SoylentNews

Today, I was greeted with this FS...

The House That Spied on Me

...which contained the following error...

Both are observable by the companies they report too to

...as I stared at this, I thought, "I should let them know"... then I realized there was no conveniently associated way to let anyone know without posting a message in the actual comments, a message that really didn't belong there, other than, well, that was the easiest thing to do.

So I suggest that at the end of each FS, there be a small link such as...

Tip the Editor(s)

...which, when clicked, would give you a form to report whatever it is that they missed, fouled up, or otherwise need to know. The form would provide the person who clicked with a copy of TFS to work with, and when submitted, the editors with the link to TFS automatically, a copy of the content, raw, ready for editing in another form field, and the remarks from the submitter.

The user of this link would copy the text, click the link, paste, make the appropriate remark(s), and submit. Easy.

I submit that it is better for the site in general if we all have the opportunity to improve it, and if that process is as painless as possible. Readers, and that includes new readers, that are not stabbed in the eye with obvious grammar, spelling and other errors, will both be more engaged with the actual story and less inclined to think poorly of the site.

Forty-five minutes later and it's still installing dependencies. The hell is goffice?

All I wanted was to do my income taxes on my Mac. Perhaps if I settled for my Windows box those taxes would have been done by now.

Russians are mocking their space program after the SpaceX launch

Some dove head-first into Russia's rising inequality and the excessive wealth among the country's billionaire elite. One user noted the millions of dollars and years of effort Musk has plowed into pioneering space technology, and lamented the comparison with the kinds of things Russia’s notorious 96 billionaires tend to spend their own money on.

His example: Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil-and-metals magnate who spent some $233 million buying the U.K. soccer team Chelsea.

Abramovich, who’s worth $11 billion according to Forbes magazine, also splashed out some $400 million for the world's second-largest yacht in 2010, which he named Eclipse, ironically enough.

Others used the SpaceX craze to poke fun at Moscow’s standard tit-for-tat diplomatic approach to disputes with Washington, with one user photoshopping a mobile missile launcher flying through the cosmos as Russia’s “symmetrical response.”

How Elon Musk Beat Russia's Space Program

The Soviet Union tried something similar in the 1960s and early 1970s. Sergei Korolev, the rocket designer who launched the first satellite and the first man into space, began the development of what came to be known as the N-1, a 30-engine superheavy rocket capable of taking a 75-ton space station to orbit and perhaps to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Finished after Korolev’s death in 1966, the N-1 was test-launched four times. Each of the launches failed, largely because of the difficulty of running so many engines at the same time.

Now SpaceX has pulled off a similar task, and even though it’s not clear yet who will contract for the Falcon Heavy’s services, SpaceX founder Elon Musk now has the most capable missile in the world: It can deliver up to 64 tons into orbit. Russia’s plans to build such a rocket, capable of flying to the Moon or to Mars, aren’t even complete yet, and certainly not fully funded, though Igor Komarov, head of Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, has promised a first launch in 2028. Even China is likely to have a superheavy launch vehicle before Russia. But it’s the success of upstart Musk that smarts. Roskosmos has the full power of the state behind it, after all. And yet here’s this boyish-looking showman launching his roadster into space, David Bowie blasting from the car’s speakers and “Don’t Panic” -- a quote from Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” -- lit up on the central console.

GPUs make a lot heat. They also do sums very quickly. You can buy GPUS these days that do well over a trillion floating-point operations per second. Some crazy people like to donate the computing power of their GPUs to distributed science projects. Some like to mine crypto-currencies hopefully to make a profit.

Suppose you could make a very simple computer that basically consisted of a cheap CPU and a few GPUs capable of somewhere between 1 and 10 TFLOPS, and would output heat at a rate of about 1kW, you could use it as a fan heater. Such a device would cost between £0.12 and £0.15 per hour to run at current UK prices.

Could that computing power be worth that much money to someone? Could you heat your house for free?

