wulrus

I'm retro computing, retro everything tech, and I DO need my collection!

Just had to order a keyboard DIN connector (pre PS-2) adapter for a old 80386. Because I obviously still don't hoard enough old stuff!

One of the few things I'm afraid I won't be able to use anymore are UMTS (3G) sticks and routers. Although, the router still works a perfectly fine mobile Wifi router, hmmmmm ....

This is a crazy use of AI!

What I have been considering, but haven't found a readily available setup yet: Make a user with lots of read permissions (most of /etc, API keys & passwords in separate excluded files). That could be done with very restrictive sudo patterns. Let the AI run commands under that user directly (it can do sudo -l to get an idea of what it can do). Then, use it like in Star Trek "Computer - run a level 2 diagnostic".

Not as the centre of attention when fixing a problem, but as additional input / modern rubber ducking.

Thanks! The whole PC had a time (when its age was ~20 years) where it still booted, but with reset BIOS settings, followed by a time where it doesn't boot up anymore. So I believe the most likely thing is that it leaked and caused damage. Retro computing community things that the most likely cause is battery damage.

Here is the exact model from someone else: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-3121-v3

Battery (top-left) already removed, but it shows that this one has leaked before as well. When you look closely, you see battery residue on the nearby 8-bit ISA (?), so it must have leaked a lot at some point and been cleaned up. Unfortunately, it came with a notorious Ni-Cd Battery; even for its time not the best.

I have an old mainboard from 1990 with emotional value and a leaked BIOS battery. And advice for cleaning that?

Well, he should then have said: "Thanks for the offer, but my feet are disgusting right now after a day in these new boots." or just "no, I'm good".

But I think it would be far-fetched to assume that the masseuse is a minor (she turned 18 that year), or that a well-known billionaire relies on slave labour for a simple massage. My assumption would be that she probably landed a dreamjob with half the work and twice the pay.

So accepting that massage is at worst general scumbag behaviour as we witness it on an average day in the city. To be clear, I would absolutely not have accepted it.

lol, getting all displays working is indeed my biggest worry for my last Windows PC, migrating next month. It has both an NVIDIA and a Radeon GPU, and that works great on Windows. But a quick test boot from USB did not go so well on Ubuntu, so the truth will only come out after a real install with drivers.

Medical professionals are typically very ethical people who believe that the right for medical care applies to the worst criminals the same as to a president, and they would uphold that belief even if said criminals executed their own FOR helping their fellow humans. (*)

But that is a belief which is hard to understand for a fascist. Who would they trust with their wounded once things escalate into a civil war? Seems unlikely that someone would risk pushing a pillow over a patient's face, but what if wounds have a higher rate of infection, surgeries fail etc.? Not intentionally, of course, but who could manage to keep operating at perfect precision while staring at the ICE uniform all while having traumatic flashbacks from videos of their coworker being executed?

(*) Also my belief, to be clear; punishment must be lawful following due process. Even Hitler should have been patched up had he survived his suicide attempt, morphine and everything.

When pointed out, the vibe coder will prompt: "How can I stop developer tools from working on my website?"

Challenging, but not impossible. I think the military budget of all other NATO members combined would just be about the same as the US. However, it's not like every country has its own independent "mix of everything"; they are supposed to work supplemental. What makes things worse is proprietary hardware and software in modern equipment such as planes. I'm not sure to which degree it would even be technically possible to use it to defend against the USA.

Then there is the nuclear weapon problem. France and UK would have to really stand their ground and follow through with nuclear retaliation. That means that even when the USA or Russia just use a small tactical nuke in Poland, Greenland or wherever, they'd have to use one of their few strategic nukes to destroy something big, possibly dooming Paris. The downside of the idea of mutually assured destruction always was that it only works with somewhat reasonable people who REALLY are not willing to take their entire civilisation with them. But since Stalin, there have never been nutjobs like Trump or Putin in charge, neither in the USSR, nor US, nor Russia.

A victorious Ukraine would certainly be an incredible asset to have in NATO, with all those battle-hardened, highly educated people.

But all things considered, might as well give it a try.

I'm reading AI content there, and when I post, I'm getting accused of being a bot / using an LLM. Fantastic.

Unexpected - I thought flying would be by magnitudes safer than anything, but it's in the same magnitude as bus, and not even train is x10. I always thought that all those safety regulations were unnecessary, just compensating for some psychological factor of how it FEELS dangerous due to overreporting, history and other factors. But apparently, they are needed so it just remains barely safer than other forms of public transportation.

Seeing what happens when the US just stops helping makes me realise: The good they did as a superpower over the decades isn't talked about as much as the bad. Obviously now, there is plenty of that, too.