Robey ☠️ @robey@mastodon.technology
- Location
- San José, California
- Disposition
- gay (they/he), pale, quiet, antifa
- Nerd topics
- distsys, firmware, retro computing
A wizard appears. He looks grumpy.
Joined Dec 2017
@technomancy @cwebber @brennen this is remarkably close to how i compute (except with less-cool tools): i keep a couple of "desktops" open for small windows like nautilus, bound to ultra-1, ultra-2, then every other app gets full-screen, ultra-(letter)...
i just concentrate better if there's never more than one task on the screen at once, and don't need to use the trackball/touchpad to switch apps
Robey ☠️
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Why did "Constantinople" get the works?
Because nobody in the late Byzantine empire actually called it that. It was "the City" - ἡ Πόλις - and the answer to many "where?" questions was "in the City", εἰς τὴν Πόλιν, pronounced "eess teen polin".
Say that out loud and you might be able to see where I'm going with this: εἰς τὴν Πόλιν became Ottoman استانبول, which became modern Turkish İstanbul.
Robey ☠️
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Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser #deleteInstagram
@brion hard agree
@SnerkRabbledauber @ChrisMcZork yeah... U.R.L. would be clearer but humans are funny, and the "a/an" rule applies to how you hear it in verbal conversation, despite spelling, which is maddening given the million other edge cases in english!
i stopped fighting these wars when i lost "data" to "DAY-tuh" because of a popular sci-fi show that changed everyone's pronunciation overnight
why does discord *usually* self-update (on linux), but *sometimes* asks me to go to a shady website and download a raw binary deb file from a man in a trench coat who smells like cheap cigarettes and milwaukee's best?
Robey ☠️
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Every day since the pandemic started I see posts being furiously promoted by bosses saying that work from home is bad for everyone and the employees all actually hate it and the employees saying what are you talking about, we like this
Robey ☠️
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Robey ☠️
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on June 12th 1956 athlete, singer and actor Paul Robeson was hauled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to answer the charge of being a Communist. Here is how Robeson responded:
anyway, why build a kitchen without a place to wash pots & pans?
let that sink in!
Robey ☠️
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@InternetEh sometimes I look at my disabling levels of executive dysfunction and depression and think that I am the most underachieving human being
then I look at the President of the United States of America and I am reminded that I'm actually quite an achiever
@ChrisMcZork sorry, that's wrong. :) ask friends to pronounce it for you: it sounds identical to "earl", it has that weird english "ur" sound
that's why "duke of URL" was a good pun name at suck.com back in the day
musky baby
oof. imagine if you actually worked for hyperloop, like you believed in their ideals and wanted to make some kind of rail system...
and then only now you find out that the whole thing was a scam to distract people from HSR to sell more cars.
i feel like you would be devastated.
if we're lucky, VENGEFUL. 😈
Robey ☠️
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Still wild and amazing to me that the famous quote absolutely pegging the core tenet of conservatism was a comment on a blog post.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time." -- Frank Wilhoit
Robey ☠️
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Robey ☠️
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@brunoph it seems like it started with golang and has now spread to other toy languages :(
Robey ☠️
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IBM's inability to give up the 286 had far-reaching consequences.
It doomed the OS/2 project, which could never keep up with the pace at which Microsoft was developing Windows because OS/2 had to be able to run on a 286. OS/2 didn't drop 286 support until 1992, by which time Windows had been fully 386-based for years. By hanging on to the 286, IBM gave Microsoft the opening they needed to wrest away the OS market.
And clone makers, who were not saddled with the promises IBM had made to support the 286 forever, rushed to embrace the obviously better 386. The original clone maker, Compaq, was shipping 386-based machines by 1986 -- a year before the still-286-centric PS/2 line emerged. One was even portable!
At the launch of his company's 386 line, Compaq president Rod Canion wasn't shy about predicting its significance. If IBM didn't have competing 386 workstations on the market soon, he said, they would lose their position as the company that defined the PC standard.
Canion was right. IBM didn't realize it until they finally gave up on the PS/2 many years later, but this was the moment they lost the PC industry. From this point on, what it meant to be a "PC" would be defined by a loose coalition of interested parties -- hardware vendors, Microsoft, Intel -- rather than by IBM.
- Location
- San José, California
- Disposition
- gay (they/he), pale, quiet, antifa
- Nerd topics
- distsys, firmware, retro computing
A wizard appears. He looks grumpy.
Joined Dec 2017
