Ah - yes, I did misread it. Jobs did push people and created the Reality Distortion Field, but he could not have gotten much going without Woz.

And, yes, I was talking about Woz' accomplishments.

Some of his logic designs were amazing. I was learning digital logic when I got my //e and started studying schematics. (The //e was a generation removed, but had some features from the ][ series and I studied those as well.) For one example, the ][ disk drive. Just as a quick and simple example, he had a 7400 chip needed and used 1 ro 2 of the NAND gates on it. He used the other gates as amplifiers from the disk signal. Not something that was at all standard at that time (don't know if it is now). That's the one I can remember, but he was using ONE gate as an amp instead of at least one, if not three more chips. Things like that kept the costs down more than most would think.

I can't remember other examples, but his habits of having to keep chip counts down, so he could make what he wanted when his family didn't have a lot of money, came through in a number of ways in his designs.

Hmmm...

That's being a little bit harsh.

He sold *new* cars! ;)

They really should be honoring Steve Wozniak instead. He's the one that did the work, did the innovation, made a floppy disk drive work for a price lower than anyone else could imagine by innovating. He's the one who did the designs and made it all possible. But Jobs was more visible and knew how to capture headlines.

Seriously, Jobs and Apple would have been NOTHING without Woz doing the kind of stuff he can do.

Clicked to update my password - now the Plex site login won't work at all. I don't mean it won't take the new PW. I mean you can't get the login page.

Not surprised, really. So freaking many bugs in Plex that never get fixed I've questioned their code quality for a while now.

We already have a standard for shortening long names. Thus

* a13n replaces 'authorization', and
* a14n replaces 'authentication'.

both of these are 1 char shorter than authz / authn, so it should greatly simply things.

Guess you never spent time programming the //e or older ][ and ][+. Seriously, you think the gs was slow? Compared to what I started with in college (the //e), the gs was rocking.

Always amazing how people think they're the first generation to deal with or discover things or face issues and have no clue what things were like before them.

I didn't get anything banned, but I left for similar reasons. I think they were going with cheap mods who probably had poor English skills (because they were from whatever country where labor was cheapest by the hour). But in many ways my issue was the opposite: The answers that were getting in the newsletter and getting all the attention and were not getting banned were the ones giving advice that would get people evicted, arrested, or just in court because it would make it easy for the landlord to sue to them or for tenants to sue them as a landlord.

That's been going on for years. It was a problem back when I was active and one of many reasons I left, even though I was a Top Writer (or whatever that title is) in one category. Top Writer? Yeah, still meant not getting much in terms of newsletter mentions when compared to the people giving answers that, if followed, would land people in court, or jail, or out on the street when evicted.

The vast majority of the ones I saw like that were political or dealing with anti-vax or other conspiracy theories.

At one time you could go to Quora for good answers and intelligent discussion on those answers. It's been a good while since that was the case. They've been pushing popular or flame-bait answers for a good while over factual or quality answers. I used to work as a landlord and would work hard to write good answers to questions so I could actually help people. I got thanked for them, but the answers to similar questions that kept showing in my feed, ones that were getting all the views and reactions, were usually inaccurate and often even advised people to do things that they could get sued or sent to jail for. I'd report inaccurate answers or bad advice that could get some arrested for larceny or worse and nothing happened.

Quora hasn't been about answers or helping people or exchanging information for at least several years. If it goes tango-uniform and the bigshots behind it lose their stock equity and get loans called in and lose houses and yachts, it's nothing more than poetic justice.

Sure but it dramatically lowers their profits/revenue, and it will run through their reserves much faster. If they drive everyone out of business at 25-30 a barrel, that'll work for a while (and I'm not clear if even the Saudis or all of OPEC can supply the world's needs without significant investment in infrastructure). Even if they sell it at a low price, there will still be a market above that price for everybody else (at which point Saudi Arabia is just losing money). Sooner or later they'll run out of oil, or they'll want to generate a higher profit margin or more revenue.

