“You can drive from coast to coast across the middle of the country and never pass through a single county that voted for John Kerry.”
— Mark Steyn takes on election-results bigotryFFS
How many words in this headline are not stupid?
Introducing Crowdsec: A Modernized, Collaborative Massively Multiplayer Firewall for Linux
How many real combat drops?
“Am I living in a simulation?”
If you’re banging Salma Hayek, the answer is yes. Duh.
StadiOn
This story about the implosion of Google’s in-house Stadia game-development company sounded like such a familiar clusterfuck that I found myself searching for Steve Perlman’s name.
SolarCluster
Former security company SolarWinds has blamed an intern for a leaked password associated with their massive fail, that turned out to be ‘solarwinds123’:
“a mistake that an intern made… They violated our password policies and they posted that password on an internal, on their own private Github account”
If an intern was in a position to set a password that was used by anything more sensitive than the third-floor laser printer, and you had nothing in place to enforce your ‘policy’ or detect lapses, and the thing that password gave access to was somehow Internet-accessible, your entire business model was a complete fraud.
I can think of plenty of stupid-password stories, including the time the new Core Services Group full of Senior System Administrators changed the root password on all the infrastructure servers to be the bullshit temporary password we’d been giving to every new employee for years (“iltwas” = “I Love To Work At Synopsys”), but that was so long ago that everyone on the Internet had a public IP address and Netscape still thought they had a viable business model.
Pokemon Shogun
Nintendo is promising a real open-world Pokégame, for next year. This year will just be another remake, this time of Diamond/Pearl. Both of these surprised me, because I’ve been assuming they’d just keep adding DLC to Sword/Shield; a lot less development work and a license to print money.
“I invented a thing!”
He seems to have survived the Internet’s immediate response that VW’s been selling that exact same thing for years.
What’s in a name, enscript edition?
I’ve been poking at re-implementing enscript from scratch, because the GNU clone of this ancient Adobe tool is cruftier than a cruftwyrm in a cruftstorm, tarted up with all kinds of useless crap that interferes with the core functionality of printing a damn text file.
There is no equivalent software available for any platform at this time. You can get some kind of printout from text editors, but black text on white paper in a fixed-width font is just too primitive to attract the attention of modern skittletext-loving dark-moded 20-year-olds with perfect eyesight and an addiction to running everything inside an Electron app.
I’ve got a long list of necessary and forbidden features, and a tentative implementation plan (Python3 + free version of Reportlab), but what I really need to focus on is bike-shedding the name.
Goal: clearly suggest the fundamental purpose of cleanly converting
TXT to PDF in any modern fixed-width Unicode font, optionally
including the implementation language as a discriminator. Continuity
with the long history of the tools in Adobe’s TranScript package would
be a plus, but I think that ship has sailed, wrecked, and sunk to the
bottom of the
ocean.
Unfortunately, I can’t find a single name that includes any of text, txt, pdf, lp, script, tran, en, etc, that isn’t either already in use by another likely-abandoned open-source package, registered to a terrorist group, or simply horrible. Assorted uses of “2” and “to” don’t improve the situation in any way. Honestly, the least-horrible options I’ve come up with so far are “pdftty” and “qenscript”. One can’t be pronounced these days without being canceled, and the other sounds like the companion app to barbiescript.
[the long-abandoned source code for the original Adobe TranScript package is visible online, by the way, but Project Athena’s ancient Trac server requires an MIT login to actually download anything; I might still have a copy somewhere from ~1992, if the files on that tape ever made it to a zip drive that made it a USB disk that made it to a NAS that made it to another NAS. Actually, I know I still have it, but I’d have to find something that can read original NeXT single-sided optical disc cartridges, and then hope they’re still functional.]
So after all that…
…it turns out that the version of “Sex (I’m A)” that Alexa will play by default is not the original version from the album Pleasure Victim. It’s a re-recording with offputting synths, Terri Nunn emphasizing her lines oddly, and some other guy taking the male role and being mixed too prominently. The simulated moaning has also been redone, really badly.
A bit of digging suggests that this is the version from the album Metro: Greatest Hits, which continues the usually-disappointing trend of Alexa choosing the most recent version of a song rather than the one I actually want to hear. Often this is a terrible live version by the wrong band, and adding “the album version of” will help, but if I have to write extremely specific incantations to safely summon a song, I might as well switch to demonology.
