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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: February 1st, 2024

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  • It is “backwards” from some other commands — usually you run copy/rsync/link from source to destination, but with tar the destination (tarball) is specified before the source (directory/files).

    That, and the flags not needing dashes always just throws me for a loop.

    And the icing on the cake is that I don’t use tar for tarring that often, so I lose all muscle memory (untaring a tgz or tar.bz2 is frequent enough that I can usually get that right at least…).



  • I feel old…when I was learning how to run Linux I started with an old 386 (maybe 486?) my dad wasn’t using. I think it had 32MB RAM, which was fancy for those machines.

    We had dial up at the time, so only one machine could be on the Internet. So, I set up a modem on the x86, plugged into an Ethernet hub (switch?), and learned enough ipchains (this was before iptables) to share a connection. It also ran Samba, an AFP server, and probably FTP and HTTP (just for local access) — but it worked for filesharing.

    It could also run MP3 streaming software which amused me because the machine itself was too slow to decode MP3 (but that’s not necessary to stream).





  • You mentioned ham radio — definitely fun! It’s a process to get into it though, as you need to study/pass an exam, and then you need a radio. Radios range from cheap ($25 or so) in the VHF/UHF (“walkie talkie”-style) to more expensive for an HF rig ($1000 range for 100W HF). If you want to get into low power (“QRP”) it can be much cheaper. You also need a fair amount of space for a good antenna setup…

    There are tons of different communication modes, some without a computer and, like you mentioned, some that use computers. wsjtx and fldigi are popular programs.

    Good luck!









  • It’s an interesting (predictable?) look into the psyche here.

    I work for a big company, and while yeah it’s a big faceless company, the people treat us ICs as assets, not liabilities; the company makes money because of its employees, not in spite of them, and they — colleagues, manager, director, SVP — acknowledge that.

    My partner’s company OTOH seems to treat employees more as a liability — the kind of attitude of “we’d be more profitable if we didn’t have to pay you,” which is really aggravating (different industry than mine, so this is more the norm mindset unfortunately).

    It’s really clear how this whole farce of a government agency views the world.