FACT CHECK: Snopes is no longer a website (Tb). When you go there without javascript you don't see any images. When I activate all the reputable javascript sources, I still don't see all of the images. I am no longer going to cite Snopes for debunking as a result. Are there any good fact-checking websites, as opposed to Javascript SNAFUs?

RIP Sweet Jupiter kitty. 23-24 years is an awesome life for a kitty. I'm so sorry I had to end your life in a sterile and noisy environment instead of letting you die in peace at home, you were suffering too much. Have a good journey, little one.

Anyone that wants his contact info, or that of any of his relatives, let me know. My info fees are very cheap (on the order of cents versus nearly hundreds of dollars which any other site generally tries to charge/nickel-dime you out of.)

I don't know if Slashdot is malfunctioning, functioning poorly as designed, or whether I'm outright being censored. Since I don't know, I'll list that possibility last. I'm trying to leave a response to This comment by Bruce Perens. This is that response:

If this is not important, why are you engaging me?

Open Source is a wave that you've ridden, not one which you've churned up with your splashing about. There are obvious benefits in the Open Source model to developers and even to corporate rightsholders.

The internet, just as it remembers that people were using "Open Source" before Christine's claim. Faintly, distantly, because archival was not a major concern at the time. Perhaps one day in our apparently inevitable future of surveillance societies, we will remember everything and we'll always be able to look up who did what and when.

The audience thinks I'm being a troll because it doesn't know what trolling is, and because some people have abused moderation by modding me as a troll. Trolling is saying things you may or may not even believe because you want to make people angry. My goal is not to make people angry, although it's okay if people become angry with what I say. My goal is to support the truth, in the form of facts. I and others have provided citations which support the view of events which I remember. I'm not alone, nor does the entire discussion hinge on a single press release, and your attempts to suggest otherwise seem disingenuous.

The truth? I've thought about it again and again, and I just can't comprehend any other explanation than those we've discussed upthread why you spend so much time supporting this nonsense. You say it's not important, then you spend a ton of time on it, then you criticize me for spending time on it. Why don't you make up your mind?

I got a solid scoop on the fact that OSI members did not invent the term "Open Source Software" and Slashdot's not interested.

I have to suspect that my CFO knows about my inherent ability to either make things right or seriously fuck things up by simply being present or part of something. Go figure as soon as he tosses me into the cryptocurrency ring, everything drops like a fucking rock. Bitcoin almost below 13K, ETH was at 800 and now in the 600 range, Ripple rose and fell with only the tiniest overall gain since I looked at it the first time, but of course those bastards can't send me the e-mail to finish making a Ripple wallet. I'd be willing to bet once I get out of this, the market will go back up, and until then, it's downhill from here. But that'd be the good thing, as the CFO would then be able to get all of this for cheap, and wait for the next inevitable irrational rise after he pulls me out of the game.

Only good thing I've pulled so far is figuring out how to get this GTX 970 to pull 12Mh/s when unconfigured it only does ~3Mh/s, and that took some risky driver fiddling and overclocking after telling the card to optimize for compute, and then doing what I could to eke out additional memory bandwidth.

lamness filter cruft because you cant delete JEs apparently

Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI, is cooperating with Mueller

It really is a shame that impeachment isn't on the table, but at least some nice heads will be rolling.

Tim Burke on special snowflakes:

If America is not great, it is not for a lack of attention to our sensitive right-wing snowflakes. They said: hands off our guns. Well, we stand now at the moment of the most intense judicial restraint on any attempt to restrict gun ownership and use in the history of this republic. They said: lower our taxes! We are the least taxed liberal democracy on the planet, we are 37 years into a national regime of ceaseless tax reduction. They said: cut the welfare state, get rid of the safety net! The safety net has been cut, the great revolution of the late 19th and early 20th Century in favor of public goods is nearly totally undone. They said: stop teaching our children what we donâ(TM)t want them to know. Creationism is back in schools, the government is actively hostile to science, itâ(TM)s ok for the top leaders of this country to endorse historical falsehoods and insist they be taught to the nationâ(TM)s children. They said: weâ(TM)re too free to see pornography and get divorced and live together outside of marriage and take drugs. And where is it that pornography is most popular and adultery flourishes and opoids and meth take hold? In Trumplandia, where people apparently need the Nanny State to stop them from doing what they blame on others who do it far less. They said: stop crime at all costs! And thirty years later, theyâ(TM)re still afraid in a country that locks up more of its own people than any other comparable nation, that allows cops to kill black men with impunity.

