My great great grandmother wrote a biography of her three brothers killed in WW1. I'm typing it all into a LaTeX editor and will be adding a family tree along with a sketched outline of their lives and newspaper clippings.

A best-seller it ain't, but it may interest a few here as these guys show autistic traits and are geeks from just over a century ago.

TL;DR version: 80s dystopian techno-horror geekfest with relatively accurate portrayal of cryptography and hacking.

Long version: Pretty much the same as above. It's a low budget BBC production that scores highly on accuracy of methods, exploits and technology of the era, insofar as TV ever gets.

The premise: a low-rank civil servant, tracking down bank fraud, discovers a trail of blackmail, corruption by intelligence services, deliberate weaknesses in security and criminal gangs operating with impunity.

By season 2, he's keeping himself alive the same way the Wikileaks journalists did, his wife has what we would call severe PTSD and the body count isn't slowing down.

Given trauma was barely understood in the 80s, the portrayal there and the bouts of temporary insanity are extremely close to what happens, again allowing for this being TV drama and not a psychological documentary.

The storyline deals with cryptography, surveillance society, backdoors and institutional corruption. All hot button issues of today. It even covers the inevitable issues of DIY security.

The conspiracy aspect is a trifle OTT bit, again, it's TV. It has to be to have a program.

It's geared to nerds, geeks and dystopia lovers, though, rather than the mainstream. I saw more reviews in computer journals than in TV guides.

It's the sort of show that would really need updating to be watchable by modern audiences, but fans of older shows would likely enjoy it.

It wasn't unusual for the time, which is the great thing

The 80s were a time for really bleak geek television - Codename Icarus (for the younger viewers), Edge of Darkness, Terry Nation's Survivors, Threads - all productions in this decade.

(Even late 70s had some dark stuff, Blake's 7, The Omega Factor, Day of the Triffids, and ABC/Central's Sapphire & Steel were not light watching. You have to go back to the start of the decade and Doomwatch to see a plausible contemporary dystopia.)

The stuff of a thousand bad dreams, these shows.

Would there have been a case for the lockdowns and other restrictions on freedoms — including mask-mandates — if the original COVID-19 was as insignificant as Omicron?

The obvious answer is: "No"...

To me this means, any such restrictions must be lifted immediately, lest they become as permanent as rent control in New York City...

There were, at one point, quite a few historical wargames (Britannia, Decline and Fall, etc) but they were mostly about large-scale strategy rather than the history itself (which was mostly an excuse for blowing up other people's counters). History lessons via roleplaying games sounds quite an interesting approach and could be used to cover all kinds of events.

The expansion pack isn't out yet (it's still in kickstart) but there's enough information about it to get a good feel for how much depth there is in there. If it's done well, it could be very effective in the same way "...and then the Huns came and beat the sh*t out of the Romans before leaving again" isn't. Unless you're a Hun.

I'd like to get people's views on the use of roleplaying games and which system would be best for such gaming. Rolemaster? Call of Cthulhu? The ever-present Dungeons and Dragons? ("My 20th level mage casts a fireball at the fleeing Scots" sounds ahistorical.)

Ok, so let's start be defining a few terms, as it is obvious from Facebook genetic genealogy groups that people are truly ignorant on the subject. (Not that I believe this is common on Slashdot, where we're all much more knowledgeable.)

First off, most genetic testing is NOT carried out by sequencing all of your DNA, a widespread belief that resulted in outrage on one Facebook group when I pointed that out.

The vast majority of consumer testing is done by SNP genotyping. They look at very specific genetic markers and see if those markers have changed from one base pair to another. That's the only type of mutation looked for and they typically look at only a few.

So we've our first way to group companies: sequencing vs genotyping.

SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) are, as mentioned above, one type of mutation. Another is called STR (short tandem repeat), where a block of DNA is duplicated.

FamilyTreeDNA does both STR and SNP testing, STRs mostly for the Y chromosome. Both can be used for family history.

Most labs, though, use only SNP tests. It's quicker and cheaper than counting repeats but with many of the more interesting ones covered by patents or kept private by other means, there's a lot more secrecy involved.

(Note: This has doubtless led to a lot of unnecessary deaths, as genetic markers indicating a high probability of getting certain forms of cancer are being milked by private companies for profit. Few people get more than one test, so most people won't know if they carry such markers and can't take action in advance.)

So the second piece of jargon is SNP vs STR.

Finally, we come to the different areas of DNA. There are regions that are especially good for ancestrial reserch (mostly non-coding DNA), then there's the exome (which is where most of the protein coding takes place), you've telomeres (suicidal buffers between chromosomes, which have a function in longevity), and so on. I won't list them all.

