tmm

I've been running Linux on a 5550 for about six months now, and the hardware is rock solid.

Everything works fine. I've experienced no overheating, network is stable, all the USB bits work, it docks and undocks without issue, the web cam works, audio works, it sleeps, hibernates and wakes up fine. Fans aren't very loud and I've only ever heard them spin up when compiling (I would say the full speed fans on the 5550 are about as loud as full speed fans on a 2016 Macbook Pro). The large touchpad works well enough. The 4k screen is OK, and matte, which I consider a bonus. The keyboard is average, certainly not the worst laptop keyboard I've ever used, but far from the best.

However, I wouldn't buy one for myself. Simply because of how flexible it is. It is nearly unusable when sat on anything but a hard flat surface. It's like the designers never even tested it as a LAPtop. Tiny, imperceptible flexes, or even just more pressure on one side than the other and the touchpad generates clicks.

Also, a USB-A port would have been way more useful than an SD-card slot.

The business seems fraught with hairy (furry?) problems.

The laser system has promise, but you need a source of random data to drive the movement of the laser pointer (maybe strap them to other cats?). Otherwise, an attacker who can predict the movement of your pointers may be able to predict the output of your entropy stream after observing the behavior of your cat colony (certain cats may prefer to hunt at different times of the day, or prefer to lay in wait and pounce vs giving chase, etc).

Alternatively, you could observe a field (bed) of cats and record their chirality, assigning 0 to sinistral cats and 1 to dextral cats. The science[1] seems to indicate no preference for one or the other per cat, so your readings should be random. However, you may only observe one or two bit-flips per hour and during transitions it may take some time for the system to settle back down to a steady-state.

[1] http://blog.dimview.org/math/2017/07/28/cat-chirality.html

The actual survey results seem more interesting: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-lif...

For instance it highlights the finding that 62% of South Koreans and 58% of Japanese respondents provided only one source of meaning in life vs only 1% of Spanish respondents and then goes on to clarify how that skews the results:

> These differences help explain why the share giving a particular answer in certain publics may appear much lower than others, even if the topic is the top mentioned source of meaning for that given public. To give a specific example, 19% of South Koreans mention material well-being while 42% say the same in Spain, but the topic is ranked first in South Korea and second in Spain. Given this, researchers have chosen to highlight not only the share of the public who mention a given topic but also its relative ranking among the topics coded, both in the text and in graphics.

Not since June 25, 2011 when they started randomizing assignment[1]. They still don't use 666 as an area number, though.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomization.html

You’ve hit on something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in price sensitive markets (which is basically anything in the consumer space). You’re better off being very expensive ($10k tattoo artist) than broadly appealing.

I’ve seen it mentioned here a lot w.r.t. freelance web developers, but my friends in the trades are aware of it too. Be expensive. It filters out the terrible customers and gets you people who are willing to pay (and wait) for quality work. The difficult part, I think, is knowing your market well enough to know what that threshold is. There is a lot of hysteresis in pricing - you can easily be too expensive for the cheap customers, but not expensive enough to make up for the reduction in paying jobs.

The hard part is you have to know your market really, really well. And you may not be able to apply that model to every job. No matter how rich your customer is, they’re probably not going to pay $1000 for you to change a lightbulb. On the other hand, there are plenty who will pay you $20k for work that your competition is quoting $5k for.

And the closer your chosen field is to art, the greater that gap can be. If you want to be a baker, you can’t compete with grocery stores for the $30 birthday cake market, but you can make $6k wedding cakes and corporate event cakes. You might only make one cake a week, but isn’t that better than having to crank out 200 sheet cakes with terrible baby pictures printed on them?

My high school rolled out an ID system in 1998 using SSNs printed on every ID (staff and students). About a week later, they realized this was a bad idea and reissued 1000+ IDs without the SSN.

I still don’t know what the point of the ID cards was. They were just laminated paper, no RFID, magstripe, or barcode to open doors or to buy things from the cafeteria or school store. You didn’t need it to check out books from the library and no one ever asked to see it. And we got a new one every year.

I guess some vendor convinced the school that they needed ID cards and so they got them.

