Powderhorn

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

I’m not a Reddit exponent by any means, but I’ve yet to run into an issue using the site on Mullvad at the router level. There’s unfortunately communities there that can offer useful information not easily found by search engines.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

“Dragged by my own petard!”

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

I think I need a macro for that.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

Oof. Sorry! I forget my suite of extensions masks paywalls sometimes.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

I honestly don’t know which one(s) are effective at it. NoScript seems to do a pretty good job, which was an unexpected bonus when I first got it.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

More incremental progress that feels less impactful than it really is. I got my solar going yesterday after lots of false starts (including panels flying off the roof while driving owing to … the wrong washers), and this morning, I got all my belongings out of the warehouse at my old job short of an 8-cube Kallax that will require a ton of organizing in the van to be able to fit.

Some days, I’m immensely productive, while others, I’m too weighed down by yet another job search to be remotely able to make progress on that front. My entire family (I got an unexpected email from my uncle/godfather yesterday) is utterly unsupportive of my firm belief that I should be able to have a job that doesn’t demean me and pays enough to start getting out of the debt that piled up during my last job search.

I had to give up housing while employed full time because I can’t survive on $21/hour with a lease. The solution is not another $21/hour paint-by-numbers bullshit job, ffs.

It seems everyone born before 1970 thinks the job market hasn’t changed since the '90s and thus a grueling job search is a personal failing, not a sign that the economy no longer works for a wide swath of people not in sales. I want to make the product or make the product better or make the workflow better so that your salespeople have something worth selling. But that brings in “no income” and is seemingly no longer needed.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

It speaks volumes that people are so ensconced in their worldviews that sharing links on the open Web to sites that require an account to view content on causes zero cognitive dissonance.

I’d be very curious to see the Venn diagram of people who see no problem spamming the web like this and people who complain about links to paywalled sites.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

This was a very accessible read as a nonacademic. Really interesting to read how these technologies work and were developed.

Passive cooling is a much-needed area of study as the planet warms, and it stands to reason further development there could spark additional discoveries on the electrical front.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

I picked up a 4K Fire Stick a few years back, connected it to my Wi-Fi and then watched the network activity from the router with little surprise. Tech companies sell ad-delivery devices with a nominal end-user benefit.

Once NUCs became powerful and affordable enough to use as a dedicated HTPC/server, anything with a proprietary OS made no sense, even taking portability into consideration. This is just the latest example of why.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

My ex and I were pack-a-day smokers (out on the porch every 45 minutes to an hour, depending on activity). First hole in new pajamas was a rite of passage. Sometimes took a few months, but it always happened.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

Sounds like an SBC …

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

Just got down from the roof after removing my remaining solar panels to swap out washers that turned out to be too small to actually hold them to the Z brackets at highway speed. Lost three of 12 at some point last week. Eight are now back up, and the three replacements arrive tomorrow. Hopefully solar will be live and my belongings out of the warehouse I used to work at by the end of the week. Glacial progress with regressions seems to be November’s theme.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

Having played this game in the past, the solution I found was getting an N95/N100 box and then using KDE Connect to use my phone as a remote. Bonus: all available desktop extensions to shape your experience.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

For someone who doesn’t care, you put an awful lot of time and effort into talking about how you don’t care.

Regardless, as mentioned by others, this does not provide license to belittle others for their choices. I don’t get the whole furry thing, but as others choosing that hobby doesn’t affect me, meh. The right has plenty on the outrage buffet before furries enter the picture, so their existence and interconnectedness with the queer community doesn’t move the needle the way you’re claiming.

Powderhorn, 6 months ago

If you think you know what I should care about, you’ve just lost me.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Chants of Sennaar is on sale. Found out about it here.

