new camera, testing. is this right?
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J. B. Crawford
@jbcrawford@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3DevOps consultant. Computer curmudgeon. Burqueño. Desert rat. Queer. Author of Computers Are Bad.
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Joined November 28, 2023
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a lot of great vintage signage on all the older apartment buildings in the university area. this is one of my favs.
So there was an era of American history where the dust had not really settled on whether the prongs of an outlet went vertically or horizontally. Both had been sold by different manufacturers. It was partly the dominance of manufacturer Hubbell that ultimately lead to standardization on the vertical prongs of NEMA outlets today. For a long time, Hubbell smoothed over the problem buy selling ouetlets that would accept either type of plug. Of course this complicates the modern use of horizontal prongs for 240v, but oh well.
Anyway, this was all rattling around my brain somewhere. What was not is that Hubbell called these outlets "Te-slot."
I would have taken "T-slot" or "Tee-slot" without hesitation, but "Te-slot" is very strange. Some sort of orthographic difference to 100 years ago?
I was driving around the western foothills of the Manzano Mountains, like you do. This is an area that is relatively close to Albuquerque but quite remote due to the way the highways run and a spectacularly failed "new city" project by Horizon Land.
And what did I stumble upon but... the Trinity tower? huh?
Turns out they filmed the Trinity scenes for Oppenheimer out here. There's the tower and at least one 10K bunker reproduced. It makes me want to rewatch the movie and pay close attention---the Manzanos here must be filling in as the Oscura Mountains, but they're noticeably much closer and taller!
Perhaps you have lived here too long when your response to this kind of thing is "but the Manzano foothills are qualitatively distinct from the north end of WSMR where the horizons are in fact much more open!"
lol. I write a big long article about email encryption with a link to a complaint about the OSI model partway through...
...and by day two the five-year-old OSI model article is outperforming the brand new email one.
that's another on my list of back catalog articles that might get a "revision 2" rewrite.
Found the time today to read through the AT&T Nassau documents I got from USEPA. They do not reveal much new information, particularly since the investigation under EPA was only preliminary. But the repeated references to "unknown quantities of old phones" as a constituent of the soil are amusing.
The old phones weren't removed; institutional controls on the site today generally prohibit digging without environmental supervision but I think it has still has some substantial areas where any future construction is going to dredge up a bunch of old WE 500s and Princesses.
It reminds me of the huge, ancient shell middens that you can find on the coasts... except it's telephones.
Today on Computers Are Bad: Megawatts by Microwave. The Bonneville Power Administration's microwave communications network, a pioneering achievement in electrical utility telecommunications that helped to build the Pacific Northwest.
https://computer.rip/2026-07-04-microwave-and-power.html
Executone, a long-running intercom manufacturer that was by this point a subsidiary of AT&T competitor Contel, really enjoyed the 1984 breakup of the Bell System. The "all broken up" lines are funny, but what I think is particularly intersting is Contel's effort to move into the residential market and take over the telephone service/repair aspect. I doubt this ever produced any meaningful business, but it does relate to the topic of an upcoming article.
have you ever tried to compile t38modem on a modern linux distribution hooooo boy I am so many forks deep
Replying to
@rf@mas.to @attoparsec@clacks.link Surveillance software integrator. Or at least that's a very good bet. While the interface for these cameras is ostensibly standardized (ONVIF) there are a lot of compatibility problems, so if you sell surveillance solutions you basically have to have a wall of 200 cameras for testing.
Another possibility is that whoever put them up is evaluating options for a larger purchase. I've been involved in putting up a bunch of cameras in one place for image quality and reliability comparisons... and that might make more sense here given that a lot of them appear to be the same model.
Interesting that they appear to be on top of a railroad relay hut, so maybe the railroad is testing them out. But maybe someone else just bought an enclosure that looks a lot like a railroad relay hut.
somewhere in the Manzanos
hit me up on IP YAHOO Chat
Today on Computers Are Bad: Extremely Low Frequencies
https://computer.rip/2026-05-09-extremely-low-frequencies.html
Replying to
I'm just old enough to look back on a lot of my formative interactions with The Hacker Community and have a very, well, complex tapestry of emotions. On the one hand, those communities were often surprisingly open and welcoming and had a lot of sincere interest in Figuring Things Out.
On the other hand, the seeds of our modern techno-fascist political movement were absolutely there, and I worry about how I personally would have turned out had I not had a few critical exposures to my good friends Marx and Hegel.
haha no it was actually Henry George. Say it with me: EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. "READ GEORGE."
I feel like Georgists always grow up to either be on the right of the libertarians on taxation or on the left of the socialists on land reform. Count me in the latter camp.