The Y chromosome is particularly good for ancestry, but only has 9 coding genes left in it. It's possible it will vanish in time, but it seems to be fairly stable for right now.

Most companies test only DNA that is good for ancestral research in the autosomal regions (aDNA, the regions outside the sex chromosomes). This allows you to identify anyone who is genetically connected, but because you (on average) get just under 50% (remember, there's mutations in each generation and that DNA comes from neither parent) of your DNA from each parent, the distance you can track depends on how many markers are tested (very few). Reliability falls off sharply.

YDNA (Y chromosome DNA) tests only test for paternal ancestry, but if two people have a common paternal-line ancestor, it's a lot more precise once you're past about second cousins. It's popular with anthropologists as it's very good for tracking how men have migrated.

mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) is only inherited through the maternal line. Again, it's very popular, this time for tracking how women have migrated. There are certain forms of mtDNA that are linked to health benefits and others to genetic diseases, so this one tends to be the most controversial of the ancestral DNA tests. It also changes very slowly, so you don't get high resolution on population movements.

These two (YDNA and mtDNA) tests can tell you a lot about whether societies are open or closed, and whether it was men who travelled to find partners, women, or both. So we can know something of the culture of even long-extinct societies.

The data I have been able to find is for 2019. It shows: Myheritage tests for 702,442 autosomal SNPS, AncestryDNA for 637,639, FTDNA for 612,272 and 23andme for 630,132. This is out of a total of 3 billion base pairs. So the best test that year looked at 0.0023% of the genome.

ISOGG produced a chart as well, but it's far older. Their chart is dated around 2013.

Since you inherit a random 50% from each parent, the assumption that this is statistically meaningful for such a small fraction of the DNA is questionable. It seems to work adequately, but I'm not sure what the error bars are.

FTDNA also tests up to 111 STRs on regular tests and 600+ STRs for their "BigY" (it depends on the quality of the genetic sample).

Companies that do sequencing sometimes offer partial kits (in the order of tens of millions of SNPs) or full sequencing (which is what the same suggests). These are rarer and more expensive.

Most DNA companies allow you to access the raw data, some only allow it if you pay vast sums of money, and some don't allow you to at all. Always check in advance.

When you download your own data, you can use public databases to search for matches (either for relatives or genetic conditions). The quality of public databases is less controlled, both in terms of privacy and quality of data. However, corporate databases will usually be smaller for both types of data and will also usually not contain data from rivals. If you want broad data sets, public databases are the way to go.

I've only tested with 23&Me, FamilyTreeDNA, CRI Genetics and Nebula Genomics, so can't tell you anything much about the quality of the other companies.

(Ok, I also tested with uBiome, a microbiome testing company in the US, but they had their computers seized some time back due to fraud. I have no idea what happened to my data on there, or whether there's a way to access it.)

The quality seems to be reasonable for all four.

FTDNA is the most expensive for a lot of things, but has less of a sticker shock than Nebula and gets more data than 23&Me. It looks like there are a few companies that are better for ancestry but it's one of the best and the one the Genomics Project used. They're the only ancestral company that gives you STRs AFAIK and they give you a much more detailed evaluation of haplogroups than anyone else I've tested with.

Nebula does up to medical grade (100x oversampling) DNA testing, so if you want results a hospital will trust, that's where you part with a vast amount of money.

23&Me is good for a lot of medical stuff and if you want to help with research is probably the best.

CRI Genetics produces a lot of data with much higher reliability than most of the others, but you can't access the raw data and their databases won't be as extensive. However, because you can't access the raw data, you have to test with them to compare against their database.

I have now passed the total of 30 different black teas. Not fruit, not spice, not herbal, not even green, white or red tea. Just black teas. No, blends like PG Tips and Yorkshire Gold don't count either.

Why so many? Aside from being my current monomania, it's because I'm fascinated by how different they are.

I couldn't tell you the chemistry that makes that difference, nor could I tell you what difference it makes in terms of the various compounds affecting alertness or sedation. (It contains both), in terms of health benefits or even in the simplest term of how water is retained in the body.

But I'm determined to find out at least some of this. It'll have to be on my own, as essentially no research is being done on the subject, and I've no idea of what that'll require beyond a very good gas spectrometer (I'm going to have to count molecules, not atoms).

But I think it would be fun to find out, and definitely worth doing as long as I can figure out how to (a) control the parameters, and (b) afford said piece of gear.

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.

