Wealth inequality is an increasingly severe problem in the US, as essentially all wealth being created is going to the stock market – and the owners of increasingly powerful megacorporations – instead of to workers. However, the tax code in the US only assesses capital gains upon sale, so there’s various approaches being discussed to assess unrealized capital gains, such as wealth taxes. I’m suggesting a more oblique – and in my opinion, simpler, philosophically – approach.
Continue reading “On unrealized capital gains and wealth”Thoughts on command line interfaces and discovery
A while back, I posted about how IBM i has some lessons to teach about command line interfaces and how to make them discoverable, over on my former mastodon.social account. However, that thread has been rotting, and I wanted to get my posts into a blog post for posterity. Unfortunately, posts from other people in the thread are missing, and they did add some context. At a later point, I’ll do some editing on this post to restructure it for my blog, rather than for social media.
Continue reading “Thoughts on command line interfaces and discovery”Windows XP PXE booting of first-gen VIA EPIA boards, and how not to get a BSOD
If you found this article, you’ve probably gotten a DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (aka STOP 0x000000D1 or 0xD1) error on fetnd5.sys when PXE booting Windows XP on a VIA EPIA 5000 or 800, or any other motherboard with a VT6103 ethernet controller. This may even apply to any other VIA Rhine ethernet controller. (Really, I’m writing this blog post because I ran into this for the second time, and want the answer to be in search engines, instead of buried in years-old IRC logs.)
Continue reading “Windows XP PXE booting of first-gen VIA EPIA boards, and how not to get a BSOD”Ideas to make electrification work in endurance racing
With the impending climate crisis, it’s more important than ever that we develop and deploy transportation technologies that minimize the impact of our daily transportation, including electric cars. Automakers have traditionally used motorsport as a venue for marketing their cars and their new technologies, and endurance racing has been one of the most road-relevant venues in the past. Electric cars, however, present a problem with that.
Continue reading “Ideas to make electrification work in endurance racing”Smol wheels, big fun
A few months ago, I got a Xiaomi M365 electric scooter, but hadn’t gotten much of a chance to ride it. Now that spring’s come, though, I’ve actually gotten some miles on it, and have enough experience with this thing to have informed opinions on it. Continue reading “Smol wheels, big fun”
Thoughts on content warnings, the Fediverse, and how to do better, with the power of tags
You may have heard of Mastodon, a federated microblogging platform that’s being pitched as an alternative to Twitter, and interoperates with many other platforms using the OStatus and ActivityPub protocols. Continue reading “Thoughts on content warnings, the Fediverse, and how to do better, with the power of tags”
Web 1.0, and this blog
You may notice that this blog looks a lot older than it did last time you looked at it. Continue reading “Web 1.0, and this blog”
More evidence towards the hypothesis that the sedan is alive and well… it’s just called a pickup truck
This post was originally written for Oppositelock, but with the impending death of Kinja user blogs, I’m reposting it here.
Last week, I saw a comment over on Jalopnik that I think really captured the nature of the American automotive market.
Continue reading “More evidence towards the hypothesis that the sedan is alive and well… it’s just called a pickup truck”America’s core ideal: the echo chamber
America is becoming increasingly polarized. Continue reading “America’s core ideal: the echo chamber”
Benchmarking Microsoft BASICs
I decided it’d be an interesting project to try to benchmark the Microsoft BASICs – I’ve always seen the claim that QBASIC was slower than QuickBASIC, and I thought I’d put that to the test. Continue reading “Benchmarking Microsoft BASICs”