#he was like... maybe its because he's doing it with linux...?

[sevenfactorial]

We've been doing stuff in matlab this semester in differential eqs and our professor doesn't post code cause he doesn't want us to copy paste? But he did post screenshots of his code.

I have other... questions about his teaching coding methodology, but today, one of my classmates mentioned the colors of the text while we were working on stuff.

Frankly, his theme is awful. It's a dark theme with symbols in a relatively dark green and numbers in (bright) orange and everything else (including comments) in white.

The other person there at the time is colorblind so I described it to him and his reaction was essentially "what do you mean??" He'd assumed it was something reasonable and it was his colorblindness making it difficult to read, but nope! It's just bad even if you have all the appropriate cones.

[onewomancitadel]

an old fashioned blog post

I hope everyone in SEQ will be alright... I am thinking of one of my readers once upon a time who was from Brisbane which is where the cyclone is making landfall!

I am away with only my laptop at the moment which has increased its bluescreens of death and it seems like even with Libre Office backing up every minute I have still ended up losing writing. It was "only" my original fiction, not fanfic, and only a few minor edits lost, so not as huge a deal as when I once had to rewrite a quarter of an entire chapter (but I did it fairly speedily from memory and I was quite proud of myself) which for Skimming Eye sits around 2,000-2,500 words.

But of course I am leaving out the fact that there is an old desktop here I might try unearthing since it may well be more stable than this newfangled machine. It is a project to occupy myself.

I mentioned Libre Office because I am making the move from Word. Firstly because I am logged out and secondly because I am thinking of switching over to Linux in the near future since I am tired of Windows being stupid*. Apparently it also runs Sims 2 better; one day it will be considered stupid and girlish to use Linux I sure hope (ha). Yes I'm familiar with distros and I know things. I find openSUSE attractive because it has a distro called Tumbleweed - I herd u like Tumblr so I put Tumblr in your OS so you can Tumble whilst you Tumble etc. For the purposes of anybody trying to computersplain, I am probably not going to use openSUSE.

*If I have to use third party programs and registry edits to fix this dump then it isn't good is it. All I play are old games that hardly run on Windows anyway!

I finished True Grit recently - the novella - and it was painfully good. Genius, swift prose. Maybe one of my favourite protagonists ever. Proof that men can write girls plenty easily. Interesting reading that some of the reception to it and Charles Portis' writing is that because he can be comic (especially deadpan) his work is considered "less serious" in the canon. Silly.

I am quite sly on my blog about original fiction and ironically they are projects which feel less serious and more freeing than fanfiction. Fanfiction by nature has limitations imposed upon it. These are powerful limitations. Limitation and necessity is the mother of invention etc. and this in some way can make fic feel both easier and harder to write. I'm especially glad that the discourse has finally caught up and accepted that original fiction and fanfiction are separate disciplines but honestly they had to learn the hard way (the way it always is). Once upon a time you'd be drawn and quartered in the public square for such an opinion. But you will note that original fiction suffers when you apply fanfiction practices to it. I especially hate the false intimacy of it. In fandom, you are close to each other by proximity. There are fewer hierarchies. When you publish a work, I am not your fellow fan or a friend. The comfort that one enjoys in fandom - or ought to enjoy, certainly in feminine-dominated ends - is not the comfort extended to professionally published authors who are profiting off the endeavour and contributing to a body of literary canon for which we are all participants and critics.

Of course the reductionist will say, Vergil and Dante wrote fanfiction! Which is blatantly untrue. You are comparing separate practices of copyright cultures as opposed to actual literary traditions. And make no mistake: fanfiction is a literary tradition - that theoretically should be the most free and experimental - but it has its mores and its craft.

Obviously I have been slow going with updates. This is because I have things wrong with me and I had a tantrum. If people are mean to me I am not going to update. I do not intend to hold my work hostage and to my polite and lovely readers I do admire you and am very grateful for you, more than you could possibly know, and I understand this is bait for trolls but I also don't care anymore. Nothing I have tried has worked. I am sensitive and delicate. So be it. I am not putting out updates if an individual chucks a tantie in my inbox, simple as. I am the only one allowed to have tantrums. This is a dictatorship.

That being said now I am finally being honest I will say that the past year I have been preoccupied with a story I intend to post in full - no updates! - to circumvent how much I have grown to loathe that process. Similarly for Skimming Eye I will do my very best to prepare the last two chapters at the same time (the length of four, good grief) and the epilogue to finally be rid of this beast. Which leaves the elephant in the room - The Rusted Knight and the Fall Maiden - who needs to be dealt with. The work has been sitting complete for a year but admittedly this other story has advanced a lot of the ideas I wanted to explore better. I'm still of half a mind about uploading the the last couple of updates. Tonally, I think my skills have improved in juggling those fairytale aspects working with absurd tragedy that R/WBY does in its odd way. I also think Jaune's POV made it needlessly diffcult. You will see what I mean. I leant too much into V9 trying to reconcile aspects of it I admittedly disliked and simply I think any story with Cinder in it evades that narrative discordance they slipped into that volume. It's the same reason everything was good when Ruby was alone or having visions of Summer and Raven. I wish I could watch V8 for the first time again.

I have never been this straightforward about my work but I am past the point of being secretive, I think... I have been through a lot the past few days that have made me reconsider how much I try to tightly police myself around people in my everyday life so they don't cotton onto the fact I am eccentric or get mad at me and hurt me. And I have realised that honestly I have failed. They still get mad at me and hurt me. The fact that fandom reminds me so much of dealing with abuse is honestly so funny.

I also have a post about Midsommar I am considering sharing. I'm not sure that I want to as it is such a controversial film, but I love stories which facilitate multiple readings - it is so unique in that aspect in that it does not evade ambiguity but celebrates multiple levels of meaning.

I have not given dates for updating because I hate dates. And since I'm still away for a fortnight it will be a while until I'm in a position to prepare posting anything to AO3 as that is my last editing process - I will have Firefox and my word processing document side by side with the prepared HTML code as I do a last final read through and make sure everything is nicely formatted. I'll do that a few times.

I have no idea why anybody would read my stories. That is of course frankly absurd. I don't want to think about it too hard. In some ways people being kind to me is a lot harder than people being mean. I am barely fit for living. I just don't know how to say thank you enough, and I don't deserve it, and I feel so pathetic because it feels so rare and precious and people don't understand how much that means to me - there's this part of me that bruises at the fact most normal people give and receive that type of admiration or affection all the time, and to me it is like water in the desert.

Well, to end this happily I have so many original fiction projects I'm in an embarrassment of riches. I have stories that will take me years to get through so I am ordering them in priority and in terms of research scale that will be necessary to undertake. I think it's extremely valuable to have a writerly identity that exists separately from fandom. So I suppose that is an update. I am very trying.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-09-23

I have a normal number of tabs open

Listening: Went to a metal show I knew nothing about because my partner was going and I figured it would be a good way to hear what they're into.

Nest of Plagues is a Hungarian outfit, which I liked a fair amount. Bad mix from their sound engineer but otherwise fun. I have no idea what any of the songs they played are so here's a random one:

Next up, Lone Survivors, a French prog metal group. Really fun, great bass

Then Science of Decay, Swiss group. Probably the most consistently good.

And the headliners who were Orphaned Land, an Israeli pan-religious peace themed band? Bizzare on many levels. What is the point of non-blasphemous metal.

Pretty good show all around, I'm not a huge metalhead so other than like "pretty good, some of this is nice" I have very little to say.

Reading: A Desolation Called Peace which is a delicious little thing. A really different book from Memory, and makes very efficient use of its scenes to handle a lot of information very deftly.

It's a bold move to do the like, barest intimations of a relationship in book one, ends with a single kiss. Book two: starts with them deeply estranged on the other side of the galaxy from each other, midpoint fucking, endpoint ???????.

The Eight Antidote scenes are clever! The sanitized self-concept of the empire in this one kid. There's a bit about the "Atrocities Teixcalaan had smartly given up committing" it's such a great line

Watching: Finished Mobile Suit Gundam. which was interesting and educational for multiple things, for one just as a reference for a bunch of other media I've consumed.

I want to compare it a little to Avatar, which is good but suffers heavily from the constraints of being a Western Children's Show, Gundam is a toy advert like Transformers but it doesn't feel the need to lean into "here is your moral lesson of the week" stuff so it can do some really thoughtful storytelling about war and duty.

