BC TECH
Saved by @jay_millerjay

argh chrome updated and it seems they've intentionally broken custom search engines. I have had a keyword search for "foone" which searches my own twitter, so I just type "foone BLAH" and it gives me a twitter search for when I said BLAH, right?

 but now I get that option in the titlebar of "search twitter self-search" which is the name of the search"
if I just type "foone blah" now...
it ignores the search I have had defined for years and just googles it.
and this is definitely on purpose because they didn't just break it, they changed it. it's now "fooneblah"
there doesn't seem to be an option to make this stop and get the old behavior back :(
I could mostly fix it by hacking around it: write my own "search engine" which redirects to google if the text doesn't start with "foone "
but
1. this will break the "searched from the address bar" magic, which means google will make me do captchas if I search too fast
2. it will break search suggestions too
this workaround works. although from the comments on the bug that might also be a bug and they'll "fix" that workingness later.
https://t.co/KShHdCMzeT
related bugs:
https://t.co/RxcaI3qKK2
https://t.co/JzYlzwWUOk
I like the bullshittery of the developer question of "What appeals to you about space vs. tab?"
which I can't accurately reply to because twitter doesn't let me use 72pt font
here's why it appeals to me:

1. this is how it's been for years. I can type "foone blah" faster than you can blink, man. it's the #1 thing I DO in my browser. what appeals to me is THIS IS HOW IT FUCKING WORKS, DIPSHIT. CHANGING THINGS BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE IT IS NOT FUN
2. the space key is placed under one of my fingers while typing, because, and this may shock you, it's heavily used when typing english text.
it's a very common key to press. the tab key is not so centrally located, because it's rare.

AND I SAY THAT AS A PYTHON PROGRAMMER
why don't we change it to ctrl-alt-F12?
What appeals to you about space over ctrl-alt-f12, dipshit?
3. and probably most importantly:

SPACE IS HOW IT WORKS IN OTHER BROWSERS MOTHERFUCKER
I don't just use Chrome. I use Firefox almost as much. Hell, if I go into IE, which I haven't since like 2006, I bet it works using space over there too
Are you just trying to make it incompatible with firefox to punish people who dare use more than one browser?
Because having used multiple OSes/Browsers/Etc for years I can tell you one thing I've learned is that while muscle memory is 100% a thing and it can be retrained, what it's very much NOT good at is the idea of having muscle memory that's contextual.
it's way harder to remember "type foo blah on firefox, and type fooblah on chrome" than it would be to switch from "type foo blah" to "type fooblah" everywhere, for example.
this is why I have a set of hotkeys on my keyboard which do things like open a terminal and they were carefully set up to work exactly the same on my windows machine and my linux machine, so that I don't have to remember "ctrl-alt-t for a terminal on windows, and meta-T on linux"
so this "just use fooneblah!" solution would only work (and I say "work" very loosely. I wouldn't be happy with this solution) if I never used firefox ever again.
WHICH I'M SURE YOU'D LOVE
my favorite example of "no contextual muscle memory" is when I have to switch between a "classic layout" keyboard and one with a function key in the lower-left, like a thinkpad or that BTC-compact keyboard I use so much
every time that happens you WILL end up doing function-C and wondering why it doesn't copy and/or kill the program
That's why, for my Thinkpad, I've got the BIOS option to swap the keys turned on, and I even got stickers to relabel them.
Haven't yet figured out a solution for my BTC-5100.
Maybe I could swap the keycaps and mod the key matrix or reflash the controller?
think about that for a second.
I have a keyboard from the mid-90s and I'm thinking about dumping a 8051 firmware, reverse engineering it, modifying it, and reflashing it onto the keyboard just to eliminate a tiny source of friction in using it.
THAT'S HOW MUCH WORK I'M WILLING TO DO JUST TO AVOID THE PROBLEM OF OCCASIONALLY HITING FUNCTION-C ACCCIDENTALLY
EXACTLY HOW PISSED DO YOU THINK I AM THAT YOU BROKE ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS I DO IN YOUR BROWSER?
hmmm. It's definitely an 8051 but it's a custom-made one:
C32191AE or 1001000220 have no results.
maybe I should just stick it in my EEPROM reader and see if it can dump it as a generic 8051, then flash the modded code onto a replacement flash-enabled 8051?
Gah, this is going to be a pain to mod.
I'd want to desolder the 8051, but look, this controller PCB is basically sitting on top of the main keyboard PCB
And you can sorta see here that there's no connector between the two boards. They just soldered some pins onto the bottom board and then soldered them into the top board.
I assume they did this (rather than just making the bottom PCB double-sided and including all the components on it) is that either they needed more room to route the top components, or they use the bottom PCB for multiple "keyboards"
like this is the PS/2 version but I bet there was an AT version (which is just a different cable, really) and an XT/AT switchable version. and if they ever wanted to make like a Sun version of an ADB version, they could just swap the controller board.
still.
connectors, man. use connectors.
otherwise some punk yelling about web browsers is gonna get annoyed at you 28 years later.

