How Clarkesworld should respond…

Pixy linked to an SF magazine that’s had to stop accepting submissions due to the flood of “AI”-generated slush.

I think the thing to do is pick one that’s short and not completely horrible, and just announce their intention to publish it without any attribution or payment. There’s no author, so there’s no copyright holder.

Stick to coffee, dude

James Hoffmann is entertaining and informative on the subject of coffee, in print and video. Sadly, his latest video leads off with several minutes of Why We Must Stop Using Natural Gas And Electrify Everything To Save The World.

I have no idea how the rest of the video went.

Next on “America’s Dumbest Criminals”…

When your profile on a dating site includes the string “MAP4-10” (that’s “minor-attracted-person” for those not up on the latest euphemisms), and includes the phrase “when I say I want kids, I mean it”, and your gmail account is “pedozack82”, you just might be supplying probable cause for a search of your home.

TL/DR: pled guilty to 313 counts of possession, 8 counts of distributing, 2 counts of promoting, and 1 count of procuring child pornography; the only real surprise is that he wasn’t an elected official, who most likely would have gotten less than 70 years.

Many of the commenters aren’t happy with this being considered probable cause, with some of them hung up on the judge relying on a detective using his “training and experience” to identify the meaning of “MAP4-10”. Some also insisted that it was incredibly unlikely that a pedo would advertise on social media for kids to molest. Never mind that the whole thing was started by a referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has some experience in this area.

Read The Fine Print

Nespresso is big on being green, with their fully-recyclable pods (and free shipping to their recycling centers), but a lot of it is marketing bullshit. Such as their recent deal that offered an upcycled throw blanket if you ordered N sleeves of pods, calling it out as made with materials from the pod-recycling program. Specifically, the coffee grounds; using aluminum from the pods themselves would make for a rather stiff blanket.

The fine print (contrast significantly enhanced by my phone; I could barely make out the text on the actual box):

So, 4 pods worth of coffee grounds is about 18-20 grams, and only 19% of the mostly-polyester blend is recycled plastic. This is about as significant as Kiss adding their blood to the printing ink of their first Marvel graphic novel. (yes, I have a copy somewhere…)

Back to the yard!

With the weather improving, I was wondering when the landscapers would pick up where they left off, so I was about to call them on Monday morning, when I heard their trucks pull up outside. First up: grading the side yard to eliminate the impromptu pond created by melting snow.

Half-bricked!

The last time I tried to update my iPad Mini, it got bricked, apparently by a bad (Apple-made) cable. The cable was good enough for backups and data sync, but somehow not for installing an update. Guess what happened when I went to install the update today that fixes a known active exploit?

If you guessed “bricked by a cable”, you’re almost correct. This time the Mac running the update hadn’t timed out yet, and I was able to swap in a different cable before it was completely hosed, so that the update proceeded. This time the bad one was an Anker cable, and I swapped in another Anker cable and USB-A to USB-C adapter.

Oh, and the release was so solidly tested that it broke the Google Photos app for many users.

Speaking of Apple,

The iOS music experience is all about displaying cover art, to the point that if you don’t have it for almost all of your songs, it’s significantly harder to navigate. So it’s rather annoying that they’ve had an unfixed bug for years where music downloaded from your computer is assigned the wrong album art when you upgrade/replace your phone/tablet.

The fix: shut off sync, delete all music from your phone, and then sync it again. There are other methods that sometime work for some people on some platforms, but it’s all voodoo; the only sure fix is to start over, which is annoying when you have 60+ gig of songs to sync.

NieR Antivirus!

2B is supposed to be back in the saddle this Saturday, after a run-in with Deus Ex Covid.

Tears Of The Kingdom Wallet

Lots of Zelda fans are upset that the sequel to Breath Of The Wild will cost $10 more when it (finally) releases in May. Given how many hours I’ve played the first game, and I’m likely well below the average, I can’t see a reason to complain. It would have to be riddled with bugs and save-deleting crashes to not be worth it.