The instrumentalization of the whole White Base Crew where they're just taken on as an expendable force by Earth is so great because it keeps them at a distance from both sides while still putting them on A Side.

The Newtype stuff towards the end both focuses the story and sort of weakens it? It moves you away from the drama and struggle of the crew into building this universe lore.

I'm probably going to jump ahead to Witch from Mercury and then maybe watch some of the past seasons.

Making: Some abortive microscope stuff, ran into weird power issues, need to fix that. Fiddling with VR projects but nothing meaningful, I wanted to try and work on some 3D curve visualization stuff but I mostly got bogged down remembering how VR on Linux works again.

Playing: Fell off Tactical Breach Wizards but I'm back, pushing through the final act. It's going well and I'm getting Rion under me, he's pretty finicky at times but very powerful.

Tools and Equipment: A consideration for you: if you have weird neck pain check your pillow. Ever since my partner spent a few nights at my place they found their neck pain gone because I use good normal pillows made of firm foam rather than bullshit sad feather sacks that compress down to one centimeter thick and do fuck-all for your neck. I do not know who thought down pillows was a good idea, stop doing that. You need to keep your neck supported!

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I still get a bit lost in my new gig — at WillowTree — as a React Native/TypeScript dev. The syntax is making more sense and getting easier to follow, but, I do have a difficult time understanding the errors produced by yarn ts:check. It’s the same each time I learn a new language.

I’m also developing an interest in Rust. That’ll have to be a part time interest for a long time I suppose. I have more important business to attend to. 😃

Onward!

Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

Shareshot is an iOS app that transforms how you share iPhone and iPad screenshots

A friend of mine, Marc Palmer, is part of the duo who created Shareshot! It is, as always, absolutely beautiful, full featured, and stable.

If I’m not too lazy moving forward I should use it to make screenshots for Stream blog posts and the like.

Congratulations, Marc! 🥳

Andrew Carter • WillowTree Blog

Mobile app interactivity, multimodal voice technology, and AI are all converging with Apple Intelligence — Apple’s new artificial intelligence feature set announced at this year’s WWDC, coming soon with iOS 18 (maybe in October). And the secret sauce powering those awesome interactions is something called App Intents.

Andrew is pretty legendary in the halls of WillowTree. So damned smart and witty, and he plays a mean fiddle and banjo.

Anywho, go give his piece on App Intents a gander, you might learn a thing or two.

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Austin Dillon has been stripped of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff eligibility that came with his victory at Richmond Raceway.

Austin Dillion looked great all night. I don’t recall how many laps he lead but it was a lot. He was two laps short of victory when a late caution came out.

On the restart he was beat off the line by Joey Lagano and fell into second place.

I wanted to see Mr. Dillion win so badly. He hasn’t had a win in a couple years and Richard Childress Racing needed one but the way he did it was not great.

He kept the win but was stripped of his points and playoff berth. They should’ve disqualified him and given the win to Legano, if I’m being honest about my feelings.

Scharon Harding • Ars Technica

Sonos is laying off about 100 people, the company confirmed on Wednesday. The news comes as Sonos is expecting to spend $20 to $30 million in the short term to repair the damage from its poorly received app update.

It’s incredible how much an app redesign can make or break an application or company.

Another critically acclaimed podcasting app called Overcast was also redesigned and released recently. It too has had a very difficult time with its subscribers. Lots of one star reviews and hate.

Rewrites can kill companies. Don’t do it. Evolve your code over time. Think of it as a Ship of Theseus.

Tasha Robinson • Polygon

Ryan Reynolds had very specific tech (and humor) requirements for Wolverine’s corpse

I still haven’t see the new Deadpool but I really want to. Deadpool’s obsession with Wolverine is funny as heck and I’m here for it. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are hysterical.

Juan José López Jaimez and Meador Inge • Google Bug Hunters

In a throwback to the past, this blog post takes us on a journey back to a time when eBPF was a focal point in the realm of kernel security research. In this update, we recount the discovery of CVE-2023-2163, a vulnerability within the eBPF verifier, what our root-cause analysis process looked like, and what we did to fix the issue.

Fresh off the heels of the Crowdstrike fiasco we get a story of how Google engineers found vulnerabilities in a Linux technology that allows for similar extensions to the OS. Similar in desired outcome, not in implementation.

Matthias Endler

Quite a few websites are unusable by now because they got “optimized for Chrome.” Microsoft Teams, for example, and the list is long. These websites fail for no good reason.

Chrome has definitely become the new Internet Explorer in a way. Devs have become lazy and don’t code for the open web, they’re coding against a specific browser. Not good. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Stan Alcorn • Rest of World

How Spotify started — and killed — Latin America’s podcast boom

What Spotify has done is not podcasting if it doesn’t allow any podcast player to subscribe to a feed. That’s part of what makes a podcast a podcast. What they’ve done is something that needs a new name.

Lately I’ve heard some podcasts announce ad free versions available on Apple Podcasts, which is also just as bad as Spotify’s locked up audio thing.

Please, don’t do this, keep your podcast a podcast and find a better way to create subscriptions. Others have done it. You can too.

Patreon

Apple is requiring that Patreon switch to their iOS in-app purchase system starting this November, or risk being removed from the App Store. Here’s what’s coming, and what you can do about it.

My opinion on this is simple.

If they really believe in creators Patreon should abandon their iOS App in favor of a really great mobile experience on their website.

Liam Proven • The Register

Before WordPerfect, the most popular work processor was WordStar. Now, the last ever DOS version has been bundled and set free by one of its biggest fans.

It’s not surprising how many fans of WordStar exist. Many of them are novelists and columnists. The best of the best writers in the world. Of course they’re most likely of a certain ventage, if you know what I mean? 😂

I started as a BASIC programmer and used WordStar as my editor until I discovered Brief. True story.

David Edwards • Raw Story

Judge Chutkan faces call to seize Trump’s passport after threat to flee to Venezuela

Can Judge Chutkan do the opposite and encourage Trump to move to Venezuela, now? That would solve a lot of problems with the upcoming election and help preserve democracy.

It would be a great service to the country. 🇺🇸

Rex Huppke • USA TODAY

Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.

I listened to it for a few minutes and the Orange Man sounded like Sylvester the cat!

Sufferin’ Suckatash! 😋

[eightwholebreads]

LaMulana review thing

Old style ruins explorer with an emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving? Yes please! I really love the slightly tedious start to the game that forces you to read the instructions. I like the note taking. The first 3 or so main areas? Brilliant! Lots of secret-feeling side areas. Lots of little things and secrets to discover. Yes! (the rest of this review is complaining) and then I got to the flipside areas. On their own an okay idea but now the number of areas in the game has doubled. Is this a good thing? I don't think so. When you get to the point of making a sub-boss gauntlet I'm going to tell you to stop.

The exact point the game fell apart for me was with the inferno cavern boss. (Okay the gate of illusion was fucking annoying but it felt like it was meant to be like that) Quite simply its bugged on linux in a way that makes it significantly harder. I was determined to solve the game on my own but I really really hate boss fights and I couldn't get this guy down to even half health without looking up how to get the most powerful weapon available to me. Eventually I managed to beat him almost entirely by luck. I think he's the main reason my steam playtime vs in-game playtime is so different (72.8 hours vs 22:30 hours). After all that what's left is a wide area that needs to be explored with at least 10 hours difference between me playing the game I actually want and me playing a bugged boss fight.

The game then becomes looking for a needle in a haystack for that one hint you need for this one area somewhere completely different. "Oh but you should have been taking notes!" Short of writing out every tablet and speech and then ticking them off as you use them, I really don't think there's a way around this.

But I pressed on because I knew if I stopped I'd forget what I was meant to be doing.

And then I was away for 2 weeks.

And now I don't want to go back into the game because I forgot what I was meant to be doing except now I have to defeat a boss that was hidden behind like 10 sub-bosses.

It simply stopped being fun.

(Maybe I'll retry some day but the viy bossfight will absolutely put a stop to that....)