I suspect there’s a limited target demographic, but I was a linguistics major for a time.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

I finally got the planned-for-three-straight-weekends-but-always-thwarted strut channel install done on my van today. This means the next project is finally solar, at which point I hit planned baseline for this housing choice. Last day at work was Friday, and I’m taking this week to do van stuff, move out of the warehouse and try to put feelers out for groups aligned with a recent course correction on the career front. Feeling pretty good about my projects and finally admitting to myself in no uncertain terms that I can’t do a bullshit job anymore.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

If they can already double the energy density of LiFePO4 in the lab and a 25kWh prototype is already in use and rated for 250km, while getting rid of cobalt and removing all the explosive hazards with a cathode base material one-tenth the price that can be made on existing lines, why is research into lithium ion even continuing for this application?

Either the story is connecting lots of dots that actually have yet to be drawn, or Big Lithium is up to shenanigans.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Oh, I’m not saying switch production until there’s maturity, but if that’s the starting point with sodium-ion, clearly the research is better suited there.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

I think we’re trying to make different points. I’m not in manufacturing but get that lab to product for batteries is glacial; what I was pointing out was the way the story is written – all strengths, zero drawbacks – would leave a credulous reader with that conclusion.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

There may be an ARM “takeover” of x86 at some point, but that day is very much not today unless you believe the PC market consists solely of Macs.

The hydrogen issue seems to continue being storage. Even if you have all the green electricity you want for electrolysis, the product cannot just go in a tank at anywhere near sea-level pressure and temperature.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

I grew up in the '80s and don’t really remember Black Friday being a thing until at least the late '90s, possibly later. The attempts to make it seem like it’s always been a thing are pure gaslighting. For my parents, it was Buy Nothing Day, as they saw no reason to break up a perfectly pleasant four-day weekend by doing shopping they could easily do a week later. But again, Black Friday wasn’t yet a thing, no huge sales, just people wanting to get away from extended family for the day at the mall.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

So, IBM walks into a Nazi bar, and after six drinks, slurrs to the bartender, “What’s with all the swastikas?”

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Bold of you to assume the same person works at the same outlet long enough to run both stories.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

This result honestly sounds like their best-case outcome. I don’t like much of what Google does, but I’m certain a lot of discussion went into what would be viewed as a “win” on this call, and my guess is “some number of people stop using ad-blocking software” actually beats out “some people are converted to subscribers” (an effect not measured here and somewhat necessary to get any context for one data point) by virtue of Google being an advertising company.

Regardless, they’re targeting only low-hanging fruit: people who use ad blockers to block ads. Sounds tautological, but this excludes anyone concerned about privacy. Nobody using an ad blocker in concert with other add-ons is going to be converted here. And I sort of wonder whether media coverage from when the crackdown started inflated ad-block installs among people who’d never used one, thus making this win less substantial on a longer timeline.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

The delicious irony here is that U.S. corporations want the government out of regulating worker rights and company obligations, and having actually encountered that, Tesla said, “no, we don’t like how that turned out, either.”

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

There are people in your field who’ve already provided excellent advice, so I’ll just add that while it’s looking too late here, never ever be afraid to ask questions of your superiors, regardless of your experience level. Doing so is not a sign of weakness, insufficient schooling or being in over your head; rather, it shows that you are on board with the best possible outcome.

If you’ve been given a different impression by your superiors, you don’t have a “you” problem here, you have a “shitty management” problem. My most recent PM-cum-department-head role was mostly anticipating both client and team needs from standard production communication and proactively removing potential obstacles from those areas, which I don’t see as a boast so much as providing the minimal acceptable level of support (there were still a lot of meetings and rampant political bullshit that ate up hours).

I told my team my expectation was that they were hired because they already were proficient at the job. As such, any sort of terminology or concept misunderstanding was not a reflection of their skills, so questions were preferable to guessing. More importantly, I expected them to grow as time passed, and growth comes from one primary source: mistakes. Which I explained thusly: “I don’t care how many times you fuck up so long as it’s a different fuckup each time.”

You appear to have no support from those theoretically charged with ensuring your success. That could be a lack of reaching out on your part, but as it sounds systemic, I’m inclined to just agree that it’s time for an exit strategy. I’ve found that my lame-duck periods (when I’ve decided to start looking or already given notice) have been when I’ve learned the most rapidly about methodology and motives. Asking “why” when you have little to lose somehow hits differently, and you may be able to get some insights that you’d otherwise be too afraid to ask for – and that may turn out to be relevant in five or 10 years, even in a completely different field.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Interesting choice to omit “idiolect” as a replacement on any subsequent references to “mental dictionary.”

