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User: ortholattice

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  1. Volume control? on Musician Creates a Million-Hour Song Based On the Number Pi (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    I moused all over the screen looking for a hidden tool tip for volume but couldn't find it. I guess I'm just not up to speed on the modern UX. Can anyone give me a clue?

  2. Re:Garbage news on Microsoft's Cloud Evangelist Adds 'Clippy' To Their Business Card (msn.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, since she "won the internet today" according to one reply and "blew up the internet" according to another, doesn't that make it news for nerds?

  3. Re:Deliberate incompatibility on Linux Subsystem Files To Become Accessible via Windows File Explorer (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Originally, the CR came before LF for the following reason. Teletypes, at 10 char/sec, could complete an LF in 1/10 sec, but a CR could take up to 1/5 sec. It was 100% mechanical, with no buffering. With the CR issued first, both would complete in 1/5 sec, ready to print the first character on the new line.

  4. Re:Devils advocate / rant on 83% Of Consumers Believe Personalized Ads Are Morally Wrong (forbes.com) · · Score: 2

    I don't have premium memberships on any sites, not necessarily because I don't think they're worth it (often the fees are rather modest), but simply because I hate setting up an account, giving them my email address and personal info, risking my credit card data (and not being sure there won't be automatic renewals that are nearly impossible to stop), etc.

    One possibility I might consider is buying a membership from a third party like Amazon, something like a gift card, where a code number gives me access to the site from say up to 10 different computer+browsers for a set period of time. Otherwise, the site knows nothing about me, won't bug me with email spam, and in general leaves me alone.

    Maybe I'm different from most people, but it's something I might experiment with if I had a site where people weren't "biting" the premium membership offer.

  5. "No need to reapply" on Researchers Report Breakthrough In Ice-Repelling Materials (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    "Testing indicates it will last for more than 10 years, with no need to reapply"

    The bean counters aren't going to like that, so we'll probably never see this product. They'll come up with an "improved" version that will need to be reapplied frequently.

  6. Re:Latency on 'Sending Astronauts To Mars Would be Stupid' (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    If you have 1000 robots, certainly you can afford to have some of them be less paranoid and take more risks.

  7. Re:Youngins on This Was the Year the Robot Takeover of Service Jobs Began (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    You are probably thinking of spirit duplicators that printed blue-colored letters. I too loved the smell of freshly printed sheets. Real mimeographs used a stencil where the typewriter cut through a coating so it acted like a silkscreen, and oil-based ink (usually black, but other colors were available) was deposited through the stencil onto paper. Spirit duplicator prints started to fade with more copies, and the typically 20-30 needed for a classroom was just the right amount before it faded. Mimeograph machines could produce a much larger quantity of copies and was used for things like policies that were distributed to all students in the school.

  8. Re:Easy-peasy on Could You Live Without a Smartphone For a Year? (techtimes.com) · · Score: 2

    The qualifications require that you own a smartphone, so you're disqualified.

    My problem is that I don't have or want a Twitter or Instagram account, so I can't enter.

    On a side note, there seem to be a lot of 4 and 5 digit UIDs here bragging that they don't have smartphones...

  9. First word processor? on Evelyn Berezin, Who Built the First True Word Processor, Has Died at 93 (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    The article doesn't say when she wrote it, only that she started a company in 1969. However, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... says the Expensive Typewriter written in 1961-2 for a PDP-1, with IBM Selectric output, "may be considered the first word processing program".

  10. Re:Mystery font on The Mystery Font That Took Over New York (nytimes.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Personally, I think it is harder to read that Comic Sans. Out of context, individual letters can be confusing: https://cdn.myfonts.net/s/aw/7... . Imagine it as the font for the code you're trying to debug, and you'll be begging to have Comic Sans back (if that's your only other choice).

    OTOH unlike the ubiquitous sans-serif used here on slashdot and half the rest of the web, you can distinguish I and l, so debugging your code is at least theoretically possible. l'II give it a bonus point for that. (Comic Sans also gets that bonus point.)

  11. Re:In the long run, all streaming is ephemeral on The Shutting Down of FilmStruck and the False Promise of Streaming Classics (newyorker.com) · · Score: 1

    I typed " Gurer ner Oybaq zra, gbb" into Google translate thinking it might detect rot13 (it doesn't). Instead, it detected Bengali, with the translation "Grab the web of molasses, ga". No idea where the "ga" came from.

  12. Re:Slackware: not affected. on New SystemD Vulnerability Discovered (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used Debian for over a decade before systemd and loved it. I'm not qualified to judge the merits of systemd, but when it was brought into Debian many things I was used to were suddenly different, with knowledge I learned over the years no longer of value. I don't mind learning new things, but I don't like them foisted on me gratuitously for no reason, especially since I had a lot more important stuff going on at the time.

    I switched my server to Devuan and am extremely happy with it. It was a breath of fresh air to see what I thought of as "Debian" back again. So far I've had zero problems, from installation to daily use, and I don't expect I will use Debian again.

  13. Re:Missing the forest for the trees on Tim Berners-Lee on the Huge Sociotechnical Design Challenge (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    For sake of argument (and simplicity) programming is a higher level order of calculus then Mathematics since it is a combination of Logic, Pattern Recognition, Mathematics, Linguistics, Art and a few other disciplines I'm probably missing.

