sxan
@sxan@midwest.social
🅸 🅰🅼 🆃🅷🅴 🅻🅰🆆.
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- Comment on Joe Biden accidentally confirmed he has 10–20 million illegal voters. He opened up the border, allowed untold millions in so they would vote for him and the DNC 3 days ago:
The most hilarious - and depressing - thing is that Joe’s stumbles are news, while Trump’s speeches are barely coherent. We’ve just come to expect it from Trump, so when he rambles stream-of-conscious non-sequitors for an hour, it’s par for the course and not news-worthy.
- Comment on New Laptop Memory Is Here: LPCAMM2 – iFixit 1 week ago:
Man, I don’t buy new hardware often, and only recently became familiar with M.2 NVMe. Which I thought was pretty spiffy.
I hate videos, so in I’m off to find an article; or maybe just have Ecosia’s AI explain it for me.
- Comment on Shaving with the Valet Autostrop VC2 - a review of sorts 1 week ago:
Dunno. Last time I used a strop was when I was shaving with a straight-edge, and I stropped before every shave. Edge maintenance eventually drove me away from the straight edge, but it makes me wonder how often you’re expected to strop those blades. You said it took you a few shaves to dial in the angle; maybe by then it needed a strop? I dunno.
I do hate the idea of good leather going to waste, so my motives are ulterior; the shave is just an excuse :-)
- Comment on Shaving with the Valet Autostrop VC2 - a review of sorts 1 week ago:
Is this the one where you were undecided about restoring the strop? If so, have you? If not, does that mean you haven’t used the strop function of the razor yet? Could that affect how aggressive (or mild) your perception is?
- Comment on He may try to sleep with you 1 week ago:
This thread went in an unexpectedly 4chan direction really fast.
- Comment on He may try to sleep with you 1 week ago:
You look cold, Kevin. Hop into bed; it’s warm under the covers. No hanky-panky, mind you! I’m a married man.
- Comment on FireChat was a tool for revolution. Then it disappeared. 2 weeks ago:
And? It works on iOS.
I’m missing the point. Was it that systems like Briar can’t work in iOS because they aren’t mesh net? If so, why not choose one that does, like Session?
- Comment on New arrival: Valet Autostrop VC2 2 weeks ago:
I am assuming some leather grease will soften it up if desired
Well? Is it desired? Are you going to restore the strop?
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 2 weeks ago:
OK, let’s ignore small arms and focus on things a civilian simply can’t buy, like howitzers and tanks.
The actual munitions - not the weapons, but the ammunition - are manufactured by a variety of companies, including Aerojet Rocketdyne and Nammo. Nammo makes a bunch of ammunition, from small arms, to cannon ammo for the M1 to 155mm Archer L52 howitzers. AR also produces ammunition for the A10’s GAU, and a bunch of other munitions and munition parts for more complex munitions (missiles & bombs). Both of these companies make TOW missiles - again, the munitions, not the weapon systems.
Lockheed Martin makes the actual Patriot missiles - that article incidentally talking about the very ramping-up we’re discussing.
The US outsources all weapons and ammo manufacture to the private sector. This is exactly why it’s called the Military Industrial Complex, and why Eisenhower warned against it.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 2 weeks ago:
I suspect we disagree on a lot of things, but this one thing we’re in complete alignment. There’s a golden rule concept floating in here: I think if one takes the position that waterboarding isn’t torture, they should try it sometime. I don’t want to be incarcerated, but I’d be willing to try it for a while it if meant proving it’s not inhumane. Very few of the “approved” interrogation techniques I’ve heard come out of Gitmo would I willingly subject myself to.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 2 weeks ago:
thegunzone.com/who-manufactures-ammunition-for-th…
www.gd-ots.com/munitions/artillery/
lockheedmartin.com/…/naval-launchers-and-munition… (just to include one of the other branches)
I could find more, if you like. All claim to be the manufacturers of ordinance. It’s not just the ammunition, the guns themselves are manufactured by private corporations. The M777 Howitzer is produced by BAE Systems. It’s always a private contractor who designs and delivers weapons and ordinance.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 2 weeks ago:
Yah I think we’re talking past one another. I wasn’t debating where Gitmo was located; when I said it was “outside Geneva” I meant it was operating outside of the agreements of the Geneva Conventions. Torture is not allowed for captured enemy combatants under the convention; prisoners at Gitmo were tortured. Gitmo was not obeying the conventions.
