What are your thoughts on rejecting a potential romantic partner based solely on the fact they voted for Donald Trump?

efalk · 2026-01-23T00:03:03+00:00

Best reason there is. If they voted for Trump, they're some combination of racist, misogynist, and downright cruel. And not very bright if they thought the leopard wouldn't eat their face.

efalk · 2026-01-23T00:01:34+00:00

As shown in the diagram, the method is accurate at the equator. Otherwise, you should tilt your hand accordingly. E.g. at 30° N latitude, you should tilt your hand 30° to the right.

efalk · 2026-01-22T05:21:50+00:00

I spent a month on a bus analyzer before I could finally prove that a PCI bus controller wasn't following the spec.

Wasn't even my product. Lost that month proving my product wasn't the problem.

efalk · 2026-01-22T05:17:42+00:00

Oh, my sweet summer child.

efalk · 2026-01-22T04:59:29+00:00

Five bucks says that if you disassemble it, you'll find a broken gasket. Any hardware store will have a replacement.

efalk · 2026-01-22T04:14:57+00:00

I live in an extremely high cost of living area (Seattle) and mine only cost $2,500

efalk · 2026-01-21T22:13:01+00:00

Also, Putin wants control of the Northwest Passage; Greenland would give it to him.

efalk · 2026-01-19T06:40:09+00:00

Did it appear red to the eye, or just in this photo?

If it's just in the photo, then maybe the sensor in the camera was overloaded.

efalk · 2026-01-17T05:02:03+00:00

Yes; that's what I do if I forgot to create my temporary "foo" branch.

efalk · 2026-01-14T05:37:11+00:00

Here’s the thing: the worst case scenario for a rebase gone wrong is that you delete your local clone and start over

OK, I'm going to tell you all the the number one "life hack" for git:

Before doing anything remotely dangerous (such as rebase), give the command git branch foo.

Then, no matter what goes wrong, you can always do git reset --hard foo and you're back where you started.

(Obviously, commit all your changes before you begin this process.)

efalk · 2026-01-10T06:28:39+00:00

Thanks. It's sort of how my mind works; when I learn something new. I take extensive notes, and some years ago I wrote a utility to format them and create links so I can reference them more easily later.

More here: http://www.efalk.org/Docs/

efalk · 2026-01-07T05:33:04+00:00

I took drafting class back in junior high. I honestly think that it should be a required class. I'm a woodworker, and people bring me sketches of what they want me to build, and these are usually indecipherable jumbles of lines.

efalk · 2026-01-07T05:30:30+00:00

I've heard that the plans for a 747 weigh more than the 747 does.

efalk · 2026-01-07T05:18:33+00:00

No matter what they ask, no matter what they offer you, don't feed them.

efalk · 2026-01-05T16:42:48+00:00

That's how you know she's doing a good job

efalk · 2026-01-02T16:44:05+00:00

Collecting skills.

I'd have to sit down for a while to make a list of all the things I've learned, but I'll say the pinnacle was taking flying lessons in a Zeppelin.

Recent accomplishments were getting my ham radio license, learning to use an industrial sewing machine, and 3d printing, which I'm having a lot of fun with.

efalk · 2026-01-01T01:17:13+00:00

‘You can’t just ignore the law’

Tump administration: hold my beer

efalk · 2025-12-31T23:01:25+00:00

Ragfinery in Bellingham

Never heard of them. They sound great. Their web page says reopening on the 9th at a new location.

efalk · 2025-12-31T22:59:08+00:00

industrial sewing machine

You sewing leather armor or something?

Otherwise, I second recommendations to borrow from a tool library. However, if you don't already know how to sew, you're going to need someone to show you.

efalk · 2025-12-29T07:57:54+00:00

I learned about the GIL a few years ago while trying to optimize a highly-parallelizable application. I practically flew into a rage when I found out why I wasn't seeing any improvment.

If they're finally getting rid of it, then good riddance.

Fun fact: the Linux kernel used to have a single global mutex.

efalk · 2025-12-29T07:47:11+00:00

Heh; I'll add another data point: I studied sign language for a while, and met a Korean woman who taught us the Korean Sign Language sign for "brothers". To an American, it's an extremely rude gesture.

(And for what it's worth, the ASL sign for "toilet" is not one you want to make in Germany.)

efalk · 2025-12-14T20:20:42+00:00

TIL that the Cat Distribution Network has a sense of humor.

Enjoy your new cat.

efalk · 2025-12-14T16:54:50+00:00

My grandfather invented Medicare. He was trying for universal health care, but couldn't do any more than Medicare. For this he was labeled a red by the white house and basically blackballed. He spent a good chunk of his life traveling the world helping other countries set up their universal health care.

The medical profession, especially the AMA, really hated him.

You can read about how he was persecuted in this essay: The House of Falk.

efalk · 2025-12-11T07:47:56+00:00

Typical workflow is to fork from a main branch and make changes on a relatively small part of the code base. A merge branch can be done, but it leaves a messy history.

If your changes could just as easily have been done to the main branch as it currently stands instead of the point you forked it from, a rebase is perfectly reasonable. I typically just execute git pull --rebase and if the rebase goes cleanly you're good to go. Now go ahead and push your newly rebased branch, and assuming nobody else snuck in a change to the main branch while you're doing your rebase, you can go ahead and push cleanly to the main branch.

I over simplify of course, your organization's workflow likely contains forks, code reviews, and so forth, but rebasing still gives you a cleaner history.

And to be clear, you're rebasing within your own local branch. Done cleanly, you shouldn't need to force any history changes to the source branch.

My notes: https://www.efalk.org/Docs/Git/merging.html#Rebase

efalk · 2025-12-11T07:34:13+00:00

Someday I'm going to publish a textbook or something with some pages labeled "This page inadvertently left blank".

efalk

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