I wrote some user scripts for /., you can find them (with some other people's) on GreasyFork. The scripts remove hostnames from Slashdot links, so you're not being bounced to multiple hostnames, and to send you straight to the domain if you do get sent to a hostname by mistake.

I got interested in actually doing this because I couldn't leave comments on *.slashdot.org a few days back, only on slashdot.org. But it's annoying all the time, IMO.

My scripts probably have no elegance whatsoever, but they work.

Last time I tried to post to my journal I got an error, so I'm trying again now.

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?

It's been since 2010 or so, at least -- if not longer.

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.

It's been almost 4 months since that labour day weekend where no matter what the topic was, the usual creeps would pile on with their hate, but this time they were joined by others. 4 days of bullying and lies triggered a major depressive episode - which in a way is a good thing, because I was able to identify the cause, same as the one in June was caused by the sewer known as facebook. In both cases recovery was much quicker - 2-3 weeks, not 6 months or more. That is a huge relief. It's a waste of time dealing with a bunch of closeted (and not so closeted) InCels.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everyone I volunteer with thinks I'm awesome because I'm such a hard worker, always ready to go the extra mile, even though I can't see too well.

My new Jack Russell is an amazing companion to the shih-tzu, who bosses him around event though the Jack Russell is 3 years older and more than twice the weight. People who see him now are amazed at how much better a dog he is. Walks on a leash properly, lets little kids pet him instead of getting too excited and scaring them away, not so hyper, even the former owner is amazed at what difference 4 months makes.

Ultimately, preparing and distributing weekly food baskets that make sure almost 1,000 people from 300 families have something to eat is a lot more gratifying than being a target of misogyny and trans-hate on the internet. I'm in a better place mental-health-wise now.

I'll check back once in a while if any of you care to reply.

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?

So, moss is starting to grow under my feet and the road is lonely without me. Every few years, I meander off in a bout of wanderlust - often with no destination in mind. I haven't really done much of this since I hooked up with Jess. I'm thinking about doing it again, and soon.

I'm not sure where I'll go. I'm tempted to go to Europe and rent an RV. I might go to Canada, instead. I've hit all the States, multiple times, but that's still an option.

I'm pretty much done here, until hunting season, so I have nothing keeping me busy. The blueberry fields will be buttoned up later today. The garden is mostly harvested and put up. I got another chest freezer and will fill that with a moose and a deer.

I don't know, really. So long as I'm back for hunting season, I don't much care. I just have to move and wear out my traveling genes. I've always enjoyed getting out there and just going, the destination isn't important - the journey is the point. I don't do traditional touristy things, I don't like most of them. I'll do museums and things like that, but that's not the goal. Instead, I'm more happy talking with someone at a diner or a gas station, and finding out what the locals do and getting permission to join them.

Music is one way to get an "in" with the locals. It's a universal language and I've often used it to get to know people. That's more interesting, to me at least, than any museum, tourist trap, beach, amusement park, or sporting event.

I've been most everywhere, though I've never been on the Indian subcontinent. I'd want to plan that better, so that's not really an option. I've stomped across Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, North America, and Australia. I've never been to New Zealand but that's just a tiny place and I'd probably get bored pretty quickly because this is going to be a fairly short trip (no more than a month).

So, anyone have any ideas where I might want to go? It should involve a lot of driving and not a lot of touristy activities. I'm fond of rural areas where I can enjoy the people. I speak Spanish and English, Jess speaks some French. I can hire a guide and interpreter, if need be. I've seldom found that necessary, actually.

I'm open to suggestions. I'll also probably want to be back here in time for foliage season. I've seen it all before, but it's still somewhat magical to me. If I'm reminded, I'll get some pictures. It's beautiful...

Still, I'm not sure where to go - but I've the urge to go somewhere.

Sex used to sell - now hate is king.

It's been known for some time that rates of mental illness increase with use of social media and other sites that allow "user engagement." We can continue to lie to ourselves that the benefits outweigh the risks, but I would invite you to look at how slashdot has changed over the years, then ask yourself if you would induce any woman (wife, significant other, sister, daughter, co-worker, etc) to visit the site.

Case in point: Google's firing of James Damore. One post in particular sticks out in my mind - a guy who said he hates all women because when he needed to get laid to "build up his confidence", no woman would have sex with him. Whether this is true or he was just trolling isn't the point - others backed him up. He took no personal responsibility for his failure with women - it never dawned on him that his attitude, that he believes it is the woman's obligation to be his personal cum bucket to stroke his ego (among other things), is a total turn-off.