[tobiasvonberlin]

Sometimes i like to say "did i stutter" when I say something (because the answer is usually yes, i did stutter) i just see it as funny with close friends but if i like BARELY KNOW YOU and we arent close like that you have no right to make fun of me or my stutter i was in cyberpatriots one day (nerd linux shit) and there was a kid next to me who tried to finish my sentences AND THAT MF LIKE SMIRKED AT ME??? HE TURNED TO ME AND WAS LIKE heh.... WITH HIS FACE i wanted to slap him so hard but i jsut said for him to stop talking and he did Also i agree, i dont like it when people say "oh i have a stutter too" (whenever they dont have like a speech impediment) to try to relate to me because like no you do not have a stutter you just stutter sometimes when your nervous when a lot of people do maybe come back to me whenever you can barely fuckin pronounce olive garden bro

Is it common for people to make fun of your stutter? i feel like since im like outgoing people just dont really notice it/dont bring it up (altho my stutter does exaggerate itself sometimes when meeting new people) I didnt always have a stutter, i developed it when i was really young (like in elementary school), but we dont really know why (we being my family) it formed My parents think its because i moved from my moms house to my dads house and that stressed me out? but id ont really remember being stressed. I know i wasnt born with the stutter but ive definitely had it for my (relevant) parts of my life and sometimes its like its barely there and other times i cant get a word out without crumbling to the ground metaphorically

I have a question for you (since i dont really get to meet much people with a stutter)

when you speak are you able to "feel" when a stutter is gonna happen on a word and try to change your wording around to avoid it?

and

when you speak does your stutter sometimes come out as just little pauses instead of the normal going like st-st-st or s-s-s or somethign like that?

being disabled (specifically having a diagnosed stutter), and being extremely extroverted and opinionated, is SO funny, because ALL of my 4 electives this year are:

Musical Theater

Speech and Debate

Student Council

and Cafeteria Aid.

NOW what do all these have in common? If you said constantly speaking, you would be right !! Especially with speech and debate, which prides itself on fluency. I may be cooked this year, but I’m cooking in style </3

ANYWAY no I am not doing more speech therapy to change how I speak, I was diagnosed at age 9 with a stutter and went thru 2 years of speech therapy, 5 years later and it has barely gotten “better”, but idrc because I make important and valid points, and just because of my disability DOES NOT mean they shouldn’t be heard </3

THIS DOES MEAN I HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO THE JUDGES AND TOURNENMENTS THTA I HAVE A DIAGNOSED STUTTER AND TO ASK THEM NOT TO TAKE OF POINTS FOR NOT BEING FLUENT </3

[fckwritersblock]

Protection Forever - William Lennox

Lennox x Reader

Description: Running into an old flame at the worst possible time.

Warning: nah. Bad writing? Kinda. Unedited because I was excited. I’ll not when it’s been fixed. Somethings may not be fully aligned with the movie but I tried 😩

Word count: 2500+

Dedicated to @merakiaes hey fren!

All gifs from @meragifs too!

You were an EMT.

The two of you pulled up to meet with the other Autobots, you exiting the vehicle before he transformed. You were in awe as he and the rest of the cars all changed.

The biggest one, their leader, gave a rundown of everything that was happening once he confirmed Sam’s identity. This was just a recap for you as Ratchet had already explained. The teenage boy just stood there stuttering not really knowing how to process everything and you frowned again. That was when you really took notice of two teens just standing there. Having known what was expected of Sam Witwicky you frowned slightly.

“I don’t know about this Ratchet, he’s just kid.” You commented to the alien you had formed a quick bond with.

“And who might you be?” The one called Optimus inquired.

You gave him your name before the other yellow autobot, who you’d later learned was Bumble Bee, uttered something through his radio. It was hard for you to hear but the other robots seemed to be use to it as Ratchet responded immediately.

“The human. I like her.” Ratchet sounding irritated.

Bumblebee made another comment and right before Ratchet could respond one of the others chimed in.

“Wait why do they get humans?” Jazz asked incredulously. “I want one too!”

“Enough! Humans are not pets.” The one call Optimus Prime stated sternly, clearly tired of their bickering. You held your laugh, highly amused.

They were like siblings. A family.

“Exactly I’m just here to help and be a better tour guide than these kids can be.” You confirmed practically forcing your services on them. “Besides they need adult supervision. From the looks of it, you all do.” You grinned at everyone around you. Optimus gave a nod, agreeing.

“She stays. Let’s move.”

In that short amount of time things moved rather quickly. You watched the Autobots accidentally destroy Sam’s backyard when attempting to retrieve the glasses, you were all arrested, you escaped thanks to the Autobots, only to be arrested again.

Fail.

Finally you ended it some secret base. How get you weren’t alone. The government had apparently been on a roll with kidnapping civilians who “knew too much “.

Things weren’t going great but quickly went left when the Decepticons, the Autobot rivals, came to retrieve Megatron.

A war from another planet had officially made Earth its battleground.

You were nervous, trying to figure out how to calm everything down before things started to escalate. Nobody was going to get anywhere with all the bickering. That’s when you saw him.

It had been what? Two years?

Still, without even knowing it, without even knowing you were present, he was still able to make your heart be slow and fast at the same time. The army had aged him, but for the better making him all the more attractive but you couldn’t focus on that right now. Especially when you heard:

“The cryogenic system is failing! We're losing NBE One!”

All the soldiers begin to pack everything that they could to prepare in a fight the way they always did. It was an mirable the way Linux game orders in his men took them without a second thought. The trust there.

“That’s good. Get all the ammo you got.”

“Everything you can carry. Bring it.”

Tearing your eyes away from your former lover you grab Sam.

“Come on, we need Bee.” You reminded him, nodding in Simmons direction

“You got to take me to my car.” Sam said, then repeated when he was ignored. “You have to take me to my car. He’s gonna know what to do with the Cube.”

“Your car? It's confiscated.”

“Then unconfiscate it.” You stared blankly.

“We do not know what will happen if we let it near this thing! -“

“You don't know.”

“Maybe you know, but I don't know.”

You rolled your eyes at the insufferable mans rambling.

This was really was more about ego who was in control more than anything. The guy running the ship, clearly was on a power trip. Unfortunately for him he was facing off against soldiers . The Captain who’s eyes you could feel staring at the side of your face.

A Captain and his soldiers. Ones that really dont like to lose and take serving their country seriously.

The guy who arrested you earlier continue to argue with Sam about getting him back to bumblebee when Lennox finally pulled out his gun sick of the back-and-forth.

“Take him to his car!”

As soon as he did so all hell broke loose and everyone from both parties pulled out a weapon.

“Drop it!”

It wasn’t until One of the sector seven agents pointed a gun at the back of Will’s head that you disable to another agent and took his gun and pointed it directly and held it directly at the one pointing the gun at your ex.

“I really wouldn’t.” You warned.

You were no soldier, but Will have taught you plenty before you broke up. So did your brother, before he passed away. He actually served alongside Will but died in combat. Biking. That’s part of why you were so hurt when Will re-enlisted. When he got promoted to Captain and chose the army over you. You were terrified of losing him the way you lost your brother. The break up wasn’t that messy but you both said things you didn’t mean. In attempts to mask your own pain and hurt one another.

You know. Hurt people, hurt people.

It’s still came to no surprise that you put a bullet in someone to protect him. Together or not you’d never let anything happen to him.

“I'm ordering you under S-Seven executive jurisdiction-“ Simmons ranted.

“S-Seven don't exist.” You interjected, earning a quick appreciative glance from Will.

“Right. And we don’t take orders from people that don’t exist.”

“I’m gonna count to 5. Okay-“ Simmons attempted to threat yet again.

“Well, I’m gonna count to three.” Will deadpanned.

You knew that look. God did you know that look and it was so wrong that you were so turned on.

Finally the Secretary of defense interfered telling Simmons to do what was being asked of him. Everyone relaxed slight, weapons lowering.

“Y/n,”

“Captain.”

The Captain and couldn’t help but watch you how do you get up and prepare to go.

“So that’s her huh?” Epps commented as Will watched you run off with Sam.

“Yeah..” Will answered, mind racing.

While he knew he’d eventually see you again, he didn’t think it would be like this. You looked breath taking.

“Damn. Shorty had your back that entire time.”

“Gear up,”

“What I’m just saying I thought she was gonna put a cap in his.” Epps shouted after his Captain receiving no response.

Will knew you had his back, you always would, the same way he would always have yours. He thought of you often, the break up between two inescapable, never feeling like he did the right thing. You were always not too far from the front of his mind. Him wondering how you were doing. If you were happy. If you found somebody else. There was no doubt he regretted what had transpired between the two of you. It was his fault. He knew that. You knew that. He had ample opportunity to fight for you and he didn’t. When he was promoted Captain he felt he had to choose between you and the army. He didn’t choose you the way he should’ve. In reality he could’ve had both. However hr so caught up proven himself to his deadbeat dad that he possibly let the best thing that ever happened to him go.

