Lockpicking Floppies!

So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over

I went looking for a remote-controlled power switch (the wireless christmas kind, not the modern IoT kind) and didn't find it, but I did find this thing I bought just to figure out why it exists.
It's a timer outlet, but you program it from your phone... but it's not wireless.

Yeah instead it plugs into your phone's HEADPHONE PORT

I got it on sale.
probably because iphone dropped the headphone port and they had to get with the 21st century and make it bluetooth

So inside the box is the device. it's got a little 2-prong polarized outlet with no ground.

on top is the only controls: on/off/timer.

I think I've permanently confused KiCAD
it's reminding me that I need to connect this capacitor to Nothing

attach this end to ground, this end to +5v, and this end to THE VOID

I accidentally made all the capacitors gigantic and they won't fit anymore

halp

gonna design an ISA card using some of these

it's gonna be tricky to fit in the case

that's from this

gonna get in line for the vaccine because I've heard all these urban legends about tracking microchips

and I think I might be able to root it and install Doom

supposedly bill gates is involved, right?
so it's probably like a miniaturized 386 running ROM-DOS.

the doctor walks in, looks down at my charts, and sighs.
"well, the bad news is that you've got the virus. I'm sorry..."
"and the good news?"
"well..."
*at doom's gate starts faintly playing from my

it took them four tries to figure out that I had the virus, because every time they did a nasal sample, the diagnosis machine kept glitching and playing a youtube video

I laugh in the hospital bed while they're like "ma'am sir ma'am sir, please, this is serious: we can't treat you. Our ventilator keeps trying to reboot in to Windows 3.1 and play skifree. we're quarantining you here so you don't spread this DIGITAL VIRUS to other patients"

It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974.
This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.

When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented.
Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.

So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

To get promoted at Google, several need to happen: 1. you need opportunities for ownership and leadership above your current level (basically, opportunities to show you're working at the next level you're trying to get promoted to). The work you're "assigned" has a big impact.

2. You need glowing reviews from peers, *at or particularly above the level you're hoping to get promoted to.* Basically, you need people a lot more senior than you to say you're doing awesome work.

A long time ago I coded up a feature for SocialCoder which converts a link - any link - to a short URL. I use it all the time for sharing links to volunteer profiles and to volunteer opportunity listings.

The feature doesn't care what the link contains, it just hashes the URL, including any query params, and returns a shortened code.

More recently, around Christmas time, I added another feature where I can click a button to send a template notification to a charity that their new listing has been reviewed and published. I call it a next-steps email.

For the past few weeks, its all been working well. Its nice to keep automating things that previously were done by hand.

Fast forward to today.

A new opportunity listing is posted by a charity.

I review and publish it, tweet about it, then click a button to send the charity an emailed notification of next steps.