I love how the guy narrating the NASA stream alternates between very matter of fact updates on events and some super purple scripted phrases
Replying to
but I am also *really* enjoying this ad, which depicts the Nike missile system. Nike is probably the most aesthetically pleasing artifact of Cold War air defense... and there's some stiff competition. The industrial design of the missiles and launchers was already quite pleasing, and then their ubiquitous installation on US soil brought a level of press coverage and public awareness that solidifed the Nike's tilted launch rails and long delta fins as "Classic Missile."
Modern missiles don't look much like this at all, but you still see illustrations today that are clearly Nike-inspired.
Used to be you couldn't find the right cable in the drawer. Now we have... This.
okay but given a week and a half of toilet troubles followed by reentry I figure they are a little green at this point
you ever use a pit toilet so new it's still got an inspection sticker?
(and yes, the thing where the NYTimes reporter explains what a mailing list is is very funny, mostly because the explanation is completely bizarre and probably leaves the reader more confused)
Replying to
(the assumption being that we, as a nation, have a serious drug problem that we are attempting to address through red white and blue stamps. which is, if you think about it, basically all correct.)
Found that the payphone test line wasn't working again, fixed it again. This time the root cause was an automatic update creating a Python version/library version mismatch. That's what I get for combining automatic updates with Python modules installed both via the system and pip. Do as I say, not as I do.
I noticed because it got two calls, the good thing is that the "basics" work even when the AGI (and thus TTS readback) is broken, so I was able to "reconstruct" the online records for those calls.
Woke up to a small gift from the USEPA. It turns out that there *was* a CERCLA investigation of the AT&T Nassau Metals site, back in 1991. It seems like the conclusion was that the site should be "Higher Priority" (has a meaning in the statute) but didn't require immediate CERCLA action, and then nothing further happened since AT&T started remediation under NYDEC permits. But the reports from the 1991 site investigation are a useful new find!
TIL Westinghouse made cubicles.
Imagine all those office workers greedily taking up 20 sqft that they *don't even need.* Good thing Westinghouse has a plan to remove 35 sqft, 20 for efficiency and 15 just to stick it to 'em
along the Jemez River (East Fork)
The New York Times has aimed my least favorite recurring feature squarely at my own backyard, and it goes exactly how you'd expect: they talk up the "college town" feel of Central by the university, one of them is an urban planner, so naturally they decide to buy new-construction bleh on the West Mesa where their principal local amenities are car washes and self-storage.
To be fair they were under time constraints but, well, leave it to the NYTimes to come to Albuquerque and play up mediocrity.
Today on Computers Are Bad: Telecheck and Tyms Past
https://computer.rip/2026-03-29-telecheck-and-tyms-past.html
nice sunset
didn't expect Super Nintendo World at Universal's Epic Universe to be giving "Last Year at Marienbad" but in this sun it very much was.
Also it was very hot and very loud and I was pretty drunk and it *looked like this everywhere* so I was having some generalized troubles with attachment to reality at the time.
it's a lake. whoever said we didn't have lakes, they were lying. we have as many as three or four.
(this one is not natural either, but instead of the Corps of Engineers, I believe it was the NM Department of Game and Fish that originally dammed it. It's a small one.)
in Jemez Springs
Replying to
@davepolaschek@writing.exchange I've done exactly this before, but you might be happier with a zero trust VPN approach like tailscale or manually with wireguard. Also see Pangolin which is probably too heavyweight for your situation but designed for exactly this kind of scenario.
Replying to
I was actually on the Cypherpunks mailing list during a small part of the period of interest and messed around with HashCash in the context of e(-)mail mixers, but I was very young and didn't know my ass from a public key infrastructure. I do like that this presents the alternate theory, though, that I caught a bad case of Cypherpunk Writing Style.
Replying to
here's some more and then I need to stop looking at old microfilm and do something real with my life
I like how on a lot of these you can make out the edges of the tape they used for lettering
Replying to
There's a distinct possibility that the problem is not so much the slipped gasket, as it is that the slip gasket caused some other problem that caused the membrane to fail internally. While I've had few problems myself, I know that RO membranes have a reputation for being fiddly and delicate. Putting the seal back where it's supposed to be seems to have restored normal operation (as far as I can tell, meaning roughly 100GPD permeate output) but I'm ordering a new membrane anyway. And it's almost filter change interval so we'll just do the whole thing.
This membrane is only 8 months old and shouldn't need replacement... but they only cost $35, so not worth fiddling with it too much considering that the high PM2.5 seems to have been causing my furnace filters to clog and I have totally spent more than $35 on filters while troubleshooting this.
I love how Zoom has taken it upon itself to remind me to go to the gym