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Kurt Raschke

@kgr.mastodon.sdf.org.ap.brid.gy

they/them Transit and technology, mostly. Prone to ranting. Boosts and favorites are not endorsements. ABATE NOXIOUS STIMULI. 🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://mastodon.sdf.org/@kgr, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Home [Unofficial]@neilzone.co.uk.web.brid.gy · 4mo ago

Just let me compute in peace

## Computing can be so _noisy_ these days No, I don’t want to sign up to your newsletter. No, I don’t want to create an account to read your site. (Well, I will for paid subscriptions, I guess.) No, I’m not going to create an account on your system to use my computer, or configure a router. I have a local account on the machine, and that’s just fine. No, I don’t want your app. You have a website. And yes, if you pretend that I can only do something via your app because I’m on a mobile browser, _of course_ I’ll switch to desktop mode. No, I’m not installing your “app” to configure this hardware. It is a sodding kettle. I’ll press the button when I want hot water. No, your tracking will not make my experience better. What would make my “experience” better is if you had not interrupted my “experience” in the first place with your weasel-y worded, bad faith compliance, annoyance of an overlay which probably does nothing anyway. No, I am not going to “consent or pay”. No, I don’t want to hear from your sponsor. No, I don’t want to use your Discord “server”. That’s not documentation. No, I don’t want to see “promoted” content. Just show me stuff in chronological order. No, that’s not a “newsletter”, that’s marketing. No, I don’t want your newsletter anyway. No, I don’t want adverts. (Although, personally, I can absolutely live with FOSS developers including occasional prompts for support. So I’ve got double standards. Oh well.) No, I am not going to disable my ad blocker. No, I am not going to verify my identity or age. No, I don’t want your chatbot. If I can’t find what I want on your website, you’ve screwed up. No, I don’t care what “Dave (48), Alabama” had to say about this. (Thanks, “Shut Up” comments blocker extension!) No, I am not giving you free labour to determine if that blurry image contains a car. No, I don’t want the upsell. No, I don’t want your survey. No, I don’t want a reminder that there’s something left in a basket. I know. I put it there. No, I don’t want to rate your product, let alone your choice of courier. You took my money, now sod off and leave me alone. ## Computing can be so _noisy_ these days, but it need not be so. If you make Free software which I can install via apt or F-Droid and just use, thank you. If you make a full-text RSS feed available for your site, thank you. If you make your site a pleasure to read in a text-only browser, thank you.

neilzone.co.uk

Kurt Raschke@kurtraschke.com · 4mo ago

Need to go from geographic points to time zone identifiers in @clickhouse.com? With @evansiroky.bsky.social's time zone boundary shapefiles and ClickHouse's support for polygon dictionaries, it's fast and easy: kurtraschke.com/2026/04/clic...

Highly efficient timezone lookups using a ClickHouse polygon dictionary

I use ClickHouse for a wide range of data projects, and I recently needed to go from geographic coordinates to the time zone identifier for the time zone observed at those coordinates. The set of loca...

kurtraschke.com

Kurt Raschke@kurtraschke.com · 4mo ago

I can't speak for Artemis, but I can speak, from primary source documentation, to how email was handled on the Shuttle and is handled on the ISS. In this era of ubiquitous connectivity, I suspect some folks have forgotten what it means for a mail client to be "offline", or what an "outbox" is.

3.1.4 Crew Mail (E-Mail) Handling Currently, Microsoft Outlook 98 is installed on SSCs to support crew email operations on-orbit. The manner in which Space Station crews create, send, and receive email messages is identical to how email is managed on the ground. However, since orbiting crews do not have a direct network or Internet link for sending or receiving email, their messages are temporarily saved to an Outlook-unique ‘offline’ folder, or *.ost file. An *.ost file exists for each Station crewmember mail account, based on the crewmember’s network username; i.e., email from or to William Shepherd is stored in shep.ost file. These *.ost files are periodically downlinked and uplinked to the crew via the Station OCA file transfer system. After the downlinked *.ost files are received by the ground, the OCA operator will log into the same mail accounts that exist on a JSC mail server. The mail server will synchronize the downlinked *.ost files with the ground mail accounts. Email being sent by the Station crew and saved in the *.ost files will be distributed over JSC networks and the Internet during the synchronization. New email sent to the crew is also saved to the crew *.ost files during the synchronization with the mail server. The updated *.ost files, with the new email, are later uplinked to the Station crew on-orbit to be viewed with MS Outlook.
Kurt Raschke@kurtraschke.com · 4mo ago

Okay, I'm getting tired of people cracking jokes about Outlook (or worse, "hurr durr stupid NASA"), so, look, we're going to talk about email in space. Yes, Outlook is in space. It has been for decades. Literally. However, the way Outlook is used is, well, you might say "out-of-this-world".

Kurt Raschke@kgr.mastodon.sdf.org.ap.brid.gy · 6mo ago

Once upon a time, it felt like the whole world was on the site formerly known as Twitter. Today, we've scattered to the wind—some people are here, in the Fediverse, others are on Bluesky, and some have simply given up on social media entirely.