(Photo of the "waves" and an unborked version is here)
        Iâ(TM)d been eagerly looking forward to this event since I first heard about itâ"Illinois was going to see its second total solar eclipse in its history as a state, and no one alive had ever seen an Illinois total eclipse. It happened in 1869 and totality passed right through Springfield, the stateâ(TM)s capital. Then, as now, people were very excited.
        I heard more and more about it, like totality was passing through Carbondale. Carbondale is about a hundred miles from St. Louis, which is about a hundred miles from Springfield. Ozzy Osbourne was slated to hold a concert in a tiny town thirty miles from Carbondale, and play Bark at the Moon during totality.
        I was stoked; it was reported that the stars come out during totality and there are other strange things, like wavy lines on the ground that scientists couldnâ(TM)t explain.
        At first I was planning to meet my daughter Patty, who lives in Cincinnati, in Carbondale, but Carbondale was where everyone was talking about. It was going to be a madhouse, I was sure, and decided to visit my mom in Bellville the day before, a Sunday, then go to my friend Mikeâ(TM)s in Columbia to cook pork on his Weber and drink beer. I planned on crashing on his couch and heading south early the next morning.
        Then I found NASAâ(TM)s interactive eclipse map. Mom and Mike were right on the edge of totality, and the center of totality passed right through Prairie du Rocher, about thirty miles or so south of Mikeâ(TM)s house. Patty watched from the Shawnee National Forest, camping there the night before.
        I set out south Sunday morning, and traffic was thick. However, it always is on the weekends, which is why I usually visit during the week. As is my usual habit I set the cruise control to five miles under the limit to make for a stressless drive. But I knew traffic was going to be worse the next day.
        I visited my mom in Bellville, then headed to Mikeâ(TM)s, where we grilled pork steaks (well, he did) and we drank beer and bullshitted. I crashed on his couch, as planned.
        Patty texted me, excited that they had found eclipse glasses for ten bucks apiece. She was thrilled. I thought she had been ripped off, as Mikeâ(TM)s wife had five pairs she had picked up at the library for free. I just heard today when I picked up tacos at George Rankâ(TM)s that they were selling them on the internet for $150!
        Iâ(TM)d planned on not using the glasses, not trusting them; there are some really evil people in the world who donâ(TM)t mind blinding people for money, or even killing them. I wound up looking through them once or twice, anyway.
        Monday morning we got up and drank coffee, and headed south on Bluff Road for the middle of the umbra, the part of the shadow that is in totality.
        Bluff road is a little-used two lane highway that you can often travel without seeing another vehicle. We turned on to Bluff Road, and joined a parade of cars and truck headed for the best view. Traffic moved briskly, at the various speed limits on the way. It took about forty five minutes.
        On the way we saw a roadside stand selling eclipse glasses for twenty bucks apiece. Mike cursed the ripping off they were doing; theyâ(TM)d gotten theirs for free from the public library, donated by a veteranâ(TM)s club. It was indeed a ripoff, because it would have probably cost less than a penny apiece to make them. But better than a hundred and fifty, at least.
        I wished Mike had driven rather than me, because there was some enchanting scenery on the way, as well as an eagleâ(TM)s nest. The magic was beginning hours before the sun and moon met.
        Mike has a grandson who lives there, and we had a hard time finding the address of the house in the tiny town. His wife had told him that if he asked google for the address on Bluff Road it would lead to the wrong house, as his address was Bluff Street.
        Stupid Google kept giving directions to the address on Bluff Road, and it was even more maddening because we were surrounded by bluffs and the cell signals were nonexistent to very weak. Weâ(TM)d brought no refreshments, so stopped at a restaurant for soft drinks and directions to bluff street.
        When we got out of the car, the very humid heat was oppressive. The place was packed, inside and out. We had a hard time finding a parking spot. We were informed that the streets were the same; Bluff Road became Bluff Street for a while.
        His grandson lived in a house trailer right up against the bluff. We got out and it was even hotter and more humid. We went in, and it was perhaps five or ten degrees less hot than outside; the trailer had only a single one-room air conditioner. Every time I went outside, the heat started getting to me. My hands shook and I could barely walk; I was starting to suffer from heat exhaustion. Mike and his very young great granddaughter went up the hill exploring.
        âoeThereâ(TM)s a cave up here!â Mike yelled down to me, so I staggered up the hill. There was a cool breeze coming out of the cave.
        It wasnâ(TM)t cool enough, so I got in the car and started it and blasted the air conditioning. It really helped, and I was in the car several times before the eclipse started.
        I saw something Iâ(TM)d not seen since I was a kidâ"a toad. Then another one. This hellishly hot day was really cool!
