There are some amazingly flexible and capable platforms out there, but the more you try to make something one-size fits all, the less it fits.A formula one racer, a stock racer, and a dune buggy are built for radically different environments than a minivan or compact car. As always, the question of "which is best" first depends on first answering the question: "for what?"Which brings us to the Didact taking a look at the current state of the F-35. After going over a severely shortened list of known deficiencies, he notes: I mean, this is a plane that…
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The series on HBO has come to an end, and while in some ways it suffers from the usual dragging pace of binge-watch oriented series, and the previously mentioned "lets make a representative scientist character, who know more than all her coworkers, a woman" - significantly toned down after the introductory episode - is still a solid retelling of the Chernobyl disaster. The infogalactic article is a long one covering the accident in more depth as well as alternate hypothesis regarding the sequence of events and responsibility/issues.Long story short - a perfect storm design flaws, piss poor training,…
At first I'd hear stories of how things constantly get worse, and figured it was old techies doing a geek style version of "get off my lawn". Or figured, like Scott Adams, that life is getting complex enough that even smart people are getting relatively stupid.I'm not sure if the recent news to hit the MSM that IQ is indeed dropping (I wonder why? What's changed, demographically?) is relevant, or how, but I've come around to the view that things are indeed going to shit.Apple no longer has the design lead on high build quality, thin, hi rez…
Trump has, from the standpoint of selling to the US Government and related concerns, severely impacted future sales of stuff produced, designed, etc. in China, as noted here:In short, the God-Emperor has declared war against all foreign intelligence interests using China as an attack vector. He’s pissed in the Deep State’s cereal. He’s told China we’re ready to start building our own electronics back on American soil. He’s told the tech industry, all of it, that business as usual is over. Cheap, but compromised, electronics won’t be available from China, excuse me, “adversaries”…
Those of my friends who've hung out with me when touring aviation-related sites like the Yorktown know my taste in airplanes is odd. Sure, I love the feisty little F-16, appreciate the sleek beauty of the F-18, and the power and form of the F-15. I've even had models of most of them. Nevertheless, my favorites are quirky.Sure, the P51 Mustang is a beauty, but I'd rather rebuild my modeling collection with an ungainly Vought F4U corsair, the FW-190, or the tubby F6F Hellcat. Going into the jet age, I truly love the A-10 Thunderbolt, the Vought Crusader, and…
For maximum compatibility, the audio files downloaded from Arkaven come as mp4 "video" files because while they are technically m4b files, many applications (like WinAmp) won't recognize them or play them well, and calling them mp4 results in a "least wrong" default that will still play the audio.In either case, since these are your files that you download - and back up if you're smart - you can't just spin up an "audible" app to download and listen to them in one easy place.The good news is that Arkhaven has an excellent guide to get you started. Nevertheless,…
In my last post I covered how to get a proper dump of the database. I have, of course, verified the backup of the database. For ghost you can easily do so by spinning up another instance with ghost - this will require a DNS entry or update depending on if it's a replacement or a separate verification instance. Services such as Digital Ocean make it easy to spin up an instance for a couple hours and then destroy them. Update it to the same version, go through the initial setup, and stop ghost using the ghost stop command. You…
After having some issues manually messing around with the backend of my install, I started digging into the issue of "hey, it's nice I can manually dump my entire text contents into a .json file but that can't be scheduled in the GUI or dumped via command line" - especially since there still are some gotchas like "running ghost config without any parameters creates a new config file for the particular env" lurking about. Also, the one "ghost for beginners" guide I could find on backups assumed an SQLite database, and had you stop,…