cicero
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2 years ago
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on: World's largest banknote printer says printing money isn't profitable anymore
I use cash to do my part to slow down its disappearance. I like the fact that it is difficult for central powers to control, and its existence means that people can more easily live off the grid. I like the ability to hand someone a tip without accessing the Internet. At the same time, I think the Bitcoin Lightning Network is pretty cool. I guess I like options.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Jeff Bezos will step down as Amazon CEO on July 5
Now he can move onto the next phase of his plan for world domination.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: A fringe Japanese religion built a pro-Trump social media empire
I would guess the anti-globalist sentiment of MAGA is shared by people throughout the world who prefer local control.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Nano 5.7
I've always thought of nano as simplistic, but reading the discussion here, I see there is more to it than I thought.
I learned vi (precursor of vim) in the 1980s and the commands became second nature to me. However, as window-based systems and applications became the norm, I found it difficult to switch between vim and Windows or Mac applications, including the web. A good example of my problem involves the use of the escape key in vim to switch out of text entry mode, but many other apps use escape to cancel an action. I got tired of typing a paragraph, hitting escape, and then having to retype the paragraph because I had cancelled my input.
Nevertheless, it's great to have an editor I can easily invoke from the Linux command-line, so I still use vim for that. However, I will consider moving to nano for that purpose. At my age, I may never know it as well as the vi/vim I learned in my younger days, but it should still be useful.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Nano 5.7
Upvote for mentioning WordStar. I only used it some in the Texas A&M computer lab. I went from my dad's Apple II, to a Commodore 64 I bought in college, to a Macintosh after I graduated. None of them were WordStar platforms, but I remember it was very popular in the CP/M and MS-DOS world before WordPerfect took over.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Nano 5.7
I used to use ed when all I had was a single terminal screen/window and a compiler error message. Ed doesn't clear the screen, so you can still see the message. Vi or emacs would clear the error message away. Of course, in a multi-window situation, the compiler output is usually in one window or pane and the editor in another, so this is moot now.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out
An alternative hypothesis does not rule out the other possibilities, even if it provides a better explanation. What matters is what actually happened, not what provides the neatest explanation.
cicero
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4 years ago
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on: Spotify continues to remove Joe Rogan episodes
So they appear to have mutually agreed to remove content to conform to the prevailing pressure to restrict public discourse to only politically correct content. While it is certainly their right to make any business arrangement they want, it is distressing that open conversation continues to shrink in our world, whether it be through unilateral cancelation or mutual agreement for the sake of money.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Medieval Minims: The hidden meaning of a medieval pen-twister
Modern people often portray the Middle Ages as a time of dullness, ignorance, and misery, such as depicted in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I think this makes us feel better about how superior we are today. The truth is that medieval life was much richer and more beautiful than the stereotype implies.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
Does it work in Hypercard?
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)
Humans understand these things because they are persons. Where did their personhood come from if not another person? How personhood can arise out of non-personhood is unexplained.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Shamelessness as a Strategy (2019)
When shame is used as a weapon and tool of manipulation, a measure of shamelessness becomes a useful defense. As the demands of popular morality increase and change on a daily basis, at some point, some of us will give up trying to conform.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
Clinton is quoted in the second line: “I was the candidate that they basically stole an election from,” Clinton said Monday on the New York Times podcast “Sway.”
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
If both of the candidates are crooked liars, how do you choose? I picked the party that I think is closer to being right.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Connecting an ASR33 Teletype to an ESP32
When I was a kid, my dad connected a Model 19 teletype to our Apple II computer for amateur radio teletype (RTTY). He used an opto-isolator to protect the Apple II from the 60 ma loop that the Model 19 used.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: The CIA's Deadly Deceits and the Vietnam War, with Ralph McGehee (1986)
When I was a kid, any stories of the CIA doing bad things were labeled "conspiracy theories." How could they possibly be true?
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Sin and Siege: The End of the Crusades
This site exposes too many complexities of history that do not fit the simplistic narratives that are popular today. Nothing to see here. /s
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)
I remember being very excited about this announcement. I had been learning about Java, but I only had an HP workstation, which ran HP-UX Unix at work, and a Macintosh at home. Neither of them had a Java implementation yet, but I could run Netscape Navigator with JavaScript. I gave an enthusiastic talk on JavaScript at the next meeting of our local Java Users Group.
However, as I got to know the language better, my enthusiasm dwindled due to what I thought to be a strange type system. Also, I got access to Java implementations on HP-UX and Macintosh, so I never went back to JS. This has always limited my ability to do web front-ends, but now I'm looking to using Blazor for that.
cicero
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5 years ago
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on: Ibis – A PHP tool that helps you write eBooks in markdown and convert to PDF
PDF is ultimately for paper when you care about how the content fits on each page. A reflowable format will have to at some point be rendered to pages if one is to go to paper, and I can't think of anything better than PDF for storing that rendering.
