Speaking seriously for a moment::
I really wasn't ready for this.
I have gotten so used to bracing myself for horrid disappointments every election and new horrors following them.
I feel like I don't know what to do with a positive turnaround.
(I'll get over that, don't worry.)
Gonna be a lot of geeks wandering around just saying:
4
The Linux Maintainers meeting report is even more dispiriting on the slop front than what I'd been hearing.
This catches the flavor of it:
"That said, there was also a general interest in knowing how patches are created. Some would like to see which models were used, or where in the development process they were brought in. Maintainers still want to know IF THERE IS A HUMAN STILL INVOLVED in the development process."
[emphasis mine]
IF there is a human. I'm dumbstruck.
I was up on the ladder yesterday starting to take down some of the remaining plywood panels I'd put up last week to prepare for Hurricane Lowell.
Our neighbor Robert saw me, hurried over, and helped me finish the one I was doing - better and faster than I could have.
Then he just took over and did the remaining three while I just handed him tools, picked up dropped screws, and occasionally helped as instructed. When someone's that much more competent than I am, I'm going to let them.
I don't want to brag but I once had a morning meeting with 10 people in it that was scheduled for 45 minutes and finished in only 50 minutes so.
This is almost certain to happen now. Nearly all models agree on this.
Whether it will hit the islands or narrowly miss Kauai and Niihau, where it will hit, and when are all still shifting and the models are flipflopping back and forth, but it's time to prepare seriously.
Taking a day off work today to inventory the plywood panels under the house that I have cut to go over the windows, and make sure they're not rotted. Any windows I skipped the last time, we cut panels for those now.
I might be too busy to report on this over the next several days, so I'll just say a few words now.
Two full-on hurricanes are heading in our direction right now, Lowell projected to pass south of the Hawaiian Islands as a *major* hurricane, then Karina to the north, plus Marie that's still too far away to tell.
BUT two major models predict that as Karina weakens, the low-pressure area will abruptly pull Lowell north/east, directly towards Kauai or Oahu. Where/when exactly is still shifting.
I kinda liked the model we had for the previous several decades where tech stuff kept getting cheaper and cheaper and you kept getting more and more for what you spent on it.
I liked that a whole lot better than I like this.
I noticed last night while pricing drives for backing up my NAS system that the 4TB NAS-grade hard drives which cost me $84.99 each in Dec 2020, today cost $249.99.
Almost 3x the price for the identical model: WD RedPlus 4TB 5400rpm WD40EFRX
It might be some of that's due to unusual demand for an older model of drive in limited supply, but even a newer similar 4TB NAS drive from WD is $199.99, 2.35x the 2020 price.
It's not a literal necessity, like high food prices, but damn.
Hey there, hello! What the hell, I have nearly 500 people following me right now? I didn't expect that.
My follows are still wide open, but please keep in mind:
* I don't expect or tolerate racist, sexist or anti-femininist, anti-trans or TERF, anti-LGBTQIA, ablist, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Jewish, or anti-neurodiverse prejudice or rhetoric from my followers.
If I see any from you, I'll probably block you, with few exceptions.
My interests are wide and my posts all over the map.
Let's hope it's very wrong.
Those narrow bands between that and the eastern shore of the island - there are plenty of people living there.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_cp2+shtml/141731.shtml?rainqpf#contents
For those of you watching the news about Tropical Storm Lala, it's looking like we'll be fine where we are in Honolulu, but the prospect for the Big Island (Hawai'i) is honestly terrifying.
Rain forecasts are predicting 20 inches (50 cm) over most of the upper slopes of Mauna Kea, with as much as 25 inches (62.5 cm) in some places. The part of my mind that does science and engineering estimates is working out "very tall mountain with 1/2 m water on it" and gibbering in a corner.
Oh, and also this was on the state branch of her professional organization's website home page, so she felt naturally inclined to trust it at first.
She has now sent them mail warning their website is likely hacked, and is putting it out on the association's local mailing list.
Anybody know what's going on with some kind of website malware posing as a Captcha? If you click the checkbox, it pulls up a box telling you to "prove you are not a robot", press Win X, then I, then Ctrl-V.
This pastes *something* from clipboard into a PowerShell or WIndows command prompt.
My wife, who's usually very scam-aware and savvy, fell for this earlier today. "It didn't seem to do anything" but I think I may now need to scan her PC from secure media and/or re-image it.
I think it's getting rapidly to "underground railway" and "hiding Jews in the attic" time in the US. (We don't actually have an attic, unfortunately.)
So I just asked my wife if she's willing to shelter people in our house and she said yes.
I'm putting it out there, if any trans person needs to get out of where they are fast, but can't get out of the US for whatever reasons, we will take you in until our house is full.
Will other cis people step up to say the same, please?
RE: https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/116301677453295956
Hell of an article. Absolutely dead on, and it's a shock to see anything so honest in a newspaper nowadays.
A thing I just discovered about the Mastodon web UI:
You can edit the Alt text on a post you previously made, or add Alt text if you forgot to, by selecting Edit and then clicking the Alt Text widget after the edit form opens.
This probably seemed obvious to whoever implemented it, but if it wasn't obvious to me as a sometime UI designer/implementer, then it isn't to everyone else either.
For those who might be interested - I just discovered, to my surprise, that the first 5 books of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries are now public domain (in the United States), and there are nice editions at Standard eBooks:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/dorothy-l-sayers
Edited to clarify, h/t to mirabilos!
Americans live in a space and time when our popular websites are running reviews of the best gas masks to use when our government attacks us with teargas.
Even if you don't use Bluesky, and as I do mostly avoid Bluesky, please consider making an exception for this public testimony about the DHS concentration camp going up in Surprise, Arizona.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cvhu7p2bziajywpce7yrlevy/post/3mdzbkhgq522b
https://bsky.app/profile/samhalpert.bsky.social/post/3me233pu7ac2z