kw71

Joined 12 years ago

Karma
1,175
Submissions
494
Member since
Dec 21
I built things that you probably see and use every day, and changed the world a little.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 7 years ago
It depends on the confinement, the overcrowding of industrial production may be unadaptable. There are still enough instincts programmed that unfamiliar males would rather avoid each other.

I do not beleive that industrial breeding is selecting for anything that makes such prison life tolerable. Birds in production generally aren't reproducing, so nothing in the henhouse is affecting evolution.

Comment · 7 years ago
> while open source keeps adapting and changing

In these places, this is a great thing to avoid. Old software is well known. You do not want to be the one to be affected by a bug that stops production or changes data.

> mainframes have remained stagnant in features

Having a well known universe without any beta software, and not being disrupted by new stuff that you don't need anyway, is a damn good feature.

Comment · 7 years ago
Writing off all the big computer shop stuff as irrelevant means you throw away all the experience and best practices and will be repeating the mistakes people made 50 years ago. And maybe reinvent some wheels too.

A computer center is your best resource for observing and learning how to build computer services, deploy them, and keep them available. And for knowing what experienced computing people and their customers expect.

And some of the stuff you do today is descended from here:

You probably wrote this comment in a program that displays forms, and allows you to fill in forms and call up other forms. This is how the 3270 terminal worked.

Maybe you have some hypervisor running somewhere. Welcome to 1970s IBM. We don't want to rewrite our 360 stuff so we will emulate the 360 in its own sandbox.

Saddest part of these things, when they come into general awareness one way or another, they are so out of tune with the universe that the public hail them as new "technology." The ideas are old, it's only some new implementation or circumstance that's novel.

Comment · 7 years ago
In the US, yea, inspections aren't universal, but the only inspection program I know of that has been scrapped was Florida's. I think there are more operating inspection regimes than defunct ones, even if you can cheat some of them. This also seems to be an anomaly among developed countries.

Rust that's more than superficial can lead to structural failure, and improper crash repairs can cause this. These are definitely situations that leave the vehicle in a lesser state of crashworthiness.

A compromised exhaust frequently leads to more exhaust entering the cabin.

This gets into the roots of my socialist beliefs as caring for our injured comrades brings us all down. There are always better things to send effort and resources to than dealing with the loss of productivity, the costs to deal with whatever damage, and misery of loved ones.

Comment · 7 years ago
Maybe they won't try to sue you for distributing the documentation and software, then :)
Comment · 7 years ago
> It seems Tesla is deliberately ignoring or trying to squash the aftermarket/custom-car culture

This culture ("F your emissions controls," "I the lay blue collar know better than the committes of degreed engineers who designed the thing") has never cared about safety, nor has the aftermarket ("fitness for purpose, engineering, warranty... to hell with all that, the only requirement for our product is that some idiot should buy it")

Improperly repaired and modified cars are a detriment to the safety of others on the road, but wishing the problem away like Tesla is doing is not going to help anything, they need to publish and make accessible the documentation like the real car makers do.

Comment · 7 years ago
I feel like I am the only person around me who maintains (changes oil, rebuilt carb etc.) equipment and people seem to treat lawnmowers the worst. I swear I think people throw them away because they're out of fuel sometimes.
Comment · 7 years ago
Ford has been doing this for decades (I think I saw it mentioned in the docs for EEC IV.) It turns off fuel for a cylinder here and there intending to pump heat out of the engine (a cylinder with no fuel is an air pump.)

It doesn't really let you operate with no coolant. Might get you farther before you die if you push it.

Comment · 7 years ago
It's ridiculous that android devices ignore the dns server my dhcp gives, too.
Comment · 7 years ago
I know personally both kinds of cases but unfortunately the career criminals are not as rare really as they seem to be for this author
Comment · 7 years ago
When I lived in Russia (2000s) it was quite abundant and seemed to be cheap, it was part of nearly every breakfast that I didn't prepare for myself whether or not there was anything luxurious about the situation.

The foie gras that GP mentioned, is inherently labor intensive to produce and not abundant anywhere.

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Comment · 7 years ago
Last quarter I quit my job at one of the world's largest automakers and for twelve years I've had a small business on the side that serves specialist mechanics of all kinds, so I talk to dealership and indy mechanics all the time. I think you need a lot more experience with automobiles before you are qualified to say such things.

I have a 22 year old 3 and a 26 year old 5. Neither have ever been in the shop for anything but tires. It's not fair or accurate to lump this in the same bucket as vw or mbz. I have bought quite a few parts from the dealer that cost less than $1, like plastic rivets or clips that I broke in the process of getting to something else. Toyota and VW want almost ten bucks for these sometimes. GM won't sell them to you. But my coolant is cheapest at the mbz dealer.

Unlike japanese makes, for anything that people have a need to replace, the original parts are sold on the aftermarket at fair prices. For my toyota, if I want a ball joint, I have to pay three times what it should cost at the dealer parts desk, or deal with junk from the aftermarket - and it's all junk. Datsuns, honda, same boat. Mazda, you're lucky if they even support your car anymore.

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