(for instance, I learned to add “the song” after the time I said “play chitty chitty bang bang”, and the TV turned on and started playing the movie)
Unrelated, Why isn’t this cat happier?
Isekai: 1.10
She didn’t need any help getting up the path to the cave, which was probably for the best. I waited outside while she rummaged through my furs and made herself decent, and then we talked.
“How long did you sleep with her?”
We were definitely thinking of the same redhead. “It was a long time ago, and I didn’t really keep score, and are you even old enough for that conversation?”
She sighed and tried again. “Not like that, I mean sleep-as-in-sleep. How much time did you spend together, touching-but-not-that-way?”
“One night. Supposedly my last, although it wasn’t, quite.”
She looked confused, so I told her everything. Dine-and-dash, “tomorrow you die”, amazing sex (without the details), the state she left my kitchen in (with all the details, because that made her laugh, and for a moment she seemed as young as she looked), the three weeks of fuzzy memories, and finally waking up here with her on top of me, vanishing as soon as she finished.
“That bitch. I really hope I’m not her, because I’d hate to turn out to be someone that I’d turn out to hate being.”
Red-eye Pie
Since I now have a Keurig and a Nespresso, and a solid supply of the necessary ingredients for liquid pie (stir the froth packet + 2x Splenda + 2x Half-n-Half together into the consistency of cupcake batter, then brew 12-16 ounces with the k-cup, using the Strong button), I decided to try combining the two for this morning’s wake-up call, dropping a shot of espresso in at the end (also Gevalia, their “Luminous” flavor). This process is apparently known to coffee-speakers as a red-eye. The final result is not to be confused with a Mocha Latte Bomb; I suspect those end up being eaten straight as often as dropped into a drink.
My giant stoneware mug didn’t fit into the Essenza Mini, and I haven’t printed a replacement drip tray for it, so I used one of my new demitasse cups to transfer the shot from A to B.
“Bosmarlin” doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as the top-tier Chinese brands, but perhaps Xinhua County Huiling Trade Co., Ltd couldn’t find anyone with the Gift Of Names, although they did find someone who writes much better English than usual. Terrific mug, though, and I really like the hamon-like pattern on the rim. Also, it’s subtle in the pictures, but it’s got faux-handthrown dimpling on the outer surface, to add a bit of visual interest and texture.
10/10, would consume mass quantities again.
(I think these may be the only SFW-ish images tagged チョコぱい…)
Isekai: 1.9
As she curled up into a tight ball and began sobbing, I realized it wasn’t me she’d screamed at. I don’t even think she knew I was there until I reached out and lightly touched her shoulder. I’d never had much practice at comforting children, especially ones that looked exactly like a fresh, innocent, untouched, virginal, naked, budding, pure, stopstopstopstopstop.
I rebalanced my disappointed hormones and resolved to platonically comfort the little girl. It wasn’t easy, but by the time she looked up at me with startled, tear-filled eyes, it wasn’t hard, either.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m not hurt. I’m not there. And I’m not alone. I think that’s okay enough for now.”
She had the same voice, too.
“I’ve got a little food in my cave, and furs and hides that you can cover up with. It’s not much, but…”
Her eyes narrowed at the word cave, then widened at furs and hides. “Where the hell am I?!?”
“Beats me, kid; I was dumped here ten years ago by a woman who looked like a 20-year-old you, and I’ve been alone ever since.”
“Oh crap, her. I am not okay any more.”
Fun with Scrivener!
Isekai: 1.8
I’d found a naked redhead where I expected to find a naked redhead, but it was the wrong one. This one was just old enough to be way too young, even for a guy who’d been alone for ten years. She was also asleep or unconscious, which allowed my firm disappointment to subside to the point that it wouldn’t scare her off.
I felt only mildly dirty as I looked her over. They had to be related: same lovely face, same shaggy mane of red hair, same delightful freckles everywhere I could see without risking a felony. For a wild moment I thought that it was her, fucking with me in a way that didn’t involve actually fucking with me.
Then she sat up and screamed. In fairness, I hadn’t exactly been keeping up with my grooming.
