It's me, I'm too lazy to modify a keyboard.

I came upon a spare Touch ID keyboard. I just got Command strips and adhered the whole keyboard to the underside of my desk. USB cable is clipped to the desk and goes to my dock. I've got the fingerprint reader right next to my standing desk controls so it's really convenient, and I still get to use my Keychron as my keyboard. The low profile of the Apple keyboard means it doesn't get in the way.

Also every time I need to unlock my Mac or sudo I get to feel like I'm tripping the silent alarm at the bank.

Much of the early part of the Human Genome Project was done using gel based DNA sequencing machines that were controlled by Classic Macs.

The rest of our shop was Solaris on SPARC/x86 and we had our own custom tool chain that crunched the data, but the sequencer itself was run by a Mac.

From 1999 or so forward the next generation of machines were Windows.

I have a UniFi doorbell that I chose because it's self hosted and the video stays in my home. It also easily lets you get an RTSP stream of the camera feed.

Earlier this spring we put a bird feeder outside the front door and it dawned on me I could be piping the doorbell cam into BirdNET to classify the bird calls. With an RTSP stream there's no need to mount a microphone anywhere, that comes for free from the doorbell.

My wife is the bird person in the house more so than I am, but it was still really fun to set up and watch the identifications come across.

RTSP listening instructions for anyone curious:

https://github.com/mcguirepr89/BirdNET-Pi/wiki/Using-an-inte...

I need to try this with my Reolink

The 2 year contracts from the 2000s and early 2010s are back with a vengeance.

20+ years ago during undergrad my OO design class had us writing C++ on Solaris. We were told that unless it compiled and ran on Sun we'd get a zero.

This was also before ewaste regulations came in and some engineering school departments would just throw decommissioned hardware out on the loading dock for people to pick over. One day a pile of SPARCstations showed up and my roommates and I grabbed them all.

We put together two working SS-5s by picking and pulling parts from about eight of them. Had our own mini Sun lab in our living room so we didn't have to go out in the snow and try to stake out an open machine in the engineering computing center.

I once did this type of "dumpster dive" for NeXT cubes. I managed to get eight perfectly working cubes. I then, feeling generous, started offering them up to my friends. Before I realized what I'd done, I'd given them all away and ended up without one. Oh well.

We had both SPARCstations and IBM RISC workstations running AIX. Our assignments were always graded on Solaris. But the IBMs had better keyboards, so I used those. The downside? I had a real knack for finding constructs that'd lead to a segfault in Solaris but not AIX.

I was too lazy to do things like shell into a remote Solaris machine to double check before submitting though. I was YOLOing before it was cool.

I had a SPARClassic at home in 1996! It was pretty underpowered, but it worked great as long as you didn't use X. I worked from my brand new PowerMac 7200 over ethernet to the SPARClassic, which gave me MacOS + Solaris as a development environment.

I wish I'd grabbed some of the PS2 devkits my university were throwing out, they had them all stacked up in an unlocked storeroom.

a friend of mine had a sun-3/xxx as an end table. (uncertain what model but it was about the size of an end table, probably with casters)

I owned many sparcstations. Once I bought a bunch of pizza-boxes for peanuts. Not many worked, but mix and match memory + graphics cards and some did.

When I graduated 20+ years ago I scoured trash rooms on campus before my card access got shut off. I paid probably six months of rent by taking what I found and selling it on ebay.

Raise your hand if you tasted a Nintendo Switch cartridge because you read the plastic was infused with a bitterant to mitigate choking hazards.

Back in the day when I worked desktop support, we would use a lot of canned air. And when they added bitterant to that stuff in order to keep kids from huffing it, it became almost unusable for its intended purpose because it turns out that nobody wants to have to breathe the bitter air after they clean out a PC. So, I went to the office supply store and sampled some different brands to see which ones didn't add a bitterant. The irony that their anti-huffing measure led to me (essentially) huffing canned air at the store was not lost on me.

We just bought an air compressor.

And ran the hose outside, because nobody wants to breathe the dust, either.

And if you don't want to buy an air compressor, an electric computer duster saves you money in the medium and long term. I haven't bought a can of compressed air in years.

I learned the hard way that if you're using canned air upside down as a method to cool something down rapidly, the bitterant stays behind.

