John Stracke @thibault.org · 26/09/2026Or they could say "you don't get anything until you've made $100", and not collect a bond. Android ads follow this model (or used to); I used to have an ad-supported app, but gave up because it was going to be a decade before I saw any money. IIRC, paid apps had a similar model. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 18/09/2026Ford signed a law barring us from assassinating foreign heads of state. That might have been a little more than fifty years ago, though. 011
John Stracke @thibault.org · 09/09/2026A mathematical formulation of a problem which only one person publishes on? 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 09/09/2026Yeah, I got stuck with a Charger one work trip, when there was nothing else available. A black one. In Vegas, in a heat wave (120°F). It was not a good experience. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 09/09/2026I used to have A1 and the AMS Lite, and now I have the P2S and AMS 2. I can confirm that the non-Lite AMS is less cranky. The only downside is that it apparently doesn't work well with cardboard spools; the cardboard rubs off and gets into the mechanism. There are adapters you can print, though. 110
John Stracke @thibault.org · 08/09/2026At one point when my kids were young, we sometimes went on walks and had them point out interesting things; for each spotted, they got a minute of screen time. I eventually had to disallow anything that was pareidolia, because it was just too easy. 001
John Stracke @thibault.org · 31/08/2026I searched for Toronto, and saw Lake Ontario. (Searching for the lake might have affected the result.) But it misnames the Gulf of Mexico. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 31/08/2026We steal vocabulary, but we don't steal grammar. Imagine how much worse that would be! "I ate the mutton tortilla's filling." "No, no, 'tortilla' is of Spanish origin, so you have to say 'the filling de la tortilla'. And 'mutton' is French, so..." 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 25/08/2026Huh. The version I remember was "he's been domesticated, I tell you". I wonder if this one is the original. 020
John Stracke @thibault.org · 19/08/2026My concern is that people won't be able to tell them from regular AirPods, and will harass anybody using either kind. 200
John Stracke @thibault.org · 12/08/2026So what if it's a wall of steel? Steel walls do not block missiles. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 08/08/2026Note that it says she publishes them; it doesn't claim she writes them. 000
John Stracke @thibault.org · 27/07/2026The other day I saw a presentation where the speaker said their Claude config was set up not to use em dashes so their work wouldn't look AI-generated...and used at least three of them in their own slides. 030
John Stracke @thibault.org · 26/07/2026He wears a cowl. Maybe he does have a pixie cut under there. 030
John Stracke @thibault.org · 26/07/2026I'm pretty sure excommunication doesn't mean you aren't subject to Catholic rules any more. Otherwise, a heretic in the cells of the Inquisition could have hit one of the priests (automatic excommunication) and gotten free. 020
John Stracke @thibault.org · 23/07/2026Probably not just one line, but: "At the stillpoint of destruction, at the center of the fury, all the angels, all the devils, all around us, can't you see!" Sting, "Love is the Seventh Wave". 000
John Stracke @thibault.org · 19/07/2026If you're reviewing or editing papers, isn't it your job to be a gatekeeper? (And, speaking as one who reads CS papers to learn from, I thank you for it.) 111
John Stracke @thibault.org · 13/07/2026So did I (except the shag, I think). And giant meant about a 19" screen. 110
John Stracke @thibault.org · 12/07/2026In the Foundation books, Seldon maneuvers to get the Foundation on a metal-poor planet so they'll have to develop more efficient tech. These people have been in space something like 13,000 years. Don't they have asteroid mining? 050
John Stracke @thibault.org · 09/07/2026I've had that feeling writing software. "Oh, yeah, *that's* what this is!" 000
John Stracke @thibault.org · 22/06/2026Oh, I remember the film ribbons. My dad's typewriter was a Smith-Corona, and he always had one film ribbon that we weren't allowed to use; if I wanted to type a school assignment, I had to use one of the cheaper ribbons. 110
John Stracke @thibault.org · 22/06/2026I used to collect old power adapters. One day I was able to find one for a device my son bought at a yard sale. Then we moved, and I decided a collection useful once in a 30-40 years wasn't worth keeping. Of course, as soon as I got rid of them, we found something that needed an adapter. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 22/06/2026Yeah, it was a blow when I pulled out the code from my master's thesis and it wouldn't work with a current compiler. Not sure how that happened; it was just C, which hadn't changed much. 110
John Stracke @thibault.org · 20/06/2026I remember one restaurant, in a town that required a smoking section 30% of the seats, where it was 3 seats out 10... noncontiguous. 120
John Stracke @thibault.org · 17/06/2026It could be difficult deploying an unstoppable army of mantises for good. I'm imagining them showing up to help at a soup kitchen, and all the humans running screaming into the night. 010
John Stracke @thibault.org · 17/06/2026"The sonnet industry" makes me think of poets trudging out of the sonnet factory, being searched for stolen meter and rhyme. 030
John Stracke @thibault.org · 14/06/2026Hey, the ebook is available at the Internet Archive! archive.org/details/bim_...archive.orgA classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue. 1785 : [Grose, Francis, F. A. S.]. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveA classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue. 1785..Digitized from IA40310714-46.Previous issue:... 000
John Stracke @thibault.org · 14/06/2026I love "ninja-level incompetence". Makes me think of the ninjas in The Tick. "We're a hedge. Really, we're a hedge. Move along." 020