        Finally, some time between twelve thirty and one it started. I finally looked through the glasses once, and afterward made a pinhole viewer out of my fist. When the sun was a crescent, I saw the âoewavy linesâ science couldnâ(TM)t explain and I had no trouble at all explaining them. It was the multiple crescents moving around the gravel. The tree was causing multiple pinhole viewers. The way the breeze moved the leaves did look like wavy lines on the ground as the crescents moved around the gravel.
        There were clouds which sometimes covered the sun, and I feared the clouds would cover it during totality, but they didnâ(TM)t. I hear clouds occluded the totality in Carbondale. I hope they didnâ(TM)t cover the sun in the forest where Patty was.
        Iâ(TM)d brought my big tablet, thinking I could use its front-facing camera to watch the eclipse on it and maybe make movies, but I feared the glare on the screen might harm my eyes, so that was out. I tried to take a photo with my phone, and I got a picture, but it didnâ(TM)t show the sun as a crescent. The only halfway decent photo was the tree shadows when it was still partial.
        Then the sky gradually changed colors for about ten minutes, after which it took seconds for it to become dark and for all the streetlights to come on, and the screams and cheers and applause of the thousands of people in town for the sight were very loud, from half a mile away. Mike kept saying âoeWow! Man, thatâ(TM)s the neatest thing Iâ(TM)ve ever seen in my life!â Nobody could help but agree.
        It did get very dark, about like under a full moon. But I saw no stars, although a friend who was in a different spot in totality told me he saw two or three stars right by the corona, which I only glanced at. Around the corona it was indeed pitch black. but the horizons were like dusk. Obviously light was being reflected from places that werenâ(TM)t in totality. Itâ(TM)s hard to explain what it looked like.
        Darkness lasted maybe two minutes, give or take a few seconds. I was way too busy taking it in for photos, and it was too dark for my phoneâ(TM)s camera to work without a flash, anyway. I should have bought film and brought my Canon 35mm SLR Iâ(TM)d bought half a century ago. Yes, film is coming back. They now sell and develop it again at Walgreenâ(TM)s.
        When it was over I was again in distress from the heat, then we headed back to his house. Mike, who knew where we were going and I didnâ(TM)t, was too busy watching the scenery to see a turn we needed to take. We got all the way to Red Bud before realizing our mistake, and highway three was in gridlock. We didnâ(TM)t want to go that way, anyway, and turned back around.
        The little-used Bluff road was full, but traffic was moving at a reasonable pace. Iâ(TM)d planned on crossing the river for cheaper gasoline, but was still heat-distressed and decided not to. We went to his house, where I drank a copious amount of water, and we ate leftover pork steaks, but eating was making me hot. They say âoestarve a fever, feed a chillâ and the reason is that eating will warm you up, unless itâ(TM)s ice cream.
        I left Mikeâ(TM)s about two, planning to stop by Momâ(TM)s house on the way home, and changed my mind as soon as I got on I-255. Traffic was at a crawl. The normally ten or fifteen minute trip to Bellville took nearly an hour. I drove right past her exit, because I could see this was going to be a long drive and I didnâ(TM)t want to get home after dark.
        Not once did the speedometer measure over 30 mph on 255. Getting off 255 to I-55 is a nightmare in normal traffic because of the idiotic interchange design, so I decided to bypass it and take Collinsville Road to I-55. Traffic was heavy, but moving briskly, far faster than the interstate. I stopped for gas and a soda and got on I-55. I was really glad Iâ(TM)d bypassed a bit, probably saved myself half an hour or even more.
        Iâ(TM)ve never seen traffic that heavy outside Chicago in my life, and never saw traffic that heavy that stretched that far. My phone rang three times before I reached a rest stop, just past the I-70 interchange. I had to pee, I had to get my tortuously aching back out of that car, and I wanted to see who was trying to call. I figured it was my mom, who Iâ(TM)d told Iâ(TM)d probably visit again on my way home.
        Two of the calls were from her, worried about me, and I ignored the other one, because I donâ(TM)t answer calls without attached names. If youâ(TM)re not a spammer, scammer, or pollster you can leave a message and Iâ(TM)ll call you back and add your number to my address book.
        Iâ(TM)ve never seen an interstate rest area so crowded. Cars parked where they didnâ(TM)t normally, and so did I. This wasnâ(TM)t a normal day. I reassured Mom, walked quite a long way to the rest room, and walked back and resumed the arduous journey.
        Four and a half hours after leaving Mikeâ(TM)s Iâ(TM)d traveled fifty miles. Past Staunton I had it up to 55mph for a short time, and hit sixty past Mount Olive. Five miles from Litchfield, traffic was stopped again.
        Past Litchfield traffic thinned somewhat, and you could usually do forty, but it was almost in Springfield before anyone could do the speed limit. There was simply far, far more traffic than that highway was designed to handle.
        Which makes me wonder how bad it will be if a nuclear missile is headed to a major city whose occupants have only half an hour to escape.
        The trip was finally over about eight, just as it was getting dark. It had been a seven hour journey with an average speed of 14.3 mph. But it was well worth it! Iâ(TM)m really looking forward to the one in 2024.

