mrspuratic

6 ms·

1.
by mrspuratic 2mo ago
Portugal has about 10% forested land, of which an estimated 25% is non-native eucalyptus (an active pyrophyte), and over 50% in some areas. I've seen the aftermath of eucalyptus forest fires while travelling through Alentejo.
2.
by mrspuratic 2mo ago
My uni had an original 1800s style beam engine (from a whiskey distillery) as a feature in the Engineering faculty building foyer. It did move, but driven by electricity, and only a couple of times a year AFAIR. https://forum.iri
3.
by mrspuratic 2mo ago
My technophile uncle gave me one in the late 80s when he upgraded, even came with a monster of a daisy wheel printer. Can't remember what the WP was, but I remember being amused with V1.0 Microsoft Basic which came on a cartridge.
4.
by mrspuratic 3mo ago
This feature has been part of bash since 5.1 (ca 2020), though it may not be enabled in all distros. cd src/bash-5.3/examples/loadables make accept enable -f ./accept accept (accept -r RHOST -v SOCKETFD -b 127.
5.
by mrspuratic 3mo ago
Plus /actual/ flywheels to compensate for non-synchronous generation: https://www.esbinternational.ie/case-studies/details/moneypo...
6.
by mrspuratic 3mo ago
Land grab strategy 101.
7.
by mrspuratic 4mo ago
Not as long as there's money to be made schilling and selling "qualifications" in prompt engineering.
8.
by mrspuratic 4mo ago
This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004. Per capita Poland is not the "greatest"
9.
by mrspuratic 4mo ago
\usepackage{comicsans}
10.
by mrspuratic 5mo ago
"updoc" is still my favourite joke name. A long time ago (predating E lang's updoc afaict) I wrote a toy markup for semi-technical docs, named so with the specific intention of dropping it casually into conversation. Still fu
11.
by mrspuratic 5mo ago
showdead=no in user settings hides flagged & moderator killed posts
12.
by mrspuratic 6mo ago
Smoke yes, but you're also turning a carbon sink into a carbon source. At ~16% of the island's surface area, peatland stores an estimated 53% of soil based carbon. (source: Irish Peatland Conservation Council)
13.
by mrspuratic 7mo ago
[dupe^2], previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897340
14.
by mrspuratic 7mo ago
Robert Frank Tinney, artist for over 100 Byte magazine covers 1975-1990, passed away peacefully on February 1st, 2026, at the age of 78. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607038
15.
by mrspuratic 7mo ago
I grind my teeth every time I hear "I need an urgent DNS change" :/
16.
by mrspuratic 8mo ago
Hydro can help a lot with that. Grid stability is a big issue with non-synchronous power sources (SNSP).
17.
by mrspuratic 8mo ago
> I couldn't quickly find a way to decompress them pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf decompress
18.
by mrspuratic 8mo ago
Although it's not mentioned in those, it's going away at the end of the month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46701733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678710
19.
by mrspuratic 8mo ago
I got a Foxydry (Italy) wall-mounted rack a few years back, best €100 I spent that year. Bottom rack folds up flush to the wall, top rack raises nearly to the ceiling. Towels dry fine spread over extra bar or three to allow for better air c
20.
by mrspuratic 8mo ago
No fridge? That's a heat pump.
21.
by mrspuratic 9mo ago
This. I have that type (regenerative MHVR) installed in the attic for upstairs, and a synced pair of in-wall ceramic (recuperative) types on opposite sides of main living area downstairs (eliminating ducting, albeit with reduced efficiency)
22.
by mrspuratic 9mo ago
In old school FORTRAN (I only recall WATFOR/F77, my uni's computers were quite ancient) subroutine (aka "subprogram") parameters are call-by-reference. If you passed a literal constant it would be treated as a variable i
23.
by mrspuratic 9mo ago
Ireland is lucky enough to have several suitable sites, but just one operational: Turlough Hill, which has been running for over 50 years and is in use daily. It's at least as useful in terms of grid stability and (relatively) rapid di
24.
by mrspuratic 9mo ago
xmkmf. I feel your pain.
25.
by mrspuratic 9mo ago
Total US Fed. Gov. contracts for 2024 was (according to gao.gov) $755B. That's a lot of drinking, never mind any anticipated AI spending boost next year.
26.
by mrspuratic 10mo ago
Not problematic, minor pedantry. With much time spent reading (and occasionally writing) technical documentation it's octets, binary prefixes, and other wanton pedantry where likely to be understood/appreciated or precision is req
27.
by mrspuratic 10mo ago
CD storage has an interesting take, the available sector size varies by use, i.e. audio or MPEG1 video (VideoCD) at 2352 data octets per sector (with two media level ECCs), actual data at 2048 octets per sector where the extra EDC/ECC
28.
by mrspuratic 10mo ago
It seems like it, but it can't be only that. A float64 representation of an int in the range 2^58 to 2^59 should be rounded to multiples of 2^6, i.e. 348555896224571968 as you found (3.48555896224571968E17) (the final digit 9 in the ma
29.
by mrspuratic 10mo ago
The whole Tapo/Kasa interop thing was badly handled too a few years back. Put me right off, when most were dangling the seamless integration carrot to distract you from the vendor lock-in.
30.
by mrspuratic 10mo ago
A marquee, animated work-in-progress GIF and a visit counter CGI would have nailed it.

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