Notices by Greg Knauss (gknauss@mastodon.social), page 2

To all you losers who told me not to look directly at the sun — the eclipse is over for you, but still going for me, probabaly for weeks.

Why is it only ever “still early” for technology that has consumed billions of dollars without producing an unambiguously useful result?

Maybe it’s just “not good”?

Live your life in such a way that @molly0xfff doesn’t feel it necessary to review your book.

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

During down time in Engineering, Geordi LaForge likes to pull up the historical records for Earth, 2024. He skips right past the Bell Riots and Irish Reunification, and goes straight the Apple Vision Pro release, and laughs himself silly.

“9.9999%” is technically five nines.

The saddest, most terrifying part of all this is that we are in a literal, nation-threatening Constitutional crisis over… Donald Trump.

Stuffed Crust Donald Trump. Reality Show Donald Trump. Excessive Bronzer Donald Trump. John Barron Donald Trump. Greenland Donald Trump. Sharpie Donald Trump. Incoherent, Loud-Mouthed, Tacky, Lying, Narcissistic, Vulgar, Cheating, Lawless, Ignorant, Racist, Sexist, Cruel, Stupid Donald Trump.

American history is low-brow parody.

@codinghorror When I was 14 or so, someone I knew handed me “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” instead of “Atlas Shrugged,” and, man, do I owe them.

Pity the man so rich that any friends he has left are too afraid of him to stage an intervention.

If tech oligarchs really want to extend human lifetimes, the proven way to do it is simple: eliminate poverty, improve education, expand healthcare.

Oh! They want to extend _thier_ lives!

Got it.

Turns out — eventually — that’s going to be the way for them to live longer, too.

If you listen carefully, you can hear Scrub Daddy begging for death.

I propose a day, once a quarter, where the team maintaining an open source project sits down with a new user and silently watches them try to compile it, using only the instructions on the website.

Yes, yes, I should be contributing. I know. I’m helping by being a dick.

“Do you want a stamp collection that will give you countless hours of pleasure, excitement, thrills, and knowledge? Do you want a stamp collection that will provide relaxation from daily tasks, make you the master of facts, that will not consume every minute of your precious spare time, require a mink-lined pocketbook, increase in value over the years? Of course you do.”

Of course you do.

So: If you (or some philatelophile you know, you nerd) would like hundreds and hundreds of near-mint copies of Topical Time or Space Stamps or The Astrophile, dating back decades, please let me know.

I mean, of course you do.

My dad died in January of 2020, and I’ve been slow to deal with his stuff. He had hobbies — complete nerd hobbies: computers, astronomy, stamps — and I want to make sure that all his nerd-hobby stuff stays in the hands of nerds.

He spent so much time assembling it all — assembling it so carefully — that to just abandon it would feel like it didn’t mean anything. It did. It was who he was.

There is someone out there who is just like that, and will _love_ this stuff.

If you think it’s weird that the gay couple in the SCOTUS website case doesn’t exist, wait until you hear about the god in it, too.

Every once in a while, I remember that Clarence Thomas is wildly, blatantly, obviously corrupt.

I wonder if that ever happens to John Roberts.

In Ron DeSantis’ Bible, the Good Samaritan comes across a traveler in need and chokes him to death.

Part of my day job is maintaining and expanding a Win32 / MFC / C++ / C app I originally wrote over 25 years ago. It works well, a couple thousand people use it every day and say nice things, and it’s backwards compatible to XP, which some of our clients still have.

This week, I started exploring a re-write, using modern Windows languages and frameworks, with the idea than surely — surely — things have become significantly less complex in the last couple of decades.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, God, no.

The techno-libertarians want on-demand government with just-in-time regulation.