Speaking of sequels…

I just watched the trailer for Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. It was remarkably tedious, and included nothing that would make me want to watch the movie. Ugly costumes, forced melodrama, jokes that didn’t land, and a muddled story. The second one wasn’t terribly good, but it wasn’t actively terrible like this.

So I’m down to two shows on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday, and two of those are on their last chance. If you’re keeping track, yes, that means this one just got dropped:

Isekai Sausage Party episode 5

Divine blessings do not include fan-service. Also, Our Sweets-Greedy Goddess has an annoying voice and doesn’t actually show up in the world, because goddess. Worse, next week is Baby’s First Dungeon Crawl.

Verdict: yeah, I’m about done here.

(“Dear NieR staff, get well soon”)

QA Priorities…

The first listed feature on the iOS 16.3 update notice is:

introduces a new Unity wallpaper to honor Black history and culture in celebration of Black History Month

The second feature listed is:

Security Keys for Apple ID

I’m guessing the first one received more testing.

Best Practices

Starting in April, all new Amazon S3 buckets will block public access by default. You’ll have to deliberately share tons of personal and financial data with the entire world.

Amazon Hokey-Pokey

I ordered something on Wednesday with delivery promised on Friday. Here’s what the tracking status looks like on Saturday, allegedly from UPS:

Wednesday

Carrier picked up the package.

Thursday

11:16 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility.
1:10 PM Package left the carrier facility.

Friday

6:58 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility.
4:14 PM Package left the carrier facility.
6:36 PM Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Saturday

1:11 AM Package left the carrier facility.
1:53 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility.
2:24 AM Package left the carrier facility.
3:09 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility.
4:24 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Note the lack of city/state names, which usually show up in UPS tracking, so this is all inside Amazon. UPS’ own tracking site has a very different view of the progress:

Wed 6:26 PM label created (United States).
Sat 7:24 AM on the way (West Carrollton, OH).
Estimated delivery: Sunday.

Simulated package handoff in Amazon facilities:

Time to break out the .25 ACP!

I had a crown fall out over New Years, found an open dentist 45 miles away that could squeeze me in, and went in to have it re-cemented. In the lobby, I saw something that’s actually pretty rare here, and accidentally amusing:

I guess the good news is that the person who made the sign was able to spell ordnance correctly. 😁

Time to break out the 12 Gauge!

Apple broke DVD compatibility in the latest MacOS Ventura update. I’m guessing nobody in QA even has a USB DVD drive to test against.

Pro Tip!

When you buy a really nice rolling snow shovel after the first big snowstorm, take some time to assemble it before the next snowstorm. If I had followed my own advice, I might have been able to locate the 9/16 and 1/2-inch wrenches required rather than hunting through boxes looking for adequate substitutes.

In theory I’m on the snow removal plan now, but they didn’t come by in the morning while it was still snowing, so I removed the first six inches of global warming myself. From the steep, 75-foot-long driveway.

The cleats were also a good idea…

I didn’t really need to go anywhere, but I had packages being delivered, and the contractors were scheduled to be here first thing Monday morning to install my range hood. And I wasn’t going to give them any excuse for rescheduling. Overnight another inch or so fell, but didn’t make my driveway too slick for them.

They can’t get up on the roof and make the vent hole for the new range hood yet (they cleared the snow from that area to dry it out and prep it), but they can at least get the interior part done.

Update: They were able to get up on the roof, so my new battlestation range hood is fully operational.

I can put up with a lot, but…

I like Charles de Lint’s writing, and am willing to accept his vast overrepresentation of victimization and other liberal bugaboos in the Newford stories, but I stopped dead on this line in his short story “The Forest is Crying”:

“Positive thinking brought down the Berlin Wall,” she said.

No, sweetie, that was Reagan.

Reminder: “cis” just means normal

I was willing to play along for a while out of politeness, but once they started demanding special treatment at gunpoint, they lost me, and from now on I’m not even going to let them redefine an adult-film marketing category as “the t-slur”.

