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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Discussion: you can have an “extinction event” in any ecosystem-- not just biological ones.

    For example, the abandonment of steam locomotives in the mid-20th-century, or the Home Computer crash of the 1980s.

    Similar to a biological mass extinction, you have:

    • A discernable ecosystem change, either a sudden event (the introduction of reliable, mass-produced diesel locomotives), or a measurable decline of “habitability factors” (as hundreds of firms brought cheap 8-bit computers to market, retail space and overall consumer interest saturated)
    • a rapid diversification of new and exotic types to fill the vacated niches (the cabless “B-unit” and flexible “road-switcher” locomotive types didn’t exist in the steam era. The post-crash computer market brought in new entrants like cheap IBM clones, the C128 and Atari 130XE, all chasing a sub-$1000 market that was now free of Sinclair, Coleco, and Texas Instruments)
    • followed by a shake out and consolidation of the survivors/winners as they select for fitness in the new world (ALCO was a strong #2 in the diesel locomotive market in 1950, but didn’t make it to 1970. The C128 never became the world-beater its predecessor did.)
    • a few niches largely untouched (China was still building steam locomotives into the 1990s. The Apple II series lasted about as long.)





  • The mafia has infested law enforcement too.

    I accidentally took the wrong streetcar when visiting San Francisco and ended up in the Castro.

    They put a boot on my gender and had it towed. Apparently I have to pay $450 plus $85 per day storage to get it out of impound. I said “forget it” and they crushed it into a cube.





  • The appeal of state media is that the bias is obvious.

    We know who’s paying the bills at the CBC or Xinhua, but it’s gonna be a lot more subtle for the local broadcaster who mysteriously drops their investigative series right after the target buys a premium ad package.

    It also means you can triangulate. If the BBC and TASS both report the same details on a story, those are probably legit.




  • Also on modern firebreathers.

    I like runit better than systemd, the packages are current, and it has most of what I want in the main repos.

    I also found the documentation excellent in thst it’s a cohesive list of real-world topics rather than a 500-km-deep wiki or forum archive.

    I should try a modern Slackware one day. I loved it back before I had broadband and just ordered a burned CD for each new release, but I should try following -current and the Slackbuilds stuff.