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JFK Documents on (or by) October 26?

Posted by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:49PM (#2695)
9 Comments
News

This is a reminder for me (or you) to check back in a week, assuming it is overshadowed by other news:

The JFK Document Dump Could Be a Fiasco

Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories, including totally unsubstantiated theories about a link between Ted Cruz’s father and JFK’s death, has not yet revealed his plans for the documents. His friend and political adviser Roger Stone, the Republican consultant who is the author of a book claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was the mastermind of the Kennedy assassination, said last week that he has been informed authoritatively that the CIA is urging Trump to delay the release of some of the JFK documents for another 25 years. “They must reflect badly on the CIA even though virtually everyone involved is long dead,” Stone said in a statement on his website.

The CIA has not confirmed or denied reports that it has appealed to Trump to block the release of some of the files on grounds that the documents might still somehow endanger national security if made public. In a cryptic statement last week, the spy agency said only that it “continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously unreleased CIA information.”

As it stands now, the document release this month will be a logistical nightmare, with the public suddenly flooded with a huge online library of documents—tens of thousands in total—that will be, at first, mostly incomprehensible even to experienced students of the assassination. The National Archives, abandoning its plans to release the documents in batches over the course of several months, said this week that it will instead release everything at once—all on the same day—sometime between now and the deadline on October 26.

I'd sub but it's pre-news again.

President Trump's Least Presidential Moment?

Posted by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:24AM (#2694)
3 Comments

Please Contribute To My GoFundMe Campaign

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 18 2017, @09:57PM (#2693)
27 Comments
Career & Education
My years of unemployment atrophied my coding skills. I've had a client since January, but it is only in the last month that I've been able to code as well as I did before my homelessness. Before that just looking at my client's source made me panic.

I get a big check when my code goes to beta, but there are some serious bugs that I must fix first.

I have a pinched nerve in my neck that causes great pain in my left arm and shoulder. A chiropractor has reduced the pain quite a lot, but I'm going to need to see him through November. He's expecting me to pay for a month in advance. That's $325. The condition is called Cervical Radiculopathy.

I've raised $125 so far. That's enough to buy me food until the middle of November. It will cover my medicine copays as well.

Besides the above, early in November I'll be billed for my Internet, my phone and my dental insurance. (I've already paid my health insurance.)

If you cannot or do not want to, please don't be dismayed.

Help Mike Survive For A Month

Your Unindicted Co-Conspirator,

Misha

The Color Guard is Colored

Posted by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:01AM (#2692)
5 Comments
/dev/random

Some shit you just can't make up. I'd say more but I'm too busy laughing.

Choose Your Dumb Flag Emojis + Soylent Upgrade

Posted by takyon on Tuesday October 17 2017, @11:41AM (#2690)
28 Comments
Code

Regional Indicator Symbol

I am adding some flag emoji to the Soylent Upgrade extension. It seems to work although they don't render as anything other than letters or boxes on my main system. I'm sure that 95% of them will work on my Chromebook, however.

I don't want to include every possible flag on the list (sorry Lesotho, New Caledonia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen...). I included the ten that were proposed as part of a draft standard in 2007, flags of the ten most populous countries (Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Indonesia OMG), the EU flag, Puerto Rico, and a number of other territories that are in the news often or are amusing.

Fun fact, separate emoji for England, Scotland, and Wales were added to Unicode in 2017. Good timing! I added England to my list below, but it renders very differently from the other symbols, showing up as one box instead of two boxes, "GBENG", or whatever.

There is no Nazi flag in Unicode, aristarchus, I already checked. However, it might be fun to speculate on what unreserved regional indicator (of the 26x26) could be used. NZ = New Zealand and SS = South Sudan so those are out. Actually, given that GB-ENG, GB-SCT, and GB-WLS were added, you are no longer constrained by 676 choices (is it 26^5 or 11,881,376 now?) and DE-NZI might be the best option. US-NZI? US-CSA?

Should the flag of Antarctica be orange?

