os2warp
bad memes, good music, and old computers.
I am Floyd, 28. no wait I'm 32 I haven't updated this in years. no. 33.
I realized there was a huge wall of text here on mobile. its gone now. long description at http://os2warp.tumblr.com/About
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and this is why baseball is the best sport (see also: these baseball sidequests)
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So, there's a lot of USians around who are very clearly fucking fed up with their political choices this election cycle, and planning to sit it out.
And I get it! What's the point of voting if there's no one to vote for?
The thing is, I'm Australian. In Australia, voting is compulsory. We don't get to sit out our elections, and I'll be real honest with you - we don't exactly get better choices than you lot. So how do you vote if there's no one to vote for? You find someone to vote against. And there's always someone to vote against.
Now, we have the pleasure of preferential voting in Australia - We get to rank every candidate from 1 to X, and I'll tell you, there's something so cathartic about putting the biggest bastard of the lot at the very bottom of your preferences. I understand that USians don't get that option - you get to mark one person, and that's it.
That means that you get one shot, so aim it at the biggest bastard of the lot. The candidate you most utterly detest. Put your vote in the worst possible place for them. Don't even think about who that vote's going towards, that's not the point. Remember, every vote is a vote against someone. Make sure you fuck up that someone's election day!
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Unauthorized water
It’s not clear when General Electric started boobytraping appliances with DRM. I first encountered it in January when Shane Morris tweeted about his fridge refusing to accept the $19 generic filter he replaced the GE $55 filter with.
https://twitter.com/IamShaneMorris/status/1220367934947758080
The fridges use an RFID detector to distinguish original GE filters from generic replacements, and engage in lots of anti-owner trickery, like memorizing the IDs of previously used filters and refusing to accept them.
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/unauthorized-charcoal-ge-fridges-wont-dispense-ice-or-water-unless-your-filter-authenticates-as-an-official-55-component/159552/41
Morris isn’t the only one ourtaged that his fridge is plotting against him. One (anonymous) owner was so offended that they created a site dedicated to warning off potential buyers and explaining to other suckers how to bypass GE’s lockouts.
https://gefiltergate.com/
There’s a good reason for the anonymity. Under Sec 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing how to bypass an “access control” to a copyrighted work (eg RFID-detecting code in the fridge) is a potential felony, carrying a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine.
This is quite the moral hazard. Manufacturers have learned that if they design their products so that any use that hurts their shareholders (like buying third party parts) requires bypassing DRM, it becomes a felony to use your own property to your own advantage.
Which is why we’ve seen DRM creep into all manner of devices, from insulin pumps to tractors to car engines to Iphone screens. “Felony contempt of business model” is the statute that every monopolist has dreamt of, and with DMCA 1201, they have it in their grasp.
Back in 2011, I wrote a short story about this for MIT Tech Review’s first sf anthology, called “The Brave Little Toaster” (in tribute to Tom Disch).
https://craphound.com/news/2011/09/28/the-brave-little-toaster-from-trsf/
The issue only got worse, and so last year I published “Unauthorized Bread” as part of my collection “Radicalized” (it’s being turned into a TV show by Topic):
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
The metastasis of DRM into every product category shows that when business apologists talk about the sanctity of property, they mean the sanctity of CORPORATE property.
If the manufacturer gets to override your decisions about the things you buy - and felonize any attempt to wrest control back - they property ceases to exist. We become tenants of our devices, not owners.
It’s digital feudalism, in which an elite owns all the property and we get to use it in ways they proscribe. The difference is that today, our aristocracy isn’t even human.
It’s the immortal, remorseless colony organism called the Limited Liability Corporation, to which we are mere inconvenient gut flora.
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Me, bleeding out on the battlefield: “Tell me…..tell me again…..about the cat…..heh…….that cat sure did want that cheeseburger…….didn’t he?”
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BASIC - Safe the date: May 1, 1964 - 2024 ...
Post #295: BASIC Programming, May 1, 1964 - 2024, The 60th anniversary of BASIC happens this year, Safe the date!, 2024.
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i bet crossing spears with someone to block entry into a location feels so fucking good
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I'll be honest, my alleged hardware expertise mostly consists of the ability to correctly plug in things which are designed to only fit one way. That this genuinely appears to be a rare skill is a little concerning!
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He was trying to make sure you could be horny on main and still get paid. The hero we needed not the hero we deserved.
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Did you know? Tumblr DOES have a post length limit. Strangely, though, it's based on how many blocks of text you have. Supposedly this implies that you can have any length post so long as it's one block of text? Very strange, will have to investigate further.
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