Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

@dangillmor Plus we went from depending on Russia for crewed space flight to depending on Elon Musk for crewed space flight.

I worked in the aerospace industry as a NASA contractor employee for six years. The rules for contractors are complex and are supposed to insure competition, but in reality there is often only one bidder who can actually do the job. Reagan and his cronies made it worse, and I don't think we've ever recovered.

Copying 54,184 volumes of Sanskrit books (~20 TB total, includes the raw scan files) from a zfs pool on an ubuntu server onto a solid state disk pack ("SSP", a disk enclosure which has 8x16tb SSDs that fits in the palm of your hand). I'm getting 159.25 MBs throughput on this copy. Takes about 40 hours to finish. When full (100TB), I can get about 250,000 books on this SSP, which I can throw into my carryon luggage.

I mean I don’t know why NYPD felt it necessary to open fire on the suspected farebeater when they could have just waited for a white New Yorker to strangle him to death

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bflruvhylepwmviyycohrptf/post/3l4cqyuvuq22g

The federal government has completely abrogated its duty to regulate the "constellations" of satellites being hurled into orbit at increasing rates and densities.

This is like refusing to do anything serious to save the planet from catastrophic climate change until it's too late.

Oh wait...

Republican logic: When Harris tells people what Trump wants to do, they get angry. Therefore, Harris must stop talking about what he vows to do.

Proper response: GMAFB.

City of Berkeley goes aggressive on sweeping #homeless encampments after the Supreme Court decimates Martin v Boise. https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/berkeley-homeless-encampment-sweeps-19753297.php?

I’ll explain why some other time but my most important travel tip is “figure out if the balcony doors will lock behind you before you go out there.”

@gleick ❝Maggie Jordan: How can you be biased towards fairness?
❝MacKenzie McHale: There aren't two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides, some only have one.
❝Tess Westin: I still don't underst…
❝Will McAvoy: Bias towards fairness means that if the entire congressional Republican caucus were to walk in to the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with “Democrats and Republicans Can't Agree on Shape of Earth”.❞
— “The Newsroom,” S1Ep02

In all the major presidential power and immunity cases, Roberts made sure he himself wrote for the majority and every time he expanded the power of the President and shielded even ex-Presidents from the reach of the law. 4/

The scam-ridden cryptocurrency industry is spending wildly to elect a Republican senate. Makes sense. So much of what Trump controls -- and he owns the Republicans outright -- has proved to be corrupt.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/sherrod-brown-crypto-bernie-moreno-millions-1235102478/

So NYPD subway cops chasing a man for $2.90 in fare money, shot 4 people, including a bystander and another cop? Cool.🤦🏿‍♂️

An important thing to know about the subway cops stopping the crime of fare evasion, is:

1) White New Yorkers evade fares more than anyone else.

2) Cops get fired if they stop white fare evaders vs Black or brown fare evaders.🤡

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112375817515001544

This is what cops mean when they say that the racism is systemic, that the system was not built by cops but by rich men.

https://www.law.com/2024/09/16/data-breach-insurance-policy-does-not-extend-to-biometric-information-collection-appellate-court-holds/
'Data Breach' Insurance Policy Does Not Extend to Biometric Information Collection, Appellate Court Holds

One of the jarring things about working in DC is being invited to meetings with policymakers to discuss some highly technical thing and realizing that *everyone* else in the room is a lobbyist for some tech company rather than an actual tech expert. And they're all wondering what *you're* doing there.

An alleged assassination attempt by a mentally ill person using a gun is a terrible reason to vote for the man who made it easier for mentally ill persons to get guns.

The more I learn about the world of money moving around, the more I think most of what people do with it should be banned. From hyper-rapid proposing and retracting trades to saddling companies with the debt incurred to buy them: no, no, no, and hell no.

This is of course a useless thought. Capitalism loves running itself into disasters with games like these.