For those of you who miss the office, what does your life look like outside it? Do you have an active social circle? Do you have regular, sustained, positive interaction with your neighbors (i.e. do you do more than say hello in passing)? Kids who do sports? A long commute or a short one? A house or an apartment? Do you do your own housework or do you hire it out? When you're in the office, where do you work (e.g. private office, cubicle, open plan)?

Prior to working from home (since late 2018), my social circle was limited to the office. After nine years in the same neighborhood, I knew two neighbors (three before the ones next door moved away) and only one who I knew well enough to ask to pet-sit. Work and commuting consumed all of my time. I had a boat I visited once a month (mostly to make sure it still floated), hobbies that sat unnoticed for weeks or months at a time, and a house and garden that were decaying around me; all because I never had time for them. I paid a housekeeper to clean and a lawn service to cut the grass. I never liked the commute, but I did enjoy the office. Lunch with coworkers, happy hour at the bar next to the office, hanging out in the cafeteria or someone's office were all enjoyable activities.

I would never trade a single benefit of working from home to get them back. Double my salary and a short commute (or a chauffeur) might tempt me back for a while (if only because I could then pay people to do a lot of the projects I'd otherwise put off), but it wouldn't keep me.

Work from home has allowed me to:

- not be distracted if I don't want to be. No one is on a speakerphone; there aren't conversations in the hallway; if the espresso machine makes noise, it's because I'm using it. Even having a private office with a solid, lockable door didn't insulate me from office noise the way working from home does (yes, there are more dogs barking, children playing, and lawns being mowed ... but unless I'm in a meeting those noises aren't distracting the way people talking is)

- meet many of my neighbors (helps that they're mostly all working from home too)

- spend more time at the marina. Used to be, I could only do that on weekends

- work on my house. Used to be, I was too tired when I got home, so again limited to weekends

- take a break from work during the day and still be productive on something else (housework, hobbies, etc). Before, taking a break from work meant a visit to the cafeteria or a chat with a coworker. Weeding a garden, washing my car, folding clothes, organizing my tools; all of these are fantastic activities for thinking up solutions to work problems

- go racing every Wednesday night. Before, if I wanted to be at the dock at 5:00, I'd have to leave the office by 3:00. That really wasn't possible. Now I leave my house at 4:45 to be there on time. This, by far has been the biggest impact ... new friends at 36, who knew!

- reclaim two hours of my life from commuting ... sure I could have moved closer to the office, but I tried that once and my next job just took me that much farther from home

- reclaim my evenings because I'm not exhausted from commuting

- work on my schedule. Aside from meetings, I can mostly work when I know I'll be most productive ... either early in the morning or late in the evening. And noone cares if I take a nap at 2:00 every day

Glad I’m not the only one! Since I was in the kitchen when I read this, I had to try. Same result, all three fingers felt like they were in warm water.

> the only trauma injury that gives me the creeps is degloving

I worked with a guy who was missing most of his ring finger. I asked him about it one day at lunch. I regretted it.

I’ve never been much of a drinker, generally preferring soda, sports drinks, or sweet tea to stay hydrated. In my experience, this is unusual.

My friends, relatives, etc. all exclusively drink beer when doing yard work, home improvement projects, or hobbies like working on cars. When I’m at the marina, I’m the only one not drinking beer while working on their boat. Maybe all of these people stick exclusively to water in private, but I doubt it.

Given that, I can see how it’s quite easy for someone to consume 5-10 drinks per day. I’ll easily drink the equivalent of a six pack if I’m working outside, and if I were a beer drinker I don’t think I’d find it excessive to drink at least that much over the course of a day.

However, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the group drinking a six pack of 90-calorie light beer over the course of a day is healthier than people like me drinking a six pack of Dr. Pepper in the same timeframe. Cirrhosis on one hand, diabetes on the other. Pick your poison, I guess.

Do you use them wired or wireless? I bought every Bluetooth dongle Microcenter offered and none of them worked with these headphones in Windows or Linux.

I’d love a recommendation for a compatible USB Bluetooth dongle.

Where do you even get video cards right now?

I’ve become oddly paranoid that mine is going to die and I won’t be able to find a (reasonably priced) replacement. And two year old RX 590s are selling on eBay right now for more than I paid for mine. Never imagined that one day video cards would be an appreciating asset.

