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HankB99

I'm not a mathematician but an engineer, math adjacent.

I recall once saying something to a colleague even more cringe-worthy than this. Fear of one's own position and stature can make us (speaking for myself) say things we later regret.

Re:The Mathocalypse on Thursday October 08, 2026 @10:31AM (#50006285)
> 5% solution (to the hardest problems),

Isn't that more likely the easiest problems in the set? I suppose the hardest problems compared to those that have been solved.

Otherwise your points stand.

Ooo. I have a Midea dehumidifier. When it powers up it displays the WiFi symbol. I wonder if it is hammering away at my access point. Might it be better to bring it on line and then just block all traffic?

And I wonder how I would even tell if it was trying to associate with my WiFi.

I think about this WRT data centers in general. It seems to me that they are not likely to be more intrusive than power plants and we've been siting them for decades. Of course no one wants a coal plant or nuclear plant next door. Why does that have to be?

And IMO the data centers could be built that are much less intrusive in the neighborhood. Perhaps they could blunt some of the complaints by covering the buildings and parking areas with solar panels. I suspect the answer here is that the companies building data centers are putting every possible dollar into data and compute capacity and as little as possible into mitigating the factors that lead to complaints.

Industrial sites: On the shores of Lake Michigan in Illinois there used to be a steel mill - US Steel's South Works. It's abandoned and is designated a "quantum park" (Illinois Quantum and Microelectronic Park.) Neighbors have extracted an agreement from the governor to not build a data center there. It seems to me that a data center would be much less objectionable than a steel mill. (I worked at a steel mill in the 70s and they are nasty places.)

Just north of Rockford IL there is a plan to build a data center which is drawing objections due to the impact on "quality of life." I can't speak to that but it looks like it would be situated in what is now farm land. Several farms would probably be bought up to make this, if it happens.

I think there are two motivations to build data centers in space, despite the technical challenges:

* Outside of any regulatory boundary, though I'm not sure how much that matters if they're selling their services within a regulated area. * No neighbors to complain.

Re:Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350 on Wednesday June 10, 2026 @08:29PM (#48484747)
I just checked my closest Microcenters (in Illinois.) 12 in Westmont and 25+ in Chicago (for $18) Zero W were 13 and 25+ respectively at $15.

Long gone are the days when they would sell a Pi Zero for $3.14 on Pi day.

Re:Who's the Smartest Corvid? on Wednesday June 10, 2026 @08:14PM (#48484619)
> Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing"

I wonder if they're just amusing themselves (by being little jerks.)

One day in early spring, I thought I heard a Red Tail Hawk screeching in a tree directly above me. I stood back, searching for it. I never spotted it despite the leaves barely out on the tree. But I did spot a Blue Jay hopping around some lower branches.

When I got home I looked up Blue Jay behavior and found that they do imitate the calls of Red Tail Hawks, among others.

Re:What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical on Saturday April 11, 2026 @02:45PM (#47732987)
I already do: https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c3

The tool chains that Espressif seem to work pretty well with these as well as their earlier (some sort of RISC) processors. I have had some code, however, that did not produce desired results until I upgraded the toolchain.

The other issue I've run into is that some cell phone battery packs that work well with Raspberry Pis won't stay on with the RISC-V ESPs because they draw so little power the battery pack doesn't detect the load.

I suspect they're looking at the cost of implementing a one time refund/credit vs. reducing prices without the need to implement anything special.

Yes, I'm being charitable but not having to spend part of the refund on an extra program could benefit their customers more in the long run.

(We're Costco members.)

Would it make sense to consider anything that prevents a process from completing it's intended function an error? It seems like this message would fall into that category and, as you pointed out, could result from a local fault as well.
Re:Ford kills the All-Electric F-150 on Monday December 15, 2025 @10:27PM (#46284417)
> A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV

How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology? We've been continuously improving ICE based transportation for well over a hundred years. It's been a lot shorter for electric vehicles.

I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.

Our kids have a Rottweiler that loves to chase a ball, Bring it back and then dare us to try to take it away from her. She can drop if convinced. Or I have a second ball that is more interesting, causing her to drop the other ball. She can hold two balls in her mouth so I have to wait for her to drop the first ball before I throw.

She also has a large (about 1 food diameter) ball that can't possibly fit in her mouth and I can kick that at which point she'll drop the little ball and try to get the big one in her mouth.

I was thinking of that in terms of siloed web sites but your description of walling off information is broader and more appropriate.
Re:Debugging Bash Like a Sire on Monday July 21, 2025 @08:23PM (#44641970)
https://github.com/vim-syntastic/syntastic looks like it is no longer maintained. Is there something more recent for syntastic?

Agreed WRT shellcheck.

Coincidentally the 2.5 admins podcast just published an episode on ZFS basics: Why ZFS https://2.5admins.com/2-5-admins-256/

ZFS relates to backups. In my case (among the many things I like about ZFS) is that it preserves hard links which I used to reduce the space requirements for my primary `rsync` backup but which `rsync` blew up copying to my remote backup. (Yes, there's a switch to preserve hard links but it is not sufficiently performant for this application.)

(Episode #256 which is a number that resonates with many of us. ;) )

It shipped in the release version but was disabled according to a note on Wikipedia.

> Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1, but did not remove it so it could be later reactivated by the change of a single byte.

