heelix

Three random pictures - man, that gives me a Johnny Mnemonic vibe.

One of the easiest ways to get paid for something is to to offer commercial support once something shifts to 'end of life' for community support. Can't get off of an old busted version - write a check for continued support! This sort of thing is reasonably easy to get through the accounting process.

Leaving a tip, paying for something free, trying to send money to a group that our infrastructure absolutely relies on - stupid hard. Commercial support, on the other hand, is very understandable to the bean counters.

Ironically, this is a fantastic time to use Firefox with UBO. I made the switch back when Chrome first threatened to block UBO and it was clear they were just kicking the can. What I've come to find is most of the things with ads won't take the time to 'block' UBO on Firefox. Perhaps it is not a big enough segment to justify anti adblocking coding. Youtube seems to have given up trying to fight it. Most things just work. It has been a long time since I've needed to fire up Chrome for anything.

My grandfather used to say 'any power tool can be a sander, if you use it wrong'.

Similar experience with firefox and ublock origin. I make the cut early, when chrome was threatening to make the change originally and have had a really good experience. Many, many things just work with the ads stripped out. Youtube and other streaming services - I don't know how people can even use them without proper filtering.

The issue is so many god damn meetings. There can be days in a row where I won't see 15 minutes of uninterrupted time during core work hours. Early, late... that ends up being quiet time to do the things I have in my queue. I'll agree that most of the meetings would be a real struggle to call it something productive.

Minneapolis is about 190nm south of the fires going on in the BWCA - with help of the Canadian fires just North of Ely. Smoke had visibility at our local (KFCM) airfield at 1 mile this morning from the smoke. IFR. I got to wonder if this is going to impact the Oshkosh airshow next week... as what we would travel up is not up for that type of visibility.

Agree. The i9 went full fans as soon as I fired up docker. The arm based macs are an entirely different beast.

One of the double edge swords I see is devs/evangelists pushing agentic coding are playing the 'good enough' statement. If that is true and those asking for software can live with good enough AI code, the moment the free local models hit that level the party is over in the continual push to the premium tip of the spear models.

Man, such a difference between a human whoops and an AI. Had a junior dev hork all environments, when the script they thought worked in nonprod... did not modify an index like they expected, they were quickly able to wipe out everything else in every environment and every data center. It was such a teachable moment. She was my very first hire when I was asked to build a team. Crazy careful with trust, but verify on things that have blast radius.

The AI? Nothing learned, I suspect. Not in a meaningful way anyhow.

I mean - you don't want to keep the unlucky people, right?

Converting DnD rules and edge cases was always a bit of fun and became my "hello world" as I was learning stuff.

Years back, I worked at a company where the agreement required them to review any personal application that I created for a year or so after I left. I was super happy to send them iterations of my DM'ing tools - written for Java (micro edition), WinCE, Palm, and any other mobile gadgets I could get my hands on.

Around the 4th application I sent, the pharmaceutical company released me from the non-compete clause. I've always wondered if they were required to try and run the applications.

Consider a dedicated SSD for each OS. You should have a couple M2 slots in the laptop. What you can do is remove (or disable) the Windows SSD, install Linux on the second drive, and then add back the windows drive. Select the drive at startup you want to be in on boot and default the drive you want to spend most of your time in. I did that on my XPS and it was trouble free. Linux can mount your NTFS just fine, without having to consider it from a boot/grub perspective.

https://community.acer.com/en/kb/articles/16556-how-to-upgra...

Looks like you got space for 2 drive.

Ubuntu just raised the minimum RAM requirement from 4gb to 6. While it might have been possible to run anything with a GUI on 4, I can't imagine that is a good experience.

When they turned Centos into streams, I cut my workstation over to Ubuntu. It has been a reasonable replacement. Only real issues were when dual booting Win10 horked my grub and snap being unable to sort itself on occasion. When they release 26 as an LTS, I'm planning to update. You are spot on - the desktop itself is reasonably lean. 100+ tabs in Firefox... less so. Mind you, the amount of RAM in the workstations I'm using could buy a used car these days.

Had a similar experience with the XPS series. Was able to find a keyboard. When taken apart, realized they had used plastic bits, tape, and other things to connect the keyboard to the top lid. Seems they expected one to either be handy with epoxy or buy the combo.

I resemble that remark. I've got to wonder how many people are starting to cut over to Linux/Mac or just stopped caring about being patched on Win10.

A couple weekends ago, I made the overdue call to kill my dual booting with Windows 10 and go full Linux. I'd considered finding a copy of the embedded Win10 long term version or paying for the patching. The local account was one of the things holding me back from doing the update. I knew I could muck with things to still have it, but figured it would be yoinked away later. Similar thoughts to updating the old threadripper that no longer qualifies for Win11. The reinforcement came from all the blasted copilot integration -- notepad, paint... just looking like evasiveness was going to be everywhere.

For a long time my 'good' box was Linux, my old box was Windows. So much just works. I still have an M2 with Windows 10 on it, but it is not in any machine right now. Will see if I run out of space and need it before they actually provide something I'd want to even have on my desk.