Somewhat belatedly…
Down the Hatch
Costco stocks a Costco-sized jar of Hatch green chiles. They’re terrific. Unfortunately, they contain no preservatives of any kind, and once opened, will turn from green to fuzzy surprisingly quickly in the fridge. I suspect they turn to mush if you freeze them, so I won’t buy them again until I’m in a position to cook with friends in our brave new post-Covid world.
However, when I went out to Seaside to get a haircut recently, I stopped at the upscale Safeway nearby that stocks Boar’s Head lunchmeats, and discovered that they also carried a selection of Green Chile Food Company frozen burritos and quesadillas, made with Hatch chiles.
They’re quite tasty, and the quesadillas come with instructions to pan-fry them in a teaspoon of butter, which is a perfect use for my new cast-iron Bluray press.
Coffee China
I bought a set of actual demitasse cups with matching saucers, from the faux-Italian brand Le Tauci (aka Shenzhen Bosiho Technology, Ltd). They seemed like a decent product at a decent price, and they are. As a bonus, they were very well packaged, guaranteed to survive anything you threw at them (which, fortunately, did not include five pounds of cast iron).
I didn’t really read the blurb in their listing. I saw them recommended on the Nespresso sub-reddit, looked at the pictures, scanned the reviews, and plopped them into my cart. It wasn’t until I looked at their lungo cup set that I confirmed their Chinese origin. These are just the highlights:
The handle is meticulously designed for comfortable holding. No matter the coffee mug is in your hand or on your lip, you can feel the finest touch of the flavor.
…
【PLEASURE GAINED WHEN SAVORING INCONSISTENT TEMPERATURE】
…
The expresso cup has no porous to absorb moisture or odors. Make it a naturally easy-to-clean vessel to maintain the natural flavor of coffee beans.
…
Different Taste From What You Try
…
Enid Demitasse Cups Has A Sturdy Handle More Than Decoration
There is a part of concave surface between it and the wall of cup, which provides more space for your fingers to hold the cup in an easy and comfortable way.Want to make a cup of perfect lungo shot by yourself? Suit it in the Nespresso coffee machine and you can get your drink within a few minutes!
…
You are the motivation for our further upgradation
I really like “upgradation”. It sounds like something you’d pay a reverse dominatrix for.
In addition to making a decent product, I tip my hat to Shenzhen Bosiho Technology for coming up with a non-ridiculous-sounding name, unlike their competitors in the coffee-cup arena, like Cuisinox, Sweese, and Huji.
By the way, JoyJolt, while equally obviously Chinese in origin, is another coffee-cup brand with an appealing name and a pretty good rep, working the double-walled-borosilicate-glass side of the street. They have an American beard for their branding, but the cups and the ad copy are definitely Made-In-China:
Top quality double walled glass coffee mug mouth blown borosilicate-glass microwave, dishwasher and oven(up to 350°F are save; not for use with metal utensils
…
The glass coffee/Tea mug are absolute design Smooth finish, crystal clear, beautiful addition to any cafe, restaurant, definitely to your own home
…
Enjoy Your Favorite Drink Never Before With The JoyJolt Aroma Double wall Glass Cups!
Isekai: 1.7
After a while, I’d given up waiting for her and started exploring more seriously. I hadn’t visited the cave in a few weeks, but fortunately nothing had moved in while I was gone. This trip, I’d followed a river to where it joined a bigger river, and then on to where it finally emptied into a lake. Great place for a settlement, I thought, but apparently nobody on this world agreed. If there was anybody on this world; after ten years, I had serious doubts. The fish were a nice change of diet, at least.
I’d like to think that I had a reason for coming back to the cave, but it was really just reflex. I always came back, just like I always checked out the rock she’d left me on.
Which for the first time since my arrival was occupied. From here, all I could see was white skin and red hair, but I broke my personal record for the Hundred Yard Frantic Scramble getting down there, all the while wondering whether I was more interested in wringing her neck or begging for sex. At least one part of me had already voted for the latter.
It wasn’t her. I’d come up with a lot of scenarios over the years, some naughty, some nice, some dark and bloody, but I’d never thought I’d find a different redhead.
Worse, she looked about twelve.