Anyone who objected to Damore's screed was immediately labeled a social justice warrior. No further proof needed. All the first amendment loonies claimed that firing him was a violation of his constitutional rights, despite it being repeatedly pointed out that the first amendment doesn't apply to private businesses, and that workers have a right to a non-hostile work environment.

His screed has been repeatedly debunked elsewhere for those who want to search for it - I am going to concentrate on slashdot. The user population has changed. Women are now a legitimate target of hate speech, and woe betide those who come to our defense.

All web sites have a value proposition, but after incessantly experiencing the huge increase in hatred towards women, both genetic and trans, I'm saying "fuck it." This site is just too depressing. Upon further review, there really isn't much on the net worth my time, so I've decided to abandon all participation in any web site that allows user comments on articles, with the exception of checking in once in a while to see if Simon's posted a new BOfH story.

The real world has a better value proposition. For example, I was given a Jack Russell dog last month because the owner knew of my reputation with dogs and her son had moved to Asia. I have received a few dogs that way - but none off the net. The real world has user benefits that the net can't match, and won't, not even with virtual reality. It's far more edifying to meet other dog owners than wade through the doggerel of slashdot, far more effective to volunteer my time at the local food bank where I'm part of helping between 800 and 950 people a week than arguing with misogynists, and far easier to maintain relationships in the real world without the distractions devoid of any real value that most of the internet has become.

Anyone wanting to get hold of me can still do so via email, sms, phone call, or just drop in. They won't find me with my nose buried in "news for nerds" that has become "abuse from nerds."

Bye, and take care. I'll miss some of you, but certainly not this site.

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.

Went to Fortuna for the beer fest, which was pretty good except that I didn't have any beer there which I liked much which I hadn't had before. Found out that, shock amazement, Hoparillo became Hop-Trio due to threat of lawsuit by a Texan brewery which might have been in or had a beer named Amarillo. (Hello Texas, I hope you don't get your asses kicked too bad, some of you are with me always.) Anyway, most of my comments got up-modded. I'm certainly going to combine beer with Slashdot a lot more.

A big part of the formula had to be that I was using my phone, though, and less is more. So with that thought in mind,

In the last couple of weeks, 3 of my sisters, a neighbor, the therapist helping me explore job options for low vision work, and a couple of other people have told me that I've got to learn to say "No" more often. Not only was I running myself ragged volunteering, but I already knew I should have said no to a former co-worker who needed a place for him and his mother to stay.

They're both paranoid, and delusional, but I'll concentrate on him. I had told him years ago that if he didn't get professional help he'd be a 40-year-old virgin, and sure enough, he didn't, and I was right. He has always lived with his mother in what can only be called a co-dependent relationship that has mutated into elder abuse. When I found out that his mother was paying all the rent where they were staying ($1,400 a month, basically her entire pension) because he wanted to stay close to work, I immediately went from "this guy is fucked up" to "this guy is beneath contempt."

BTW, they don't need a 7-room place. No couch to sit on to watch TV, because no TV. No kitchen table and chairs. A cheap 120-volt stove (no wonder his mother didn't know how to fry an egg). Plastic cups. A few small folding tables like you'd set in front of the TV to eat off of to hold 2 computers. Twin beds (fortunately in separate rooms now - they weren't always). But with his mother stuck spending all her money on rent, she's dependent on what he buys, and he's a cheap bastard. He seems to think that grapes and soda crackers is an okay supper. She is the same, except that the times I brought her to the diner (she's obviously been socially isolated for the last decade at least) she really cleaned off her plate. I feel sorry for her. Like too many people approaching their 70s, they're vulnerable to the predations of their children. Especially since in their folie à deux, he really cranks her up.

His latest paranoid delusion is that his landlord, who lives downstairs, is using the sound of their footsteps to track them from room to room, moving an infra-sound projector that emits inaudible sound waves that are causing ear pain. In another building, it was another tenant's air conditioner, and the place before that, mold and noise. Multiple specialists have told him there's nothing wrong with his ears, so it's kind of obvious that his problem is between the ears. He's so paranoid that he glued the bottom flaps of his cardboard moving boxes shut "so that the movers couldn't get into them", so he has a room devoted just to uncollapsible moving boxes. Even a decade ago, he would insist on taking his backpack to the washroom with him because he didn't trust anyone, even though everyone else left their personal laptops behind when going for a snack, to eat, or to pee. He would cover his mouse with 2 layers of kleenex (germaphobe) just in case anyone else touched it. Oh, and he's anorexic. Doesn't trust most food. After a couple of decades, not only does he look like he has AIDS, but he's permanently damaged his skeletal musculature - he walks like an 80-year-old, with an 80-year-old's posture.