I just received a letter stating that my JCB credit card will expire at the end of April. It appears that they are abandoning the US market altogether. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/jcb-shut-us-operations-deactivate-cards-may-2018/

How will I sign up for nude model websites now?

[Final (I hope) Update 0715GMT, 12 February 2018]
I ended up implementing Ampache and it seems to work acceptably (more details here).

I still need to do some clean up, but this is looking good.

Oh, and fuck you, Tivo!
[End Update]

[Update 0528GMT, 11 February 2018]
Fuck you Tivo!
[End Update]

I've been using Tivo for more than a decade (I got the first one free with a new TV -- the first one is always free, isn't it?).

Of course, DVRs are really only useful if you view/hear your own media and copy media to and from the DVR.

For a number of years, I've been using pyTivo and kmttg to manage that process.

Several months ago, a Tivo software upgrade broke the music streaming functionality from pyTivo (although oddly, not the video). Some research found that the only Tivo supported streaming music app (and video, but I don't care about that) was Plex media server, coupled with the (really, really, really crappy) Tivo Plex client.

I implemented the Plex Media Server and found it to be slow and a resource hog (which I didn't really care about since it was on its own VM).

The big issue for me was that even though the Tivo was local to me and the Plex server was local to me, the Plex server would refuse to function unless I created an account on their site and allowed the Plex server to phone home.

It's bad enough that it's clunky and slow, but that I had to allow them to spy on my completely *local* music streaming? Not happening. As such, I shut down the Plex server for good. Good riddance to bad garbage.

So, for the last few months, I've been trying to find a mechanism which will allow me to stream music through my Tivo -- with privacy -- like pyTivo used to allow me to do.

I've come up with nothing. Tools like Emby, Streambaby, GMediaServer, Galleon and others aren't supported (Tivo killed support for HME and doesn't support DLNA) any more.

Eventually, I'd like to move off of Tivo and go with something that's FOSS, but I'm not ready to plunk down the cash (a PC with multiple tuners and enough CPU, memory and disk to support my needs will be pricier than is practicable right now) at the moment.

So here's a hail Mary to any Soylentils who may have had the same issue and solved it.

I'm not averse to bringing in some inexpensive hardware (with HDMI or composite connectors) to stream audio to my receiver, bypassing the Tivo altogether. But I'd much prefer a software solution.

Any ideas or suggestions?

The Memo: Knives come out for Kelly

Kelly’s most vehement critics even suggest the episode could herald his demise within the administration.

“We’ll see this as an inflection point when he is fired,” said one source within President Trump’s orbit. The source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, blasted Kelly as “tone deaf and politically inept.”

A second source close to the Republican Party complained, regarding Kelly, that “everybody knows he limits access and information flow to POTUS on a daily basis; this could be the beginning of the end of that — and maybe Kelly as chief.”

Trump's self-imposed shackles are coming undone!

Banned From Election, Putin Foe Navalny Pursues Politics By Other Means

He said he doesn't have any doubts that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because similar methods have been deployed against members of the Russian opposition: hacked emails, the publication of false personal information and attacks on social media accounts by armies of bots.

"Putin is conducting a creeping expansion into the Internet — extremely effectively and cheaply," Navalny said. "Of course he had fun hacking those servers and meddling, but it didn't have any significant effect on the elections."

Amid all the hostility between the U.S. and Russia, Navalny said the affinity between Putin and President Trump is inexplicable, especially considering that the Kremlin has based even its domestic policy on anti-Americanism. "This makes no sense, and there is no rational explanation for it. But maybe one day there will be a new Watergate and we'll learn a lot about these amazing ties," he said.

Beyond the personal relationship of presidents, Navalny said that the strategic interests of Washington and Moscow are largely aligned, and that instead of squabbling the countries should be pursuing nuclear non-proliferation and fighting terrorists together. A key move to bettering relations would be for Russia to stop its involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine, he said.