There are lots of factors going on here, and you're way oversimplifying them. For starters, OPEC currently provides 40% of the world's oil and about 60% of the exported oil to the international market (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Ffinance%2Fmarkets%2Fcrudeoil%2Fsupply-opec.php). So a 10% drop in overall oil demand and maintaining the price means they lose 25% of their revenue, given large fixed costs, that's a larger percentage drop in profits.

One thing worth noting: If there's a 40% drop in oil demand, it means OPEC could be shut out of the market. That's unlikely to be true, because OPEC can pump gas cheaper than most, while there are any number of sources that aren't economical unless the price of gas is higher so if gas got down to 1USD per gallon (laughable I know, but conceptually possible, and it has been that low in my lifetime in the US), OPEC might be the only one that can turn a profit, but as they try to drive the price up, the more other sources can generate gas economically, this caps how much revenue/profit they can make... This is why gas rarely gets up to 4-5 USD in the US (at that price shale oil sources become economically viable, and OPEC knows it'll incentivize moving away from oil

There's a tremendous amount of competition in the international oil market, it is just that OPEC controls the biggest bloc and is the most motivated to drive the price of oil up as it is a huge way to draw dollars into their countries. The people who control the last barrel of oil sold get to set the price. So if OPEC isn't the one controlling that last barrel sold. If there were a 30% drop in global oil demand, that'd drop the revenue by 75%, which would apply serious pressure to the OPEC nations where that represents a significant fraction of their GDP. Saudi Arabia facing a 75% drop in revenue will present a serious problem for the gov't and their ability to stay in power.

Also, at least the US has been a major purchaser on the international market, but we also have a tremendous amount of oil we can generate. It is just that we have needed a huge amount of since the early 1970s (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fdnav%2Fpet%2Fhist%2FLeafHandler.ashx%3Fn%3Dpet%26amp;s=mcrimus1&f=a). Notice that the US has been trending down for ~2 decades now (peaked around 3.9mil to 2.2mil recently although there is an uptick from the recent low point... to be honest I'm not sure about the units if those are barrels per day over the year or total per year).

Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations know this. They know they play a precarious game, and that being too greedy will kill the golden goose. They also know the world is looking to move away from oil for various reasons, and that the golden goose is going to die. They'll need to replace that, prior to becoming a modern version of the "buggy whip makers".

The people openly supporting this are the current Board of Directors. They are attempting to consolidate their power by implementing a system in which the outgoing Board picks the incoming Board. The Board does not post any of the minutes of their Board meetings. They do not post copies of any of the policies. When folks have asked for copies of the minutes, they were told it is the policy of the organization not to post those. When asked to see a copy of that policy, they have responded that it is policy of the organization not to share copies of the policies. In other words, "we the Board will do whatever the heck we feel like doing, and you petty members can go sit in a corner and color." (How's that for a polite phrasing of what I was really thinking?)

All ISC2 members need to vote against this proposal, and also sign the petition at https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjsweb.net%2Fisc2

And yet they're providing internet to many who couldn't get it or get a reliable connection through other sources. There are things I can do with a business I've wanted to start for several years that I couldn't do until Starlink came out of beta and I could get it. Considering that employment and income goes up in areas when good internet becomes available and that they're helping groups as well as individuals be a part of something many people have taken for granted for over 20 years now, ignoring their impact on peoples' lives is ignoring most of the story.

Wise County, VA - look it up. Backwater. Rural. For many homes no internet at all, for many others, no reliable internet. Wise County Schools had no reliable connection to use the internet in instruction in classrooms or to help kids learn to use what most kids these days take for granted. Starlink came in and worked with them directly to help them get real internet they could use in their classrooms and for the kids to use for doing homework.

When you can see that the public schools in a rural county like Wise is now able to start catching up to the 21st century that most of the US is in, that kind of makes the concerns about observatories take on a different perspective. I'm not happy that issue is there and, from early on, when they saw it was going to be an issue, they started working out how to de-emphasize it quickly. But when it comes to educating children so they can take part in the 21st century economy and actually use Google and other internet resources, it's worth weighing the gain and loss

Think about those kids who can finally do ANYTHING on the internet next time you sit down and stream any program you take for granted now days.