I found this out accidentally. I have a habit of holding the cartridge between my lips when I switch cartridges (my hands are occupied with the case). Then minutes later I'd notice a bitter taste when drinking water or licking my lips, and have no idea why!

Telling people not to do something is a sure fire way to get them to do it. Human curiosity is strong.

Case in point: in Germany, there are occasionally "Durchgang verboten" ("passage forbidden") signs next to driveways leading to e.g. an inner courtyard. These are most of the time a sure sign that it's possible to take a shortcut through the courtyard to the other side of the block. Of course, this is a country where you can be reasonably sure of not getting shot for trespassing...

In the US, “NO THRU TRUCKS” is a dead giveaway that you are staring at a shortcut route. And as it isn’t “PRIVATE ROAD”, you are not trespassing.

If it’s not someone’s home, and you are not engaged in nefarious activity, you will not be shot for trespassing. You will be told to leave.

PSA: Don't try this in rural Wyoming...

Even in cattle country, if you make no attempt to hide your presence, I would expect no trouble. I have pulled a gun on someone and had one pulled on me. It was fine both times. Just needed to be explained.

... if you got to the point where gun was pulled on you, that was already a situation where it's so fine? I'll be honest, I don't understand how can you be so calm.

I live in a mostly rural state. Guns are common. Dealing with some person who doesn’t know you, doesn’t know what you want, and is an hour away from law enforcement support has to have some self-reliance. Hands up, explain why you are there, and you can be friends. High-visibility vests help, but you might ditch them.

I had a buddy who said the way you knew it was a good fishing spot was because you got pistol whipped by an AK-47 the last time you were there.

Various legal systems have varying definitions of what is and is not a legal infringement on property rights.

For instance, in (some parts of?) the UK there's the Right to Roam, I believe, which grants the public limited rights to pass through certain private property (such as an open field). Obviously this doesn't extend to harming anything. The point is, passing through someone's private property without causing any damage or inconveniencing them is not automatically considered unethical.

For the record, freedom to roam in England and Wales is rather limited in scope; the quintessential right-to-roam countries are the Nordics (and to an extent Scotland, but it’s an honorary Nordic country anyway). For example, in Finland the customary rights extend beyond just hiking to activities like gathering wild berries and mushrooms.

Do you hate Hawaii’s protection of beach access even if it requires passage through private property? Legalized disrespect?

I couldn't find anything to support the idea that Hawaii’s protection of beach access allows anyone to traverse private property except where a specific rights-of-way easement exists on that property. I don't think the gp would consider use of land via an easement to be disrespectful as the easement holder has rights to the land that must be respected as well.

The courtyards of apartment complexes/condos are usually considered either semi-public or semi-private spaces, and their status with regard to passing through is not clear-cut either legally or morally.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wp:beans

Well.... how did it taste?

It tasted like that time I popped a Smartie/Rocket in my mouth and began chewing casually only to realize that it was an uncoated Tylenol pill.

I thought it tasted like quinine/tonic water or maybe grapefruit rind (the ingredient in the Beverly soda from Italy). Coin batteries sometimes have a bitter taste coating which is similar to the Switch cart.

I stuck just the tip of my tongue on there, and it was so bitter that it was more of a sensation than just a taste. Enough that I reflexively pulled away.

Well, I can say that you definitely won't want to taste it twice.

I was disappointed that it was a bit bitter, yes, but not in the category of “won’t do it twice”. Such that I even tried multiple cartridges. I’m retirement age, though, so maybe my taste buds are shot.

Extremely bitter

Which in that case is Denatonium Benzoate.

The brand name is Bitrex. They send samples to parent groups to demonstrate why it's a good idea to put it on things kids might swallow.

Kindle charging cables were a favorite among some of my friends, for similar reasons.

<raises hand> .. It really was grim

>I'll never be able to read about us digitally unrolling fragile scrolls without it seemingly like otherworldly sci-fi technology.

I similarly had my mind blown reading an article last week, about how sports & game card collectors are now having their packs CT scanned so they can identify what cards are inside (and the value of the pack) while keeping them sealed.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5987857/2024/12/12/trading-...

I had a Makerbot 2X in 2014 and it required constant janitoring every time I wanted to print.

I built a Prusa MK4 this spring; it calibrated itself and printed a great looking piece right from the get-go. The difference is night and day.

The links on the page all go to Amazon. This page looks like AI generated SEO spam that's set up with the intent to generate Amazon affiliate leads.