I’m sure there are all sorts of loopholes engaged in what went on there; were insurgents technically “enemy combatants?” By classifying them as “terrorists” were they excluded from protection? Since they weren’t wearing military uniforms, were they excluded from protection? Is waterboarding technically torture?
But nobody in the world is going to being the US in for trial, so the question was moot: we all knew Gitmo defied the spirit of the Geneva Convention; this is why I say it didn’t serve a purpose. We know torture is an unreliable way of gathering intel. If I waterboard you enough, eventually you’ll name your own child as a terrorist if I want you to.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 2 weeks ago:
It’s the “without more funds” part that’s misdirection. I still do assume that we could ramp up, quite quickly. These are private companies producing the munitions; if the gvmnt suddenly doubled the contract funding, I would be greatly surprised if we discovered production couldn’t keep up.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 3 weeks ago:
I’m not downplaying what we’re giving Ukraine; I was taking objection to the idea that the US barely has enough munitions to defend itself from a nebulous enemy and we need to be careful about how much we give out.
Yup, my service was decades ago.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 3 weeks ago:
Gitmo had nothing to do with Geneva. It dealt with US law. If we brought them back to our soil, they’d have full protections under the constitution.
Isn’t that where the GC comes in? The convention isn’t about applying your country’s laws, but about ethical standards for treatment of enemy combatants. Gitmo being not on our soil is where Geneva should have come into play.
I was there for about six months
I’m sorry about that; maybe some people enjoyed working there, but I think it would have messed me up.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 3 weeks ago:
Oh, yeah? Your meter is completely off, then.
Ordinance gets replaced on the regular. A lot of it gets used during training. When I was in, once a year we’d go to the range and get issued a ton of everything: cans of ammo, grenades of all sorts (but mostly smoke, and no CS, and no LAWs). We’d be there most of the day. More than once Saw gunners from our platoon would would melt barrels trying to go through all the ammo we were issued. One time, there was still a dead tree standing down range and my buddy and I spent about an hour trying to cut it down by shooting it with our M16s. Even the TOW gunners were there doing their thing, and they were usually pretty stingy with the TOWs. I think they left out the CS and LAWs because someone in command decided that was just a little too risky; but otherwise they have us a ton of everything. Like, we would be there all day, trying to find things to shoot at from our trench.
There was no objective to these exercises except to burn ammo. There were no targets except some rusted out old trucks, like maybe deuce & halfs? They were fairly unrecognizable by the time we saw them. Some long-dead tree trunks. Now that I’ve spent some decades in corporate US, what it reminded me must of was departments wildly trying to spend the rest of their budgets before year’s end.
It was glorious; just sending destruction downrange with nobody shooting back. Maybe there was some hidden purpose, but there orders were: “here’s ammo. Shoot it all.”
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 3 weeks ago:
Eh. The US has twice proven that it can ramp up war production enough to go from essentially no war capacity to overwhelming force very quickly. Weapons manufacturers are salivating at the chance to satisfy wartime demand. And who are we holding back in fear of? China? If we get into a tangle with China, weapons reserves are going to be the least of our concerns. Russia? Ukraine - tiny little Ukraine - is showing that the mighty Russian war machine is mostly façade over rusting or entirely missing parts. The only threat Russia presents the US right now is nuclear - and weapon stockpiles aren’t going to protect against that.
So who are we afraid of? Canada? Honestly, I think Canada is the real threat; I think they’ve been putting on a friendly face and biding their time, waiting until we’ve given all of our ordinance in support of another country, and then they’ll sweep in and take back Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown, and Buffalo, and then they’ll have all the tourists mwahahaha!
This “holding in reserve” is a cop-out. We’re giving Ukraine stock that was due to be rotated out for newer stuff anyway; they aren’t getting latest-gen anything, and if the US goes into any conflict and burns through enough latest-gen munitions and has to reach into old stockpiles, I think we’re in for a rough ride no matter what.
- Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think I agree with you about Gitmo ever serving a purpose. It was entirely outside of Geneva Conventions and served as a secure prison for anyone deemed an enemy of the state, including US citizens. Torture was regularly practiced and there was no oversight; it was an oubliette into which people disappeared for years, with no representation or recourse. Gitmo was everything the US should stand against, when we consider our highest ideals and morals.
The US has plenty of blood on its hands, but Gitmo was out in the open; there was no subtlety, it wasn’t a “dark secret.” The only thing it accomplished was to prove that you can scare the current American public enough that they’ll accept nearly anything, including stuff that would have outraged the WWII US public.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Everything will be 30x better, but, while the battery has 30x the capacity, the screen, CPU, and networking chip consume 30x the power, meaning you’ll have exactly the same runtime - 4-8hrs, depending on screen brightness and load. The drive will be 30x bigger and faster (IO), but the OS will take up 30x as much space. Everything will be 1024-bit to access all of the RAM, and a simple “Hello World” will take up 512MB. WiFi will be terabit speeds, but now that everything is in 32k, streaming is even slower with buffering lags every 3 minutes. Your 60TB drive can hold 12 movies. Boot times are still in the half-minute range because the OS takes up 120GB of drive space.
But while you were in the future, you saw a person on one of these peak machines running tmux in a tty on Linux, and no display manager.
- Comment on RIP in pieces 4 weeks ago:
Like Thanos, it’s inevitable. But so much damage and chaos can be avoided if it happens sooner rather than later.
Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?
- Comment on RIP in pieces 4 weeks ago:
A little late for April Fools.
- Comment on Thriving 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on "Digital sovereignty": German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein ditches Microsoft for Linux and Open Source alternatives 5 weeks ago:
Last time they tried this (that was Munich IIRC) it was just too early. All they really had access to was OpenOffice, which - and I appreciate all the work that went into it by all the selfless contributors! - was kind of shit. Now there are a least three office suites with decent MS compatibility, which is critical for being a functioning part of a larger organization, not to mention Office365 web if worst comes to worst. At least they wouldn’t have to roll back everything if they encounter problems, like Munich did.
This is great news.
- Comment on acceptable screws 5 weeks ago:
That’s one of my issues with Pozi - it can be hard to see the markings, and not everyone has great eyesight. I mostly object to Phillips-related screws because there are so many variations that mostly look the same and require a table to differentiate. And none have the torque-transfer performance of Torx. Plus, you can use a hex head in a Torx bit in an emergency and you don’t much care about either the bit or the head.
- Comment on acceptable screws 5 weeks ago:
Freaking awesome. Better and better. We’ve finally fixed the screw heads, and pretty much also computer connectors (and small device chargers!) with USB-C. Just in time for the end of the world via total ecological collapse.
Great times.
- Comment on acceptable screws 5 weeks ago:
Torx gang unite.
We had our 20 y/o deck repaired and stained last year. I was chatting with the overseer about what he was going to do and the topic of screws came up; he said he was going to use Torx, and only ever used Torx anymore - I just about cheered.
I’d been losing hope in humanity lately, but little signs of sanity like this, professionals finally getting rid of the hell-bits that are Phillips heads, lifts my heart and gives me hope.
- Comment on How do I get my suit tailored? 1 month ago:
Look for reversible belts. Most are not expensive but should last a fair while, and you only need to buy one.
I used them a lot when traveling for business; it let me pack one fewer item.
- Comment on Anon buys an air fryer 1 month ago:
Yeah! So the ideal tool would be both a toaster oven – a small oven – and have the ability, a setting, to circulate air in the same way an air fryer does, right?
- Comment on Anon buys an air fryer 1 month ago:
Oh, yeah. It’s been a long while since I’ve lived in that environment. You’re probably right that most cheap stand-alone stovetop/oven units don’t have a convection setting.
- Comment on Anon buys an air fryer 1 month ago:
I’ve considered one if those as well; convection heat does make a difference, though, and that’d be nice to have. It seems to me that convection is the thing that turns a toaster oven into an air fryer.