"We're a Western country," Navalny said. "Russia — based on its size, population, nuclear weapons and intellectual potential — should strive to be a leading European country."

Russia should aim to join the European Union and work on participating in a joint security system with NATO members like the U.S., Britain and France, he said.

Navalny's only job is to keep doing what he is doing now without getting assassinated, and eventually mount a real attempt at winning the Presidency after Putin retires from politics.

I buy them quite a lot so I can fabricate an excuse to chat up the cashier at a certain convenience store.

It's ready now, and my apartment is fragrant with the appetizing scent of gravy and salisbury steak.

The mashed potatoes aren't so good but the green beans are of far better quality than those found in cans.

But I don't feel like I can eat it.

I got very little sleep last night. I was awake until four in the morning, then had to get up at 6:30 so I could take the bus to my witch doctor appointment.

I don't feel so good.

Maybe I'll just put it in the fridge.

The cashier is always happy to see me. The other day I folded a Peace Crane before her very eyes. I demonstrated that tugging its tail leads it to flap its wings, then said "This is for you." She was quite pleased.

Unfortunately whenever I see her I lose the ability to speak. So quite commonly I just pay for my Hungry Man and then leave.

-pers gnashing their teeth."

I just asked my client whether I should just give up on what I'm doing.

I'm trying to write a GUI uninstaller. How hard can that be?

Apple recommends that one use a very, very simple privileged helper app, because it cannot guarantee the security of its GUI libraries.

That sounds dandy but so far I am unable to get that helper app to work.

There is already a dead-simple shell script uninstaller. The GUI is intended for those users who cannot deal with command lines.

What's behind the Justin Timberlake backlash?

Timberlake must be wondering what went wrong. Because, truth be told, there's nothing egregiously bad about either Man of the Woods or his Super Bowl performance. They're just... slightly disappointing.

The backlash feels bigger than a commentary on his music. There's a mockery and a cruelty that feels personal - as though people had a lingering resentment towards the star, and they've suddenly been given licence to express it.

For some, it goes back to his relationship with Britney Spears. After they broke up, he made music and videos that traded on their story and told several interviewers he'd taken her virginity - a personal detail that wasn't his to share.

For others, it's about his failure to support Janet Jackson after exposing her breast to millions of TV viewers at the 2004 Super Bowl.

Timberlake's half-hearted acknowledgement of that moment at this year's show did not go unnoticed.

"He chose to perform the song Rock Your Body, during which the famous wardrobe malfunction took place, and yet he didn't mention Janet: He didn't shout her out, and he stopped the song right before the line during which he ripped off her costume," pop critic Ann Powers told NPR. "It was almost like he was trying to erase what had happened in the past, but that is just not flying in 2018."

"The Super Bowl performance invited people to reflect on the time Justin threw Janet Jackson under a bus, and what that said about race and gender," agrees Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice.

As The Pop World Seeks Accountability, Justin Timberlake Seems Lost In The Woods

You say "not right for this moment." Explain what you mean by that.

Justin Timberlake's entire career and art is based on his ability to be smooth — his ability to be easy, to create music that seduces us with references to the past, with appropriations, with artful mixes, and never quite shows any struggle. But we are living in a moment of struggle, and we want our pop music to also reflect that struggle. And frankly, Timberlake now embodies that phrase so often spoken today: white male privilege. It's just not a good look for 2018. And it's really, in some ways, not his fault — it's just who he is.

Why Prince fans are bashing Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl halftime performance

In a 1998 interview with Guitar World magazine, Prince was asked directly about the use of digital editing to "create a situation where you could jam with any artist from the past." He was not a fan.

"That's the most demonic thing imaginable," he said. "Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing ... it really is demonic. And I am not a demon. Also, what they did with that Beatles song (Free as a Bird), manipulating John Lennon's voice to have him singing from across the grave ... that'll never happen to me. To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control."

Last one could plausibly form the basis of a tech-related submission, although it is a little late.