A while back I discovered that theyâ(TM)re selling photographic film again, so I bought a package of three rolls of 35mm Kodak color film. Not sure what Iâ(TM)ll photograph, but the Minolta 35 mm SLR takes a hell of a lot better pictures than my phone. Actually, than any phoneâ"and any digital camera.
        I got home, set the film aside (itâ(TM)s a lot more expensive than the last time I used film) and looked for my camera, which hadnâ(TM)t been used for a couple of decades.
        I couldnâ(TM)t find it. I was sure Iâ(TM)d put it in the middle drawer of my dresser, but no matter how much I rummaged I couldnâ(TM)t find it. And damn it, Iâ(TM)d paid eighteen dollars for the film and didnâ(TM)t keep the receipt. That was a few days ago.
        So yesterday I decided to look again, maybe it was in a different drawer? I looked through all of them, and finally rummaged through the one Iâ(TM)d looked in earlier. And I found a small case with a zipper, and there was a camera inside.
        An old sixteen millimeter, the kind you used flash cubes with. Looking more, I found another camera. It was a cheapo as well. And then at the back of the bottom of the drawer, there it was. My old camera, the SLR (I have another 35mm but itâ(TM)s not nearly as good).
        Checking it out I wondered if I could remember how to use it. On the bottom was a screwed in battery cover. I opened it and stuck the battery in my pocket, since after half a century that batteryâ(TM)s certainly more than dead.
        So I want back to Walgreenâ(TM)s for a new battery.
        They donâ(TM)t make them any more. Itâ(TM)s a mercury battery, and they no longer sell anything with mercury in it. And itâ(TM)s a strange 1.6 volts, the new ones are 1.3 or 1.5, which is going to make my light meter inaccurate. Iâ(TM)ll have to experiment to find out how to adjust it... that is, if I can get it to work at all. Itâ(TM)s thinner than the old battery, and I donâ(TM)t think the polarity is marked. And itâ(TM)s thinner, so Iâ(TM)ll probably have to use aluminum foil as a spacer to make it connect. That means Iâ(TM)ll have a burrito from La Bamba for lunch tomorrow, because they wrap them in foil. Iâ(TM)m not buying a whole roll for a square inch of foil!
***
        Two days later as I was eating my burrito I remembered that film changed sometime in the 1980s, with the film speeds changing from ASA to ISO, so I put off opening the battery until I could do a little research. I found that the cameraâ(TM)s built-in light meter wouldnâ(TM)t work; conversion was more complex than converting Fahrenheit to Celcius. So now Iâ(TM)m going to have to schlep all the way over to the west side of town, or all the way up to the north side.
        And then I thought of the other cameraâ"the one we call a âoephoneâ. It could probably be used as a light meter, so it looks like I have a little more research.
        So I downloaded two or three photographic light meters, all of which were completely incomprehensible and none of which came with instructions.
        So it looks like my only recourse is to go to the camera store and buy a light meter. I googled, and everything was either on the far north side of town or the far west side. One listed was Best Buy, and since Iâ(TM)d decided to hook my TV to the network I needed a cable and went there.
        They had the short cable I needed, and lots of camera supplies, but no light meters. Itâ(TM)s probably because cameras had built-in light meters for the last half century, but film changed from ASA to ISO three decades ago or so, so it would no longer work even if they still made batteries for it.
        So I asked the guy for directions to the camera shop, got in the car and looked at Google Maps, and couldnâ(TM)t find the damned place! When I got home I looked it up again, have a better idea of where it is, and will have to go back out there, but Iâ(TM)m calling first.
        I should have called. I found it on the map, drove out there, and found the hard to find camera store.
        Their cheapest light meter was over $250! Thatâ(TM)s way, way too much. The store guy explained that it was because so few people are shooting film now, and new cameras have built-in light meters so they only made really fancy ones. It made sense, but of course I was disappointed. Not sure what to do now, Iâ(TM)m not paying that much for a light meter! I only paid fifteen bucks for one when I was a teenager.
        Then, on my way out, I saw something that cheered me greatlyâ"a small blackboard with a notice that they could digitize VCR tape! Itâ(TM)s worth twenty five bucks to me to get that tape of my kids when they were kids digitized.
        But I still donâ(TM)t know what to do about that light meter. Guess Iâ(TM)ll have to check Google Play again and try all the light meter apps. Iâ(TM)m not very hopeful...
        Any ideas?

All the cops and newspapers are searching for a motive in the horrific mass murder in Las Vegas last week. No connection to any terrorist groups, no indication at all that it would happen, and the newspapers are all asking âoeWhy??â

        The answer is simple and I canâ(TM)t figure out why nobody else can figure it out.

        For well over a century the line between fame and infamy has been blurred. The eighteenth century James Gang were murdering thieves, but still well regarded. The reason was the hated Pinkertons, hired by banks who were also not well liked. The Pinkertons did some horrific things themselves, like killing an innocent fifteen year old mentally challanged boy. The Pinkertonsâ(TM) infamy caused the James gang to be famous despite their foul deeds.

        In the 1930s there was Bonnie and Clyde, also murderous thieves, but the people they murdered and stole from were bankers, who were hated more than anyone in the country, having taken away peopleâ(TM)s homes, crashing in 1928 to 1930 leaving the country in poverty.

        By the twenty first century, actually before, the words âoeinfamyâ and âoeinfamousâ have almost disappeared. We think of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon in the back four times, killing him in 1980 not as infamous, but famous.
        Itâ(TM)s simple. The mass murderer last week did it to become âoefamousâ. Because he knew full well that the media would release his name, and by all accounts he wanted everyone to know he was the perpetrator.

        The media should stop printing the names of these monsters. But they wont; I
wrote about this two decades ago and nobody listened. Nobody will now, either.

Slashdot is having serious problems with forms. https://slashdot.org/journal only loads sometimes. After submitting a comment, the subsequent page load almost always fails (but the form submission works.) What did you guys break this time?

See Have Bruce Perens Keynote Your Confference at perens.com

What a sorry mess. 2 whole days wasted. Went back to Debian, and I'm never making that mistake again.

Why does it need to be so damned hard to tell the difference between a visited and non-visited link on Slashdot? I have color-calibrated my display, so it's not me.