My Bride worked for a banking/credit card company. Someone took the sample "northwinds" Microsoft Access sample app, changed the labels, and modified their business process to mimic a few of the existing queries. At some point, there was a company mandate to port all of these types of apps to Oracle. Oh, the huge manatee... The process/business was a non-trivial bit of cash flow.

There has always been a bit of back and forth. Giving long deadlines and crazy costs, the business will always kruft something together. Sometimes it works, sometimes folks get burned, sometimes you get a nice hand off.

Man... updated mozilla,toyed with my ad blocker, now updating the os. Never crossed my mind this was a 'them' problem.

I was able to pick up recycled flourinert, which I used for an immersed dual celeron setup. It was mind boggling to see the submerged motherboard chugging away and silence beyond the the soft whir/gurgle of the water pumps. My first CRAYon machine was so messy. I always hoped that it was coolant from our U of MN's Cray.

I had the 17" XPS, which was lovely. A nice 16:10 screen, which was the main thing I was looking for. Battery was easy to replace. Easy memory and M2 drive replacement. It was a pretty good laptop for x86. Main issue was heat/sound. Linux was pretty easy to get going on that hardware. You could get at the internals - so cleaning out the fan was doable. (order new screws, as they ship with silly soft metal on the orignals)

https://i.imgur.com/4SdAQu9.jpeg

When they released the 16" series, most of the updgrade features were gone. Memory was tied to the CPU, which puts you in the same position that Apples does. Not a fan. I swapped out the 17" for a 16" macbook. I doubt I'll look at an XPS again.

What is the difference between software and car sales? The car sales knows when they are lying.

Likely reddit

Many folks left Dig for their primary feed when they did the UI update. I think I switched over to Slashdot around that time. The multi selector for karma, on the comments and them changing usernames so my original no longer worked drove me to reddit as that prime feed for me, for about 10 or so years.

As reddit exploded... that main home switched to here. Not quite that same sense of community and always a grab bag of subject, so much closer to Digg/Slashdot feel. I never ended up doing facebook or some of the other social media sites. As reddit tried/tried to become that sort of space (with monetization!) it became something I was not looking for.

Ah man, I owned a Jag XJS with the V12. Nothing on that car was what I'd consider 'normal'. Want to change the brake pads - down the rabbit hole I went. That car was why I own a voltmeter. I was a lot more knowledgeable after that car - smart enough to run, not walk from an XKE opportunity.

Well.. it was probably too good to be true. I'm a hiker - and was in on that first wave of purchasers. For $24, the 2000mAh battery was pretty light for what it is - 10.16oz. (more capacity for what I usually need) In comparison, I think my nitecore NB10000 is around 5.98oz for around $50, which is one of the better ones out there. On the cheaper side, the INIU 1000mAh is around 5.96oz for about $26 which does OK. I see amazon already pulled the page to order the haribo battery pack.

I also picked up their earbuds, which - for $11, sound and work far better than I expected.

When covid hit, my wife showed stroke symptoms - half her face stopped working (bell's palsy). She had an MRI as part of the diagnostic. As part of it, the operator asked her if she wanted to have some music. Yes please, some soft 80's love songs.

"Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games..."

It was not the calming music she was expecting. She still jokes about it.

Oracle is supporting Java 8 till 2030 as a paid binary if you download from them and free source code as part of the OpenJDK. Other OpenJDK vendors, like Adoptium, are providing free binaries till 2030 as well. Other folks may or may not provide free binaries. RHEL builds of the OpenJKD are free till November 2026, part of extended life support till 2030.

For us, the biggest driver for getting off Java 8 was SpringBoot dropping support for anything older than 17.

I've had problems getting one. Taken a couple attempts at it when the drivers license renews. Last attempt, it seems those adopted need both the biological as well as the legal birth certificate. I've sorted my passport, so do have a passport card now - but I don't always travel with it. (One of the gotchas with GA flying, some days you end up taking a commercial flight home) Guess that changes. Previously, they would just wave you through and 'randomly' select you for fabric/skin swabs.

I made the jump back to Firefox when Chrome did the first 'we are messing with uBlock' the first time they threatened. Honestly, it has been a really good experience. Most things just work. I'm also amazed how well the adblocking works as I suspect teams don't have the energy to deal with non-chrome + adblock on streaming services. Always a shocker to use a work browser without adblock and see how rough the default internet actually is.

Is there a way to detect/filter dependencies that use HTTP URLs as dependency specifiers as part of an NPM install? Since you can send specific requesters different payloads, I can see how this would bypass most of the normal scanning tools.

Suspect they were IFR. All your points stand. First time flying things with a jet engine, I was shocked how much more fuel gets burned at low altitude. It almost always works out better to max climb to altitude and descend than to fly low and level. On a small jet, things can get spicy fast when ATC route you around at 5000' for 15 minutes or so. Three aborted landings would gobble gas like crazy.

§ 91.167 Fuel requirements for flight in IFR conditions.

(a) No person may operate a civil aircraft in IFR conditions unless it carries enough fuel (considering weather reports and forecasts and weather conditions) to—

(1) Complete the flight to the first airport of intended landing;

(2) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, fly from that airport to the alternate airport; and

(3) Fly after that for 45 minutes at normal cruising speed