Here's what I have included so far:

🇦🇫 - \uD83C\uDDE6\uD83C\uDDEB - AF / Afghanistan
🇦🇶 - \uD83C\uDDE6\uD83C\uDDF6 - AQ / Antarctica
🇦🇺 - \uD83C\uDDE6\uD83C\uDDFA - AU / Australia
🇧🇩 - \uD83C\uDDE7\uD83C\uDDE9 - BD / Bangladesh
🇧🇷 - \uD83C\uDDE7\uD83C\uDDF7 - BR / Brazil
🇨🇦 - \uD83C\uDDE8\uD83C\uDDE6 - CA / Canada
🇨🇳 - \uD83C\uDDE8\uD83C\uDDF3 - CN / China
🇨🇺 - \uD83C\uDDE8\uD83C\uDDFA - CU / Cuba
🇩🇪 - \uD83C\uDDE9\uD83C\uDDEA - DE / Germany
🇪🇬 - \uD83C\uDDEA\uD83C\uDDEC - EG / Egypt
🇪🇸 - \uD83C\uDDEA\uD83C\uDDF8 - ES / Spain
🇪🇺 - \uD83C\uDDEA\uD83C\uDDFA - EU / European Union
🇫🇷 - \uD83C\uDDEB\uD83C\uDDF7 - FR / France
🇬🇧 - \uD83C\uDDEC\uD83C\uDDE7 - GB / United Kingdom
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 - \uD83C\uDFF4\uDB40\uDC67\uDB40\uDC62\uDB40\uDC65\uDB40\uDC6E\uDB40\uDC67\uDB40\uDC7F - GB-ENG / England
🇮🇩 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDE9 - ID / Indonesia
🇮🇪 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDEA - IE / Ireland
🇮🇱 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDF1 - IL / Israel
🇮🇳 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDF3 - IN / India
🇮🇶 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDF6 - IQ / Iraq
🇮🇷 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDF7 - IR / Iran
🇮🇹 - \uD83C\uDDEE\uD83C\uDDF9 - IT / Italy
🇯🇵 - \uD83C\uDDEF\uD83C\uDDF5 - JP / Japan
🇰🇵 - \uD83C\uDDF0\uD83C\uDDF5 - KP / North Korea
🇰🇷 - \uD83C\uDDF0\uD83C\uDDF7 - KR / South Korea
🇲🇽 - \uD83C\uDDF2\uD83C\uDDFD - MX / Mexico
🇳🇬 - \uD83C\uDDF3\uD83C\uDDEC - NG / Nigeria
🇵🇰 - \uD83C\uDDF5\uD83C\uDDF0 - PK / Pakistan
🇵🇷 - \uD83C\uDDF5\uD83C\uDDF7 - PR / Puerto Rico
🇵🇸 - \uD83C\uDDF5\uD83C\uDDF8 - PS / Palestinian Territory
🇷🇺 - \uD83C\uDDF7\uD83C\uDDFA - RU / Russia
🇸🇦 - \uD83C\uDDF8\uD83C\uDDE6 - SA / Saudi Arabia
🇸🇪 - \uD83C\uDDF8\uD83C\uDDEA - SE / Sweden
🇹🇷 - \uD83C\uDDF9\uD83C\uDDF7 - TR / Turkey
🇺🇸 - \uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDF8 - US / United States
🇻🇦 - \uD83C\uDDFB\uD83C\uDDE6 - VA / Vatican City
🇻🇪 - \uD83C\uDDFB\uD83C\uDDEA - VE / Venezuela
🇿🇦 - \uD83C\uDDFF\uD83C\uDDE6 - ZA / South Africa

If you think a country should be included, comment and make your case.

South American representation is looking particularly bad.

Antarctica, England, and Puerto Rico and others should probably be removed if they just don't render anywhere.

One stupid thing is that there is currently no way for me to add a tooltip that identifies the flag your are hovering over. I will think about the best way to add this.

-----

New ordered list buttons will be added. Now the type attribute can be changed (discussed here). Clicking the "1. List" button will output <ol type="1">. "A. List" adds type="A", and "I. List" adds type="I" (Roman numerals). I could make two more buttons for the lowercase versions, but that seems excessive. Having the two new options should be a good enough reminder that you can change the look of your ordered list.

  1. Wow
  2. Who
  3. Even
  4. Uses
  5. Roman
  6. Numerals
  7. Anymore
  8. Latin
  9. Is
  10. A
  11. Dead
  12. Language
  13. Plus
  14. What
  15. Happened
  16. To
  17. The
  18. Zero?

  1. This
  2. Is
  3. A
  4. Test

  1. This
  2. Is
  3. Another
  4. Test

Too bad we can't access the incredible variety added by CSS3 and later's list-style-type.

Also on the agenda:

  • Title case fix(es) such as "IPhone" to "iPhone".
  • Fix so the title case button appears even after you have previewed a journal.
  • Recognize the poll results/comments page so commenting features are added. The URL in question is https://soylentnews.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=110&aid=-1 where QID is the number of the poll.
  • Take a look at *New* comment cycling. The button appears on some individual thread pages where there are no actual new comments (but there were new comments on the overall story).

