Frankly, I’m surprised an old-school juggernaut like Zawinski doesn’t already have his own mail server. It’s not like he lacks the technical ability to set one up.
palordrolap
Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.
Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.
Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.
Really hoping he hasn’t brought the jinx with him.
Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish
- 1 Post
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palordrolap@fedia.ioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Librarians Are Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AI
19·3 days agoAre you sure that’s not pre-Python? Maybe one of David Frost’s shows like At Last the 1948 Show or The Frost Report.
Marty Feldman (the customer) wasn’t one of the Pythons, and the comments on the video suggest that Graham Chapman took on the customer role when the Pythons performed it. (Which, if they did, suggests that Cleese may have written it, in order for him to have been allowed to take it with him.)
Actually yes, but I didn’t expect they’d go down the same avenues with the Pi.
I actually considered getting one of the computer-in-keyboard versions precisely because I’m of that same generation, but I couldn’t justify the expense.
Edit: It has come to my attention that it isn’t actually the people behind the Pi doing this. I really should read more rather than jumping to conclusions. There’s a few obvious rewrites I could make, but I think the prediction at the end is still valid even if the route I took wasn’t the right one.
This would appear to indicate that someone in charge of product design at Pi HQ is a Gen X-er or Boomer desperate to relive computing history through their own products.
Computer on a board. Bigger computer on a board. Computer entirely within a keyboard.
And now a computer in a PC-like case.
Prediction: The next step will be some kind of ARM-based cloud service.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•Zelensky reveals new 20-point plan to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine
451·9 days agoRussia are never going to agree to this…
Russia won’t agree to anything that isn’t the complete capitulation of Ukraine and Zelenskyy being replaced with a Russia-friendly
puppetleader.Having a plan out there in public isn’t just about the plan, it’s also a message to Russia that Ukraine (and Zelenskyy) aren’t making it up as they go along and that this is what they intend to do if the Russians don’t
idit’ na h-ygo home.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•Orbán says unsure who started Russia-Ukraine war
12·11 days agoI did think about this, but I imagined that the Russians would find some way to fly mostly over populated areas on purpose so that shooting them down would risk a fireball falling on innocent civilians.
Escort flights might be a better choice, but I can see that turning into a multi-jet dogfight over innocent civilians instead, with a risk of multiple fireballs.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•Orbán says unsure who started Russia-Ukraine war
81·11 days agoOn the one hand, Hungary has remained somewhat different from its neighbours because it’s surrounded by mountains and hard to get in or out of by land so it would seem a safe bet for a swap, but on the other, it’s the 21st century and mountains aren’t so much of an obstacle any more. Would we really want to give Putin an airstrip in the middle of Europe?
It would be foolish to assume Putin’s expansionist plans are limited to Ukraine. It’s just that Ukraine is proving a bit more difficult than he expected and he’s had to concentrate his efforts there.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball
5·12 days agoThe real question might be whether the compiler was smart enough to change
var++andvar--into++varand--varwhen the initial values aren’t needed.As compiler optimisations go, it’s a fairly obvious one, but it was 1974 and putting checks like that in the compiler would increase its size and slow it down when both space and time were at a premium.
If by “too late” you mean “too late to get popular, rich or famous”, well sure, it’s going to be a lot harder now that there are enormous channels that got there first and where people are used to going for content, but if you have something that people want, there’s a chance people will find you eventually.
But that’s still not to say you’ll be big and famous. There are streamers who have been streaming for years who get only a handful of viewers every time they do. And yet they still do it because they love it.
On the other hand, there are many, many people who started streaming but quit because they had to make a living and their time was better spent elsewhere. Streaming only works as a career for, I want to say, the top few percent. (I don’t actually know the figures, but I’d be surprised to learn it was a big number.)
As for equipment, I’ve looked in on smaller channels streaming on Twitch. Not all of them have good stuff. No transitions. No Vtuber avatar. No mic. No webcam. Just raw, live game footage and maybe a little interacting in the chat. Upgrades can happen later.
But if by “too late” you mean that no-one should even think about starting doing streams ever because it’s all been done, or someone’s already doing it, then no, of course not. The day it’ll be too late will be the day all the streaming services shut down.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•France's first lady Brigitte Macron apologises after slur sparks feminist backlash
1·17 days agoThe French word is more akin to the English C word, at least etymologically, which makes me wonder how high it ranks in terms of French profanities.