IIRC it did manage to make it into the PCs of some users - testers and early adopters?

/pedant

I'd like to emphasize "Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets" because I don;t and I suppose anyone not intimately familiar with this particular munition and the task to which it has been applied does either.

She's just bloviating which makes her the perfect mouthpiece for Trump.

> A lot of that power currently gets discarded instead.

How is power discarded? I would expect peaking generation to be cut back or perhaps even base load plants can reduce output. (AFAIK "base load" means they are expected to be kept operating continuously whereas "peaking" is designed to start up when needed and shut down when not.)

> sword

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but I bet a fair bit of metallurgy was learned producing a better sword.

Re:Persuasion methods for engineering managers on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @08:59AM (#43972453)
> customers always wanted to change "something" ...

> multiple drafts after each other with the first one being the "lightening rod draft".

This reminds me of something I learned in a developmental psychology class (many) years ago. It reflects the "terrible twos" when the toddler learns they can disagree with their parent and answer almost any question "No!" in order to exercise their newfound power.

The suggestion in the class was to phrase questions in a manner to give the toddler a choice between two reasonable options rather than a yes/no query. For example "Do you want to play inside or go outside?" rather than "Do you want to go outside?" [1]

It seems that the choice could be manipulative or could offer reasonable options depending on how it is cast. (Of course there is a continuum between the two.)

[1] Our two boys never wanted to go outside and play but once outside, didn't want to come back in, claiming "Do we have to? We're just starting to have fun."

Re:Man pages are great, man readers are the problem on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @11:09AM (#43633022)
Will I be struck down or downvoted into oblivion if I mention man2html? Definitely not light weight since it also installs Apache, but I do like to view man pages in the browser. I think 'python3 -m http.server' could be substituted for the server and perform well enough for a single user system.

It's unfortunate that Markdown isn't better standardized so it could be extended to better meet the needs for man pages. (Do we need a new standard to rule them all? Yes, I'm thinking of the XKCD comic.)

Re:Federal cuts disrupt repairs to iconic U.S. trails on Sunday April 06, 2025 @09:41PM (#43606651)
The budget for the NPS is so small that if they shut it down, the effect on the deficit would be too small to measure. But someone would still need to manage those properties so it would be "necessary" to sell them off to private interests.

I really hope that's not going to happen, but that fits with strangling the parks for the necessary resources needed to operate. (And then mandating that they remain open.)

Re:Rich Text, Poor Text (2013) on Saturday April 05, 2025 @10:13PM (#43598417)
> I'll take a Lexical editor with SQLite to store my data any day.

Do you have tools that do this or an example?

I'm pretty happy with Markdown and mkdocs (on Linux) to manage and format my notes. VS Code does a pretty good job with this providing both a preview and facilitating linking between documents (both file and heading links.) I'm always open to something better.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wEJJAqsyXVjhT5jW7

Maybe jumping spider? The iridescent colors were spectacular.

Re:How to Delete Your 23andMe Data on Thursday March 27, 2025 @10:41AM (#43494160)
> > this is more like "requesting the data to be deleted".

> Ideally the court can compel the purchaser(s) to destroy the data.

I suppose a court order holds more weight than checking a box on a web site, but I'm not sure how much I'd trust the eventual purchaser.

Worse yet, if the seller drops their guard (due to lack of funding for proper security) will someone steal the data? At that point web requests and court orders are moot.

I guess I'm seeing a black hat behind every bush. I'm not sure if this kind of data has any value on the black market.

Re:Why do some birds mimic the sounds of other species? on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:59AM (#43372953)
As a teen I worked in a pet shop and a Mynah - the shop pet - had learned to imitate a squeaky hamster wheel.
Re:Why do some birds mimic the sounds of other species? on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:57AM (#43372939)
> Blue Jays imitate the calls of Red-tailed, Red-shouldered, and Broad-winged hawks, for example.

I've seen this. We've had Red Tailed Hawks nesting in the area and used to hear them calling every morning. (True fact: Most "eagle calls" in media are Red Tailed Hawks because they sound more intimidating than the chittering from Bald Eagles.) One morning I was out and about and heard the "hawk" in the tree directly above me. I stopped and searched through the branches which were just starting to develop leaves. A bird the size of a hawk should have been easy to spot. After searching for a minute or two, I spotted a Blue Jay hopping around the lower branches.

> The function of these imitations is unknown.

I have a couple guesses.

* Blue Jays being jerks. * Blue Jays mob hawks and maybe just wanted to find one in the area. * Blue Jays just wanted to see what - if anything - would react to the potential presence of the hawk in the area.

> DDR5 memory training.

That makes sense. I also have a newer host that uses DDR5 RAM. The first time I powered it up, I thought it was not working. While I was sitting there trying to figure out what to try nest, It finally came up. It gets better with time (or BIOS updates.)

I have an old server motherboard that does not support UEFI. Otherwise it still runs fine.

I came here to ask why it matters to the GPU how the host boots. Does it need to load some drivers or firmware before the host OS? The only thing I found in the article was "... may lose access to important and necessary features of your motherboard,"

Before that I tried to get to the moon. I climbed the nearest tree. Good progress at first ...
Re:NASA Shuts Off Voyager Science Instrument on Thursday March 06, 2025 @02:46PM (#43284356)
> What would be found here in a thousand years much less a million?

Possibly an advanced civilization that says "No, not ours."

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