    I'm not quite sure I understand what you are saying here, but computer science is a small subset of mathematics as commonly understood, which is the collection of theorems derivable from the axioms of (typically) ZFC set theory. (See wikip. under "ZFC set theory", the website metamath.org, and many other places.) In particular, of those axioms you probably don't need Infinity, Foundation, Replacement, or Choice for (most of) computer science. Logic is a prerequisite for ZFC set theory and thus mathematics, so it isn't "higher level order". And if you're going to throw in Art, you might as well throw in Ethics.

  14. Re:Little thought experiment here on Microplastics Found In Human Stools For the First Time (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    "With proper recycling, lightweight plastic is actually easier/better to recycle than paper."

    Our pressed-paper egg cartons go into the compost. They soak up water and degrade quickly.

  15. "taxes on processed foods" triggered me... Some processed foods are good for you, and some unprocessed foods are bad for you. "Processed" in and of itself means nothing. Our cat was fed nothing but heavily processed cat food and lived to 21, which is 142 in cat years, while cats in the wild don't live nearly as long on 100% natural, unprocessed rats and other rodents, in their 100% natural environment.

  16. Here's my list, fellow gnurds.

    Once and a lifetime opportunity, laundry mat, ad homonym attack, commynism, weight lifting can stump your groth, trial by error, refudiate, all of the sudden, a whole nother thing, nucular, aniliation, laxadaisical, irregardless, so long as, anyhow, besides the point, asterix, ax a question, Daylight Savings Time, every once and a while, misunderestimate, should of, a mute point, wreck havoc, hang grenade, brandy sniffer, bob wire fence, statue of limitations, try and make me, Sodom & Gonorrhea, viscous cycle, old timers [alzheimer's] disease, sickly cell anemia, squeamish cell carcinoma, prophylactic shock, prostrate cancer, escape goat, pre-Madonna, Klu Klux Klan, Signore Weaver

  17. valgrind won't run on Cygwin, unless there has been some recent progress I'm unaware of.

  18. I agree with Linus, of course, but still it's funny/sad that the user code it broke was... pulseaudio.

  19. Re:I'll tell you how they made it just be watching on How the Weather Channel Made That Insane Hurricane Florence Storm Surge Animation (wired.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here's how to make it even better. Make a slit in the greenscreen and put a bucket of water on a chair behind it. She plunges her arm into the slit, and her arm disappears into the wall of water video. When she pulls her arm out, her arm is dripping wet, and she's holding a rubber fish (flopping as she subtly shakes it) that was at the bottom of the bucket.

  20. The very same Ellen Pao who tweeted: "CEOs of big tech companies: You almost certainly have incels as employees. What are you going to do about it?"

    How about company-owned bawdy houses, like in the old west mining towns? Ellen? Hello, are you still there?

  21. Re:@aol on Is Your Email Address Holding You Back? (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, let me tell you about my experience with AOL. My cable company is Verizon, and around 6 months ago they stopped providing email service. It was moved to AOL (which Verizon purchased) - still with the verizon.net email address, but serviced by AOL, with an AOL webmail page if you wanted it. Since then it has been very unreliable, mainly the SMTP login would fail for hours at a time. At the beginning AOL had a support email, but no more: their support email page said "this email address is no longer available due to excessive volume". Instead, you now have to pay per incident, or maybe buy a service plan, I forget, to report a problem.

    I now pay another provider, on top of my Verizon bill, to get reliable email. (And no, I don't want the "free" gmail. No offense to gmail users, just my personal preference not to have my data collected.)

  22. Re:What depth are these coral reefs? on Scientists Discover Hidden Deep-Sea Coral Reef Off South Carolina Coast (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    I hope they're deep enough to keep away from Paul Allen's yacht. In 2016 the anchor dragged through the Cayman Island's coral reef and destroyed it: https://www.businessinsider.co...

  23. While it wouldn't surprise me if the data was falsified (extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence), here's one possible explanation for those who wish to cling to a glimmer of hope.

    The problem is that the blue and green show the same values, corresponding to 0.1T and 1T, only shifted by a constant small amount in the noise region. But suppose the two susceptibility values were measured as follows: change the temperature to a new value, let things sit a while to be stabilized, then do the 0.1T and 1T measurements quickly.

    While the temperature is stabilizing, the material may be undergoing some small random but slow changes in stress and strain, shifting the "background noise" a little at each new temperature. If the 0.1T and 1T measurements are made in rapid succession, they might have the same "background noise" values since there wasn't enough time for it to change. The constant shift between blue and green might be a systematic shift related to the intensity of the magnetic fields involved.

  24. Re:Are these "inventors" really that dull... on The Touch Bar Could Replace the Keyboard on Future Macbooks (cnet.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually learned "touch typing" when I was young, meaning I can type while looking at the book or whatever I'm referencing, and not looking at either the screen or the keyboard. Is this even a thing anymore? It definitely requires tactile feedback, along with bumps on F and J to align my fingers to their home position. All I know is that I can type far faster than about anyone else I know. Except on a touchscreen, where my speed slows down to a snail's pace, which is why I have avoided buying a tablet.

  25. Re:Shareholders on One Year After Data Breach, Equifax Goes Unpunished (boingboing.net) · · Score: 1

    Somehow I "knew" that they wouldn't get punished in today's environment, so when the stock plummeted I gambled and bought 100 shares, and now I'm ahead a couple of grand. Not a fortune (my risk-taking tolerance has limits), but it shows my gut feel was right.