deleted by creator

I mean, it’s a pretty good illustration of a deadlock. Most traffic intersections, especially 4-way stops are basically mutexes anyway.

Jamming a circle though… that’s like deadlocking a ring buffer message queue with threaded consumers. Or something. It’s just a spectacular way to break stuff any way you slice it.

That environment was wild though. At the time, you basically needed to be an electrical engineer and/or a licensed HAM operator, just to have your head wrapped around how it all worked. Familiarity with the very electronics of the thing, even modifying the hardware directly when needed, was crucial to operating that old tech.

Unsolicited advice warning: Depending on how handy you are, you may want to consider grabbing a few wear parts or the most commonly replaced bits before inventory completely dries up. I used to have a newer (but still old) dryer and thought the heating element was failing - a replacement part was actually kind of hard to source. Anyway, that would give the ol’ beast a good shot at another decade or two.

I recall reading in Consumer Reports many years ago that most refrigerators were discarded not because they stopped working, but because of cosmetic damage. Broken plastic door shelves, dents, rust, out of style, etc. The compressors were still fine.

Yup. The enshitification kicks in super hard after a technology is mostly “solved”. Refrigerator compressors and insulated boxes are both very much optimized as much as they’re going to get. The only way to eke more cash out of making a product like that is to cut corners on other bits, or get people to buy a subscription somehow.

I keep racking my brain on this one. Unless it’s doing advanced things like automatically tracking fridge inventory and helping build shopping lists, there’s literally no point. Analog controls work fine, even for fancier fridges with integrated ice makers.

Have to? No. Want to in order to avoid potential problems since I already have a printer around? Yes.

Printing return labels mostly.

Occasionally, I will travel with hardcopy for travel itinerary, reservation info, flight info, and the occasional QR code to interface with various services and kiosks along the way. Reason being: sometimes, I’m in a busy place and I’m simply not getting to an outlet to feed a hungry phone. Plus, apps are aggressively networked these days (no offline data) so losing access to information due to spotty cell or wifi reception is a stupid problem to have, especially when paper is such a reliable workaround.

Also, a hard-copy backup for tax filings and other important transactions is cheap insurance.

I’ll add that I’m currently using a 15-year-old HP laser printer that’s on its second toner cartridge. An inkjet would have clogged and sent to e-waste about five times over by now. So it’s hardly an inconvenience.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.

There’s a hidden advantage here apart from moving away from Microsoft, or having 1st party controller support.

Game devs will have a precise target to optimize for.

If enough steam machines and steam decks are out there, it simplifies porting software since you have a handful of fixed targets to hit. A studio could easily buy a few of these appliances for testing and development, and know for certain the product will run as intended. It’s a luxury currently enjoyed by consoles, and it really does help their dominance in their respective niches.

This also helps smaller studios since the bare minimum means targeting a known steam platform, rather than pulling machine specs out of thin air and taking their best shot. It’s a much easier problem to solve and takes a lot less time and money.

I think there will always be room for high-end gaming, but as long as you’re “steam machine 2025 compatible” or whatever, you know what you’re going to get.

65: Kids are out of the house, you have some money to fix a broken door, but you’re just too damn tired to go breaking things or screaming about it. Also, the reason for the tantrum happened 30 years ago. So you tell your family a pointless, rambling, mind-numbingly boring story about it at Thanksgiving, instead.

<< The Monkey’s Paw Curls >>

2026 marks the first year in American history where a completely home-grown pandemic forces borders to close, and air-traffic to be redirected as to avoid receiving American passengers. The EU, Arab League, and countless other countries congratulate themselves on rapidly orchestrating the containment of the disease to the USA; truly a landmark moment for international relations. Meanwhile, a Georgetown-based super-PAC “La di libertine” gains untold amounts of influence in government, following an uncannily well-timed short-sale of AI-based stocks. When asked about speculations as to their ties to Italian crime syndicates and fascist hardliners, they declined to comment.

Narrator: And that’s when the Fire Nation attacked.

It really can be like night and day. My cat was so incredibly stressed out when we brought her home that she kept “fawning” all over us for the first two weeks. Lots of excessive side rubs and a general clingyness to every interaction. She needed constant touch.

After that she began to settle in and became much more herself: playful, independent, and only sometimes in the mood for a lap or a cuddle.

In a small, anecdotal way, I can say with confidence that the level of fiber trenching that happened (in a major metro area) from late 1999 through 2002 was on a whole other level.

I predict a whole “Weekend at Bernie’s” DeathGate scandal where a whole bunch of executive actions and auto-pen shenanigans happen posthumously under his name, even though Vance is right there. Why? Because it’s exactly the same kind of greedy and stupid this administration has demonstrated so far.

I already learned my lesson here.

Last time I said something like that was November of 2019.

There has to be a better name for that.

Wait 3 to 5 business weeks while the 16-bit ARM microcontroller they put in these things serves a web page like old people fuck.

This also goes for some NAS appliances and the in-dash console of newer cars. Underpowered ARM implementations are the scourge of this decade.

A bid for immortality on the back of an LLM is just… asinine. What are they thinking?! That’s like saying we can bring Shakespeare back from the dead because we created a very clever digital knot based on all his written works, and he can only speak to us from a web browser or text terminal. Do these animals really think they can just model their Reddit posts and live as a ghost in the machine after that?

I would love to hear what Kurzweil has to say about all this.

And just like that, the e-machine continues to fulfill its intended purpose: browse the internet like it’s 1998. It’s never obsolete, but you do need a time machine to take full advantage of it.