A Forbes' contributor says that the "US Newspapers' Problems Come From Their Former Monopoly, Not The Duopoly Of Facebook And Google."

That is only a part of the problem. There are far larger ones.

First, the prices of their newspapers. The skinny little State Journal-Register costs a full dollar and has very little news you won't find in other outlets. The Illinois Times prints theirs free, making money from advertising alone, and it is superior to the incredibly poor SJ-R.

But mostly it's how abysmal their web sites are. Know why I'm not reading your ads? No, not AdBlock; it isn't installed. It's because I've read the article in less time than the incredibly bloated web page loads and far faster than the even more bloated ads load. By the time the ads finish loading, I've already closed the tab. The St Louis Post-Dispatch is abysmal with loading; a full thirty seconds, then it goes blank, and takes another full minute, and every article is like that! They, and almost every other paper, badly need a competent webmaster. Except for extremely long or graphics-laden pages, the damned thing should load in seconds. Hire someone competent, who actually knows HTML and doesn't have to resort to one of those stupid programs that take your 5k of text and turn it into a 5 meg page. Today's sites load slower on high speed internet than back in the 33k dialup days.

Then there's "click to read more" after only half a paragraph is displayed. What in the hell is wrong with those morons? They expect me to subscribe to this garbage and actually PAY for it after annoying me?? STUPIDITY!

Then there are so many stupid pages that render in a six point typeface, gray on white, on a tablet that when you zoom, the ads completely cover the text! With morons like that working for your paper you expect me to believe anything you've written? The science rags are the worst about this, but Newsweek isn't any better. Zoom the page and the stupid social media bullshit covers the text!

Look, morons, nobody goes to your stupid site because it's got a "cool" interface, they go to find out what's happening in the world, and you seem to work hardest at making that as difficult as possible. And you expect me to PAY you for that? How fucking stupid can a person be?

Then there's the quality problem. Two decades ago I rarely saw a typo and never a grammatical error, these days few articles are error-free. You idiots expect me to PAY for that unprofessional garbage?

No, the newspapers are dying from blood loss, caused by repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. Fire the idiots and you might start making money again! Of course, if you're the publisher, that means you have to fire yourselves, because you're the most moronic at all!

As always, if slashdot has borked the text, just go here.
        She was gone again, shortly before my elderly cat died. I refer to my muse, of course.
        I looked everywhere I could think of, to no avail. Stolen again? I went for a walk, on the lookout for that aged black aged Lincoln with that blonde and that brunette and the kind of weird-looking driver, the ones who stole my muse before. It cost me fifty bucks to get her back!
        They had been right about the weather.
        But this time, there was no ransom note, or any other sort of clue. Almost every day I would go walking, in search for, if not my muse, an idea for a story.
        Maybe she had gotten trapped in a tavern. I went there looking for her, or an inspiration. I had no luck.
        Weeks went by with no trace.
        I was starting to get worried; had the Grim Reaper taken her, too?
        Finally I got a text message: âoeOn vacation, asshole. Iâ(TM)ll be back when you quit crying over that damned cat.â

