Jonathan Corbet
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
A conference room with a better view than most - the memory-management room at LSFMM+BPF in Vancouver.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
We lost a longtime family friend, great mountaineer, and all-around amazing person this weekend.
https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/remembering-mountaineer-tom-hornbein
Farewell, Tom Hornbein; the world is a far better place for you having been a part of it.
https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/remembering-mountaineer-tom-hornbein
Farewell, Tom Hornbein; the world is a far better place for you having been a part of it.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
My father was, among other things a mountain climber (on the 1963 US Everest expedition and did the first ascent of Tyree in Antarctica), a skier (Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole is named after him), and a maker of adventure movies. Then he was in a helicopter accident and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He used that time to show just how full a life with disability can be, and to help others to do the same.
"Full Circle" is a movie about him, and about Trevor Kennison, a young adventurer who has suffered a similar injury, and who is similarly unwilling to let it stop him:
https://fullcirclefilm.co/
It's a great film. But folks who wanted to see the screening in Denver were denied the chance when the theater canceled it. It seems that they were unprepared to deal with an audience that, it was expected, would include a large number of people in wheelchairs; they said it would be "unsafe for the community".
Not impressed. Hopefully they will be able to find a more enlightened venue sometime soon.
"Full Circle" is a movie about him, and about Trevor Kennison, a young adventurer who has suffered a similar injury, and who is similarly unwilling to let it stop him:
https://fullcirclefilm.co/
It's a great film. But folks who wanted to see the screening in Denver were denied the chance when the theater canceled it. It seems that they were unprepared to deal with an audience that, it was expected, would include a large number of people in wheelchairs; they said it would be "unsafe for the community".
Not impressed. Hopefully they will be able to find a more enlightened venue sometime soon.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Went for a bike ride this morning; quite windy, but nice anyway. The world is *finally* turning green.
Reflecting on the experience... on a bike, it's easy to notice (and complain about) a headwind. Tailwinds, instead, are much harder to notice. They can be a "I'm feeling good today, maybe I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought" experience, where you don't realize that you're getting help - until you turn the corner.
Life is kind of similar. It's easy to notice the headwinds (bad luck, discrimination, etc.) but just as easy to miss the tailwinds that make your experience easier and smoother than it could be. Tailwinds that others may not have.
A key to a good life (and a good bike ride) is to notice and appreciate the tailwinds.
Reflecting on the experience... on a bike, it's easy to notice (and complain about) a headwind. Tailwinds, instead, are much harder to notice. They can be a "I'm feeling good today, maybe I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought" experience, where you don't realize that you're getting help - until you turn the corner.
Life is kind of similar. It's easy to notice the headwinds (bad luck, discrimination, etc.) but just as easy to miss the tailwinds that make your experience easier and smoother than it could be. Tailwinds that others may not have.
A key to a good life (and a good bike ride) is to notice and appreciate the tailwinds.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
It's the first day of the merge window and, so far, there have been three pull requests with links to LWN articles describing the work. Nice to know somebody is reading all that stuff...:)
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/ZEbkqq1tvm1WHVHw%40bombadil.infradead.org/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/20230421-freimachen-handhaben-7c7a5e83ba0c%40brauner/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHC9VhQEXm3XG7B1wJBVsd15xFNpMjyuyxWDEcTAGrSN6zWoaA%40mail.gmail.com/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/ZEbkqq1tvm1WHVHw%40bombadil.infradead.org/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/20230421-freimachen-handhaben-7c7a5e83ba0c%40brauner/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHC9VhQEXm3XG7B1wJBVsd15xFNpMjyuyxWDEcTAGrSN6zWoaA%40mail.gmail.com/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Just updated the laptop to Fedora 38. It seemed to go mostly well, but GNOME 44 seems to have changed something with font scaling; both gnome-terminal and emacs came up the size of a postage stamp — and a small stamp at that. Nothing like trying to tweak parameters when you can't see the dialogs without a microscope...
Firefox, instead, came up as always. Weird.
Firefox, instead, came up as always. Weird.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Sigh ... another important mailing list (fedora-devel) is about to go dark: https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20230420212037.GA7197@mattdm.org/
I get it that email sucks, but forum systems do as well. The future we are headed toward seems to have every project in its own little walled garden, isolated from the others.
But at least we can get cute little badges ...
I get it that email sucks, but forum systems do as well. The future we are headed toward seems to have every project in its own little walled garden, isolated from the others.