what's a web browser? OH, YOU'LL SEE!
(although to be accurate, Mosaic was released in 1993 so there's every possibility they could have known what a web browser was)
the first major web browser is older than Doom. That's not something that feels like it should be true.
and the first FIRST web browser is older than The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It's older than the US release of the Super Nintendo.
That was WorldWideWeb (aka Nexus), launched in December 1990.
it was released to the general public in August 1991.
Zelda: A Link To The Past, The US release of the Super Nintendo, and the dissolution of the USSR hadn't happened yet, but would later that year.
WHEN THE FIRST BROWSER WAS MADE, THE TWO MAIN FOUNDERS OF GOOGLE WEREN'T OLD ENOUGH TO VOTE YET
Oh hey, its's a Foam-and-Foil keyboard.
This use a capacitive method to detect key presses. These seem to have been liked by some companies as a better feeling keyboard than a membrane, but the foam sometimes completely disintegrates so they don't last forever.
Here's the other side. This one seems to be still doing fine after 28 years, though.
Pads closeup.
You can see there's a little foam pad under the foil.
This is apparently for "overtravel". The key actually is detected shortly after you start pushing it down, but to make it feel like you can push it down farther, the foam is there and gets compressed.
Several companies made these, like Cherry and Key Tronic and, of course, BTC.
https://t.co/syXLRu6Rly
TexElec makes replacements in case you need to fix one of these. THANKFULLY I don't, at least not yet.
https://t.co/8xEis5WHID
Anyway I was looking at the key matrix to see if I could easily just adjust these to make ctrl and function switch. Not really, no.
The two pins in the middle go off to other keys (since it's a matrix) so I can't really swap them without affecting other ones
What I could do is chop the traces here, scrape off the solder max, and cross-connect them.
This would be hard because they'd have to cross, so I'd either have to use insulating layers or drill through to the other side.
plus, this is capacitive, and who knows what the tolerances are on that? it's entirely possible that doing all this modding will change the capacitance and now the keys don't work.
so I don't think that's a very good solution. Changing the controller is probably a much better one.
I'm also not sure what those two solder blobs are about.
The ones on top are for a reverse-side jumper connection.
But if you look at the opposite side (I mirrored it so they'll match) you can see that those aren't vias, there's no hole here. It's solely on the top, not the bottom.
https://t.co/GvdQ2dmzzL
by the way, BTC is still around! They just don't make keyboards anymore:
https://t.co/vh3qJTKdSs

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foone
foone
@Foone
So I got out some CF cards and noticed something odd about this one. Do you see the weirdness?


How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?


So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.

They're definitely not USB.

And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.


It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such
FUN
foone
foone
@Foone
Something that I didn't realize but hurt my brain to learn:
John Norman (aka John Frederick Lange Jr.), of the Gor series of sci-fi/BDSM novels, is still alive.
He released two books (one of them a Gor book, #35), in 2019.


I guess with the fact that the series started in 1966 and feels like it's always a historical thing... I assumed he had to have quit writing and/or died back in like 1986.

Nope. Still alive, he's 89, and was apparently still writing as of 2 years ago.

also, my brain being what it is, I totally just googled for the book's cover image by entering "trans man of gor" which is NOT the title.

in my defense, how many book serieses look like this WITH THE SAMEAUTHOR FROM BOOK #1 to BOOK #35?


Anyway if you look at any this and think it's a suggestion that you should try reading any of these novels or learning anything about them, you are quite mistaken.

Gor is bad sci-fi and bad BDSM, and you should skip it for either reason.
CULTURE
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foone
foone
@Foone
Lockpicking Floppies!

I don't know why twitter is refusing to insert a card for this one. In any case, It's the @LockPickingLwyr, and it's a floppy-drive-lock.


so I've been meaning to do a video or thread on these sorts of locks myself. I have several, of different designs.

generally they're all designed vaguely like this one: it's a plastic insert that goes into the floppy drive, then it has some bit that rotates with the key to hold itself inside.

and they pretty much universally use super-cheap low-security tubular locks like this. You can probably pick most of them with a ballpoint pen
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foone
foone
@Foone
time to get back to "repairing" old computers


The funny thing about making the 8-bit-guy into a meme about "repairing" computers with powertools is that the obvious heightening joke would, like, the "8 rounds guy", who fixes computers with firearms

but that would also be him, given that he's also a big gun enthusiast.

so it's inherently hard to satirize the repairing-computers-with-dremels guy, since they're also the guns-guy.

you'd have to go up to like a mythbusters level of overkill.