Slashdot has probably borked the text although it looks fine in preview. A non-borked version is at my blog.
        Half a century ago I was reading a book by Isaac Asimov. I donâ(TM)t remember what book, but I know it wasnâ(TM)t I, Robot because I looked last night and it wasnâ(TM)t in that book. But in the book, whichever one it was, Dr. Asimov wrote about the origin of the word âoerobotâ; a story by Karel Capek titled R.U.R.: Rossumâ(TM)s Universal Robots.
        I searched every library I had access to, looking for this story, for years. I finally gave up.
        Then a few weeks ago I thought of the story again. I have no idea what triggered that thought, but it occurred to me that there was no internet back then, and since the book was so old, it would probably be at Gutenberg.org.
        It was! I downloaded it, and to my dismay it was written in Czech. So I fed it to Google Translate.
        Thirty five years ago when I was first learning how computers work and how to program them, I read of a program the US government had written to translate Russian to English and back. To test it, they fed it the English phrase âoethe spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.â Then they fed the Russian translation back in. The re-conversion to English read âoeThe wine is good, but the meat is spoiled.â
        I figured that in the decades since their first efforts at machine translation, it would do a better job.
        I figured wrong. What came out of Google Translate was gibberish. It does a good job of translating single words; paper dictionaries have done this well for centuries. But for large blocks of text, it was worthless.
        When I first saw the Czech version I could see that it was, in fact, not a novel, but a stage play. I kept looking, and found an English language version translated by an Australian. Itâ(TM)s licensed under the Creative Commons, so I may add it to my online library.
        Wikipedia informed me that the play was written in 1920, and a man named Paul Selver translated it into English in 1923. So I searched Gutenberg for âoePaul Selverâ and there it was! However, it was in PDF form. Right now Iâ(TM)m at the tail end of converting it to HTML.
        After reading it I realized that this story was the basis for every robot story written in the twentieth century, and its robots arenâ(TM)t even robots as we know robots today. Rather, they were like the âoereplicantsâ in the movie Blade Runnerâ"flesh and blood artificial people. That movie, taken from Philip K. Dickâ(TM)s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? would have actually been a sequel to R.U.R., had R.U.R. ended differently.
        The Terminator was R.U.R. with intelligent mechanical robots instead of artificial life. Their aim, as the âoerobotsâ in Kapekâ(TM)s story, is to destroy all humans.
        Asimov said that his robots were an answer to Frankenstein and R.U.R. He thought the very idea was ridiculous, so he made his own robots inorganic and mechanical rather than organic, and added his âoethree laws of roboticsâ. His laws werenâ(TM)t physical laws like the inability of anything to travel faster than light, but legislation; similar to Blade Runner, where the artificial people werenâ(TM)t allowed on Earth. In a few of his books, like The Caves of Steel, robot use on Earth is strictly limited and controlled and people hate them.
        I thought Asimov had the first mechanical, non-magical robots, but I was wrong. There were fictional mechanical robots before Asimov was born. The first US science fiction dime novel was Edward S. Ellisâ(TM) 1865 The Steam Man of the Prairies, with a giant steam powered robot.
        One thing that put me off about this play (besides the fact that itâ(TM)s a play, which is far better watched than read) was that the original story was written in a language I donâ(TM)t understand. Thatâ(TM)s why I donâ(TM)t read Jules Verne; his stories were written in French, and I donâ(TM)t speak that language, either.
        I dislike translations because I used to speak Spanish well, according to South American tourists, and a smattering of Thai. And Iâ(TM)m a reader. Itâ(TM)s more than just the story, itâ(TM)s how itâ(TM)s written. There are word plays and idioms that are impossible to translate. For instance, a beautiful English phrase that uses alliteration would lose its beauty in any translation. And, there are no boring stories, only boring storytellers. I suspect that Kapek may have been an excellent writer, but Selver wasnâ(TM)t, to my mind. Little of the dialog seemed believable to me.
        But in the case of this story, even the poor translation (Wikipedia informs me itâ(TM)s abridged) is worth reading, just for the context it places all other robot stories in.
        It will be at mcgrewbooks.com soon.

