Cloudflare challenges seem to be becoming more and more frequent on my general internet use. Yep, "Cloudflare loop" is a thing. No, I'm not going to download and install a different web browser, dump all my cookies, or whatever other nonsensical "solution" they recommend.

I've become to hate Cloudflare with a seething passion.

For me, "wrong" as in "blue glare." It only takes a few minutes for a glare headache to start forming.

Some of it could be because I have defective red/green color vision, but so do about 15% of all males.

+1 for headache-inducing. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly the blue-shifted ones I eventually had to remove from my living room.

"Streaming tape backups." Several different hardware formats, various software interfaces, native OS and commercial.

Backups are important, but only restores count. Thousands of dollars and years down the tape rabbit hole, I eventually realized (major denial factor there) that the number of successful restores was 'zero'.

By that time I could buy an external hard drive and enclosure for about the same price, and it would work perfectly. Particularly if I simply did a recursive copy of the files instead of using some backup software's weird-Harold file format.

Charles Moore, creator of the FORTH programming language, also created a one-hand "puck" keyboard that worked by chording.

Supposedly, he used it to write programs in FORTH while driving to work.

As far as the story goes, he programmed input-only, having no visual or audible way to review what he wrote.

"...and back in the day, we had to chip the edges of zeroes to make ones..."

We've had the "Mechanical Turk" version of AI-generated content for two decades; the pay-by-the-word "content farmers" and the spammy sites that use their output.

The main difference between that and "AI" is that we're getting the "AI" promoted as the search results, as opposed to diluting the usefulness of the links.

I'm re-reading Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" at the moment. It's about Data General and the development of a new minicomputer. I read it at the dawn of my IT career in the 1990s and found much of was still relevant then. (the book was written in 1981) Thirty years later, I'm mostly just nodding as I follow along; yep, yep, yep. "Engineering" is a distant second to corporate politics and office pecking order.

Reading Brian Shul's "Sled Driver" autobiography on the tablet. Shul was an SR-71 pilot, and the book is about 10% Shul and 90% SR-71. It reads fast and it's interesting, with unexpected bits of information.

Just finished David Goggins' "Can't Hurt Me." It's supposed to be a "motivational" autobiography. I can't say I felt motivated. Most of his problems were self-inflicted, and he treated his family and children like dirt.

As for David Goggins, I mostly agree, his level of drive is impressive at some level, but also just insane- he pushes himself to do things likely to cause permanent lasting injuries just because he can. It seems like he couldn't even get along with other Navy Seals, because they weren't disciplined and motivated enough for him, and wouldn't accept ideas like training to the point of serious injury or disability. But it makes zero sense- how can you be ready for a mission when you're injured? Ultimately, it seems like he's addicted to self harming to escape emotional trauma/pain, not because he's disciplined.

Jocko Willink is a similar "Navy seal teaching you the secrets to becoming a badass" but his approach seems a lot more sane and useful, and has been more effective in his own life.

I looked up Sled Driver and the cheapest I can find is $350 on eBay (with $475 being the next best price). Where did you find the book?

annas-archive org :)

Another vote for The Soul of a New Machine. It's one of my favorite books.

If you haven't read it, I also enjoyed his book, 'House'. It has a similar theme to TSoaNM: multiple parties with the same ultimate goal, but conflicting approaches born out of self-interest.

I read it shortly after buying the house that would be (and is) our 'family home', of a very similar vintage (early 80s, East Coast.) Certainly not every home from the past was artfully constructed (or even well-built), but something just feels different with the modern, Fortune-500 homebuilders that rush an army of interchangeable subcontractors through cookie-cutter plans to maximize interior square-footage and stack as many units as possible on a tract of land.

I just hope there is something more serious but less than serious about building a computer such as the Nova. I went through Nand to Tetris and it was pretty fun.

All of my clients have their own servers, hot spares, and off-site backup.

We had a local election back in 2004, where Candidate A unleashed a spam tsunami at text and voice numbers. Enough that it angered enough people to turn the election to Candidate B. (best as we could tell after the fact)

Candidate B, it eventually came out, was the one who was running a sock puppet "Vote for A!" campaign.

Back in ancient times - the 1980s - one of the DAK-style electronic toys mail-order places sold an interesting box. It worked like this:

1) pick up line

2) play a pre-recorded message (default: "Please enter your extension.")

3) wait for the touch-tone sounds (or rotary clicks, those still being a thing)

4) when the correct three-digit code was entered, your phone would ring.

No code, no ring. Simple. (and no voicemail, either!)

And if "extension 123" got compromised, you could just change it to "456" and let people know.

Call from another jurisdiction, and good luck trying to enforce any laws.

Back in the old days spam call centers were often in the Caribbean for that reason, but now that phone calls are so cheap, they might be anywhere.