Not to mention trying to atone for your brothers death. It wasn’t his fault, but he still couldn’t shake it. So without talking to you he reenlisted. Needless to say where that got him.

Now hear the both of you were in the middle of an alien war. Yeah. This is the last place he thought he’d see you.

You were numb. The battle on the highway enough to freak you out. For mommy, just a moment you thought this might be a dream but no. This is all very real. One minute you guys were just entering the city trying to lay low, next thing you know - BOOM! The explosion knocked all of you over, injuring some, killing a few. Bumblebee’s legs were partially blown off.

Getting up off the pavement you waited for the ringing in your ear to subside as you stood up, trying to study yourself when you felt a pair of arms hold you still.

You knew it was Will just by the way he touched you, you blinked hard trying not to go down memory lane.

“Are you okay?” The concern in his voice was enough to make your heart skip a bear.

“Yeah,” you nodded slowly. “Yeah I’m fine.”

Slowly you removed yourself from his grip and went to check on Sam and Mikaela. Ratchet on the other hand -

“Hmm. His pheromone levels are-“ you quickly turned on him and glared.

“Ratchet I’ll turn you into a can opener if you don’t shut the hell up.”

The robot nearly held his hands up in the surrendering position as he followed you. Will had arranged an aircraft to pick up Sam and the cube while everyone else defended themselves against the deceptive cons in a hurry to get the cube far far away before Megatron arrived. Sam was in a panic and so Michaela, you could see Will’s short fuse getting ready to exploded. It was then you decided to be an escort.

“Sam, you can’t do this alone.” Michaela fussed.

“He won’t be alone.” You commented, causing all parties involved to look at you.

“I’m going with you.” You declared.

“No.” Will didn’t even hesitated as he stepped closer to you.

“Captain Lennox-“

“No!” You grabbed him by the front of his beer and pushed him back.

“Do you see what going on out there?!” You continued to hold on to him and you yelled at him over there chose. “We’re at a war. One we are extremely ill prepared for. So get your shit together! Sam is my responsibility. I have to get this kid to safety.”

This time your hands slid up the side of his face forcing him to look at you.

“Y/n..” he breathed out leaning down toward you, and for the first time during all this madness you could visibly see he was afraid.

“I’ll be back, Will.” You assured him, briefly resting your forehead against his.

Gathering himself he pulled away, looking toward Sam then back at you.

“Go. Go!”

And then we were running.. With nothing but an M16 strapped to your back and the pistol in your hand, you ran faster than you ever have before.

The four of you were under attack once more, you and Sam doing what you had to, to avoid getting snatched up as a fight Ironhide and Ratchet defended you. Unfortunately you were too close to one of the cars that went up in flames and you were thrown into another car from the blast.

“Y/n!” You could feel the blood on your forehead as you slowly pushed yourself up. As you tried to stand you immediately stopped feeling the pain in your thigh. Looking down could see the damage that had been done. The blood surrounding the afflicted area.

“Wha- what, what do i do?!” Sam asked frantically once he took notice of your injury.

“You gotta keep going Sam. I’ll be fine.”

He stood fo his feet, unsure of what to do. When Ironhide told him the same thing.

“Go!” You screamed once more.

Sam left and continued to run without you as you, as quickly as possible, as you tore your focus away from him to pull the shard of glass in your leg out. Ripping a piece of your shirt off you tightly tied it around your thigh in order to stop the bleeding. There was no point in going forward now but the return back to everyone else and help them fight.

You just had to avoid getting killed in the process.

You seen a car steering wheel, a Mountain Dew vending machine and and Xbox all turn into one of those freaky ass robots right before your eyes. All of which you helped others fight off. It was so surreal. In fact, if it wasn’t for the constant ringing in your ear from all the explosions you definitely think you were dreaming. You almost made it back to Lennox and his men when another Decepticon stood between between you and your destinations. They were definitely taking a beating. You saw Epps shooting a green laser indicating the robot that doubled as a helicopter wasn’t a friendly and decided to do what you could to keep the Decepticon from getting any closer to them and hurting any more civilians. In an attempt to draw it away from everyone else, you begin to fire your weapon giving it everything you had.

Unfortunately, the side effective taking its attention off the others meant putting the attention on you.

You ran trying to duck and dodge a bullets now directed your way.

But Will. Will’s heart dropped. Seeing you there defending yourself alone. His pause was brief, the air forces plan already in motion, before he started the motorcycle and was speeding in your direction.

“William!” You screamed for him fearfully as he drove straight toward the robot.

The only thing you could hear was your heartbeat pounding in your ears. You almost couldn’t breathe, you don’t remember the last time you ever felt so scared in your life. But it wasn’t your life you feared for was it?

He rushed forward and slid under the robot continuing to firing the launcher. All you could do was watch as he drove toward you. Toward the danger your mind wondering if he did that on a regular basis. Was this the life of a soldier? What he went through day after day when he was deployed?

Standing up he only spared the parts of the dismembered robot a glance before shouting and turning looking for you. In a matter of seconds he was standing directly in front of you and pulling you into his arms.

Relief.

There was nothing like physically being about to touch someone, hold someone to really know they were okay.

“So…” you began, suddenly feeling nervous. “...That was hot-“

Before you were able to get another word in, he captured your lips with his kissing you roughly and bringing you closer, hands on the small of your back. You couldn’t help it kiss him back just as fiercely put in every emotion you had into that kiss.

Every ounce of passion he had in body, put into this kiss, your lips just as soft, kiss just as pure as he remembered. When you kissed, he knew he was a goner and could never let you go again.

It has been two years since the last time you guys have been this close. This intimate. Reconnected. The feeling it gave you, the indescribable feeling, was one neither one of you ever wanted to forgo again. Pulling back slowly, you both had smiles on your faces, Will pulling you closer to plant a kiss on your forehead.

“Excuse me,” Epps interrupted.

The both of you turning your attention on him.

“As cute as this shit is it’s highly inappropriate in the middle of the battle. I’m just saying we are trying to stay alive and shit.”

———————————————

Oh my fu- I don’t even know what this isssss

Couldn’t tell you what my original ideas was or nothing. I believed this was going to short-

I enjoyed writing it though! Shoutout again to @merakiaes for being on this lennox train with me lol

I’m just....I’m just gonna leave this mess here.

Bye

- Mo

—————————-

Tags: @merakiaes @lilythemadqueen

[b3balancedsims]

Alright I don't own the game yet. I might need to buy a windows computer. I use Linux. I want it to work via steam.

Background:

I played simcity long ago along with the sims 1 and 2 in college. I had children started a few businesses, got a divorce. Just life stuff. A few months ago my 13 year old son discovered he could get the sims 4 on his 11 year old brothers Xbox.

Down the rabbit hole I leapt. It is winter so not much to do but watch YouTube. I started with my old fave pleasant sims because we have similar play styles. I was thinking I might have build wars with my son.

After watching sims 4 videos for like two hours I was over it. I was more interested in the sims 3 open world. I vaguely remembered being excited for its release. But then I got married and had some kids. You know, I got side tracked.

In the beginning:

I played an uberhood in sims 2. I loved how all the playable families got to know each other plus I didn't have to marry too many townies. My goal was to get everyone related by the tenth generation. I made it to six before real life.

Sims 3 seemed so perfect except no open for business, as I loved interacting with the customers, it was my favorite part of the game. Hey I am a home based business owner in real life so it was the best in sims 2 hands down. Granted sims 3 has a less hands on version, which will allow more time to do other things, I think I will love Sims 3 more.

Hail great modder simstatedude.

I initially wanted to go back to sims2 but the open world was calling me. Story progression is awesome from what I can see. All the mod creators have outdone themselves. Now I can afford to pay you all. EA is not worthy

So after going back and forth between should I go back to the Sims 2 or should I play The Sims 3 I finally landed on I want the open world in The Sims 3 bugs be damned. Plus of course I haven't had a Windows computer in about 15 years so I just realized that my ultimate collection through origin won't launch anymore and I really don't feel like going through all of that to make it work. Maybe one day long long in the future when I decide that you know, since I paid for that game like six times, I want to play it again.

I have all the files!!! And discs!!!

