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_mdpn

Re:Zip Files: History, Explanation and Implementation on Sunday March 08, 2020 @08:40PM (#22521861)
It really does. There are two things that fit together for me:

First, access - I can think of twelve bars within walking distance of my apartment, four of which are on the same block, and a total of eight of which are within two blocks of my apartment. Almost every grocery store has a liquor store as a part (not separate store, just separate section with a register), and some stores, like WalMart, sell booze in the normal aisles. It's everywhere.

Second, culture - in Wisconsin, if you're under 21 but a parent, guardian, or spouse then you are allowed to be served, possess, or consume alcohol, so teenagers drinking at home as part of a party is completely legal in the state. Bars are so close to the house, and every area has their own, so social drinking, especially when the winter is cold and dark (in parts of the state in parts of the winter, the sun is set by 4:30 in the afternoon), is very popular. Many of the locals, if they're religious, come from a history of Catholic, Lutheran, and similar religions that were typically not parts of the temperance movement, and many of the cultures that settled the land - Scandinavian and German most commonly - are also known for their relationship to alcohol.

Third, recent developments - the part of Milwaukee I'm in was decimated when the manufacturing base was systematically hollowed out in the late 1980s through the current day. Desperation and escape are two motivators to drink, and there are parts of the community that I'm in that have been hit hard by that.

Lewis Black has a bit about drinking in Wisconsin. It is exaggerated, but only slightly so, in a way that I didn't quite understand before I moved here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WlwumGkSec

Re:Zip Files: History, Explanation and Implementation on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:48PM (#22509388)
Speaking from experience (856 days sober, had my last drink a year after moving to Milwaukee), Milwaukee is a hell of a town for an alcoholic.

One of my favorite coffee shops is right near the PKWARE building off Pittsburgh Ave.

Margaret Sanger unapologetically supported eugenics and sterilizing 'inferior' people. Does that make Planned Parenthood a bad idea?
Re:Where’s _why? (2012) on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:39PM (#22293684)
It's interesting how parasocial interactions form, often without us consciously doing so or meaning to. The drive to form these associations seem to be wired more deeply than the side of our brain that listens to reason.

There's a decent article called "Parasocial Interaction in the Digital Age"[0] that describes this phenomenon occuring through YouTube, and I would not be the least bit surprised to find that it's applicable to the situation of _why discussed here.

[0] [PDF] https://thejsms.org/tsmri/index.php/TSMRI/article/download/3...

Re:Open Letter to the Linux Foundation on Sunday November 10, 2019 @08:10AM (#21497815)
Bad times make hard men

Hard men make good times

Good times make soft men

Soft men make bad times

And so the cycle goes

Re:Stupid Unix Tricks on Thursday October 17, 2019 @09:24AM (#21281751)
I just moved to Catalina, and the fact that zsh has a clear and reasonable standard for startup files made up for the fact that I had to move my shell init to its files.
Re:The internet is an SEO landfill on Sunday June 23, 2019 @02:00PM (#20257425)
The older I get the more I realize that there is often an inverse correlation between popular and useful/valuable.
Re:I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me on Wednesday April 03, 2019 @01:27PM (#19565265)
>Do you choose to either prosecute a burgler or put a lock on your door but not both?

Physical property and intellectual property are not the same, so this analogy does not hold.

Copyright is fundamentally a balancing act between these two opposing interests:

  - the right of a creator to make money of their creation for a limited time

  - the right of the public "to promote the progress of science and useful arts"
There is no such duty for a physical property owner to allow others to access, view, or build upon his property.

If you choose to use technological means to deny society the second interest above you should not also be allowed to claim the protection of the first interest above.

Re:Homebrew 1.9.0 on Wednesday January 09, 2019 @02:43PM (#18868081)
Yes, I know that I have to make a judgement call about whether or not to trust infrastructure I don't own, and I have made that judgement, but I'm asking for myself and others if the Homebrew project haa any additional information I and others can use to make that evaluation.

It is frustrating that you are being so opaque and dismissive. You still haven't answered my earlier question if the Homebrew project has published a summary of the results of these security reviews (I understand not posting the entire review publicly). A quick Google search did not turn up anything, which is why I am asking.

For contrast: I can find out the build process for a Debian package from their website[1]. While they do have some private operation documentation, they also publish the process by which packages get pulled into their system, built, and pushed to the mirrors[2][3]. They have documentation for how to replicate their build environment and build packages on my own[4]. This documentation is open, and I can verify packages with it as they move toward reproducible builds[5]. I understand that Debian is a much larger operation with a much longer history. I understand that it takes time to develop these things. This is not an attack on the Homebrew project or the work they do.

[1] https://www.debian.org/devel/buildd/

[2] https://www.debian.org/devel/buildd/operation

[3] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/FTPMaster

[4] https://wiki.debian.org/BuilddSetup

[5] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds

The stores wouldn't even need to be wired up to the Internet. All they would need is a call center to dispatch pizza orders to the stores or a fax machine if they wanted to dispatch orders without a voice call, both mature, widely deployed tech at the time.
Especially when you end up in C++ template hell.
Re:John Dvorak: “Yesterday I was fired from PC Magazine” on Monday October 01, 2018 @03:51PM (#18116171)
If you didn't know, he has a blog (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/) and is a co-host of the No Agenda Show Podcast (http://www.noagendashow.com/) and DHUnplugged (https://www.dhunplugged.com/)