And I’ll sit it out. Cool to start, warm later. It was very moist last night and the trend has been rising humidity all week. We’ll get rain at some point. As long as it stays relatively cool, even the high humidity hasn’t dampened my love of our current weather. More please.
So I spent the morning doing stuff, then went out to do stuff. And indeed, some stuff did get done. Not all the stuff, or even most of the stuff, but some stuff.
Today, I’ve got to do my speaker install at my client’s house. I’ll do a pickup on the way there (most expensive item on the invoice? $15 for Tide powder) and on the way home I’ll grab another pickup of some other household stuff. I can combine trips, and they are mostly a big loop to the northwest, and back. That saves money and time.
I’ve cut back on buying. There’s less stuff I want or need, and there are fewer auctions tempting me. Plus, some are just farther than I’d like to drive nowadays. With the decrease in sellers, it’s harder to combine trips, especially to distant places. When I started, I could combine 3, 4, 5 or sometimes 6 pickups in one loop down to Dickenson and back. Now I don’t go to Dickenson unless it’s a fantastic deal on something I really need.
There are changes in the secondary/reseller market. They don’t benefit me, the buyer. We’ll see if they even survive or if we go back to a time when only a few big retailers were doing it.
Things change. That is the only constant.
That and the prudence of stacking of course!
nick the prudent…
First!
n
Wow, that’s…old.
I know I’ve said this before, but I really believe the way forward for your software is as a web service. If the code were running on your server, your life would be a lot simpler. People would have no access to the actual running code, so many kinds of attacks would simply be impossible.
April fool!
Oh, dear. I didn’t even have April Fool on my radar…
The computer magazine I read (c’t) always has one fake article in this edition. Sometimes it is surprisingly hard to spot.
Wait until AI really takes hold in the C-suites over the course of the next year.
If you think they are dumb now, you haven’t seen anything yet.
First!
n
—-
and by “first” I really meant “last” as I immediately went back to sleep. And here I am, only a few hours later.
Some coffee in my mug, females woken.
Tired. Will most certainly try for a couple more hours sleep as soon as the kids are out the door. First appointment can’t happen until after 10am anyway.
n
The server time for that kind of CPU intensive activity would be incredibly expensive, especially right now.
Most people do not pay the full costs of their online activities, and the advertising model supporting what most people view as “The Internet” is incredibly suspect.
Streaming is the least “green” way to watch a movie, but Wall Street still believes in Netflix as long as the subscriber numbers keep climbing.
I’m not so sure. If you go to someplace like Hetzner, renting a server is pretty cheap. GPUs are expensive, sure, but Lynn isn’t writing GPU code. Considering that his licenses cost anything up to 6 digits, I think he could afford a pretty hefty server.
The savings in not having to fight piracy would (imho) be worth a lot. Of course, he would have to completely re-write the front-end, but the computation engine could pretty much remain as it is – it just needs something in front of it, to parse the API calls.
The hosted services model really is tailored to non-CPU-intensive applications. Front end and presentation on your browser, on your dime, small discrete data requests processed by the server, mostly database lookups and simple calculations.
There was a brief window of time where I had a killer application in my mind. IIRC, part of the Obamacare fiasco was a loophole for small businesses that could exclude part-time employees from health care coverage. Part-time was about 30 hours or less in a given week.
I had already delivered a complex aircraft scheduling software package to the USAF for matching travel requests with aircraft training flights, for an existing manual program that was saving millions of dollars in commercial travel. Basically, pilots had to fly to maintain currency, and instead of flying empty, be useful.
In complexity, it was the traveling salesman problem on steroids. We used a purchased product from iLog to do constraint programming and optimization. “Optimization” is a misnomer, but that’s the terminology in that problem space.
Anyway, I sketched out a great model for businesses like McDonalds, to allow franchise owners to let employees handle their schedules. Employees could block out their availability, the number of hours they want to work (as long as it’s less than 30), put in vacation requests, and the employer could enter the slots needing filled per shift (manager, counter, fry cook, etc.). All that is simple web-based DB stuff, easy-peasy.
The trick was the optimization part, where the top manager could generate schedules with a push of a button. Generate the list of needed labor for the week, match the available people with the appropriate training to the slots, attempt as far as possible to keep within the employees’ requested hours and days, and guarantee not to trigger the Obamacare tax.
My experience with the Air Force process said the compute time would be the bottleneck. With the fastest non-GPU servers of the time, it would be a “request it and get an email when it’s done” sort of thing.
I suspect Lynn’s software is about the same level of complexity per run, but the number of runs per week is significantly higher.
OBTW, it’s not only CPU cost. These problems are memory-intensive too, so adding cores doesn’t help as much as you’d think.
Ran across an interesting post on who owns who, in the powertools world:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/1s4jjs8/i_went_down_a_rabbit_hole_on_who_owns_every_power/
I ran across a similar post on paint, it seems that many formerly separate companies are just the same (low quality) paint rebadged now. Unfortunately I lost the link.