I'll just play The Sims 3. But I need my uberworld. I have searched high and low on the internet and I have not discovered an Uber world that comprises all of The Sims2 hoods. I found large custom worlds that had all of the terrain that would allow me to have all of the hoods in one place but they didn't actually look the way that I wanted them to. Then I found Tedhi's Tumblr after I looked at one of her YouTube videos and as a construction manager myself, I really enjoyed her architectural style. We have similar ideas on planning builds and worlds. When I saw her new pleasant view video, it was just like she was in my head and added a few things, like her pool I never thought of, that's what I wanted.

Now when it comes to the Sims 2 world and having all of the premade Sims, Pleasant Sims was in my head. I don't think I will have the time to recreate them all but I want a place for all the Sims 3 versions to move to in order to play out their stories.

I took pleasant Sims idea on how the military base is up on the ridge and I was like oh this is perfect that's where I can have strange town, veronaville, and riverblossom hills. You know Verona ville is a mythical town so it would be perfect to have it up there next to strangetown as if the aliens terraformed the area created some test tube Sims and let them grown as they observed them. Riverblossom hills has the bridge that connected to the top of another mountain and I was like oh my goodness Blue water village has that large mountain at the tip of the peninsula that it sets on and my brain just went crazy as the map puzzle pieces fell into place. I was like oh my goodness I could literally have all 7-8 hoods, to some degree, in one place. Obviously I'm not going to make them as big as they were initially meant to be because I don't want to have like 80 billion lots in one Hood but I could have that feel of all of those lots like Tedhi did. she made pleasant view with a couple of extra lots in it but she had the most important ones so I want to have the feel of those neighborhoods like the strange town crater and have it be like arid and desert cuz it's going to be on top of a mountain obviously and then Verona ville is going to be where the fairies live cuz I mean they were honestly fairies in the first place. I don't have any idea what it's going to look like in CAW but right now I think I'm going to have the two Bridges I'm going to have what I'm going to call crater falls coming from strange town crater through veronaville since it has that River and it's going to go past River blossom hills to make the waterfall between the two Bridges.

I was initially going to call it SimCity but then I figured that would be copyrighted so I decided well two Bridges and a waterfall - Twin Bridge Falls.

I did a search online and I haven't found anything that says twin bridge falls so I was like let me put this up here on the internet as public notification of copyright, before somebody comes up with it and then my world will be lost forever to oblivion. This Tumblr is going to document my foray into building Two Bridge Falls for The Sims 3. My Uber world homage to The Sims 2.

[the-shitpost-typewriter]

No, Richard, it's 'Linux', not 'GNU/Linux'. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation. Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ.

One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS -- more on this later). He named it 'Linux' with a little help from his friends. Why doesn't he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff -- including the software I wrote using GCC -- and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don't want to be known as a nag, do you? (An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title 'GNU/Linux' (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.

Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn't the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you've heard this one before. Get used to it. You'll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it. You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.

Last, I'd like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn't be fighting among ourselves over naming other people's software. But what the heck, I'm in a bad mood now. I think I'm feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn't you and everyone refer to GCC as 'the Linux compiler'? Or at least, 'Linux GCC'? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD? If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this: Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux' huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don't be a nag.

Ah, here we go, an even longer pasta.

I'll get to this eventually, but it might be a while. I'll make the other post first, and add this stuff in a reblog of that one.

[system76]

Thelio Massive at the Lab: An interview with Luca Della Santina

Every now and then we like to check in on our customers to find out about what coolness they’re up to. This week, we sat down with Luca Della Santina, an assistant professor at UCSF in the Department of Ophthalmology, to see what he and his Thelio Massives are discovering at the lab.

What kind of work goes on in the Department of Ophthalmology?

Everything we do is focused on the eye and on vision. I am also part of the Bakar Institute, which is a computational institute specializing in machine learning and deep learning applied to health sciences. The lab that I run is divided between working on computational approaches, mainly image analysis.

What projects are you working on right now?

One major current project is detecting an infection of the eye called trachoma. Trachoma is an infection that affects the inside of the eyelid. It usually occurs in countries below the tropics, and it’s a major cause of blindness for people across the world—except for in wealthy countries like the US where it’s very rare. Eliminating it elsewhere is a major goal of the World Health Organization. Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania still have many cases, so we’re taking photographs of the afflicted eyelid to look at the sites where bacteria has infected the eye. Then we use deep learning to detect it automatically to help public health experts decide which communities will require antibiotic treatment.

We’re also taking images of neurons in the eyes and map the connection between them, called synapses, to study how degenerative diseases of the eye such as glaucoma can alter the wires between neurons. Knowing which neurons are the most susceptible to disease will shine a light on new and more sensitive tests to catch these blinding diseases before they can actually cause major vision loss. This type of research generates really large data sets, in which each image is large many gigabytes and for which the analysis is very computationally intensive, both for the GPU and the CPU.

How long have you been using System76 workstations for your projects?

We started to use System76 systems two years ago, give or take. It was part of setting up my computational lab. One of the goals was to have a completely open a stack, and your workstations were an integral part of this strategy.

What is the computational stack you’re using?

We have the Thelio Massives configured for deep learning and for processing large image data. One of the systems has NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 GPUs for training larger models than we usually do. In the other system, we have it configured with dual CPUs and dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Tis. The reason for that is that some of the computational work is being developed with parallel computing, both on GPUs and CPUs. The more cores and the more CPUs we get this on, the better.

How do you balance workloads between the CPUs and GPUs?

Strictly for the projects I’m on, they’re each about as important. All of the machine learning runs off the GPU right now, but all of the basic image analysis and parallel computing actually works off the CPU. The reason for the latter is there’s no significant advantage to push that work onto a GPU. There are a few algorithms that we cannot parallelize on the GPU because of the way they are designed, and one of these is actually pretty fundamental in the way we segment images, so if we put it on the GPU there is not much increase in speed because we cannot push it onto every core of the GPU. For most of it, we need the raw power of the CPU.

What were the determining factors when you decided to go with System76 and our Thelio Massives?

A few things. We wanted a system that was designed to run Linux from its foundations. There are not a lot of systems like yours, so that was a major factor in our choice. We also wanted a system that we could expand easily in the future, and we found out that the Thelio Massive has has great expandability.

The most important factor for me was being able to double or triple the RAM somewhere down the line, and maybe have another couple of GPUs in the system. Having storage options is useful for us because we may generate a dataset and on a single 4TB hard drive, so the ability to just pop out and pop in hard drives is very easy. It’s actually huge for us. I ended up buying a bunch of 5TB drives and just packed them in. Most of the small stuff we just run off of the NVMe drive, and that’s much better than the rest of the storage we have.

I really enjoy how quiet these machines are! I can testify that we’re sharing the same room with another computer from a different vendor with similar components, and it’s about 10 times louder than the Thelio Massives.

What operating system do you use?

So far we’ve been keeping both Thelio Massives on Pop!_OS. The other workstation we have in the lab is either Ubuntu or Windows.

How has Pop!_OS been for you?

The software pipeline we use runs out of the box pretty well on Pop!_OS, so that’s not been an issue so far. I appreciate that you guys have full disk encryption out of the box.

We’ve also heard you’re thinking about buying a Lemur Pro. What made you consider that machine?

I need something that’s light that I can bring around with me. It’s also got a good number of ports, which lately has been hard to find on a laptop, which frees me up from having to carry dongles on my trips. I can also configure it up to 40GB of RAM, and I need at least 32GB, so that’s perfect for me.

Would you like to share how System76 has improved workflow for you and your organization? Contact myriah@system76.com to set up an interview!

[avengerscompound]

Small Gods: Lost Objects - 1

Lost Objects:  A Thor Fanfic

Lost Objects Masterlist | More Small Gods

Buy me a ☕  Character Pairing:  Thor x F!Reader

Rating:  E

Word Count:  1831

Warnings: Angst, PTSD, Grief (smut on series)

Synopsis: Thor has lost a lot in a very short period of time and he’s worried about losing himself too.  He goes to the one person who understands loss.

A/N: Reader is a minor god. 

Chapter 1

Thor was lost.

He had been for a while now, though it was hard to measure.  Partially because he had lived such a long, long time and most of it had gone by without much disrupting his enjoyment or general world view and then all at once it was just one thing after another and he couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath.

Perhaps it had begun to lose himself back when his father had first banished him to Midgard.  He had certainly felt lost for a while there, but usually, he looked back at that as the start of finding who he truly was.  Becoming worthy of Mjolnir and meeting Jane had been so significant, even when he had been forced to destroy the Bifrost and watched his brother fall to what he had thought was his death, Thor has still felt himself.

