Nobody Cares: Technology-only Edition

[Essence Lumin]

I feel sorry for some of these IT support people. I use T-Mobile for my cell service. When I press 5 on some message in my voicemail it is supposed to give me the date and time the message was left. I lived on the west coast for a few years but have been back here on the east coast for over a year. Pressing 5 still gives me Pacific time on my messages. So not the biggest deal in the world but irritating. I spent over an hour with a woman from the Phillipines trying to troubleshoot this to no avail. She seemed to understand I have three phone numbers. She called me on google voice to my laptop so we could talk and experiment with my cell phone. In the meantime I used my textnow number to call my usual number and leave messages for testing. Nothing worked so she has filed a report with their engineers to get back to me within three days.

So the problem isn't fixed but I give her an A+ for doing what she could.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Open Source Security (OpenSSF) and OpenJS Foundations Issue Alert for Social Engineering Takeovers of Open Source Projects – Open Source Security Foundation

openssf.org

Looks like there were some attempts by threat actors to wheedle their way into more open source projects. Because the projects were much larger and had some set security protocols though, the attempts didn't work. But smaller projects are obvs still vulnerable to this kind of thing, and it's going to take work to figure out how many projects have been infiltrated or hijacked like this. Cuz there's bound to be some.

 

[detrius]

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/feb/20/faroes-amazing-underwater-drive-tunnel-viking-atlantic

There are just 54,000 people living on those islands, but I guess that's about to change.

 

[Caete]

 

[Free]

Oh joy, I guess this means our robot overlords will have flame-throwing pets to help keep the humans in line.

You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000

Thermonator, the first "flamethrower-wielding robot dog," is completely legal in 48 US states.

arstechnica.com

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Makes Elon look like a piker.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Makes Elon look like a piker.

Look like? Ha ha haha.

 

[Free]

Musk with his fucking flamethrower NOT attached to a robot dog. BO-RING (pun intended).

 

[Monica Dream]

I'm gonna reaaaaaallly lean into the "nobody cares" part of this thread.

A couple of days ago, Microsoft open-sourced both Multitasking MS-DOS 4 and MS-DOS 4 official under an MIT license. Mistakes were made, but with a few people fixing up things I was able to make up distribution media for it.

I'm posting here because I'm chuffed. I mean -it's crap (even by DOS standards) but it's viable crap (unlike DOS 1.25 and 2.11) and I'm going to use it as a base for an 86box emulated machine project.

I've stumbled upon a lot of programming books and such from that era on archive.org already, so I'm going to do some reading and see where it goes. I used to want to write/develop my own OS and then I realized I'm uneducated and can't program for shit despite taking stabs at it for ~25 years.

In July it'll be 30 years since I got my first computer (a used, cheap XT), and put my voc-ed typing skills to use; but nobody cares.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Google has fired its Python team. The team taking over will be located in Munich, Germany. Is work force in California really so expensive, that even moving it to one of the highest price regions in Germany helps cutting cost for the company?

Thomas Wouters (@Yhg1s@social.coop)

It's a tough day when everyone you work with directly, including your manager, is laid off -- excuse me, "had their roles reduced", and you're asked to onboard their replacements, people told to take those very same roles just in a different country who are not any happier about it. (It's almost...

social.coop

 

[Kalel]

Former NASA Engineer Says He's Invented a Thruster That Doesn't Require Propellant

"There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before," Buhler told The Debrief. "It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years... until the next thing comes."

The startup recently presented its findings at the Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC), a highly unusual "anti-gravity club" that attracts some of the biggest names in the field.

The team's drive, which it says uses electrostatics to enable Buhler's "new force," isn't exactly a powerhouse, producing a mere 10 milliNewtons. To put that into perspective, holding a mass of about 100 grams, or a medium-sized apple, in the palm of your hand exerts 1 Newton, or 100 times more force.

But the "magnitude is not important, really, since anything above zero would work in space!" Buhler assured The Debrief.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I am getting so tired of "former NASA engineer swears on a stack of bibles he can violate physics".

 

[Monica Dream]

Google has fired its Python team. The team taking over will be located in Munich, Germany. Is work force in California really so expensive, that even moving it to one of the highest price regions in Germany helps cutting cost for the company?

Thomas Wouters (@Yhg1s@social.coop)

It's a tough day when everyone you work with directly, including your manager, is laid off -- excuse me, "had their roles reduced", and you're asked to onboard their replacements, people told to take those very same roles just in a different country who are not any happier about it. (It's almost...

social.coop

It's not money, it's stability. They think that by moving to Germany there will be less risks of protests.
At least, that's my guess.

 

[Noodles]

I am getting so tired of "former NASA engineer swears on a stack of bibles he can violate physics".

Yeah, this kind of feels like someone kind of forgot about friction or something like it's HS Physics and thought they made a "breakthrough".

 

[Free]

That is some laptop mobile computer!

(Oh, those shoes! And the vest!)

I wonder if Johnnie and Suzie did get to compute. Because they look fully compute-able. Ooh, an intro to Pascal...

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

That is some laptop mobile computer!

(Oh, those shoes! And the vest!)

I wonder if Johnnie and Suzie did get to compute. Because they look fully compute-able. Ooh, an intro to Pascal...

The magazine itself is on the Internet archive. I noticed the original cover price.....$2.50 for a copy? That's fairly high for 1980. I wonder what machine that guy is carrying. Probably some 8080 or Z80 machine from one of the plethora of companies that made them. Unless it's a mock-up just for the cover photo.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

The magazine itself is on the Internet archive. I noticed the original cover price.....$2.50 for a copy? That's fairly high for 1980. I wonder what machine that guy is carrying. Probably some 8080 or Z80 machine from one of the plethora of companies that made them. Unless it's a mock-up just for the cover photo.

I remember that when the magazine came out I recognized it but I'm damned if I could tell you what it is now.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Exidy Sorcerer.

 

[Free]

Pretty impressive system for when it was made (1978).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy_Sorcerer