andros_rex

I like the classic Usenet “Micro$oft.” Producers of Microshaft Wind-blows.

[W]e found a loophole. Their systems were programmed in such a way that you didn't have to receive 10 books, you only had to order 10 books. So we found an obscure book about lichens that they had in their system but was out of stock. We began ordering the one book we wanted and nine copies of the lichen book. They would ship out the book we needed and a note that said, "Sorry, but we're out of the lichen book." One of these days we're going to get all those lichen books dumped onto our front lawn.

It’s frustrating, because you can tell they spent a lot of time making the words weaselly enough. The one about climate models especially enrages me, because yeah, they’re predictive tools with limitations (which I’ve discussed with students when I’ve taught with climate sims). But I know my old department head (who used to compliment kiddos for forgoing masks in 2020) is going to have those “uncertainties” do a lot of work.

The Franklin Standards need to be on everyone’s radar. They don’t want your kids to learn about climate change.

Explain how and why Earth’s climate changes over time.

Climate changes continually at all time scales and Earth’s climate has never remained constant.

The Earth's climate has varied greatly between glacial advances and retreats that correlate with cyclical oscillations in Earth's orbit around the Sun (Milankovitch Cycles, precession).

In addition to being affected by the climate, the biosphere also has a significant effect on the climate, including self-regulation and resiliency (carbon-oxygen cycle, hydrological cycle).

Humans are just one of the many influences on Earth’s climate (urban heat island effect, wetland drainage, deforestation, agriculture).

Computer models of climate are simplified simulations of the real world, and make prognostications that are inherently uncertain.

Global weather forecast models (short term) and climate models (long term) are quite different in their design, their strengths, weaknesses, value, limitations, and uncertainties.

The wording is subtle, but you can see how they are attacking the idea of anthropogenic climate change. (There’s similar fuckery with evolution and some subtle anti-trans stuff.) Oil and gas companies have a lot of money and can afford a lot of propaganda. No states have adopted these standards yet - we think Florida and Texas will go first, then Oklahoma will follow. But this information warfare.

The story of the woman who accomplished this is pretty interesting. Maryam Khatoon Molkara wrote a bunch of letters to the Ayatollah Khomeini asking for advice with her dysphoria. He told her to dress in woman’s clothes and encouraged her transition. Learning about her can be the positive part of this story - one person was able to improve the situation for people like her.

As others have pointed out, it’s not really a win for queer rights on the whole - you can transition from one set of strict enforced gender roles to another. You can’t be gay/lesbian. It might be coercive and fixing the distress of having the wrong set of hormones in your body is kinda the point of HRT.

I have to use a windows 11 machine for work, and it genuinely surprises me how terrible it is. I don’t understand the opposition to local accounts - if I’m working somewhere with public WiFi/capture portal, I have to use my phone as a hotspot first.

The PIN log in seems to roll a random number and decide each morning whether it is going to work or not.

I also got a laptop with 11 on it for gaming. So much spyware I’ve had to uninstall, configuring anything is a nightmare. I was trying to adjust my mouse sensitivity/figure out why the scroll wheel is either 0 or to the moon, but even when you dig into the control panel, half the settings are missing.

I also had to turn off my WiFi and google commands to make a local account, because otherwise Microsoft accounts are mandatory.

Every change seems to make the experience actively worse for the user.

The reality is that most people are terrible people, especially when we look at them years later, once the dust has settled.

(Look into what Dr. Seuss did to his first wife)

Yeah - I’ve noticed Big Lots (similar kind of store) hasn’t been that much better than Walmart or whichever store the items first came from.

Clearance sales also seem to getting worse across the board. My Walmart puts dented cans and packages with missing stuff out for maybe $1-2 off at most.

I read this as talking about BadBIOS at first - did that ever turn out to be real, or was it just paranoia?

They don’t play well with Linux. Occasionally my HP laptop will turn back on SecureBoot with no warning. There’s also like a full minute of delay between opening the thing and keyboard strokes registering. (Iirc, HP is so Linux hostile it’s not really supported by Arch)

What even is a NPU, if it’s not necessary for the software to work?

I thought it was hilarious how redditors fell for some guys bait/fetish post. Iirc the guy admitted to making it all up in some dm’s