(Illustrated version here)
        After buying copies of books from my book printer, finding errors to correct, and giving the bad copies to my daughter who wants them, rather than discarding them I realized I was stupid. It would be a lot cheaper to buy a laser printer.
        An inkjet wouldnâ(TM)t work for me. The printer is going to be sitting idle most of the time, and inkjet nozzles clog; Iâ(TM)ve had several, and all clogged if you didnâ(TM)t use them at least every other day. Plus, the ink dries out in the cartridges. Being a powder, toner has no such problem.
        So I went looking at the Staples site, and they badly need a new webmaster. This little four year old laptop only has a gig of memory, and a lot of people have far less. The poor little machine choked. That damned web site took every single one of my billion bytes!
        Or rather than firing him, make him design his websites on an old 486. Or even 386.
        So what the hell, I just drove down there; I didnâ(TM)t want to wait for (or pay for) it to be shipped, anyway, I just wanted to see what they had.
        Buying it was easy. They had exactly the printer I was looking for; Canon, a name I trusted since we had Canons and other brands at work, wireless networking, and not expensive. They had a huge selection of lasers; itâ(TM)s a very big store. I paid for the printer and sheaf of paper, and man, lasers sure have gotten a lot less expensive. I expected at least $250 just for the printer, maybe without even toner, but the total including tax and paper was just a little over a hundred.
        When I got home, of course I pulled out the manual like I do with every piece of electronics I buyâ"and it was worse than the âoemanualâ that came with the external hard drive I ranted about here earlier. Cryptic drawings and very little text. At least the hard drive didnâ(TM)t need a manual. All there is is a network port, a USB port, a power socket, and an on/off button. Plug it in and it just works. With the printer, I really needed a manual.
        Kids, hieroglyphics are thousands of years out of style and I donâ(TM)t know why youâ(TM)re so drawn to emoticons, but there was an obvious reason for these hieroglyphics: globalization. Far fewer words to be written in three different languages.
        I could find nothing better on Canonâ(TM)s web site. So I followed the instructions in the poor excuse for a manual for unpacking it and setting it up, as best as I could.
        I couldnâ(TM)t find the paper tray.
        Iâ(TM)ve been printing since 1984 when I bought a small plotter and wrote software to make it into a printer. Afterwards I had ink jets at home until now, and lasers at work. All the lasers were different from each other in various ways, usually the shape of the toner cartridge, but all had a drawer that held the paper no matter what brand of printer.
        I couldnâ(TM)t find it. Sighing and muttering, I opened the lid to the big laptop and copied the CDâ(TM)s contents to a thumb drive to install the printer on the smaller notebook. Thereâ(TM)s no reason to make two calls to tech support, because an installation screwup is never unexpected when youâ(TM)ve been dealing with computers as long as I have.
        And why send a CD? Fewer and fewer computers have CD or DVD burners any more. Why not a thumb drive? All computers have USB ports these days, and have had for over a decade.
        The installation was trouble-free but still troubling; I didnâ(TM)t think the wi-fi was connecting, as it said to hold the router button until the blue light on the printer stopped flashing. I held the button down until my finger hurt and was about to call tech support, but as I reached for the phone the light stopped flashing and burned steadily.
        Maybe it was working, but Iâ(TM)d have to find the paper tray to find out. But it had installed a manual, one I couldnâ(TM)t find. So I plugged the thumb drive back in and searched it visually with a file manager, and found an executable for the manual. Running it took me to an offline web page which wasnâ(TM)t too badly designed, but I would have far preferred a PDF, as I could put that on the little tablet to reference while I was examining the printer in search of where to stick the damned paper, instead of a bulky, clumsy notebook.
        I finally found it, and it wasnâ(TM)t a tray, even though thatâ(TM)s what the documents called it. I havenâ(TM)t seen anything like it before, and the documentation was very unclear. But I did manage to get paper in it, and sent a page to it, and it worked well.
        Meanwhile, I wish Staples would fix their web site, and Canon would fix their documentation.
        When did clear, legible documentation go out of style? Hell, the lasers we had at work didnâ(TM)t even need docs. Good thing, too, because IT never left them when they installed crap. Another reason Iâ(TM)m glad Iâ(TM)m retired! Work sucks.
        At any rate, a few hours later I printed the cleaned up scans of The Golden Book of Springfield so I could check for dirt I missed looking on a screen. I saved it as PDF and printed it from that. And amazingly, this thing prints duplex! It only took fifteen or twenty minutes or so to print the 329 pages.
        Iâ(TM)m happy with it. Man, progress... it just amazes me. But when I went to print from Open Office, the word processor Iâ(TM)ve used for years, I didnâ(TM)t try sending the print job to the printer, but it looked like Oo wonâ(TM)t print duplex.
        Then I discovered that they may stop developing Open Office because they couldnâ(TM)t get developers; the developers were all working on Libre Office.
        Damn. The last time I tried Lo it didnâ(TM)t have full justification, which was a show stopper when Iâ(TM)m publishing books. Iâ(TM)d tried it because someone said it would write in MS Word format. I was skeptical, and my skepticism was fully warranted. It could write a DOC file, but Word couldnâ(TM)t read it. Plus, of course, the show stopping lack of full justification.
        I decided to try it out again, since Oo may be doomed⦠and man! Not only does it have full justification, it has a lot Oo lacks that I didnâ(TM)t even know I needed. It appears to now actually write a DOC file that Word can read, even though when you save it in DOC the program warns you it might not work in Word.
        And it might⦠I havenâ(TM)t tested it⦠might arrange pages for a booklet. Iâ(TM)ll test it with this article⦠when itâ(TM)s longer than four pages, as it is now.
        This was all over the course of the last week as I was working on a PDF of the Vachel Lindsay book. The computer nagged me that the printer was running low on toner (it has a small âoestarterâ cartridge), with a button to order toner from Canon. I clicked it, and damn, the toner cost almost as much as the printer did.
        Then I ran out of paper, so I went back to Staples, where I discovered that the printer I had paid eighty something plus tax for was now twice that price! So I got the toner and five reams of paper.
        At any rate, I tried to print this as a booklet, and this is what came out:

        Itâ(TM)s backlit; the picture on the top left and the grayer text on the bottom right are on the other side of the page.
        But a little fiddling and yes, it will print booklets. It isnâ(TM)t Libre Office doing it, itâ(TM)s the printer itself!

