MarkG509

I, too, love Backblaze's reports. But they provide no information regarding drive endurance. While I became aware of this with SSDs, HDD manufacturers are reporting this too, usually as a warranty item, and with surprisingly lower numbers than I would have expected.

For example, in the Pro-sumer space, both WD's Red Pro and Gold HDDs report[1] their endurance limit as 550TB/year total bytes "transferred* to or from the drive hard drive", regardless of drive size.

[1] See Specifications, and especially their footnote 1 at the bottom of the page: https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-r...

Over 40 yrs ago, I had a programming assignment in college that I wrote in Lisp. My Prof, a non-Lisp-er, asked me to rewrite it, expecting C or Pascal. But I took him through my Lisp code, and was able to argue for the 'A' on that assignment. I might have created a Lisp-er in the process.

And they've done it before[1], about a year ago. This used to be a great source for free (not illegal) content, though it was clear that some links were bad.

[1] Now disabled: https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv

Linux Mint comes with Hypnotix that contains free feeds for 974 TV channels world-wide, and 171 US-En Movie channels. Of these are nearly all of Pluto TV's channels, many of the free movie channels available on Roku, and even a few channels I can get over the air.

Given my browser's built-in privacy 'stuff' (plus uBlock Origin and uMatrix), and the block lists in my firewall, the funny thing is that I leak the most PII data watching OTA TV via the HDHomeRun app on my phone (I prefer their app to VLC on my phone). MPA needs to take a time-out, maybe catch up with technology.

Back in the early 2000's, I was involved with bringing up, diagnostics, and bench-marking large-scale supercomputers. Would occasionally tell management, with a day or two of notice, when would be a good time to schedule maintenance, rather than attempting to run customer's application codes. Back then, I was using spaceweather.com, a somewhat simplified and sensationalized version of the spaceweather.gov.

On days when I knew what was coming, it was (almost) fun watching ECC single-bit error counters ticking up across the O(100k) nodes...like watching popcorn pop in a hot pan.

I'd love to A-B these to my trusty old FiiO X5 with Sennheiser HD-650's (at home) or IE8i's (when exercising). Hearing the sound-stage and subtle do-dads buried by lesser set-ups is a pet-peeve of mine.

A very important, perhaps dominant, factor in all of this is how the music was ripped/encoded. Except in my car, for which I did separate rips, I don't bother with MP3-320. For the X5, having 200 CDs ripped via WMA9 locks me in, until I can find a week or two to re-rip to a more modern lossless format.

I grew up on vinyl via my (crazy/rich) older brother's Class A/B stereo. I'm spoiled, and feel sorry for the people today that think MP3-120 is "good enough".

I fired IBM from my life "for cause" a few years ago after 32 years at Research.

This comment is overall correct, though there were some isolated pockets of truly amazing/wonderful (some classified) things to enjoy working on since the mid-2010s.

But, when did Sloths lose their energy? I have seen videos[1] of Sloths crawling/slithering slowly across a road, and cannot imagine they were ever a formidable or challenging target for (pre-)humans.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES32UFlPOUA

I use an Asus RT-68P. The EULA did scare me off from running all of the services listed in the article, with the exception of "Web History", where I do not recall having seen any indication that my history would be leaked. But, regardless I just turned off that function.

I agree with the author's disappointment in Dynamic DNS support. But, I followed instructions on the web[1] and added a cheap USB thumb-drive to run a script on every router boot. This script sets up a cron job that supports DuckDNS.org, and fixes other annoyances like turning off all the router's LEDs.

[1] https://www.securityforrealpeople.com/2015/08/cron-on-asus.h...

Edit: Grammar, and a clarification.

My favorite teacher in grade school, and echoed by my favorite teachers later in life, told me that the most important thing they are trying to teach us is how to learn because we'd all be learning for the rest of our lives.

I still strongly agree with that sentiment, but the difference/problem with learning as an adult is two-fold: why I am learning, and how much time I have to learn/apply that knowledge.

There is a difference in learning material to 'ace' a midterm/final exam, versus learning something to figure out a novel way, or picking up a new technology, to accomplish some task (e.g., at work). Part of the difference is who decides what can be "pruned", and especially when. I think back on all the 'stuff' I knew I would never need again once the final was over. Admittedly, I wasn't always correct, but age and experience increased my hit rate, and what subjects I under or over estimated could be whole other threads.

I am retired now, but have gotten into learning, mostly just for fun, some of the most complex (nasty) subject matter that I never had time for before. If I want to go off on some tangent, or deep dive, I can. The amount of free (or inexpensive) courses out there is wonderful and exciting.

Adding my experience to the chorus, my 'fridge is a GE TA-12S that I have owned for 34 years. It was 'old' when I bought the place, so my guess is that it is approaching 40 years of age.

Not a single problem in all that time, though I suspect it could use a new door seal. It is a manual-defrost model, which gives me the opportunity every few months (or when the door no longer closes :) to thoroughly clean it out.

The only other issue is that I have had to raise the temperature setting (rotate the 'wheel' away from "Coldest") from time to time over the years. It started at about 6 and is now past 3. If the trend continues, have a good 10 years left before it ices up completely.

Although it is true that it is not very efficient. A rough guess, based on having left it unplugged for over a month while traveling earlier this year, would be that it uses $0.65 (ConEd rates in NY) per day.

Enjoyed and agreed with the article, thanks!

Earlier this year, I retired (voluntarily) from a large company after 32 years. Now that I have time to breath/think/sleep, I actually 'audit' many of the on-line courses I find mentioned here. Great fun. Thanks!

Perhaps it time someone built a web site where the opinions, comments, and especially actions/votes, of every politician running for office, from City Council on up, were tracked.

Scoring the politicians based on their support for the constitution and especially human rights, plus encouraging the vote, could fix this after just an election cycle or two.

"Hacker's Delight" by Henry J. (Hank) Warren. Despite the unfortunate title[0], it teaches (with code) numerous tricks, algorithms, ideas, that really improve performance and function of programs.

[0] not "hackers" as in those who try to crack into systems, but rather as in those who enjoy writing professional, clever, and efficient code.

Back in the time-frame of the Leopard to Snow Leopard transition, I visited an Apple Store (for the last time), where upon I informed a 'genius' that on Windows, I had code that I needed to (or was required to) run everyday that was older than him, and that Apple's complete disregard for backward compatibility lost me (and everyone I know) as a customer for ever.

By far, the worst month for me has always been March. Now that we've made it to April, I'm planning to sit tight till after the Santa Claus rally.

Thanks for the reminder to recheck my certs. I manually wiped CNNIC (among others) when the news first broke, and with today's Firefox update, I'll check again.

No one has mentioned that recently IBM has become an app developer for Apple.