mindbleach

@mindbleach@sh.itjust.works

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mindbleach,

No dude, you demonstrably said ‘I’m going to repeat your argument so you can think about it.’ Projecting some emotional state onto me is not gonna change how you fucked this up.

This is mockery. I am calling you ignorant.

I am trying to highlight how you joined an explicitly leftist server, whilst remaining aggressively unaware of… genuinely the first things people learn about leftism. So when you try smugly posturing your way out of a pointed question, you’re just revealing you know less than nothing.

To be utterly frank I just lack respect for people who think of themselves as any flavour of anarchist while still dreaming of a system as thoroughly rigid as the artificially created Internet.

Anarchists being naked hippies, of course, not organized laborers. The internet was mostly designed and operated by academics. It runs on half a century of “does this sound right?” collaborative standards. Whatever browser you’re reading this in has its origins in anti-monopolist diehards building better software out of spite.

None of which is even addressing the initial failure. Capital didn’t design your computer. Intel’s founders definitely did, but only because they were workers dissatisfied under Fairchild, who were in turn workers dissatisfied under Shockley. The early history of silicon valley is halfway to semiconductor co-ops.

At no point did shareholders build hardware.

mindbleach,

And that excuses a total lack of awareness.

mindbleach,

Case in point. You think quoting an argument and sneering is a counterargument. Obviously, because you don’t know the first thing about labor theory of value.

Someone asked if you think capitalists or engineers did the engineering, and you revealed you don’t understand the question.

mindbleach,

Now see if “programming socks” do anything for you.

mindbleach,

I do some 8-bit coding and only last month realized logarithms allow dirt-cheap multiplication and division. I had never used them in a context where floating-point wasn’t readily available. Took a function I’d painstakingly optimized in 6502 assembly, requiring only two hundred cycles, and instantly replaced it with sixty cycles of sloppy C. More assembly got it down to about thirty-five… and more accurate than before. All from doing exp[ log[ n ] - log[ d ] ].

Still pull my hair out doing anything with tangents. I understand it conceptually. I know how it goddamn well ought to work. But it is somehow the fiddliest goddamn thing to handle, despite being basically friggin’ linear for the first forty-five degrees. Which is why my code also now cheats by doing a (dirt cheap!) division and pretending that’s an octant angle.

mindbleach,

“Concave?”

mindbleach,

Paul versus Baby Driver really illustrates what Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s chemistry bring to a movie versus what Edgar Wright’s directing brings to a movie.

And even in combination, the trio only nailed it two out of three times. The World’s End is just… okay.

mindbleach,

Sorry, it just sounds like it was leading to some “ah-HA!” reversal, being so brief and general in response to normative statements about a complex topic.

Removing DRM is generally somewhere between outright illegal and getting attacked by flesh-eating lawyers.

Blizzard killed an independent Warcraft / Starcraft server called BNetD.

Nintendo’s whole attitude toward emulation is infuriating nonsense pushing for digital art to slowly rot.

mindbleach,

In some contexts.

Is there a particular goal for this rhetorical poking?

mindbleach,

You want examples of software protected by copyrights, trademarks, and/or patents?

mindbleach,

Reverse-engineering. Binary patches. Basically a free-for-all for anyone who owns a legal copy of a thing.

Please be advised I won’t give two shits about any hair-splitting over the word “owns.”

mindbleach,

You want open source treated well? Remove IP protections from closed-source projects.

It’s like patents versus trade secrets. If you show your work and agree to let anyone play with it, there are incentives provided. If you rely on secrecy… and people figure it out anyway… tough shit.

mindbleach,

Dr. Stuart Ashen’s most resilient contribution to internet culture, somehow.

mindbleach,

Apple is being forced to tolerate users controlling their own phones, and is kicking and screaming the whole way.

Don’t phrase this like they did it out of love. They’re trying not to do it at all.

How do you address a letter to an army soldier or even a navy sailor on a ship?

I was watching Band of Brother and wondering how those paratroopers got letters from home. Did their family need to know their nearest base? Or could they simply write their name and battallion? If I want to mail a package to a sailor do I just the ship’s name? Or a port? I’m not actually mailing anything I’m just curious...

mindbleach,

For WWII specifically, anything written might not actually be sent. V-Mail services photographed letters, reduced them onto microfilm, and reprinted them overseas. A lot of people were sending a lot of mail and paper is fucking heavy.

AFAIK, addressing worked about the same way it works now: you’re given an address for a specific person, at a somewhat-abstract location. Sometimes it’s a very concrete place - no pun intended - like a permanent airbase or an actual city. Sometimes it’s a boat. Sometimes it’s a “forward operating base,” which falls somewhere between no-fun-allowed paintball facility and Burning Man with more grabassing.

Overseas military addresses must contain the APO or FPO designation along with a two–character “state” abbreviation of AE, AP, or AA and the ZIP Code or ZIP+4 Code.

AE is used for armed forces in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Canada; AP is for the Pacific; and AA is the Americas excluding Canada.

Also:

APO / DPO / FPO basics

APO – Army/Air Force Post Office. The Military Post Office for Army and Air Force personnel
FPO – Fleet Post Office. The Military Post Office for Navy and Marine personnel
DPO – Diplomatic Post Office. The preferred designation for mail addressed to Department of State overseas post offices.
MOM – Military Ordinary Mail. Mail originating from the Department of Defense.
MPO – Military Post Office. Provides postal services for military personnel.
PAL – Parcel Air Lift. An expedited service for Package Services is available for an additional fee.

Anyway you can also send “unit boxes” for a whole group, but I think you’re still supposed to address them a specific individual.

mindbleach,

“It must have come from upriver.”

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