Trans activist group attacks Aretha Franklin over Natural Woman

In-security

I brought my Arlo security cameras with me from the old house, but haven’t gotten around to permanently mounting them outside, due to all the work being done (I just had a temporary setup for while I was in Japan). Now they’re being end-of-lifed, so it’s kind of moot. I think I’ll check out the competition before buying new ones.

With luck, this will improve the price of the ammo…

Smith & Wesson just announced a pistol in 5.7x28mm, a gas-operated 22-rounder in the M&P brand, with an optics mount, picatinny rail, and threaded barrel for mounting a suppressor. Price is approximately half that of FN’s pistol, which should attract some customers. Ergonomically it resembles the M&P line, but lacks the adjustable comfortable grip due to the length of the 5.7 cartridge. Also, it looks like it uses the three-handed hammer-and-punch field-stripping method of the CSX, which is a giant leap backwards.

Little Girls MasterBlading episode 2

Our Sorting Hat Box doesn’t have a voice of its own, which they make up for with exposition from both his and her voices. This is immediately followed by a 6-year timeskip to get Our Battle Maiden up to a full-figured short-skirted twelve-year-old, so the plot can briefly quicken as the young scumbag from the first episode returns as an adult scumbag, complete with scenery chewing and mustache twirling.

They need another six-year timeskip ASAP if she’s going to keep showing that much premium cleavage; the only thing that says “twelve” about her is her height relative to adult males, which just improves their view.

There’s a brief moment of self-awareness as Our Early Bloomer recoils under the lustful gaze of adult men, and she wonders if all the young women he admired in her previous life felt the same. But that’s about it for his feminist awakening, and she doesn’t bring it up again.

Verdict: this is all still prologue; at this pace they won’t reach Ninja High School until the season’s more than half over, which limits the screen time for the other cute girls (and the story, such as it is). Sorry, not willing to stick around that long.

(unrelated busty battle maiden is unrelated)

Zero-Trust Dungeoneering episode 3

Our Dragongirl Gourmand’s a real cutie when she’s happy, and her betrayal backstory was actually well-done. This has earned the show another episode on my watchlist, even though I still want to know about the receptionist’s eye (and there are two girls like this, on opposite sides). Also, Our Undercover Idol seems to be taking a direct interest in her #1 fan, and she’s cute, too.

Verdict: one more, at least

Isekai Amazon Fresh episode 2

Sadly, Our Shopping Hero bids farewell to his escort party, which suggests that Our Genki Scouter Gal will not be a regular part of the show. Which significantly reduces my interest in future episodes, although I did like his interaction with the merchant guild. The receptionist (who we’ll likely never see again…) was easy on the eyes, and smart enough to immediately recognize the quality of his spices.

Verdict: one more, just in case, although the goddesses don’t look as interesting as the adventurer gal.

(genki adventurer gal is unrelated, and no longer on Pixiv for some reason, so I can’t link to the picture)

Unrelated, Modern Problems:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.”

“Don’t give him free fish the next day, and he’ll burn down your house, loot the neighborhood shops, and murder anyone who disses him.”

Reminder: a server config that works when you test with a single client is not guaranteed to work when someone fires up 1,000 clients at once. Just sayin’. Also, nginx internals can be weird and hard to debug, especially when Production is on fire. Also also, Never Cut And Paste From Stack Overflow. 😁

Meanwhile, Down Under

How Not To Summon A Demon Lord To Australia. Too sexy to import on DVD/Bluray, but streaming the broadcast version is fine!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that boobs are involved. The kind with nipples.

Meanwhile, in FNlandia

FN has injected steroids into their popular 509 series, producing the FN 545 Tactical 18-shot .45 ACP with an optics mount, picatinny rail, and threaded barrel. I think that pretty soon handgun makers are going to have to start adding M-Lok rails at various angles so customers have a new way to tart up their guns so they can look more tacticool than the next guy while poking poorly-grouped holes in paper targets at a suburban pistol range.

