Things you don't need to know...

pibbur who said:
PS: A Corollary: "Den som taber sin ene handske, er heldig i forhold til den, som taber den ene, kasserer den annen, og finder den første igen". Piet Hein aka Kumbel. DS.

PPS: It's Danish. DS.
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In The Netherlands his great great great (etc?) father is world famous for having captured the Silver Fleet.
In 1628, Admiral Hein, with Witte de With as his flag captain, sailed out to capture a Spanish treasure fleet loaded with silver from their American colonies and the Philippines. […] Hein captured 11,509,524 guilders of booty in gold, silver, and other expensive trade goods, such as indigo and cochineal, without any bloodshed.
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An enormous amount of money at the time.
We have a song about him. I myself learned it as a child.
A song praising Admiral Hein's capture of the Spanish "silver fleet" written in 1844 is still sung by choirs and children at primary school in the Netherlands, as well as during traditional drinks by student unions in Belgian universities.
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-mum-jailed-duping-teenage-12582647

A mother has been jailed for four-and-half years after duping her teenage daughter to go to Pakistan and forcing her to marry, in the first successful prosecution of its type.

The woman was found guilty following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court, where a jury heard how the victim had sobbed as she was married to a male relative 16 years her senior.
…
It is the first time a forced marriage case of this kind has been successfully prosecuted in a criminal court in England, with the mother convicted of actively deceiving the girl in order to convince her to travel.
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You don't need to know in which countries forcing selling your own children into marriage is legal.
What you do have to know however is that Dragon Age Inquisition was banned in the very same Pakistan due concerns over morality of it's fictional characters. And you know how they explain when a game is banned in Pakistan? With these words: "These games are an effort to malign the minds of youth against Pakistan." But of course it's malign to have a choice.
 
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It was just a matter of time. TB died today.
I will not open a new thread, he was not a vain person who'd want monuments or something, he was just one of us.

You don't need to know how much I miss him.
 
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Soon being notorious for effectively ruining spam business, GDPR starts today in certain countries.
Spamprevention is not everything, it also restricts use of your privacy data - anyone who wants to use different data about you, and that ain't just name and birthday but also stuff like DNA profile, anything related to your current health even if you're 100% healthy, etc - anyone needs to get your permission first.

What you don't need to know is how many parasitic companies will die off since sending a "newsletter" or whatever spam without you opting in first is illegal starting today.
What you do need to know is that fines for breaking GDPR are huge. Draconian.
Buhbye Facebook.
 
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joxer said:
It was just a matter of time. TB died today.
I will not open a new thread, he was not a vain person who'd want monuments or something, he was just one of us.

You don't need to know how much I miss him.
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RIP.

pibbur
 
joxer said:
It was just a matter of time. TB died today.
I will not open a new thread, he was not a vain person who'd want monuments or something, he was just one of us.

You don't need to know how much I miss him.
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Everybody should know as he exposed many developers and publisher over the last ten years. He will be missed and hopefully his wife takes over as he planned.

 
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joxer said:
It was just a matter of time. TB died today.
I will not open a new thread, he was not a vain person who'd want monuments or something, he was just one of us.

You don't need to know how much I miss him.
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Sad times.

Good, though, that he wrote a form of "goodbye" before that. That keeps good memories of him.
 
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Thrasher said:
If clotted cream or scones becomes affected, I imagine the queen will have something to say about it.
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If it goes on for any length of time, the Queen will be expected to abdicate.
 
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Hard disk drives. Has to be the number one piece of pc hardware where price/performance has developed the most.

I typically (for fun) calculate how much the 20 Mb disk drive I didn't buy in '84 would cost me now. (0.2 cents). But what if I (for even more fun) calculated how much the storage capacity I have now would have cost me if I bought it back then?

Today I have around 40 TB. Yes, it's more than I need, but it includers storage for RAID, backups and old disk drives which still work. The 20 MB disk drive cost 20,000 NOK. The 2,000,000 disks I would have to buy would then cost me 40,000,000,000 NOK. In 1984 1 USD was worth 7 NOK, so I would have to pay around 5.7 billion dollars. Suddenly I feel very rich.

Let's disregard the fact that it would not be possible to connect all those disks to one single PC. DOS 3.0, released in '84, supported up to 32 MB partititons, and there were some minor HW restrictions as well. What's more interesting is the number of units shipped globally in 1984: 3,65 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/398951/global-shipment-figures-for-hard-disk-drives/). Assuming these were 20 MB drives (probably not correct but I don't have the exact number), I would run off with more than half the global production.

And given the size of a 5.25" disk, I would have to buy 9 more houses to store them (disregarding necessary space for cooling, power supply, racks and so on).

pibbur who is fascinated by this.

PS: Feel free to correct my calculations if you find any errors. DS.

PPS. I think the disk I considered in '84 was 20MB. It may have been 10 MB (the IBM PC came with a 10 MB disk, if it came with a disk at all). I leave the updated calculations to the readers. DS

PPPS: Special offer to the watchers: 200,000 disks, conveniently stored inside one small (3.5") package. Price 200,000,000 USD, that's more than a 50% discount.- DS.
 
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Why don't citizens vote? One opinion that reflects my own.
Here are the two most honest reasons I can come up with:

  1. It doesn’t interest me
  2. It’s not going to change how I live my life
In a Venn diagram of things I’m interested in and things I can control, my focus and attention are at the intersection.

Politics doesn’t fit into this category for me. In fact, at this point in my life, it’s outside the diagram altogether.

Plus, it’s kind of a circus these days.

Like most people, I see political informationthrough the lens of the media.
The media’s incentives are to produce the most outrageous stories possible, not to provide unbiased, useful information that might actually help people understand the issues and how they are impacted.

Social media is even worse. It’s basically every person on earth with their own amateur media outlet following the same formula: shock value over real value. Not to mention a lot of it is complete BS.

I might have found this entertaining at one point in my life and it’s still good for an occasional laugh or two. But it’s not something I’m willing to invest a lot of time in right now.

I never really watched the news and I’ve recently cut way back on social media.
That’s no excuse for me to remain ignorant, but it is a turnoff.

If I cared enough about the issues at stake, I would make an effort to educate myself. I’m just not that interested in them.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the issues we face as a nation are important. But I find it difficult to relate to them on a personal level at this point in my life.

I’m not worried about what everyone else does.

I try to focus all my energy on making my life the best it can be in whatever situation I’m in.

I know improving the healthcare system is important, but I’m more worried about the things I can do to improve my own health.

I know the economy is important, but I’m taking full responsibility for my own financial situation.

I know education is important, but I’m not going to rely on the government to make sure my future kids are well-educated.

Here’s the truth (and some people look at me like I have two heads when I say this):

I can never seem to get excited about a candidate in any election because I can’t imagine my life would be any different if the other candidate won.

This has been my feeling in every election that’s happened since I’ve been alive.

It’s even true with the most recent election. I am a brown immigrant. If anyone should be angry that Trump won, it should be me. But I’m not.

Ijust don’t care that much because I refuse to let the outcome of the election
dictate the way I live my life.

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe this is a terrible approach. I’m not saying I’m right. This is just how I feel.

I will say this, though: I do care more now than I did 10 years ago.

The only reason for this is that the people in my life that I love and care about care and I hate to see them suffer.

My loved ones are better people than I am. They have the best interest of people they don’t even know at heart. So much that this election brought them to tears. I really admire this.

I did vote in the election. But I did it for the people in my life that I love, not for me. They make me a better person and I might not care much about politics, but I do care about them.
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