I think the solution is TLS-PSK[0]. But browsers don't support pre-shared key mode. If they did, each IoT device (or consumer router, NAS, etc) could ship with a unique key which your browser could prompt for on first use. These could be even be managed by password managers, so you'd get the trust on all your devices.

Why isn't this a thing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLS-PSK

I do, although these days its connection to the outside world is a SIP trunk via Asterisk. Works just fine as long as I don't need to interact with an IVR which requires asterisks or pound to do stuff (looking at you, Google Meet). Audio quality is better than a cell phone, and I can hear it ring from the back yard.

I have a desk fan made in 1912 that I use regularly and the telephone in my kitchen is from 1954.

Because why should I have to click to get focus?

Less of an issue on a tiling window manager, but sometimes I really want to be able to type in a window without bringing it to the foreground.

Also, selecting text should copy and middle click should paste. No one can convince me these things are bad or unnecessary.

I’d like to know too. I’ve worn contacts since I was 12. Originally, non-disposable that I took out and cleaned every night. These were pretty good, but by the end of the year tended to get a bit ratty around the edges. It’s been too long to remember the quality of correction, but I know that contacts have always been better than glasses for me.

Then for years I wore the disposable, extended wear kind you can sleep in. Typically replaced every two to four weeks. Aside from dry eyes in the morning, these were by far the best.

They are not without risk and certainly not for everyone, but they had the highest manufacturing quality, were the most comfortable and seemed to me to provide the best correction.

For the last two years I’ve worn daily disposables. I think these are probably best for eye health since you’re not reusing one set over and over and not leaving them in for days on end, but they have the most variation between individual lenses. Sometimes I’ll get contacts that are instantly irritating. The next in the package will fit comfortably. Quality of correction varies every day too. This I just live with, as it’s not worth (to me) burning through them faster just because my distance vision isn’t as good as it could be today.

I’ve always used whatever brand my optometrist recommended (which I’m sure is whatever they’re being paid to promote). If there is some gold standard brand I should be asking for, I’d love to know.

These are really pretty great, and do what - in my opinion - art should do (in as much as art should do anything at all). And that is to tell a story.

The best paintings provide a connection with a subject - person, place or time - and maybe stir up some emotion about the scene. Some of my favorite are 16th and 17th century Dutch paintings of naval battles. The artists were the war correspondents of their time and their work is as moving as any photograph from a modern battlefront.

Pollock's paintings tell a story in their own way too. I worked in theater in high-school and college and also painting boats and for an industrial coatings company. In short, I spent a lot of time around paint. A Pollock painting reminds me of these workshops: of years, sometimes decades of overspray, splatter, drips, spills and all of the other marks of "work being done here".

The scarred and stained surface of the workbench from my grandfather's garage could hang in a museum. Sixty years of paint and oil; holes from when tools were bolted to it or when parts were drilled; cuts from countless handsaws; scorch marks from blowtorches and soldering irons.

The painting is like the artistic expression of the evidence of work accomplished.

> sn't 27 years closer to three decades than two...

The article is a little oddly worded at that point, but it clarifies later on.

After he had been in jail for 19 years the warden noticed his artistic skills and asked him to draw a picture of a hole at Augusta.

It was after that that the review of his case started. It took another eight years for that review to result in an overturn of the conviction.

> How do they colour-code the wires to identify them?

It’s actually pretty simple. There are only 10 colors: blue, orange, green, brown, slate, white, red, black, yellow, and violet. They’re grouped in “binders” (using colored strings). You’re likely familiar with the first four pairs from network cables (which omit the white/slate pair). After cylcling through blue through slate paired with white through violet (25 pairs), the wires are bundled with binders starting with blue/white string. That gets you to 625 pairs (the first picture posted above is 600 or 625 pairs). After that, the binder groups are bound in a similar fashion (typically if you’re going beyond 625, the slate/violet binder is omitted to get a nice round 600 in the first group).

Wikipedia has a good article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/25-pair_color_code

100-pair cable is only about 3/4” diameter. I have a 24-line 1A2 telephone that uses 75 pairs just to connect to the phone switch and two 100-pair cables feeding a telephone display case in my living room.

