Geek Stuff category archive

Hear the latest about the Apple car.

Humorless twits.

The resident curmudgeon of my local rag, whose default operating position is that “other people can’t have nice things,” occasionally gets one right.

This should be interesting. A user of the Ashley Madison electronic adultery emporium and canoodling clearing house has filed suit:

The plaintiff claims that he was lured to spend money on the site based on representations of how many women were active on it, especially after he received messages from women that required him to pay for credits to continue the conversations. Now, he believes those messages didn’t come from women at all – instead, they came from “fembots with fake profiles created by Ashley Madison.” These allegations are fueled by a recent report from a journalist who allegedly discovered that the company created fake female profiles and bots to interact with male customers. The plaintiff argues that the use of the fembots violates Maryland’s Consumer Protection Act, which outlaws unfair or deceptive trade practices.

The piece goes on to point out that precedent may be on the plaintiff’s side.

Compiled a new kernel from Ubuntu 15.04 for Ubuntu 14.04 running in a virtual machine in VirtualBox. Took three tries before I got it right.

Dr. Richard Cytowic argues that smart phones are making us dumb.

More profound is the shift in how students now think. During their entire educational careers they have been bombarded with fact-based questions that can be answered quickly by a Google search. To them, being Google–like is the pinnacle of academic performance. Even top students think in terms of a Google search. Ask a “Why” question and all you get are the “What,” the “Who,” and perhaps the “When”—exactly the kind of details they’d come up with if they typed the query into a search engine.

“Why” questions, or demands for critical analysis and opinion, leave them flummoxed. Most teachers still believe that critical thinking and self-aware imagination rather than rote memorization should be at the heart of learning. Advocates of more technology offer shiny new toys, but they misunderstand how learning occurs. Or perhaps, cynically, they don’t care.

Much more at the link.

My new podcast about w3m, a command line web browser, is up at Hacker Public Radio.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Learn how to use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, September 3.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

Join the forums.

This little pile of electrons turned 10 years old on Thursday.

Who wudda thunk?

Read more »

PCBSD running in VirtualBox running on Slackware –Current on my Zareason Limbo desktop through a VNC connection from my Zareason Strata laptop using the X11vnc server and the tightvnc viewer.

Thanks to Klaatu for getting me off my duff to figure this out.

Afterthought:

You might notice a certain pattern in how I like my desktop to look.

It appears that, at Ashley Madison, there was less than met the eye.

Since long before the days of the badger game, horny men have been suckers ripe for the plucking, and there have been plenty of pluckers.

FreeBSD v. 10 running in VirtualBox on Slackware –Current.

Zucked on his own petard.

Via C&L.

Sign off, sign on.

Gridiron twits.

No selfie-awareness, no selfie-awareness whatsoever.