But at least we can get cute little badges ...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Chaco Canyon pictographs thought to record a highly visible supernova that occurred in 1054.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
When the passport office destroys your international travel plans, you might as well go and check out some of the local wonders. This is what's left of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, built in the years 850 to 1150.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Today's addition to the list of "things that it never occurred to me could be a problem".
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
A hard-earned lesson for US folks needing to renew a passport in the 2020s... there are two choices:
1) Send in an application, pay the "expedited processing" fee, fill in the blank indicating when you have travel plans. Then wait for over three months, spend countless hours in the State department's phone system from hell, and finally be told that there is absolutely no way to get a passport in time to salvage your trip.
2) Complain to your Senator's office. Hear back the next day with the time for appointment two days later to have a passport made on the spot. Actually showing up for the appointment is highly recommended.
I sure wish I'd known about #2 a week earlier. I'm still used to living in an America were government services (for the reasonably well off, at least) Just Work, and we're not there anymore.
1) Send in an application, pay the "expedited processing" fee, fill in the blank indicating when you have travel plans. Then wait for over three months, spend countless hours in the State department's phone system from hell, and finally be told that there is absolutely no way to get a passport in time to salvage your trip.
2) Complain to your Senator's office. Hear back the next day with the time for appointment two days later to have a passport made on the spot. Actually showing up for the appointment is highly recommended.
I sure wish I'd known about #2 a week earlier. I'm still used to living in an America were government services (for the reasonably well off, at least) Just Work, and we're not there anymore.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
The new(ish) solar panels on the roof came with an monitoring app from SunPower which, naturally, stores lots of information about the house in the cloud somewhere. I'm sure that their management of, say, the realtime consumption data is entirely secure, nothing to worry about there.
Today the app said that we were producing nothing, despite this being a beautiful cloudless Colorado day. Some digging into their web site turns up a page (https://us.sunpower.com/solar-resources/home-solar-system-troubleshooting-questions-and-answers) suggesting to log out of the app and back in; failing that, the trick is to uninstall and reinstall. Sure enough, that worked. Quality engineering there.
My intention to figure out how to get the data directly out of the monitoring system and short these people out is growing...
Today the app said that we were producing nothing, despite this being a beautiful cloudless Colorado day. Some digging into their web site turns up a page (https://us.sunpower.com/solar-resources/home-solar-system-troubleshooting-questions-and-answers) suggesting to log out of the app and back in; failing that, the trick is to uninstall and reinstall. Sure enough, that worked. Quality engineering there.
My intention to figure out how to get the data directly out of the monitoring system and short these people out is growing...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
So after something like eight hours spent on hold over the last couple of weeks, I'm now informed that there is no hope of getting my renewed passport in time for next week's trip. Three months and the full "expedited processing" fee, it seems, were not enough. So now I get to tear down all of my plans, pay all of those cancellation fees, and remain stuck inside a country that I am rather frustrated with at the moment.
Hopefully something will happen in time for me to get to LSFMM next month.
Hopefully something will happen in time for me to get to LSFMM next month.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
So #reddit seems to have decided today that the way to profit is to take away its nice "compact" mobile presentation and, instead, ceaselessly nag web users to switch to the app instead. The site has pretty much become unusable on mobile overnight.
The "request desktop site" option (*in the reddit settings*, not the browser equivalent) makes things a bit more tolerable.
My day to grumble, I guess.
The "request desktop site" option (*in the reddit settings*, not the browser equivalent) makes things a bit more tolerable.
My day to grumble, I guess.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Grumble.
At the very beginning of January I paid the extra fee for "expedited processing" of my passport renewal. Now travel is approaching and I still have no passport...just spent an hour on hold, only to hear that nothing can be done yet.
Time to step away and go for a bike ride, I guess.
At the very beginning of January I paid the extra fee for "expedited processing" of my passport renewal. Now travel is approaching and I still have no passport...just spent an hour on hold, only to hear that nothing can be done yet.
Time to step away and go for a bike ride, I guess.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
They say that we can't control the weather, but I now have evidence to the contrary: just install solar panels on your roof, and you'll cause one of the cloudiest and snowiest winters in a long time...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Sometimes I'll put out an article and the world seems to get excited. Then, other times, I write about direct-map fragmentation and seemingly put everybody to sleep. I've never understood why people don't find these things fascinating...:)
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