Replying to
@catsalad@infosec.exchange Back in the day, /dev/null was so much faster than /dev/mt0 for the nightly tape dumps.
Remote
Frobnitz Coil Oil
@frobozz@tty0.social
mastodon 4.6.0Erstwhile IT-type retooling for wires-and-pliers. Occasional hiker, aperiodic XC skier, aspiring sailor, sometime bassist, and confirmed menace to potted plants. Bookish. Cat person. Dislikes spectator sports except women's rugby. Artémisophile and latent goth, overfond of dark clothing and darker music. Quietly miserable, often tired and overwrought. Affinity for '70s and '80s minicomputers and a few operating systems which ran thereon. Building a Level 1 HPR Cert rocket.
40 Followers
131 Following
26 Posts
Joined June 19, 2026
they/them:
Yes, one of THOSE people.
OSes:
BSD, Ancient Unix, Plan 9, VMS
Languages:
Forth, Scheme, Algol 60, Oberon 3
Replying to
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org @Archergal@wandering.shop I took-up longbow archery for a while. I was never able to reliably confine the arrows I loosed to within a target smaller than a 5' square. I could get them to trend within a significantly smaller area, but for each quiver of a dozen I loosed, 3-4 would hit in the lower left or, more often, lower right of my backstop. And that was from a stable stance on solid ground. The thought of where arrows might land if I attempted loosing from a pole gives me chills.
Replying to
@BrianJopek@mastodon.world I clearly remember seeing lots of huge, puffy contrails from jets during the 1980s. So if there were anything sketchy going on, the wingnut's sainted hero, Ronald Reagan, must have been in on it.
Replying to
@wendynather@infosec.exchange If this is ever actually released, I owe a the estate of a late friend $20. If it's released and is less painful to watch for those who've read the book than Johnny Mnemonic (1995), I owe the estate $100 and a three-meat Chicago-style deep dish.
Replying to
@mwl@io.mwl.io Tampons less so than pads, and for pads to be effective, they need either sustained pressure or to be stuck-on with lots of duct tape. (Source: a StB class taught by an ER nurse who worked for Harborview, Seattle's level 1 trauma center, and heavily attended by members of a J B G C.)
@brouhaha@mastodon.social @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems HOAs: the vanguard of American fascism.
@BegoniaArizona@m.ai6yr.org @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Either way, not buying anything from Taylor Farms, ever again.
@samlitzinger@journa.host Someone used an LLM to do their homework.
@mwl@io.mwl.io Welcome. I consider it my duty to inform visitors and newcomers that the best Cuban sandwiches in Seattle are at Un Bien on 15th in Ballard.
You picked a noisy week. We're about to be subjected to 4 days of low altitude overflights by F-18 SuperHornets and a Growler or two.
Replying to
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social GenX remembers, surely as we all drank of the hose, carried latchkeys, and bought $20 dime bags of oregano and ditch weed from that guy with the wispy mustache and a dented yellow Camaro, near the payphones in the McDonald's parking lot.
Replying to
@Viss@mastodon.social I think I still have an Intel HDMI gumstick around here, somewhere in the abandoned tech midden. If I find it, you are are welcome to it. IIRC, it came with Ubuntu installed, which filled almost the entire onboard flash.
Replying to
@mattblaze@federate.social If they think _you_ weren't nice, they should definitely avoid making any poorly-thought-out comments to Rob Pike on a bad day.
Replying to
@david@fouroclockfarms.club From what I hear, this is exactly what Steven Miller and Russell Vought have done. It's just that they allow Trump's worst decisions to play-out, in part to maintain the illusion that they're not in control, and because they both deeply enjoy human suffering.
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@chewie@mammut.gogreenit.net @nixCraft@mastodon.social Just realized that 486 technically had 10 serial ports, though I had the two on the motherboard disabled to save IRQs.
I have yet to encounter a web-based collaboration tool that's less annoying than flat text files on a Unix box with group write permissions and an understanding that thou shalt use RCS with adequate comments, or thine cubicle shall host the giant pink carnival teddy bear of shame until thou catchest the next version control scofflaw, and deliverest the teddy bear unto them.
The latest Linux kernel update to my deal-with-the-outside-world box kernel panics on every boot attempt. This particular box is currently running OpenSuSE, which was a mistake in so many ways. Definitely not what it used to be. I blame LLMs. I'll probably switch this machine to MX, too. Works well enough on my improvised RIP and my expendable laptop.
TIL TI stopped making NE5532s, but is now selling an incompatible op-amp with very different characteristics with the NE5532 part number. Also hearing that something similar has happened to the OPA134. I think I'm going all-discrete if I design any more audio stuff.
Sounded like a UH-1 was circling right outside the house, but according to adsb.fi, it was out over the lake.
There are a whole lot of Digidesign 001 rack units out there. There are a few of the corresponding PCI cards, needed to run certain versions of Pro Tools LE 5.something. AFAICT, there are exactly two of the original HPCN50M-M cables to connect them together available on the planet, and one of them is in France. There is a possibility that a cable meant for a Mitsubishi industrial servo drive /just might/ work as a replacement. I'll know sometime around mid-August when/if it arrives from China.
It is annoyingly difficult to find a straight-through HPCN50 M-M cable that's >3 feet long and doesn't have to risk clearing customs.
Replying to
@GrantMeStrength@hachyderm.io California Mexican Food, in what used to be a Burger King. Just about any taco truck is a better bet during the day, but late at night or early in the morning, CMF is definitely preferable to either Taco Bell or Aliberto's.
Replying to
@paco@infosec.exchange If free usage costs $0.02, it is not, in fact, free. That said, I will happily deliver two pennies, or a whole pocket-full, to One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, on your behalf, as soon as I find my old wrist rocket. There's a halfway decent 24 hour burrito place, a few blocks away . . .
Replying to
@chewie@mammut.gogreenit.net @nixCraft@mastodon.social At one point in the '90s, I had a 486 with 8 serial ports, running, of all things, SCO's SysV. Two modems (Telebit PEP and USR Courier), three glass TTYs, a grungy old DOS laptop with Procomm, a serial line printer, and eventually, a serial cable to a newer 486 running Slackware. Probably never used more than 3 devices at once, unless I was using the laptop to transfer files while printing and syncing mail upstream.
Replying to
@nixCraft@mastodon.social I'd be happy if they'd just start including 9 pin serial ports, again. I buy about 5 replacement USB to serial dongles a year.