        I like this printer. Iâ(TM)ve figured it to about a penny per page, and I donâ(TM)t think thatâ(TM)s too expensive, considering a page is both sides.
        And then I had this document open in Libre Office, tried to insert a graphic (the second one in this article), and it simply didnâ(TM)t insert. Maybe it doesnâ(TM)t like JPG files, I donâ(TM)t yet know. A little googling showed me that Iâ(TM)m not the only one with this problem, and none of the fixes I found fixed it. I have Open Office open now.
        And here I was going to uninstall Open Office. Iâ(TM)d better not, I guess. Iâ(TM)ll need it if I want to insert a graphic; inserted in Oo they show in Lo. Puzzling.
        A week later and Iâ(TM)ve found that sometimes it will insert a graphic, but only if you go through the menu; using text shortcuts never inserts it. And sometimes it simply doesnâ(TM)t insert the picture, and sometimes it says it doesnâ(TM)t recognize the format when Iâ(TM)d just put the same graphic in another Lo document.
        Well, Iâ(TM)m not uninstalling Open Office yet, anyway. Not until Lo solves the graphics show-stoppng bug.
â¦
        I wrote that a few weeks ago, and have been using both. Libre Office has a horrible problem with keyboard shortcuts, and those shortcuts save a LOT of time. But except for its horrible bugs, itâ(TM)s a better word processor than Open Office. So both will remain installed.
        Itâ(TM)s possible I may uninstall Microsoft Office, depending on how well Loâ(TM)s spreadsheet works. I havenâ(TM)t even fired it up yet, but Ooâ(TM)s spreadsheet is almost useless.
â¦
        The above is several months old now. Lo does lack one important thing Oo has: controls to move to the next or previous page. Not good when youâ(TM)re writing books. Also, it still has graphics problems. Often, simply opening a document in Lo removes any graphics.
        After sitting idle for a month or so, I needed to print a return label. Iâ(TM)m starting to become wary of buying anything from Amazon. Iâ(TM)d bought a new battery for this laptop a year or two ago, and the battery came from someone other than Amazon, and it was the wrong battery. I got the right battery directly from Acer.
        Then I ordered a long throw stapler to make booklets with, and staples for it. The stapler came a week later; no staples. So I bought a box from Walgreenâ(TM)s. A week later, the staples came, again not from Amazon, and they had simply thrown the box of staples in an unprotected envelope. The box was smashed, the rows of staples broken.
        Then I ordered a DVD, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I watched the first six, put the seventh in the DVD playerâ"and it was region coded for the UK! Some company from Florida sent it. WTF is wrong with people? So I needed a return label.
        It wouldnâ(TM)t print; it just hung in the print queue until it timed out. After a little digging, I found that the router had assigned a new IP address to it.
        So after a lot of googling, I gave up and cringed; I was going to need tech support, which is usually a nightmare. I wind up on the phone talking to someone with an accent so heavy I can barely understand them, if at all, who is ignorant of the product and reading from a checklist.
        I found Canon was one of those few companies that actually care about keeping their customers happy. Support was over email, painless, and effective.
        I have to say, itâ(TM)s the best printer Iâ(TM)ve ever owned.

(If the text is borked, you can read it here)

Some highly paid people seem to not be very good at thinking straight... or at all.

Weâ(TM)ve all seen robot bartenders in movies: Star Wars episode one; The Fifth Element; I, Robot, etc. Ever notice that human bartenders often have a lot of screen time in movies, but robot bartenders donâ(TM)t? The reason is simple: robots are boring. Which is why we wonâ(TM)t see many robot bartenders in real life, and this real life robot bartender is going to go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

I suspect that the engineer who designed the thing doenâ(TM)t frequent bars, but likes science fiction movies, because nobody goes to a bar to drink. From my upcoming Voyage to Earth:

âoeIs Mars still short of robots?â

âoeNot since that factory opened two years ago.â

âoeIâ(TM)m surprised you donâ(TM)t have robots tending bar, then.â

âoeScrew that. People donâ(TM)t go to bars to drink, they go to bars to socialize; bars are full of lonely people. If thereâ(TM)s nobody to talk to but a damned robot theyâ(TM)re just going to walk out. I do have a tendbot for emergencies, like if one of the human bartenders is sick and we donâ(TM)t have anyone to cover. The tendbot will be working when weâ(TM)re going to Earth, but I avoid using it.â

Someone who doesnâ(TM)t visit bars inventing something to use in bars is about as stupid as Richardson in Mars, Ho! , who assigned a Muslim to design a robot to cook pork and an engineer who didnâ(TM)t drink coffee to make a robotic coffeemaker.

Just because it works in the movies doesnâ(TM)t mean it works in real life.

It has been a while since Trump's win, has there been any evidence of the foretold uptick of hate-crimes by his supporters? And I mean, actual crimes — not just speech — that are real, reported to police and investigated?..