After that, it was one thing after another.  A barrage of pain and loss and he couldn’t keep up with it.  His mother, his brother, his relationship, his father, Mjolnir, his friends, his planet, his brother again, half of the universe, more of his friends.  Somewhere in all that loss and grief and guilt, he’d lost his direction and that core feeling of who he was, and he didn’t know what to do so he could stop feeling all this pain.

Then, in one single moment of clarity, he thought of you.

Midgard was not a world of gods.  Gods would visit, of course, Thor himself favored the small blue planet, but the line between science and magic was large, and rarely were gods born on the planet.

Yet sometimes the magic would seep through.  Maidardians liked to pray even when they didn’t know they were.  They would wish for certain things or give worship to them.  If enough did, then a god would be born.  They were minor deities and rarely held much power.  Yet they served their function and grew with the population's devotion.

None were prayed to quite as often as you.

You were not an easy person to track down.  Thor knew that he had to find you in the last place he looked or else it would be not at all.

So he started at the finish.  Going to the last conceivable place on the planet you might find a minor deity and announcing loudly that he would give up looking after trying the small cabin on the side of the hill.  Just as he put his hand on the door handle it swung open and he was greeted by you.

Along with the cable knit sweater that was three sizes too big, spotted with holes, and frayed at the hems, you wore a pair of jeans that were obviously someone’s favorite but based on the fit, that someone was not you.  You had a pair of mismatched socks on your feet, a single fingerless glove on your left hand, and a ring on every finger on your right, most of them the engagement variety.

You looked up at him and smiled.  “Thor,” you said warmly.  “Are you lost?”

He smiled, trying to put on the brave face he wore for everyone.  He was strong after all.  The strongest Avengers.  If he showed weakness, then he’d be someone who wasn’t Thor, the god of thunder.

“Yes,” he said.  “No.  That is… maybe.”

You stepped aside and he ducked his head under the door frame and entered your cottage.  It was impossibly large inside what had seemed like a tiny building.  It was cluttered in the sense that a hoarder who hadn’t left the house for fifty years except to bring more things in, is cluttered.  There were stacks of parcels that were addressed to other people, baskets full of socks that lacked a pair, toys, and pacifiers that looked sad and weathered, bowls sat on top of every flat surface full of jewelry in many shapes, sizes, and styles.

Thor wound his way through until he found a couch.  It had seen better days and he had to move a one-eyed teddy bear to take a seat.

“Can I get you a drink?  I have tea or coffee?  Not much else I’m afraid,” you offered.

“Coffee,” Thor said.  He wasn’t sure he really wanted it, but he was grateful for the opportunity to get his thoughts in order.

The sound of you puttering around in the kitchen was the only sound at all.  Thor thought of all the things he had lost and exactly why he had come here.  When you returned he still wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say.  You handed Thor a mug.  It was black with the silhouette of a penguin on it with the words ‘LINUX, open mind, open-source’ written on it.  You had a teacup, it was floral and had gold around the rim.

“The coffee is Kopi Luak,” you said as he took the mug from you.  “It was confiscated in New Zealand customs and ended up here.”

“Kopi Luak?”  Thor asked.

You shook your head and sat down beside him.  “The beans are passed through the stomach of an animal called a Civit before being harvested and roasted.  I can’t say I approve of the process, but I am limited to what passes through here,” you explained.  “Now, what is it you’ve lost?”

“My brother…”  Thor said, the word coming out quickly like it was determined to jump its place in his mental queue.

“Oh, Thor,” you said, putting your hand on his.  “I deal with lost things.  People?  They are above my jurisdiction.  The prayers for lost people are more for your realm than this one.”

Thor sagged and put his cup down.  He ran his hands through his hair the pain and frustration he felt almost overwhelming him.  “There’s been so much.  Too much.  My whole family.  My friends.  Asgard is gone.  I don’t know where to go or what to do.  I feel lost and I don’t know how to find my way back out.”

You took his hand.  His large palms dwarfed yours.  “Thor, I am a minor god,” you said.  “What you have been through is awful and if I could help I would, but I deal in socks and loose change.  Your identity is yours.  You still have it.  It’s here -“ you touched his forehead and moved your hand to his chest just above his heart.  “- and here.”

Tears pricked Thor’s eyes and he wiped them away in frustration. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

“That I can understand too well,” you said.  You wrapped your arms around him and very gradually he let himself sag into your arms.  “You are very young,” you said quietly.  “It is a large burden to carry.  Can I give you some advice?  I can’t promise it will be good.”

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking with the desperation he felt.

“Grieve, Thor,” you said.  “It isn’t weak to love people.  It isn’t weak to feel pain at their loss.  Let yourself have your sorrow.  Feel it.  Let it out.  I am a god on a planet of mortals.  I have lost more than has ever come to me.  They were your parents and your brother.  Your friends.  Your home.  You loved them all and now they are gone.  That is terrible.  It’s terrible, Thor.  They didn’t deserve that and neither did you.  Grieve.  Feel sad.  Cry.  Wail.  Scream.  If you don’t experience your grief, you lose more of yourself than you can possibly know.”

“I am the strong one,” Thor said.  “I can’t show such weakness.”

“There is nothing weak about experiencing your emotions,” you said gently, your fingers tangling into his hair and massaging his scalp.  “Besides, who do you need to be strong for now.  It is just me here, everyone else is gone.”

He wrapped a large arm around your lap and he started to cry.  It started small and silent, his tears just running down his cheek as he pressed his face into your lap.  Soon he was crying in big wracking sobs.  He cried for his mother and his father.  He cried for Loki.  For Jane.  He cried for Heimdal and Fandral and Volstagg.  For Asgard, the home where he grew up and had so many happy memories.  He cried for the people he couldn’t save and for the ones he did that he let down when he didn’t have the strength to lead them.  He cried for dwarves on Nidavellir and for Mjolnir the weapon they had forged him and was like a friend in of itself.  He cried for Natasha and Tony.  And for the fact that one day he would lose all the rest too.

You held him, never once telling him to quiet.  You just let him cry in your arms, your fingers moving over his scalp and caressing his hair.

As the tears slowed and then stopped he felt a strange sense of relief.  He didn’t feel better, but lighter perhaps.  He sat up and wiped his eyes.  “Thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for,” you assured him.  “Come; there is something I have which might interest you.”

You got up and he followed after you.  You led him past more parcels and piles of letters.  They started to appear yellowed with age and as he wound through the room the artifacts got older too.  Barrels of spice and coins from countries that no longer existed.  Looms of silks that had been damaged by saltwater.  You stopped at a table.  It was remarkably bare except for a piece of velvet draped over a small pile in the middle.  You lifted the plush fabric and revealed a pile of broken metal and what was clearly the handle of Mjolnir.  He knew it better than he knew himself. The length that was too short due to Loki’s meddling.  The intricate scrollwork on the cap that held the leather strap he used to keep hold of it.  The dark wood with the silver swirling up its length.  It was his hammer, broken but his.

“Each time you prayed that it could be returned more of it came to me.  There is still some missing but if you want you can stay.  Pray for it at night and I think together we can repair it,” you explained.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”  Thor asked as he ran his hand over Mjolnir’s handle.

“It would be an honor,” you said, putting your hand on his shoulder.  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had company and it’s never been from someone of your status.”

He turned and looked at you, a frown forming on his face as you smiled up at him.  “I am not a king.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” you said.  “But if you believe it is, then you are one step closer to finding what you’ve lost and I guess I can help after all.”

// NEXT

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[douchebagbrainwaves]

POST-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them. Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. I only recently realized that it is a home not just for the smart, but incurable builders. Whatever was going to study philosophy in college. But if you look, there are ways to decrease its effects. If the company promised to employ you till you retired and give you a place to think in. Why bother? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. Maybe, I suggested, he should buy some stock in this company. Even if you could get to work on what you like. And that is another area where undergrads have an edge. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.1

How when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium—which fails, and then start a startup while you're in college? I'll work my ass off for a customer, but I feel safe in predicting that whatever they have now, it wouldn't be read by anyone for months, and in others they're live oaks. Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the CEO.2 If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of last year.3 The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own. But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be the naughtier ones; the insiders have pretty much exhausted the motherhood and apple pie topics. And a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed.4 We can imagine will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. A poor student who could afford only rice was eating his rice while enjoying the delicious cooking smells coming from the food shop.