Things came to a head Sunday night. I had just entered the bathroom when he tried to squeeze in by me. I told him I was there first and he would have to wait. He kept on trying, so I pushed him with one hand - and even though it wasn't a hard push, he kind of went flying into the hallway's opposite wall. He's a real bag of bones with zero muscle tone.

I decided that this weekend would be his last. But first, I told him Sunday morning that he owed me money for him and his mom staying here. He said he'd bring it Monday, but snuck in real late Monday, left really early Tuesday, came back really late Tuesday night, and they were both gone Wednesday by 6 am. Problem solved, but I should have stuck to my guns in the first place - the last time he puled his nonsense, I told him never to contact me unless he's seen a psychiatrist, but of course paranoid people only see that as trying to exert control over them. And cash in advance. D'uh!

More good news. Not only are the crazies gone, but there's a Jack Russel at my feet. His owner asked me to baby sit him for a weekend, and then asked me if I wanted to adopt him. He was quite the handful the first week, but he's settled down nicely - he now walks properly on a leash, stopped humping everything in sight or trying to mark things. He's become really attached to me, following me everywhere. There were some problems with Jack, the little dog, but Jack put him in his place so it's all good.

But boy, does he crave attention, and lots of walking.

It's while I was walking the two of them that a guy almost half my age stopped to talk to me, asked me if I was single, and then asked for my phone number - several times. I've never looked my age, but I guess the increased estrogen is enhancing the desired effect.

My life - never boring.

The "repressed gay men hate transsexuals" has been proven in various court cases, but it's still a bit jarring to find it repeated in my face.

There's a guy who for several years made a habit of loudly insulting me in public. One day, he went too far - "Hey, are you like those shemales on Jerry Springer?" He was about 30 feet away when he shouted it. Pissed me right off, so I went up to him and said "You ever do that again and I'll call the cops and have you arrested for sexual harassment*. Do you really want to go around the rest of your life being on the sex offenders registry?"

He continued to talk against me behind my back. But at least not to my face.

One day I saw him walking along with a bicycle wheel, and asked him what he was doing. He said he was going to the garage to get a flat fixed, so I told him to wait and I'd fix it for free (our old man had taught me and my sisters to fix flats using nothing more than 3 tablespoons and a patch kit so he wouldn't have to over and over again).

It was after this that we ended up talking about the biological basis of transsexuality, and how transitioning to the other sex isn't a choice - it's what you realize you have to do when you have run out of choices to avoid the inevitable. How it's much better to live as who you are, and not what other people expect or demand you be, because you'll never please everyone anyway, and why should you? And how liberating it is.

So fast forward 5 years later, to last night. I'm walking my dogs (I babysat a Jack Russell last weekend and the woman was so amazed at how much calmer and happier he was that she asked me to adopt it) and he pulled up on his bike. He wanted to thank me for changing his life. What I had said had sunk in, and the next day he decided to tell his parents (and a few others) that he was pretty sure he was really gay, not straight. Later that very same day he went online and found a boyfriend, and they're still together.

So that cliché has a lot of the truth behind it. Repressed gay men do beat up on transsexual women, and them coming to terms with their sexual orientation makes the hate go away.

Please keep that in mind next time you see me getting slagged for being me - there's lots of truth in the conventional wisdom, and there are way too many repressed people out there looking for what they think is an easy target to make them feel superior, or at least distract them from their own issues, or turn their self-loathing against others..

I'll do my part by reminding them of what they're running away from :-)

* Yes, it's considered sexual harassment here - as well it should be. Any form of harassment based on sex qualifies. As one judge remarked, "if harassing someone because they used to be the other sex doesn't qualify as harassment based on sex, what does?" Transsexuals are a protected minority at both the provincial (for decades) and federal level (June 18th), unlike the USA.

Looking for sysadm or auto electrical work, willing to tone down online rhetoric if it's a dealbreaker