I think most English speakers know where the B word falls with respect to the C word (and say, something like the worst racial slur), but I have no idea where on that scale the French word falls.
Either way, I’ve definitely heard both English translations be called misogynistic, and I think that would qualify those words for “slur” status. I can’t imagine the French word is thought of any differently.
Pros: Little screens on every key!
Cons: Looks awful and costs a fortune!
Get one today!
Yeah. Right Control should be where Fn is for sure.
And as an ISO keyboard user, I need my right Shift key, so that Control has to be a Shift instead. On ISO, left Shift is small and right is large. For that and other reasons I use the right one way more than the left. And if that’s not possible for deep technical reasons, hard-wire it to the left one bypassing all of the trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time a keyboard did something like that.
… and what do you know, there’s a even little space there with no key where they could put the Fn key omitted by those changes.
Everything else I could deal with. Even the otherwise US layout. It’s been a while since I used one, but occasionally there’s a hiccup and I’ll reach for double quote or at-sign in the opposite places, so that muscle memory is still there, maybe waiting for mangling into typing on something like this.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
Technology@lemmy.world•⇆ bidicalc - a spreadsheet where formulas also update backwards
10·20 days agoAs it stands, it doesn’t look like there is one. It appears to be a recreational mathematical toy for the creator to learn things more than it is for others to play with. It’s kind of neat nonetheless.
I think I might have made different choices for the reversal calculations, but I haven’t really thought about how I’d implement those choices, nor about nigh-insurmountable edge cases, and I’m only vaguely thinking about the “c = a OP b” case, not anything more extreme. The creator may have wanted to make the same choices but found themselves forced down a different path.
Verbatim from the creator: “it is imperfect”.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Quilter's AI just designed an 843‑part Linux computer that booted on the first try. Hardware will never be the same.
7·20 days agoI seem to remember a story about how something - a neural net, or an early reinforced learning experiment - ended up accidentally exploiting a physics bug in a chip to achieve a result that should have gone through the chip’s expected circuitry instead.
It was specific to that one particular chip, and swapping it out for another supposedly identical chip caused the calculation, or simulation, or whatever that was running on the larger system, to fail.
That is, it wasn’t supposed to be exploiting physics glitches but that’s what happened.
… I think I found it. It happened all the way back in the 1990s if this story is to be believed: https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•US threatens new ICC sanctions unless court pledges not to prosecute Trump
11·23 days agoSounds like a perfect opportunity to bring the court case forward, and when he inevitably doesn’t turn up (not that he would have if everything ran to the original timetable), make the finding in absentia, presumably “guilty” but at least worse than it would be if he’d bothered to turn up, and then…
Sanctions? Heck. What else do we have to hold him to account? An ever bigger tariffs war? Forcibly close US embassies and consulates? Seize US assets?
It’d be a fine line to prevent the Big (cutter of) Cheese from bugging out and declaring war.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Hurray! This German State Decides to Save €15 Million Each Year By Kicking Out Microsoft for Open Source
261·23 days agoIn before Microsoft break out the FUD tactics and a year or two of cheap licenses.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•Millions of children and teens lose access to accounts as Australia’s world-first social media ban begins
54·23 days agoPeople with a serious criminal record. Murderers and worse. Those who leave their victims alive but scarred mentally or physically.
Then those with less serious criminal records. Fraud. White collar crimes. That sort of thing.
Then other “undesirables” depending on who isn’t liked by whoever’s in charge.
And then the goalposts for what’s desirable will start to move.
And the scope won’t just be limited to social media. Websites will be categorised further. Some might remain open access to all people (except the ever increasing list of those to be protected and those who shouldn’t have access) but others? No. Those sites themselves are undesirable.
palordrolap@fedia.ioto
World News@lemmy.world•Millions of children and teens lose access to accounts as Australia’s world-first social media ban begins
193·24 days agoWho’s next to be blocked?
I mean, now that the infrastructure and policies are in place, it’s only a matter of time.

It’s worse than that. They don’t want the Palestinians to die. They want them to suffer.