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

No offense taken!

While the summary brings up most of the salient points (it totally misses that I’ve written editorials, which is the strongest selling point I have in this version), it does not convey any sort of intent or vocabulary past middle school.

Interestingly, this was my first draft and is roughly half the length of a later version that reflected edits and suggestions from a colleague of a decade.

Your feedback is helpful for considering the expectations of my intended audience. The problem I faced in writing this is that I have two functional writing voices: the informal, breezy version used for this post (which is how I speak short of dependent clauses in the predicate usually hanging off the verb instead of as far back as they end up in writing), and (for lack of a better term) the Voice of God used for the serious shit.

While the latter is what I am attempting to return to careerwise, I fear selling myself with that voice (already a tough ask in the third person) would fare far worse. When you are reading a publication, a fair amount of self-selection on tone and authority level has already happened on the part of both the org and the reader. A random post on the internet does not come with that built in, so punchy declarative sentences with sparse dependent clauses and thesis reiteration would make me end up sounding like a pretentious asshole to nearly everyone.

On balance, this feels the lesser of the issues. And while a less … flourished take might get more nibbles, it’s false advertising to attempt a voice I don’t use, to say nothing of how bad I think the results would turn out.

Over and over again in life, both personally and professionally, there’s been an aside, a turn of phrase, a throwaway line that gets me the interview or the date. It’s never the boilerplate, because writing ability is table stakes; being able to connect through the serendipity of personality in the rest has been the winning strategy.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

This looks promising. Just the fact that it autopings the list of servers on demand solves much of my Invidious frustration.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I’m on FF. Forgot that detail. Also forgot I can edit the title. Which I have done, so the message above this made sense at the time it was written (for anyone who came in late).

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

That worked last round but not this time, unfortunately. I’m kicking the tires on LibRedirect currently.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Sounds like a beertle to me …

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

I was going to avoid responding, but you are mischaracterizing my responses to your ongoing harassment via DM.

This is not about “bias.” This is about you wanting a political party’s opinion about an election to be considered the same as reported news. It is not.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

By all means.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Take a deep breath. No one is asking you to leave. We are trying to educate you about the community guidelines set for U.S. News.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Now that there’s been a bit of a cooling off period, I may be able to better explain to your satisfaction the issues at play here.

Blanket statements like “there’s not a single editor or reporter in the free press who” … well, citation needed. “Find yourself a professional journalist …”

Hi.

I’m not holding against you the fact that you didn’t read the link in the sidebar that sets expectations for the community that were agreed upon with the admins before I was empowered to set the tone. It explains I was an editor at daily papers for 15 years, which is why I was trusted to make the sorts of calls you’re taking offense to here.

Assuming I’m blithely making the rules up as I go because you don’t like them reveals less about my qualifications than how personal this topic is to you. And I get it. Removing the story because it was not reported news does not mean I’m not alarmed that this is the direction the Ohio GOP has chosen to go in, but as a press release, it’s a tantrum, not policy. It’s also not exactly stop-press in terms of tactics. Nationally and regionally, the GOP’s stance has for years now been to tell voters that they’re wrong for wanting progressive policies. I live in Texas, so Ohio’s got it easy in that voters can actually make decisions for themselves.

We likely agree on the implications for democracy, but those do not impact “what the standards actually are.” If anything, I’m hewing to more objective standards than you run into today, in that objective context is what turns an antidemocratic diatribe into news.

I rose quickly in newspapering by standing up for values imparted upon me by an upbringing that cherished the role of shielding people from believing a political statement was itself news. I’m aware this feels out of place, but I’m keeping the goalposts where they were before all hell broke loose after 9/11. I ran my first professional newspaper at 24, 20 years ago, precisely because I told my bosses at my first paper whenever I thought they were veering off from objective journalism. The city ed there didn’t much like the fact that a kid kept questioning some of the editorial decisions, but when he got his own paper, he wanted that check.