@edH, and recently I saw one on why restaurants don’t taste good, or unique anymore. Basically the same problem, chains owned by the same company, and everyone buying their food from Sysco.
n
cross platform standardization, economies of scale, synergies – same lies as the corporate world.
Jeebus:
Judicial Activism Run Amok: Obama Judge Orders Trump to Make Illegals Legal Again (Yeah, NO)
Activist doosh-nozzle following in Skid Mark Jackson’s footsteps. All iz US Citizens.
Overruled in 3, 2, 1
Every time a judge’s ruling is overturned, he should be suspended. One day for the first offense, two for the second, then four, and so on.
I am currently watching the NASA live stream of the Atemiss II launch. The stream must involve a hundred cameras stationed in various locations.
Vanguard holds 13% stake in Sysco and a similar percentage of all the major publicly traded sit down restaurant chain operators like Brinker and Darden as well as fast food players like Yum.
Taco Julie is the poster child for management at the various Vanguard restaurant subsidiaries. “Good” school. DEI hire.
This Colion Noir video is worth a look. Canada is trying to do what the left here wants for us too. I’m a bit shocked at how far they’ve gotten.
I wasn’t paying enough attention
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNBwQSAYYiI
n
So I wonder how many of the Canadian Cops are going to volunteer to go door to door to grab people’s guns ? I am thinking zero.
I suspect that Canada will bring in the blue helmets.
Wow, that’s…old.
I know I’ve said this before, but I really believe the way forward for your software is as a web service. If the code were running on your server, your life would be a lot simpler. People would have no access to the actual running code, so many kinds of attacks would simply be impossible.
Got $5 million to give me for the port ? That is what I told my partners several years ago. Our Windows user interface is written in 723,483 lines of C++ with MFC and my own custom written dialog library for my 150+ dialogs.
And of course I will need a huge monster web server. And of course people will attack it because that is what people do for fun nowadays.
That was actually my thought, that you’d spend more on a full time IT security professional then you’d save elsewhere.
But that’s just my feelz, I have no idea what it would take.
And if people – clients – are running the code on an airgapped internal/process machine, they won’t be too happy connecting to the web.
I’m not so sure. If you go to someplace like Hetzner, renting a server is pretty cheap. GPUs are expensive, sure, but Lynn isn’t writing GPU code. Considering that his licenses cost anything up to 6 digits, I think he could afford a pretty hefty server.
My licenses cost US $3,000 to $8,000 per year. My main business does not even hit seven digits total income anymore.
BTW, many of the refineries and chemical plants now have cell phone jammers, supplied by the FBI. So you have to have access to a hard line in these plants to get internet. And the plants do not have guest access. So if I had web access only, the contractors, my primary user, would not have access in the plants.
Every time a judge’s ruling is overturned, he should be suspended. One
dayYEAR for the first offense, two for the second, then four, and so on.FIFY.
Watching the live stream from NASA I had the thought that the stream may be on 30 second, or something, delay. Ya know, in case of rapid disassembly during launch.
BTW, I am paying $300 per month for my managed dedicated dual core cpu server with 16 GB of ram and a 100 GB M.2 drive. A plow horse of a server would cost a couple of thousand per month.
https://www.pair.com/
Plus a backup web server and a failover service. These are not cheap.
“Young, Open-Minded People Have to Ask Why the Solution to Every Issue for Democrats Is a Tax”
https://rumble.com/v77x3ma-young-open-minded-people-have-to-ask-why-the-solution-to-every-issue-for-de.html?mref=8g74p&mrefc=2
True dat.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
You know, I was saw an article on the Australian “googly eyes vandal” yesterday and had the thought:
I’d like to buy that lady a drink at a bar just down the street from the Obama Presidential Libary…
“SpaceX confidentially files for IPO”
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/spacex-confidentially-files-for-ipo-154109626.html
“The reusable rocket and space exploration company confidentially filed for its IPO with the SEC, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. Though details won’t be available until closer to its official listing, The Information and Bloomberg reported earlier that SpaceX was expected to raise up to $75 billion in its offering.”
“Though SpaceX was most recently valued at $1.25 trillion, Bloomberg reported the company’s valuation was on track to hit $1.75 trillion, putting it on par with companies like CEO Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA).”
I have yet to decide if I am going to buy any shares.
“BREAKING: New reconciliation bill just announced”
https://therightscoop.com/breaking-new-reconciliation-bill-just-announced/
“Both Senate Leader Thune and House Speaker Johnson have just announced that the are beginning a new reconciliation bill, and they’ll use it to fully fund DHS for the next three years:”
About time !
I swapped toilets guts today. Fluidmaster. After turning the water off and flushing the tank, I stuck my plastic ruler in the tank to see how high the valve is. Then well. I had to get a little Craftsman screwdriver. #1 size, maybe. Because with wet hands I had no grip on the locking collar.
