JeffDClark

I have spent the last two years learning about galls on plants as well as botany (mainly Oaks). I even built a website for helping ID and catalog the various gall forming species that occur across the US and Canada. https://www.gallformers.org

My main techniques for learning have been internet resources, https://www.inaturalist.org, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ , and sci-hub being indispensable. I also have built up a decent library of related books, though there are very few relating to galls mostly they are botany related.

This hobby has led me to become a much better photographer (this is one of my recent favorites https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/96982552) and gets me outside wandering around in nature at every opportunity that I have. My own yard, the neighborhood park, county/state/national parks, all of them offer nearly limitless exploration opportunity.

I have been at it for about 18 months and I feel like I am competent but am acutely aware of just how much more there is to learn, which is for me one of the main appeals.

Erroneous 503s. I would get a 503 on every call. Uploading a single file with a single call would immediately 503. I never once got a successful upload. I simply switched the endpoint URL and credentials over to AWS S3 and it worked first time so it was not my code (though I suppose it could have been an issue in the library AWS's node S3 client). My theory was the request was somehow malformed based on what DO was expecting and it was returning a 503 rather than a 400. But the request did work with S3.

I tried, and tried to use Spaces for image hosting related to a site that I am building but it never worked for me. DigitalOcean support was responsive but useless. I got the same basic response over and over again for days on end. I did finally get a response acking my problem and that it would be assigned to an Engineer. The ticket was then closed the next day with no further comment. I re-opened it and asked about the status of the engineer looking at the issue and received back the same response I had already heard nearly a dozen times. I then re-closed the ticket, deleted my Space, and went back to AWS. :(

I had heard good things about DigitalOcean, but I would not use them or recommend them to anyone after that experience. The one primary issue I had was a showstopper but there was a lot of other bugginess.

Piling on the Blackboard is horrible train, my kids school system uses Blackboard, Fairfax County, VA, FCPS. Its true awfulness was on full display when the school system tried to switch to FT remote schooling back in the Spring. Parents, students, and teachers all clamored to not use Blackboard. Administration did not listen. It did not go well. From the time schools shut down until the end of the school year it was essentially no school. The Director of IT for the FCPS took the fall, but Blackboard was at root the problem. Blackboard tried to shunt all blame onto FCPS. I suppose in a sense FCPS was at fault, in that they bought the steaming pile of crap in the first place.

https://wjla.com/news/local/technical-issues-latest-on-virtu... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fairfax-schoo... https://www.tysonsreporter.com/2020/04/21/fcps-dropping-blac...

A piece of fiction that has never failed to make me think every time I read it, is: The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanislaw Lem.

One of the tenets of getting your mind bent is reading things that are antithetical to your own world view. For this reason I read and had my mind bent by Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind - Graham Hancock.

Finally, I offer The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber. I have read a lot about food, nature, etc. but Barber nails the heart of the problem with our current (really recent past, in light of the pandemic) food culture. From farms and restaurants to the consumers (we are not just eaters) he shows how there could be another way that is more sustainable, as well as being more delicious.

I canceled mine after dragging my feet for years and paying way too much all that time. I have been dreading the call required to cancel but it went pretty smoothly. The lady asked why I was canceling and I said, "I only pay for this for Hockey (and sometimes Baseball) and I am no longer getting either". She seemed not surprised in the slightest and there was zero push back or painful trips to the "retention department". I too look forward to way better streaming options in the next couple of years.

I just setup Windows on a machine for the first time in a decade, it was a very gross experience indeed. I do recall it asking a series of questions about sending data to MSFT that were all by default, opt-in. One of those options sounded a lot like a key logger. The entire install process was so full of dark patterns it was really quite unbelievable to me.

I have been using NewsBlur for years (ever since Google killed Reader). I quite like it.

Having grown up in Bradenton, which is even warmer than Tampa, I understand the heat. However, your statement about 100% humidity and 100 degrees is not possible. If it were everyone would be dead after being outside for even a short amount of time. Further 100 degree days are rare in that part of Florida, in fact I believe that TPA has never measured 100 or above. The key to happiness is that area of the country, IMO, is to enjoy the water and the wildlife.