I have been quoted by journalism professors over the years and didn’t end up at a metro obscenely young not because I didn’t have the opportunity, but because I wanted to change the world, which is far easier when you don’t have three layers of editors above you. I’m here for the same reasons I dropped out of college four times to get my career started: imparting actual news.

You are not being singled out, and what is happening in Ohio is wrong. But every time we allow outrage to move the needle on news value, the term loses more meaning … if there remains any left that’s consistently agreed upon.

As I said, I’m a columnist. That’s actually what got me in the door of my college paper. But I quickly learned that while it’s fun to spout off, far more fulfilling is letting voters know about the shenanigans their “representatives” get up to. But you can’t just give them column inches … they want people to hear their unedited bullshit, they can buy an ad.

In today’s environment, allowing that link to stand would have been saying to our user base (which seems to like the standards I proposed for U.S. News) “we said we’d stick with news, but here’s some political speech all the same,” thus creating a false equivalence that takes away from any gravitas built up around the late-20th-century model of journalism I’ve chosen to uphold and that the admins and community have shown approval for.

Making an exception here to the expectation of reported news would have been malfeasance.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

This is largely moot given that this will stand. The issue was never the topic, but the source.

Your edit reveals your inability to understand sourcing. None of the places you listed will care about a Beehaw mod decision, and if someone does happen upon this thread, you’d be very disappointed by their conclusion.

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

Look, if what you learned at Harvard was “we just count as news everything anyone says,” then we have an issue with Harvard’s J-school.

Did Harvard also tell you to randomly insert capitals in proper nouns? Because you’re consistently doing that.

I have no college degree. I saw no need of one because the J-school had been gutted and rolled into communications, and the writers we had on staff who were on the CMU journalism track were the worst writers we had. Assignments were 12" in three weeks; we needed things turned around in a few hours, and if you can’t write 12" in 20 minutes, this is not the correct field for you.

“Whatever his credentials, …” So you’re admitting you lack respect for actual experience. You previously argued you wanted someone with credentials. The level of cognitive dissonance you are displaying suggests Harvard is a shit school for journalism. Throw the name around all you like; you’re making yourself look like an ass when you can’t follow your own expectations.

At this point, I’d be fine with you leaving and telling everyone you know that Beehaw sucks because they chose a mod with news judgment to run a news community.

You’ll note no one has yet moved to remove you. This is not because the mods and admins agree with you by any stretch, but rather because our goal is an inclusive environment where education is a preferable step to banning. That said, randomly messaging admins to protest an act in line with what is expected of me as a mod went over extremely poorly. All you are doing at this point is unspooling rope.

If you would like outrage peddled as news, I would suggest Beehaw’s U.S. News community is not a good fit. If you are unable to accept constructive feedback without Beeing Nice, I would suggest Beehaw is not a good fit.

You are free to define news however you like. But you can’t expect an established community to say “oh, shit, we were wrong this whole time.”

Powderhorn, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I switched in May on my main rig precisely because of OneDrive nags after shopping distros for a couple months on my HTPC. The Surface had been dual-boot from the get go, as I bought it for a bootcamp, but I’d not used it for over a year because of other available computers. Without a functioning AC outlet at home (inverter install is awaiting solar install), the Surface is the only viable option, and I thought I’d be back on my desktop within a month … two months ago.

Windows is more of a telemetry platform than an OS at this point, and Proton’s evolution means my Steam library functions just as well on KDE Neon. I have a few legacy Win-only apps, but my expectations about use frequency from years ago no longer matched actual usage by the time I was willing to revisit my assumptions in spring.

And I’m glad I did, as Plasma is fucking amazing in terms of customizability compared to “you will have your taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and you will like it.”

Powderhorn, 7 months ago

I moved away from a desktop client for several years because of Thunderbird staying stuck in the 2010s, but the redesign brought me back into the fold. It’s certainly overkill for scanning through subject lines, but compared to having five tabs open …