I bet you’ve never proofread anything as much as you proofread that comment. Just like I did this one.

I’m controversial

You’ve ended up with +5 in my book, so you must be doing something right. At least according to me.

“At least the dems were taught a lesson”

ssh

Barebones, usually. In general I prefer software that does only one thing and one thing well. Input or output to/from said software can be handled by other pieces software.

I’m a big fan of modular designs where you can swap out any layer with something else, provided that the data interchange is c9mpatible.

Lacking the above, I usually go for softwares with support for plugins/extensions.

Well over 50%, according to a 2024 US “poll”

Not really that cheesy, but Johnson Space Center south of Houston. I spent an entire day there, and visiting the restored Mission Control from the lunar landings was amazing.

Kind of. But I’m also a pragmatic person resulting in a lot of contradictions. Just as an example, I despise authoritarian regimes, but my work email ends with .cn

I consider myself an anarchopragmatist at heart; I would love to have neither Gods, kings, or mayors, but the process of implementing an alternative would most likely be worse than what we have today, at least in my corner of the world.

Yup, I 100% agree. Tapes are often viewed as obsolete, but there is no more cost-effective way of storing data in the petabytes in a safe way than tape.

Hell, at work I have a few live storage clusters measured in petabytes, and being responsible for them can be pretty stressful at times. Data loss isn’t just bad, it is fucking terrifying when its data costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to collect.

I have yet to experience data loss, but I breathe a sigh of relief for every batch of data that has been confirmed written to tape. Because once it is, I know that it is safe and no longer my responsibility.

It’s written to two sets of tape at a time, both of which are read back to confirm data integrity, and once it is, that’s when I know that my live copy is officially not supposed to be a backup.

One set of tapes is stored on board in case something stupid happens with the other set during transport to a literal mountain for storage. There it is re-read and checksummed, confirming that the other set of tapes can be rewritten with the next dataset. (Yes, every tape cartridge is written to twice).

Not sure if it’s still in use today, but the above description was 2008 through 2012. Msdos was used for “gun timing”, which basically amounted to extreme precision when it came to opening or shutting some solenoid valves. The computer had a GPS input and a bunch of serial outputs, and a control line (also serial).

The control line sent instructions of which solenoid to open when, a time reference was determined by the GPS, and you can probably guess what the serial outputs were for.

Well aware of it. Used it between the top two rows.

I had a similar matrix of screens at my old job: Seismic survey observer desk. Three rows tall, four columns wide.

They weren’t all connected to the same PC, though; If I remember correctly:

• Top row was one PC (linux)
• Middle row was another (linux)
• Bottom left was its own PC (It ran msdos 6.22. Excellent OS for realtime stuff!)
• Bottom right was its own (linux)
• middle two at the bottom was windows.

They were all connected to a Raritan KVM switch, so I used that to select which row to control. The exception was on bottom left and bottom right which had a dedicated keyboard and mouse.

I have a picture of it somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it.

I built a Prusa Mendel from scratch eons ago. With enough of effort, and a more modern nozzle and extruder, you should be good.

Yeah, I think so. When you have low signal to noise, especially if the dataset is huge, AI tools seem pretty great.

Not a tech company, but a petroleum exploration company, which involves a lot of tech. The petroleum industry in general is extremely conservative in terms of tech, in that older and proven technologies tend to stick around. For example, I often write data to magnetic tape.

However, the industry doesn’t shy away from newer technologies where it does make sense. There is some AI at play, but it is limited in scope, and only deployed where it makes sense. Most of it is done on the processing side, so I don’t know much about it, but I get the impression it’s used in a similar manner to those headlines you see from time about AI predicting rectal cancer 99% correctly. Interpreting seismic survey data involves some geophysical wizardry that I’ve never quite understood - I just make sure the production servers offshore work.

That tracks with my cassette player estimation: 2002. Presumably they didn’t trash it while new, but it doesn’t exactly scream quality, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it died shortly after the warranty expired.

So if I were to guess: shortly after that bud light can was introduced, so 2005ish.

Questionable parenting with questionable taste in “beer”

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Yeah, I was looking at that cassette player and thought 2002 or thereabouts

What’s your favorite dinosaur? 🦕

I cringe at the thought of having to liquidate a large sum of crypto every month just so I can pay my phone bill, fill up my car, and buy a wedge of blue cheese.