On the bright side, I didn’t like their old FNX-45 model at all. I do wonder how long it will be before the new one (and its 22-shot 10mm sibling) is out on shelves, though. I still haven’t seen the new High Power anywhere, and the Five-seveN Mk3 is pretty scarce, too.

Jan. 16 update

To my surprise, guns.com has both the 545 and 510 in stock already, in both Basic Black and Coyote Ugly.

Meanwhile, e.map is still not a function

(sorry, Pete)

Unrelated, every time I see shit like this…

…I realize that the world is doomed.

Temperatures are supposed to drop about 25°F tonight and stay that way for at least a week, so today’s rain will be followed by tomorrow’s snow. Welcome back to the midwest, eh?

1Password ssh-agent

I missed this announcement, but it does seem to work, as long as all of your keys are recent/strong enough. It imports your private keys into a vault (replacing the passphrase with their security) and acts as your ssh-agent, allowing you to transparently sync keys to your Linux, Mac, and Windows devices, and the browser extension correctly detects common cloud and source control platforms that you’d want to paste public keys into. It also handles any necessary format conversions on import, which is handy when you’ve got a mixed audience of Windows and Mac/Linux users.

Never explain!

I’ve been idly following the light novels for Realist Hero, and the latest one, book 17, finally fills in every detail of how things work and how they got that way. It’s been lurking in the background for a while now, with the author dribbling out nonsense about time travel, dungeons, “overtech”, and nanites, but it comes to a head here when Our Realist Harem King (who just added two more wives) resolves the Great War Against The Demons with the words “sudo make me a sandwich”.

This follows and is followed by a complete history of the world and its creatures. And it’s really dumb.

(okay, those weren’t his exact words…)

Related,

The Killin’ Slimes & Collectin’ Cuties light novels have pretty much run out of steam as well, with the latest volume consisting of a series of unrelated short stories that accomplish nothing. In fairness, the premise was always pretty limited in what they could do once the full cast was assembled and sufficient wacky hijinks ensued. Best Girl Beelzebub was pretty much the only thing holding my interest, and she doesn’t show up nearly often enough.

(see? no Beelzebub!)

False advertising

Last week, when discussing the upcoming election with my mother, I had to correct her on the nature of one of the items. Because she reads the local newspaper, she had picked up an erroneous impression about the constitutional amendment to prevent non-citizens from voting in local elections. She thought it would allow it, so she intended to vote no.

I hadn’t read any voting guides, and I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in… well, ever, so I just read the sample ballot, which was perfectly clear. Since it passed 77% to 23%, relatively few people were fooled, despite the best efforts of the activists.

Dear Smith & Wesson

I would never buy a concealed-carry pistol that has giant letters shouting EQUALIZER on the slide. No matter how big your advertising budget is (and it’s apparently quite large, judging from the amount of email, ads, and puff pieces this week). I don’t even want to sign up for any of the giveaway packages at various retailers, because it just doesn’t appeal to me, even without the silly name and rollmarking.

I also wouldn’t buy a Tactical Rowdy Elite Combat Patriot Pit Bull Extreme, which would take up about as much space on the slide. I definitely wouldn’t carry anything with a “cool” name, because even a perfectly obvious self-defense situation will likely end up in civil court, where your Bloody Decker 45 with an engraved Punisher logo will look a bit peculiar to a jury carefully selected to know nothing about guns.

The CSX, on the other hand, is a very nice piece that would be a fine replacement for the long-discontinued Star M43 Firestar, except for the three-handed-hammer-and-punch field stripping and the smooth, floppy spacers on the 12-round magazines, which should be firmly attached and stippled.

(speaking of nice pieces, a while back I picked up the Jeff Quinn limited-edition Ruger GP-100 in .44 Special for an excellent price; good thing I bought lots of ammo during Obama’s first term, because 44SP is running $1/round most places, if you can find it at all)

Going on the list…

While I’m in Japan, I’ll have to see if I can find a P-90 keychain/charm to match the one Karen Kohiruimaki has. But I’m not going to spray-paint my PS-90 pink. 😁

(although…)