I was driving back from South Carolina to Northern Virginia the day after the eclipse. The first hours were uneventful, by the time I hit I-81 things got crazy. I had all 3 nav apps running (Waze, Google, Apple), Waze kept routing me off of the interstate and onto side roads, which in SW Virginia involve quite hilly terrain so are anything but direct. Apple and Google never deviated from the interstate even though the predicted arrival time kept climbing. In the end I took some of Waze's advice but I am not sure that it saved any time. I finally went with my own navigation system, I know that this road (US Rt 29) will eventually get me to where I want to be AND it is not at a standstill. I am sure it took longer, but the drive was way more pleasant. Bottom-line, a drive that normally would take a little more than 8 hours, took 12 hours and no nav app saved the day.

As did I, then I saw the sub-headline of "For one thing, you won’t like IPAs." and I got sad for myself.

Its good the be aware that one component of higher efficiency in an AC/Heat Pump is thinner tubing. Thinner tubing is more prone to develop leaks and costly coil replacements and refrigerant refills.

This seems to be primarily an issue with copper coils. I was bitten by this with a brand new system that I had installed about 9 or 10 years ago. It was pretty tough to eat the labor costs of having a new coil installed (that was covered under warranty) as well as a complete refrigerant fill (at the time ~$900 for the full R410A fill) on a system that was less than one year old. Its been good since then though!

When the arcades left the malls I stopped going. Then again I also got old and the world changed.

Speeding things up would only make it worse for all of the wrongly convicted. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-d...

I just finished the book Acid Test (http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/039916...). The stories about the progress that the lucky individuals, who have been part of MDMA therapy studies for PTSD, have made; combined with government's refusal to fund research as well as their stonewalling during permitting (DEA primarily) is heartbreaking and infuriating.

The author quotes some numbers about how much the US Dept of Defense and Veterans Affairs Administration spend (and are projected to spend) "treating" PTSD in veterans over the coming decades. They are shockingly large and unfortunately the US keeps sending more meat into the grinder.

How do you only pay ~$5 for a DC-Baltimore commute?

What about the, "I never trusted Facebook and continue to not use it." option?

Is this the talk that you are referring to? http://slideshot.epfl.ch/play/suri_stonebraker

Looking at the word cloud linked from the article (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3077/youporn_passwords.jpg) I am brought to puzzlement over just why 'melinda' is such a popular password.

The only reason I am even considering an LLC for my one person software company is patent trolls.

I guess the uproar over the sleaziness of patent trolls, and Lodsys in particular is over. A shame. I wish that these stories would stay in the news and at the top of Hacker News everyday until a positive change to the system is made.

I have had articles in my list that have become unavailable. No amount of trying to re-download them works. What you say makes sense but I am unfamiliar with the exact way that it works.

The whole idea of an app like Instapaper (or any of the other examples presented) is that the "stuff" that is saved for later is all user-generated content. Some articles may even vanish (different location, move behind a paywall, deleted, etc...). In this case those articles would become inaccessible when the OS deletes the cache.

It seems that the argument that only the list of metadata is user-generated can apply to any type of media (music, movies, etc...). Technically speaking all of the music on my phone could be downloaded on demand. Of course this requires an always connected, fat, and cheap network connection. Which is pretty much the opposite of what most folks have.

This also breaks the user's expectations. I was annoyed/surprised when I upgraded to iOS 5 and Instapaper had to re-download everything.

But Amazon Prime streaming is not (yet?) available on the AppleTV that the kids use. Sure I keep meaning to jailbreak the darn thing but I never quite find the time to do so.

Netflix has huge penetration into hardware that Amazon does not have and to me that is a huge leg up for them. Also I can not believe that Netflix does not have an ace up their sleeve, i.e., a serious infusion of streaming content. However, I would be in awe if they did not have that ace up their sleeve and are instead trying to push the content providers into the present so that we can get on with the future.

Totally agree. It was a no brainer to cancel the DVD side of our subscription, but the streaming, no way.

I think that everyone is missing the really big thing here, the US Post Office is screwed...

I wonder if the law enforcement folks look at the "collateral damage", i.e., all the innocent servers (virtual or otherwise), as a windfall of extra data to mine. If my neighbor gets his house raided by the SWAT team they do not have access to my house only his, but with hosting this is not necessarily true. Further, I at least know who my neighbors are and can choose to not live in a bad neighborhood or even move away if I want, however with hosting this is not the case.