bjnord

I started my history with computers on the PDP 11/40 at my Dad's university.

Years later when my company was writing Unix software and we were porting to all the major vendors, DEC loaned us an Alpha workstation so we could port to OSF/1. That machine was blindingly fast, way way better than any of the Sun, HP, IBM, etc. hardware we had in the office. It quickly became my desktop because it came with a gorgeous monitor. I strung out the loan as long as I could and was sad when it had to leave.

James Gosling spoke at our developer conference around that time, and talked about the Alpha design team (who got to create this fast RISC processor without worrying about the "embarrassingly large" backward compatibility footprint the modern x86 chips were saddled with), and how great the Alpha was as a platform for Java. DEC and Sun were my two favorite tech companies; I'm glad I got to use their products when they were at their height.

There was a wonderful project "choir.io" that did exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6220740

I got early access and wired it into our software, which essentially processed streams of various events. And you could get a sense for when the pace picked up, or something unusual was happening more often than normal. Sadly the project was shut down at some point.

Curiously, I saw another story today pointing to Verizon 5G maps which are now available: https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/coverage-map/

Here in Minneapolis (one of the first two cities that got it), there are 6 (count them, 6) locations downtown near the Vikings stadium, and that's it. Yeah, I won't be ponying up for that any time soon.

oblig.: https://xkcd.com/435/

Now where did I put that Infinity Gauntlet...

Yes, and in the same way, once the AA execs realized how much it was costing them, they started looking for some way to get out from under the agreement they made.

I had something similar happen with a national tire-and-brake chain, from whom I bought a "lifetime alignment" for one of my cars for the cost of about 2 alignments. After a few years had passed, it was always a huge rigamarole: "I don't show that in the computer; do you have your receipt paperwork?" "We don't offer lifetime alignments any more." "This store has a new manager since then and we're no longer honoring that deal." They always gave it to me after I persisted, but never easily.

Look, I'm not responsible for your shortsightedness; I bought the deal on your terms, and now you need to honor the deal.

Usenet as it was 30 years ago: http://olduse.net/

...and the scratchy static introduced by whatever tool they used to add that voice watermark.

Can Airfox and Earthfox be far behind?

You're assuming it works. Where I work we have an intranet-based web app that pushes the new password to all the various corporate systems. We're forced to choose a new password every 90 days. I'd say 1 time out of 3 something doesn't work, and I have to open a support ticket. While I'm waiting for support, I'm not getting emails, or can't log in to some systems, etc. Multiply that by hundreds of users at my company.

Twice, support resolved the issue by resetting my password and telling me the new one... which is my last name plus 4 digits. Then I can live with a very insecure password for 90 days, or try the reset app roulette again.

Interesting that this was just on HN a few days ago: "What Happened to Hovertrains? (2018)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944382

Seriously! That was awful. My heart rate is slowly returning to normal. (Long-time very satisfied EasyDNS customer.)

I'm a happy Newsblur subscriber. The developer has continued to extend and improve it since the days when he was suddenly mobbed by Google Reader refugees like me. It's got great uptime, I've hardly ever had an issue with it.

This takes me back; I first read this (in pieces) via the Unix fortune(6) program.

Reminds me of "pacifist" conduct in Nethack.

I used to work in assessments (educational testing, employee satisfaction, etc.), and the MMPI and other psychological testing would sprinkle in items like "I have never had hair on any part of my body (agree/disagree)" and use them to calculate an honesty/reliability scale, to help assess whether the results were usable or the respondent was giving random or misleading answers.

They are, although since the ADA dates from 1990, the web isn't mentioned explicitly. It's been up to the courts to decide how it applies.

Nevertheless, web-related ADA lawsuits are on the rise: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotels-ada-compliance...

[disclosure: I work for a company that provides services in this arena]

I wonder if the "Required operating systems" (Windows / Mac OS X) is really true. Just checked again with my Chromebook (Chrome OS 72) and it worked fine, as it has been.

I use Pocket also, but: For most web sites, Pocket makes a text-only copy that you can read offline without hitting the website again. But Pocket doesn't do that for Medium articles; it will only take you to medium.com to see the original (or offer to view it with the Medium app), so either way you have the login requirement, 3-article limit, etc.

I suspect that Pocket and Medium have some kind of agreement; Medium may have stepped in to say "you can't make that text-only offline copy; that's our content" and Pocket, not wanting to get sued, went with the linked strategy instead.

"I have never felt more conflicted with empathy for and gripped by fear of an electronic conscience since."

There are several episodes of Black Mirror that explore that idea... what is ethical with respect to something ("just bits") that's also someone (a self-aware conscious being). They've done a good job filling that question with a lot of emotion; some of those episodes are really gripping.

I use Informed Delivery (pretty handy), so when I started reading the article, I thought -- I should be safe, because I already signed up for the account at my address.

Not so! FTA: "Normally in these cases I’d urge readers to simply plant their flag by registering an account to claim their address. However, the USPS allows new account creations for anyone currently able to receive mail at your address, which means that claiming your address may involve registering an account with every adult present at your address."

It turned out beautifully, do not hesitate.

What stands out to me is the supportive comments on the Kickstarter page for this announcement. I only speed-read the first page, but they're almost uniformly "that's OK, you gave it your all". One person said they found his updates inspiring.

He may not have reached his goal, it may have been an unrealistic goal for one person, but clearly he ran the process in such a way that he kept his supporters rooting for him. Compare that to the pitchfork-and-torches ending of a lot of failed Kickstarter projects.

I have it on High Sierra (10.13)

"Is SpaceX going for 2nd stage reuse at all? That's going to be a lot harder"

Yes, they are (and yes, it will be): "SpaceX also continues to study the feasibility of returning and reusing the second stage of the Falcon 9, and Musk said he’s confident it can be done. The question is what “mass penalty” will have to be paid, primarily in terms of the fuel needed to slow the second stage down so that it can make a controlled descent back through Earth's atmosphere.

"Still, Musk believes the Falcon 9 will get to full reusability. In terms of the rocket’s overall cost, the first stage accounts for 60 percent, the upper stage 20 percent, the fairing 10 percent, and the remainder are costs associated with the launch itself (fuel costs are between $300,000 and $500,000), Musk said."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/spacexs-block-5-rock...

Searching for ":;" in my Apache logs, I'm definitely seeing some hits -- although the majority are security organizations doing wide scans to see how many systems are vulnerable.

I, for one, would be interested in seeing that nokogiri script that turns ugly HTML into markdown... although I'd totally understand if you want to keep it close as a competitive advantage. ;-) I regularly have to deal with the ugly HTML that various apps' "Export" features disgorge.