Got that un-locked, pulled the old off of the post, pushed the new on, connected the new hose that fills the bowl. Put the ruler and screwdriver away and done. I flushed the toilet a few times to adjust the fill level.
Less than $10 with tax from the local lumberyard/hardware store. Half an hour and that included afternoon cookies for Penny and Buddy the Beagle.
Much excitement here. So wow.
Years ago, I paid $100 to Langa List. 15 pushing 20 years. Maybe Brian’s list. They merged. Now it’s called Ask Woody.
Well, I figured I’d donate a hundred bucks. So I did the thing to give them some money. I get an auto reply with a coupon code to sign up for text alerts on my phone. I don’t want that but ok. But I can’t. The system has no phone number for me. I don’t see a place to add a phone number in my account.
I sent an e-mail. Just an auto reply about how busy it is this time of year. Nothing since last Wednesday.
Discover Card is being whatever but the last time it let me log in I had a $100 pending charge.
I’m not going to worry anymore about this. I tried.
Wednesday. Bedtime for this April Fool…
Something new is blooming, and my hayfever is going mental. Itchy eyes, runny nose, sinus headache, the whole miserable show. Plants! Who needs plants? Roundup them all, says sneezy me.
Domestic bliss and janitorial/handyman jobs for the in-laws tomorrow. Maybe I can plead hayfever and be excused? I doubt it…
Goodnight, especially to the people on their way to the moon. I hope that goes well. I would love to see a moon landing in my lifetime; the last one was before I was born.
I was at Lackland AFB, gathered around a 9″ TV with four dozen other people in olive green clothes and shaved heads, for the first landing on the moon, July of 1969. I find it hard to fathom that it has taken this long to return to the moon. At this point space exploration should have created a permanent facility on the moon.
Because Johnson caved on ICE and CBP funding.
Now they will have to depend on Incitatus to get the reconciliation bill through.
Ladies and Germs:
‘If I Steal a Wallet in Japan,’ Justice KBJ Argues That Makes Her a Japanese Citizen
Listen to SkidMark Jackson and you’ll realize she is the dumbest SCOTUS judge ever. With her logic, if you commit a crime in another country, you can be a citizen of said country. When the other two libs dump on her, you know she is the dumbest judge ever.
Can you imagine the snickering going on at this hearing? The other judges are probably thinking, “Oh, for fucks sake, woman, shut up.” Speaking of a woman, she’s the one who couldn’t define a woman.
It is clear that the current NASA can’t accomplish any of this. Too much DEI and it may never recover. It will be up to private companies with goobermint funding to do it. NASA is full time jerbs for the woke crowd.
Because Johnson caved on ICE and CBP funding.
Now they will have to depend on Incitatus to get the reconciliation bill through.
I was arguing with a friend last night and I stated that there was not a decent dumbrocrat in the USA. He replied “Fetterman”.
7 minutes until the candle is lit!
Nice launch & flight so far.
I made super lazy tuna salad today. A spoon of pickle relish in a bowl. A spoon of aioli? Garlic flavored mayo. Kraft makes it, comes in a bottle like tartar sauce. Dump in an un-drained can of oil packed tuna. Bunch of fresh ground black pepper.
Meh. Was ok after mashing it all together. Kind of a waste of a can of tuna. There was enough left to give the dogs each a large heaping tablespoon.
Buddy chowed down. Penny? Kind of suspicious. But she ate her entire pot. That’s good.
Comm loss & recovery.
The inflight video isn’t up to SpaceX standards … but there are like 5 TDRSS satellites as compared to 10,000 Starlink units.
Someone needs to hurry up with an AI video creation model and quickly come up with one of Walter Cronkite holding up wooden models of the Artemis booster & capsule and explaining what’s going on.
“The old ways are the good ways.”
All the LSM outlets are saying SCOTUS is skeptical of disallowing birthright citizenship. If so, any crimmigrant or legal can drop a kid here and get citizenship. It is so clear that this is wrong. We won’t know until Summer. A SCOTUS no vote will lead to the destruction of the FUSA. SCOTUS won’t even back deportation and stopping activism. How can we expect them to protect the country? tRump just needs to deport no matter what some activist doosh judge rules. He’s got three years to stop the enshittification of the FUSA.
From what I can google the newest operating TDRS satellite is older than the oldest operating Starlink.
“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
I got really lucky today that nothing above the ceiling got in the way of my speaker install. It was much tighter than I expected.
Sounds REALLY LOUD now, which is what the client wanted.
Got all the insulation and drywall mess cleaned up and headed home.
Working with my arms above my head was a lot harder than I remember. I hurt.
I’m taking some meds and hitting the hay early tonight.
—-
n
Thursday. Good morning.
Has NASA just pulled off the greatest April Fool’s prank of all time?
Artemis II Flight Update: Crew and Ground Teams Successfully Troubleshoot Orion’s Toilet.