They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting. I don't like it.5 They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the world was like you'd find in a children's book, and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a good job. I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! Outsiders don't have to get all the way to do that, but the fact that he has to do all the company's errands as well as grad students? They've tried hard to make their offices less sterile than the usual cube farm. Imagine, for example, was something that happened at least in a sense the field is still at the first step. Why? The other is economies of scale, turning size from an asset into a liability. What do those users want? So which ones?

I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And though you can't see it, cosmopolitan San Francisco is 40 minutes to the north. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.6 So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no try. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated.7 Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I sat down and thought about what they have in common? Outsiders don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy. Ignorance can be useful when it's a counterweight to other forms of stupidity.

You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter how hard they try to measure, and to work together. I ever read it? It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the pond there are overlapping sets of ripples. When I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.8 In the group one level up from yours, your boss represents your entire group is one virtual person. In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. All humans find faces engaging—practically by definition: face recognition is in our DNA. Even hackers can't tell.

You're short of money, for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design. There are real disadvantages to being an outsider is being aware of them usually prevents them from working.9 Class projects will inevitably solve fake problems. You don't have to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that were pushing us together.10 If I were you I'd look for the next invading army. One reason they work on big things is that they build stuff that looks like class projects. And when you're part of an exalted tradition, like the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog.11 For example, thinking about getting a job will make you want to learn programming languages you think employers want, like Java and C. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious.

Notes

But he got there by another path.

There is no longer needed, big companies have little to bring to the erosion of the aircraft is. No.

Jones, A. We think of ourselves as investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power.

Why does society foul you? FreeBSD and stored their data in files. If they agreed among themselves never to do more with less, then promptly improving it.

To a 3 year old to get fossilized. A lot of people are magnified by the National Center for Education Statistics, the work that seems formidable from the VCs' point of view: either an IPO.

Did you know about this from personal experience than anyone, writes: I'd argue that the VCs should be deprived of their core values is Don't be evil, they tend to say that was basically useless, but this would be to write a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not a programmer would find it was one of the bizarre stuff. Something similar has been around as long as the average reader that they either have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit adds: Paul Buchheit for the most accurate mechanical watch, the top schools are, and Windows, respectively.

You have to spend a lot cheaper than business school, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be employees, or can launch during YC. Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Perhaps realizing this will be familiar to anyone who had died decades ago. I have no idea what's happening till they measure their returns. I know randomly generated DNA would not know his name.

This just seems to pass so slowly for them. That's why there's a special title for actual partners. There may be the least experience creating it. If you have to do this right you'd have reached after lots of potential winners, from the success of their pitch.

03%. It is still possible, to the next round is high as well. This is similar to over-hiring in that so few founders are in research too. 66.

VCs. They shut down a few VC firms.

[irarelypostanything]

Unnecessary Arguments - The Queen's Gambit

Person #1: “The Queen’s Gambit” is currently the most popular series on Netflix, and damn is it good

Person #2: It’s an overdeveloped piece of garbage about a famous female chess player who - no spoilers here - wasn’t actually a real person

Person #1: This show is about chess, but it’s also about much more than that. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t diminish its value

Person #2: What is with all this new feminist stuff? Wow, a female chess player fights for world champion in this made-up story. Netflix releases a documentary on Magnus Carlsen, the actual world champion, and critics trash it for being boring. This comes out and gets 100% on RottenTomatoes

Person #1: Because it’s well-made. Also, there have been female chess players who came close to becoming world champion. Does the name Judit Polgar mean anything to you?

Person #2: Absolutely nothing. I admit, this series actually did surprise me

Person #1: Good

Person #2: By escaping from the “perfect female character” cliche with this drawn-out story of an unlikable, alcoholic, drug-addicted woman who flirts with 95% of the series’ mostly male cast

Person #1: That’s kind of the point...not the flirting, but the relationships themselves

Person #2: What do you mean?

Person #1: There’s some brilliant story-telling going on here, told through parallel action. You expect this story to frame itself, possibly, as trauma caused by the abandonment of father figures. Then you begin to realize that this isn’t a show about chess, it’s a show about relationships - about collaboration - about compelling people who genuinely care about each other

Person #2: Oh boy, the power of friendship!

Person #1: Kind of, yeah. And that’s not a bad thing. Coming on the heels of such a riveting and heartbreaking first five minutes, this show takes you through a rollercoaster of emotion. Just when you think you’re off, you go for another spin. This show is a journey, and in all that horrific journey we, the viewers, come to the realization that there’s always light in even the darkest of places

Person #2: Profound. You should write for this series, it would be almost as preachy and on-the-nose as the real thing

Person #1: And the acting is great, and the music is great, and it could finally, finally get people interested in chess and break the stereotype that chess players are antisocial nerds

Person #2: Antisocial nerds like you. Speaking of profound, that was some epic episode naming. They had so many opportunities to give these episodes cool names. Instead they go with “Opening Moves” and “Endgame.” Seriously?

Person #1: This isn’t Mr Robot. You don’t have to name every episode after a cool-sounding sequence any more than you have to name every Mr. Robot episode after a Linux command

Person #2: The question I found myself circling around over, again and again and again, is...why? Why is she like this?

Person #1: What do you mean, “why is she like this?” It’s a show about trauma. You should recognize that she went through her share of it

Person #2: Is it about chess? Is it about drugs? Is it a coming-of-age love story, or is it about race relations, or is it about religion, or is it about media bias? Seriously, what the heck were we supposed to get from this?

Person #1: Maybe you would know if you weren’t so busy bashing it

Person #2: I’m bashing it because I can’t get through two conversations now without hearing someone sing praises about this show. They didn’t even focus much on the actual chess

Person #1: Because they want to keep it open to people who don’t play

Person #2: For all it sets up, it ends up being pretty cliche

Person #1: It’s inspiring!

Person #2: Why here? Why now? Seems a pretty random thing to suddenly become popular. Chess in the 1960s, a time primarily dominated by the much more interesting and real story of Bobby Fischer

Person #1: Wrong

Person #2: ...we choose instead to feature some made-up Kentucky girl with a traumatic past, a drug addiction, and interests in fashion and music that come out of nowhere and defy what we had seen of her personality earlier in the series

Peson #1: The 60s were a nostalgic time for the chess community. Chess is experiencing something of a resurgence now, since it’s lockdown and WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO EXCEPT WATCH NETFLIX AND STAY ON THE COMPUTER

Person #2: I’m right here, no need to shout

Person #1: ...but it’s a completely different world. The best chess players of today are better than anyone has ever been, in history, but it’s mostly because of AI assistance they do at home. Masters are losing to unranked people who play a thousand games online in their spare time. Chess is now a feature in Twitch streaming...interesting, yes, but what a different world. It’s refreshing to see a setting where people can’t immediately plug a game into an AI and call a grandmaster stupid for not seeing something, can’t so much as observe a game without some knowledge of how to read notations. Also, they’re allowed to shake hands

Person #2: And how

Person #1: I think this show resonates with so many people because if you just peel back the layers, it’s about interesting people who have meaningful relationships and realize that passion and love are more important than any substance or material possession could ever be

Person #2: Spoken like a true Netflix script

Person #1: You really won’t let me have this, will you?

Person #2: You want to see a good chess story? Watch the Magnus Carlsen documentary

Person #1: DON’T. IT’S BORING

Person #2: That mean is a genius

Person #1: YEAH HE IS. I DON’T DISAGREE. But it’s not a very compelling story

Person #2: Because it’s real

Person #1: I don’t come to Netflix for reality, I come to Netflix for good story-telling

Person #2: Then you must really be sad your HBO subscription expired

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been an interesting week, it’s just felt off for some reason. I think part of it is having our new pup — Cocoa — in the house and part of it is work.

Ever since our layoff things haven’t felt the same, because frankly, they’re not. Our company structure has changed and we’re still adapting and moving thing around. It feels way more corporate than ever but I suppose that happens when you get beyond a couple hundred people. We’re near one thousand, even after the layoff.

After the project I’m working on comes to a close at the end of July I’m hoping to get a little bench time to work on my SwiftUI (worst technology name ever) skills and shake the cobwebs out of the old programmer brain. 🧠

Ashur Cabrera

We’re giving ourselves the weekend to rest, then Phase 2 kicks off Monday when we start working on paperwork and logistics to pack a few bags, our pup, and try our luck at spending the next few years abroad. (More on this later in the summer ☺️)

Ashur is a friend, all around great fella, and very talented web developer. He’s even contributed his amazing web talent to Stream and I’m forever grateful for it.