It takes me about a half hour to punch down 100 pairs on a 66-block. Old school telecom guys could probably do it in under 10 minutes.

I don't think it's one per customer. More like one per transaction. I buy mine from Microcenter and probably have 10 by now.

> other interesting things on the map: the 5-digit telephone number.

It's not 5 digits, it's 7: MAin 5-6200. The first two digits are 6 (M) and 2 (A): 625-6200. Telephone exchanges used to be named, this particular one was called MAin.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names

> I can't recall ever seeing a runway shutdown abd inoperable for months on end due to "road work".

I’m guessing you haven’t flown through Phoenix recently? They have had a runway closed for repaving (might be reopened now) since early January.

Runways are generally concrete rather than asphalt and there are plenty of concrete highways. It tends to be a louder and less comfortable surface to drive on and when repairs do need to happen, they’re more disruptive than a simple asphalt resurfacing. I’m sure there are other reasons to prefer asphalt, but I’m not a civil engineer.

This is a fantastic search engine. I clicked 'surprise me' and ended up at http://homebrewcpuring.org - a web ring! I don't think I've seen a web ring in 15 years. I wish they were still popular; what a wonderful way to discover new stuff.

> people don't want handouts, they want an honest day's work for an honest day's pay

But why? People do seem to want this, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why. I was unemployed one summer and got about $400 every other week from the state. It wasn’t a lot of money, but factoring in transportation costs it was a better deal than going out and getting a low paying job. It was literally the best summer of my life since I was a kid.

If I was working a $12/hr factory job or mining or some other labor type job and someone came along and said they’d pay me the same to stay home, I’d take that deal before they could finish the sentence.

I’ve worked a factory job and I’ve worked outdoors. While I enjoyed the work, I enjoyed not working 1000 times more.

I don’t particularly like working in an office either, but since I can generally set my own hours and the pay is good, it’s not so bad. Punching a clock is hell; why anyone would prefer that over unemployment, welfare or UBI is beyond me.

Another good account of being in the water a long time is the experience of Webb Chiles. He writes about it here: http://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/swimming.html

He was swimming for about 2 days after his boat sunk of the coast of Florida.

I use it primarily to control lights and my thermostat. In theory I can use it to control my entertainment system, but that seems less convenient than an app on my phone.

The lighting control is great. I see a lot of people saying a physical button or switch is better, but voice control is a button that is always exactly where you are.

I live in an older house which with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom is lit entirely with tabletop lamps. Adding modern recessed lighting with convenient switches would be a major undertaking. Installing a bunch of Insteon lamp controllers took 15 minutes and pairing with Alexa was pretty simple.

Bottom line, Alexa is an I/O device just like a keyboard is. It's only useful when connected to other devices. If you find home automation worthwhile, you'll probably like the voice control Alexa provides. If you think home automation is more trouble than it's worth, Alexa probably won't change your mind.

Where I live, homeowners aren’t allowed to do most plumbing or electrical work on their own homes. Anything beyond replacing an outlet or a faucet and you’re in master tradesman territory.

I’ve no issue with getting the work inspected, but there is no reason that I can’t be allowed to do my own work. Of course, I do it anyway (and so do many others) but technicallly it’s illegal.

Related to this, it amuses (and saddens) me whenever I hear of a shortage of skilled trades workers. When it takes 7 years of apprenticeship to become a master electrician, plumber or gas fitter is it really any wonder that kids coming out of high school would choose something else?

I think it’s that there are two fiber companies and one was working on New York to São Paulo and São Paulo to Cape Town. The other was working on East London, SA to Puducherry and they signed a joint provisioning agreement.

It doesn’t read like they got together beforehand to discuss the best way to connect New York and Puducherry, rather they were both making connections to South Africa and chose to connect their new routes together afterwards.

It’s an odd way for an African news agency to write about two major undersea cables landing in South Africa.

If the kites are for trapping animals, wouldn’t the gates be pens to hold them? If you trap 1000’s of antelope or whatever, you can’t kill them all at once, you have to keep them somewhere.

These kinda look like stockyards to me.