"this hard drive from 1986 won't spin up. We tried freezing it, tapping it with a rubber hammer, and opening the case to lower the friction... there's only one option left: GET OUT THE C4 EXPLOSIVES!"
INTERNET
foone
foone
@Foone
So a weird thing about ultraviolet light, like blacklights and UV-C disinfecting light, is that it's invisible. Kinda. And also Kinda.

See there's a distinctive look to blacklights, they look like this.


But it turns out this isn't the ultraviolet that you're seeing.
See, the light produced by the bulb isn't perfectly monochromatic UV. Blacklights are in the UV-A range, which is 315 - 400 nm. The human vision range is 380-nm to 700nm.


There's a little overlap there, between the high UVA and the low end of human vision...
And there's multiple types of ultraviolet lights, but the kinds used in blacklights peak at 370nm or 340nm

so while most of the light coming out of the bulb is in the invisible UV range, some of the light is a bit higher up in the spectrum, which makes it slightly into the visible violet range.

So the light you see from UV lights is either the not-UV light it produces as a side effect, or something else fluorescing.
TECH

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These past few days I've been experimenting with something new that I want to use by myself.

Interestingly, this thread below has been written by that.

Let me show you how it looks like. 👇🏻


When you see localhost up there, you should know that it's truly an experiment! 😀


It's a dead-simple thread writer that will post a series of tweets a.k.a tweetstorm. ⚡️

I've been personally wanting it myself since few months ago, but neglected it intentionally to make sure it's something that I genuinely need.

So why is that important for me? 🙂

I've been a believer of a story. I tell stories all the time, whether it's in the real world or online like this. Our society has moved by that.

If you're interested by stories that move us, read Sapiens!

One of the stories that I've told was from the launch of Poster.

It's been launched multiple times this year, and Twitter has been my go-to place to tell the world about that.

Here comes my frustration.. 😤
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Paul Stamatiou \U0001f4f7
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With SIM attacks at their highest, now is a great time to take a closer look at your online security.

Removing SMS from your two-factor auth is a start, but authenticator apps have downsides too...

https://t.co/Dk0MPJHL2V


Just look at these headlines from recent SIM swap and port attacks.

It's all too established for attackers to find ways to socially engineer control of your phone number and start gaining control of your accounts.

I first talk about some general security tips.


Unfortunately not all websites let you remove your phone number from accounts.

You may consider migrating your phone carrier to @googlefi , which requires email account access to do anything (and can be locked down with security keys and even Advanced Protection)


Beyond SMS, I talk about issues that TOTP authenticator apps (the code generators) have as a form of two-factor auth. They're so, so much better than relying on SMS for your second factor but they still have issues like utilizing shared secrets and lacking phishing prevention.

Enter security keys!

Utilizing public key cryptography they don't have any shared secret between the client and the server. They prevent phishing by taking the website domain into account.

Even if you get tricked by a clone phishing website, your key won't.
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Originally, tweet length was 160 minus username length. One day, I turned to Jack and pointed out that I got one more character than him. He said, "That's not fair. We should standardize." I agreed. He said, "How about 140?" I said, "Sure." And he updated the code.

Last year, we upgraded tweet length to 280 and guess what? Use of 'please' is up 54% and 'thank you' is up 22%. I love that! Also, people are asking more questions and having more conversations. All this, and the majority of tweets are still under 140. It worked.
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Santiago
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Here is a simple example of a machine learning model.

I put it together a long time ago, and it was very helpful! I sliced it apart a thousand times until things started to make sense.

It's TensorFlow and Keras.

If you are starting out, this may be a good puzzle to solve.


The goal of this model is to learn to multiply one-digit
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For people curious about the Roam API and confused by the syntax, or interested in why Conor went with Datomic/Datascript and not a traditional database, this older talk by Roam developer @mark_bastian is a great overview.

He gives great examples using Spiderman of how even modeling something fairly trivial in SQL is much more complex than in Datomic. But the real kicker is when you're trying to interrogate the data to find recursive relationships.


Right now the Roam data model (at least that's exposed to developers) is just about pages, blocks, and children with tags. Already you can see how finding the page containing a block with a certain tag etc is useful.https://t.co/jWJnuKu1RG


But imagine when attribute relationships are fully represented

You should be able to model the entire Spiderman story in Roam.
Page title: Peter Parker
Child of:: [[Richard Parker]] [[Mary Parker]]
Aliases:: [[Spidey]]

etc, and do these kind of queries.

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MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
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Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.


However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.


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Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.
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Redemption Center personnel were scheduled to work for the next nine days from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm until...

2. ... Dec. 24, when they would close at 5:30 pm.

The general public would begin exchanging at the new International Rates on the first banking business day after the Christmas Holiday.

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