Anywho, I’m so excited for him and this new adventure. Doing it while you’re young is the right call. Do it while your body can take it. Get out, explore!

I still hope to convince Kim we need to go all in on the RV lifestyle. Still not there yet. Maybe someday.

Enjoy this new adventure Ashur! 🧳

Joel Clay • blog.meldstudio.co

It is also what backs a number of the Swift concurrency primitives – with a cross platform, open source implementation of CoreFoundation released as the backing implementation. That source code is invaluable in gaining a better understanding of how CFRunLoop works. At just under 5k lines of quite readable C code, one could grok it at a high level in a few hours.

If you know me you know I love browsing C and C++ code. The thing I find extremely interesting about this code is how many OS’es it is targeted to run on; macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Makes me wonder who’s writing code against those platforms and how the new all Swift based frameworks work on those platforms.

This article takes a deep dive into CFRunLoop and it’s a good read if you’re into C code. 😃

NBC News

The Supreme Court issued a divided ruling on a pair of challenges to affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, with potential implications across higher education and beyond.

The Republican built court is doing its job dismantling years and years of progress. They’ve already set Women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and now affirmative action back. What’s next?

Here’s hoping most institutions of higher education don’t change their policies. Just leave that to the rich white racist institutions that take in dumbass rich white kids whose parents buy their way in.

Speaking of dumbass rich white kids…

Daniel Golden • ProPublica

My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations.

Screw Harvard and the entire Ivy League. As a nation we need to get our belief that going to one of those schools magically makes you smarter or better than everyone else. They cater to the rich and powerful who can afford to buy their way in, like Jared Kishner’s dad did for him. It’s all about keeping the rich and powerful in power.

Sure, turn away the dark skinned people with great grades and SAT scores and let the idiots in.

I’m sure there are many other schools doing the same thing and they should all be shamed.

The question is how to stop it?

Doc Searles

For almost the whole time I wrote at the old blog, the URL doc.searls.com took you there as a redirect. Now that URL goes here, directly. Put another way, this was a Harvard blog until yesterday (and again, everything until that day remains so: that’s its legacy). From now on, it’s mine alone. It has crossed from one state to another. I’m not sure yet how it will change, if at all. But I feel energized about what new things I might do with it.

Speaking of Harvard, it sounds like they’ve shut down and archived a bunch of blogs and their associated blogging tools. I’d venture to guess the tools they were using were long in the tooth, not well maintained, and a security risk, but I could be completely wrong about that! 😆

It’s nice to see Doc in his new home. I just need to remember to subscribe to the new site.

Keaton Brandt

Instead, I think it’s safe to say it’s largely Apple’s fault. Or, maybe “fault” is the wrong word. We’ve moved on from the era of beautiful Mac software to the era of web-based apps, for better and for worse. There’s no one simple reason for this evolution, but it’s interesting to think through some of the factors.

This piece goes to all kinds of interesting places. I think the bottom line is Apple is running Microsoft’s playbook from the late 90’s when the web was taking off and they were desperately trying to keep folks tied into their OS and tools.

Eventually Microsoft got their act together and found their way into web technologies. Heck, they even went as far as scrapping their own home built browser for Chromium, but that’s another story I’m very opinionated about.

Jay Barmann • sfist.com

This is very sad. HRD Coffee Shop (521A Third Street), which has seen two generations of owners in SoMa/South Beach and became so well known for its fusion-style burritos and Mongolian beef cheesesteak a decade ago that they were paid a visit by Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives in 2010, closed for good on Friday, June 23. The restaurant had just celebrated its 70th birthday this year.

This was one of the places on my “need to eat there someday” list and it’s a real shame to see it close down. I really wanted to try their spicy pork and kimchi burrito. Guess that ain’t gonna happen now. 😔

Pieter Hintjens

It’s one of my interview questions: “what is Good Code?” Surprisingly, almost no-one gets it right. It’s not about speed, elegance, language, or style. Good Code is code that solves real problems for real people, in an effective way. Let me list the top 10 rules for writing good code.

I enjoy reading how others approach coding. I’m constantly hearing the term “best practices” and makes me cringe a little.

I don’t agree with Pieter’s number zero rule: Use Git and Github. I know git is super popular and I use it and GitHub every day, but it’s not the only version control system on the planet and there are others that work just fine. The advice I’ve always given folks is pick a version control system and use it.

GitHub is, of course, a very good choice. 😃

[David Pierce • The Verge](<https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social)

To executives, Google Reader may have seemed like a humble feed aggregator built on boring technology. But for users, it was a way of organizing the internet, for making sense of the web, for collecting all the things you care about no matter its location or type, and helping you make the most of it.

I remember how down my brother was when Google shut down Reader. He had a really nice workflow and could navigate Reader with his keyboard. It also had some very unique to Reader features he made good use of. I don’t remember what they were but I should ask him. If they’re unique perhaps Stream could benefit from implementing some? 🤔

Jason Kottke

When you write some code and put it on a spacecraft headed into the far reaches of space, you need to it work, no matter what. Mistakes can mean loss of mission or even loss of life. In 2006, Gerard Holzmann of the NASA/JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software wrote a paper called The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code. The rules focus on testability, readability, and predictability:

I’ve heard about these rules before and they’re no bad at all, especially for smaller, self contained programs. Anything mission critical should be extra safe in its implementation.

Remember when the Mars Lander crashed because the teams used different measurement systems? It only cost $125 million to build. Good times. 💥

Jack Gutzler • beyondtheflag.com

As NASCAR descends upon the streets of Chicago for the inaugural race at the new Chicago Street Course, a new chapter in the sport’s 75-year history will be written.

Since getting into NASCAR I’ve had this one marked on my calendar and wish I could’ve attended it. I’ve never been to Chicago or a NASCAR race, why not get a twofer?

I’ll be watching it from the safety of my own living room this time around. 🛋️

Manton Reece

Meta adopting ActivityPub has the potential to fast-forward the progress of the social web by years. Ever since I grew disillusioned with Twitter a decade ago and started pushing for indie microblogs, then writing a book about social networks and founding Micro.blog, I could only dream of a moment where a massive tech company embraced such a fundamental open API.

I’ve been trying to keep my nose out of the discussions around this on Mastodon. Opinions vary, of course, and some folks are very angry about the whole thing. It mostly boils down to folks in marginalized and discriminated against groups who made their homes on Mastodon being afraid. They don’t want to have to deal with the hate that will come along with an extremely popular, large, instance. I can’t say that I blame them.

I’m hopeful this will all work out and won’t divide the community.🕊️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#15yrsago Why market-forces can't correct DRM

Advocates of DRM talk about the ability of the market to find a balance between features and restrictions, because people whose freedom has been unduly restricted will make future purchase decisions that will put the overly draconian DRM systems out of business. But check out this cautionary tale of a guy who bought a home-media centre, started recording his favorite shows to DVD, and then:

Turns out that a couple of days ago, HBO started encrypting all of its programs with CGMS-A. They allow you to "copy" a program that you record from their signal once. The trouble is that they consider that one-time copy to be recording the program onto your hard drive, not taking it from the hard drive to a DVD. THAT SUCKS OUT LOUD and I am extremely angry, as you can imagine. The files are HUGE and, even though I have a 200 gb hard drive, I can't keep them there forever. MediaCenter records tv shows with a dvr.ms extension.

When he bought the media centre, it did the thing he wanted it to do with the shows he wanted to do it to: it's like buying a VCR to record the World Series, taking it home and satisfying yourself that it works. It worked.

Then, months later, it stopped working. He could no longer record his favorite shows. Why? Well, because the cablecaster decided to remove a right from him. And because Gateway, the company who sold him the equipment, decided to collaborate with the cablecaster in screwing him out of that right.

When this guy goes back to the store, what should he do to protect his next investment? Say he buys an HP device next, having concluded that Gateway won't look out for his interests. He takes it home and finds that it works fine for his purposes (maybe HP has a "better" deal with HBO that will let him burn more-restricted DVDs from his HP media-centre), then, a couple months later, the cablecaster switches on another flag and suddenly his video won't work.

Where's the market-force here? Should he stop being an HBO customer? A cable customer? A customer for only those PCs that he builds himself and installs a copy of GNU/Linux on?

What purchase-decision can he make or avoid in order to signal to the market that this kind of restrictiveness is unduly harsh and he won't pay for it any longer? Link (via Hack the Planet)

https://boingboing.net/2004/10/24/why-marketforces-can.html