These are just ideas:

Maybe a "Now" button on admin.pl?op=edit so editors can set the story release time to the current time. Not sure about this, would entertain other ideas about the release time field, such as manipulation of the time using [+60m] and [+90m] buttons (including correct handling of the date change). The only thing the extension currently does with this field is add a check to make sure whether or not you want to post a story in the past (typically because you forgot to add a day).

If I missed anything or you have any ideas, let me know.

Goody Goody Nom Nom

Posted by turgid on Sunday October 15 2017, @07:11PM (#2687)
9 Comments
Topics

Just what is this abomination, "nom nom?" Where has it come from and why is it on my television? "Yum yum," surely?

One doesn't say, "Goody goody nom nom." When was that last time that you declared that meal was, "Nommy?"

Yummy. Food is yummy. When one eats one goes, "Yum yum."

Jango Raid: The Unofficial Music Player of SoylentNews

Posted by takyon on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:54AM (#2686)
20 Comments
/dev/random

Jango Raid.

Made by an AC. Explained here.

Jango is a free online music streaming service that allows users to create and share custom radio stations. Users choose artists to stream, and the station plays music from similar artists. Users can further refine their stations by rating songs and artists in their feed to play less or more frequently.

The Fever (Aye Aye)
Blackout City
Hot Head
Green Onions
Eh
BTTF
RR

My little snowflake

Posted by Snow on Friday October 13 2017, @04:06PM (#2683)
12 Comments
/dev/random

My little girl is now 9 months old. It's been a tough 9 months. Each day is very, very long, but the months have flown by. It almost seems that she learns something new every day. She has been on the edge of crawling for a couple weeks now. Yesterday I came home from work and she is scooching around on her bum. Now she is able to go forwards and backwards where before she could only go backwards.

She loves the XBOXONE. The power button lights up and makes a do-do-de-do sound when you touch it, and she LOVES playing with it. She will sit there for minutes (hours in her world) powering on and off the xbox. Yesterday I was holding her and looking out the back window and there were some magpies hanging around the yard. I said "Look at the bird." She tried to say bird (pretty good). I show her our dinner "potatoes" - "padada".

I get up in the mornings and take a shower while she sleeps. Normally when I get out she is awake. She goes "dada" when I enter the room. It's pretty nice to be recognized. Every night we read books before bed. I started about 4 months ago to start a routine. Read the books, then go to bed. She really loves reading with me. We started with only one book, but are up to 3 now: Pooh's Honey Trouble, Moo Baa La La La, and Jamberry. (all are great books. I would recommend all of them).

It's not all good though... Last night was pretty tough. My wife got food poisoning or something and so she was basically unable to leave the bathroom for a couple hours. This was just after we put our daughter to bed. She woke up, so it was my job to take care of her. She was crying pretty hard so I picked her up and rocked back and forth while reciting our books from memory. She fell asleep on my shoulder and I was able to put her back to bed. She woke up 1 minute later and started crying crazy hard. There was nothing I could do... MY wife was stuck in the bathroom, and I was stuck with a screaming baby. Nothing I did would calm her down. It's times like that where I really question my decisions...

Coming home from work is still hard. I get home and I'm mentally tired. I just want to hide in my computer room for a while and unwind, but I can't. Dinner needs to be made. The baby needs to be fed. I need to eat. Dinner needs to be cleaned. Baby needs to be bathed. Baby needs to go to bed. Every night. I feel drained when I come home from work, but I still need to perform. It's tough.

My wife is amazing. We are lucky enough to live in Canada and our socialist policies give us a year of government handouts so one of the parents can stay home with the baby. It's really nice. I honestly don't know how you Americans have babies. Anyway, she has to go back to work in December. She'll only go back 3 short days per week, but it's still going to be tough. My wife has been a great stay at home mom. She has infinite patience. I couldn't do it.

Having a baby is hard. It changes everything in your life. The first few months were the worst. Fucking miserable. It's slowly getting better though. Those first few months I would have "I hate this baby" thoughts every day. Now those thoughts are rare and out numbered by "I love this baby" thoughts. She's growing on me.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get her to sleep in her own bed. I want my bedtime cuddles from my wife back.

McDonald's Rick and Morty Szechuan Sauce Stunt Backfires

Posted by takyon on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:49PM (#2680)
7 Comments

Weinstein Accused of Rape

Posted by takyon on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:57PM (#2677)
10 Comments