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

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 13th, 2024

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  • 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.




  • On 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.



  • 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.



  • The 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.



  • 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.


  • As 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”.



  • Sounds 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.



  • People 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.