias in the UK then in California. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sequoias-redwoods-uk
747.
by somat 1y ago
> "required a full engine rebuild insanely often, something like every 1000 hours." If that is true it is delightfully ironic. I have heard that the main reason the M1 has a turbine is that the army saw the dramatic improvement
748.
by somat 1y ago
I saw the Bone Quarry at Dinosaur national park a couple of years ago, And it was very nearly a religious experience. I was on a cross country trip and decided to see it on a whim, so no real research on what it was, I thought it was going
749.
by somat 1y ago
I like to call it "carboniferous foam" It makes it appear like you are working with something exotic. And actually, when you compare it to other materials, carboniferous foam is pretty amazing stuff, it's combination of highl
750.
by somat 1y ago
This is a perpetual problem in computer science, people want a hash function, then decide that the random function very nearly does what they want. then use the random function as a hash function and are dumbfounded that it turns out there

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