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• Post #4234327

  @housepanther @roknrol I asked my local tux, Enrico Fermi, and he said that it looked like a fun toy to chase around the kitchen floor but would probably not survive being pushed off the counter.

• Post #4234326

  You* probably know some of the lyrics to a dozen or so songs by Madonna. Every one of them is pre-2000. Since then, she's released 42 albums. Don't worry, you aren't missing anything. This is slightly different from The Eagles. You can also hum about a dozen Eagles songs, and all of them are pre-2000. Since then, they released one album. You still aren't missing anything. On the other hand, you** only know two songs from They Might Be Giants, and one of those is a cover. They...

• Post #4234325

  Is there a term for declarative speech, where the words explaining something are told instead of being shown? e.g. "No pressure" instead of making a gentler suggestion, or "I would like to respectfully request" instead of actually showing any respect.

• Post #4176709

  An astoundingly large percentage of my personal technical policies are guided by the idea that I want to minimize my losses after the next sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

• Post #4170014

  Have you ever noticed that there are major problems in the world which have obvious solutions of the form: Stop doing the problematic thing, which will be better for everyone.Cooperate with other folks, which will be better for everyone.Consider improvements that will also be better for everyone. ... and that these solutions are Just Not Implemented, even in stage 1? There will always be game-theory defectors. Crush them mercilessly after they defect.

• Post #1941424

• Post #1715772

  #LongWordASong The present interlocutor is bodily assaulted and is rendered supine, yet presently regains footing. "I deny your future ability to restrain me on the ground!" The subject of the narration quaffs four ethanol mixtures: distilled grain alcohol matured in casks, neutral spirits, malt fermented by bottom-dwelling yeast, and fermented ripened fruit of malus domestica. -- "Striking a washing basin to produce a loud, deep tone", Chumbawamba, 1997

• Post #1715770

  Is it only fascism if it involves a party that calls themselves fascists, or can any advocate of authoritarian corporate plutocracy be considered fascist?

• Post #1715769

  Words are defined so that we can communicate effectively. The actual usage of a word gives it meaning, and thus the meaning may change over time. “Fascism” used to be nationalist, militarist, racist, authoritarian government with cult-leader worship. Now, I think, “fascism” means advocacy of a capitalist corporate-plutocratic authoritarian structure. Rather than “the blood is the land” mythology, it’s “wealth is self-justifying”. The classic “fascism” is a set of tools which the current one i...

• Post #1715768

  I present to you: a candidate for the worst layout of a FAQ ever. https://www.passbolt.com/docs/hosting/faq/ On my screen, every FAQ's headline is truncated to How Can I. If I decrease the zoom, I can get one or two more words. None of them is enough to read a whole entry's headline. And there's no option to read the whole thing at once. Bad. #passbolt #infosec #security #usability #fail

• Post #1715767

  There is a long-standing split among philosophers on the subject of names. Realists take them seriously, believing them to be things. Nominalists take them lightly, believing them to be means, believing them to be convenient labels. Every man in the world is either a Realist or a Nominalist. Give yourself a test: if someone called you a gigger or a fell-picker, and you knew it wasn’t true, would you hit him or smile? That’s how easy it is to tell. -- Alexei Panshin, in The Thurb Revolution Rea...

• Post #1329180

  What the website says: "Stop losing recipes! Save your favorites to [service] for free!" What I think: The privacy policy says explicitly that they will use your information against you aggressively, for profit, and maybe you can delete it but that's it. Someday it will shut down and take all the saved recipes with it. In the meantime, there will be all the advertising. What I do: copy recipes i like to my own wiki, hosted on my own machine

• Post #1329179

  Reminder to all and sundry: the printer you are using at work to run off a thousand copies of your novel? It logs who, what, when and how much. The "what" mostly comes from the name of the document you submitted, and is presented by the computer you are using. If one were to, say, rename the novel's file to "inventory report 2023 revised" or a similarly boring excuse for a ridiculously large print job, nobody is likely to notice. It will still be attributed to your use...

• Post #1329178

  Amazon: Here's a normal price on the toner for your Xerox printer, marked at a 37% discount from the usual price of "nobody buys it at this price". Also Amazon, just down the page: Consider this instead: toner for an Epson printer you don't have that isn't compatible at all in any way with your Xerox! It's on sale!

• Post #1328460

  Excessive chaos produces a desire for order. The desire for order is both good and evil: cooperation is good, dictatorship is evil. Everything not trivial is complex. Excessive order produces a desire for chaos. The desire for chaos is both good and evil: self-determinism is good, denying responsibility is evil. Nothing is purely one or the other. Improving things is not futile, but it can be difficult and requires maintenance and debugging. It is impossible to predict every consequence, but q...

• Post #1169992

  The unusual browser feature I use most is Reader Mode. SO MANY STUPIDLY DESIGNED WEBSITES! Reader Mode: "Here is the main text in a sensible typeface at a reasonable size with high contrast and appropriate margins." There should not be a need for Reader Mode. RM's utility is a solid indictment against web designers. Look at your site-intended-to-convey-textual-information with Reader Mode. If it breaks, fix that. If the page is suddenly much easier to read... you have work to d...

• Post #968849

  Every physics textbook ever written comes with exercises at the end of each chapter, and every physics professor who has ever stood in front of a lecture hall has said the same thing: you cannot learn physics by watching someone else do it. You have to pick up the pencil. You have to attempt the problem. You have to get it wrong, sit with the wrongness, and figure out where your reasoning broke. Reading the solution manual and nodding along feels like understanding. It is not understanding. Ever...