"Sideloading" is the rentseeker word for "being able to run software of your choosing on a computing device you purchased". There is no reasonable case for an operating system developer having a say over what programs you run on your hardware.

#Android #Google

@artnacrea @b0rk I've veen trying for forty years to tell the difference between a process that has been niced and one that hasn't, and I have never yet been able to do it.

I went to CityMD recently, and the offered a bizarre choice of languages. Despite being in absolute agony, it was very hard for me to resist choosing Old English. The only word I know is "hwaet", but it was still hard to resist.

Unrelatedly, if you are considering going to CityMD, and you don't have a great need to practice your Old English, don't go. Take a vicodin and find a real doctor the next day.

Would Ronan and I be on the same side of the bit war?

’Twas this: a very lovely animation for a very catchy song. https://jmac.org/notes/2025-08-08-doodles-rose-betts-and-its-ok-koy.html

How long after the disappearance of Metrocards will the Metrocard-swiping gesture, meaning "please swipe me in", persist?

Consider the following sentence:
"Use another sorbet flavor, such as a citrus-adjacent blood orange or grapefruit or a fruity raspberry or strawberry."

Some editor at the New York Times let this cursed sentence through. Imagine describing blood orange as "citrus-adjacent" (yes, it's adjacent to the original lemon, but you just can't use words that way). Imagine having to add the adjective "fruity" in front of "raspberry", as though to distinguish from a meaty raspberry. Why?

Half a loaf is better than none, but half a phone is e-waste. But the last three fifths of a phone is a whole.

🤔

External Attachment: A screenshot of a publisher’s website of a book titled “The Invention of Scarcity” by Deborah Valenze, showing pricing, availability, etc.. Circled in yellow are three things: the title of the book (“The Invention of Scarcity”), the word “ebook”, and (in the same row as the ebook) text saying that the ebook is “out of stock”.

"America has been vaccinating people for fifty years. If vaccines caused autism, America would have trains, okay? We would have so many trains." - Jon Allen

@nedbat

External Attachment: A photoshop job by @igb that has taken the weird taxonomy of Google Docs classification system and added Borgesian categories like "Those belonging to the emperor", "Those that from afar look like flies", and "Embalmed ones" to the usual "Owned by anyone" and "Not owned by me" buckets. The docs displayed in the view behind the modified drop-down are all Borges texts or references: "The 3 Versions of Judas", "The Garden of Forking Paths", and "The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge".

Venn diagram

I don't think this will help me prepare for a database exam. Good thing I don't have a database exam coming up.

What idiot called it FUSE instead of "those that, at a distance, resemble files".

Some loud military type planes flew by as we were walking, startling us. Later, I realized it was because it was Fleet Week.

I wish that when the Navy offered to hold Fleet Week here, we had said, "No thanks, our city doesn't need an enema."

I realize that McMaster Carr is a very silly place to buy a roof turbine, but weirdly, Lowe's doesn't sell the size I need, and the McMaster one is not made in China.

Also, since last time I checked, McMaster started telling you shipping costs before you order, which means that their web site is now perfect in every way (I am serious -- if you haven't tried it, go right now and find a 1/8 long in brass set screw on Amazon. Then try to find the same thing on McMaster Carr.)

Like puzzles? Want to work with (well, at the same company as, anyway) my wife? Jane Street is hiring a puzzles and games producer.

https://mltshp.com/p/1R0FZ “N’a jamais été”

@novalis @mjd

This is wild! www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ub...

First fault rupture ever filme...

One thing I like about the Slow Horses novels is how mannered they are. Nobody talks like any of these characters, but it doesn't matter, because they are so much fun to listen to.

Also, I love Jackson Lamb as the perfect example of Stage 3 ethics.

And in terms of his role in most of the novels, he's a lot like Gandalf, except, you know, an asshole.