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shannonizers fail at logic

 some people have been wittering on about “AI”, as though it’s this or that. according to derpawerp, they are even going to take over the world. i asked one what’s the third-most populous city in new zealand, and it said something implausible. it then claimed auckland was the second-most populous. immediately after, it said auckland was the most populous, but didn’t notice its mistake. i had to “prompt” it, by asking whether the same city was really the first and second most populous. at which point, of course, “you’re absolutely right”. but it continued, with a straight face, making not just incorrect, but blatantly incoherent, claims about city population rankings. these word salads don’t just fail on basic facts, they lack the self-awareness to pick up on themselves when, according to themselves, they are being ridiculous. one was bugging me for pictures ideas, so i said draw a projection of new zealand onto northern hemisphere, flipping latitudes and lining up the other axis wi...
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device registration for wifi on Princess ship

To register a device for wifi on Princess ship, connect to wifi MedallionNet, and point. a browser at login.com. Background:  tardtards decided that wifi connection couldn't be done via wifi protocols, it had to be via a web page.  So were born "captive portal"s.  When web was plain-text, network provider's stack could easily man-in-the-middle user's web requests (assumption: user goes straight to web), and redirect to their captive schmortal page, and make them fill forms. Then the web went mostly-https, (SSL / TLS), meaning encrypted, so MITM shouldn't be possible, and the captive schmortal MITM attempts result in certificate errors.  User may choose "abandon ssl certificates", "do anyway" kind of things in browser.  But the client is now told, I think by a DHCP item, what URL to go to to do the captive schmortal.  This is somehow passed from the client's OS to the client's browser.  Sometimes a new browser window is launched, on ...
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some Pacific time zones and offsets as of 2026-08-19; observations on Linux, Unix, MacOS, iOS timezone handling

Crossing the Pacific westwards, the ship's time gets set back one hour at a time.  The ship's management arranges it so that at land stops, it is synchronised with the location.  Changes between one stop and the next are somewhat arbitrary, but the idea should be to keep changes smooth and have dawn and dusk at sensible wall times. I set around 5 clocks at each change. The Casio F-91W is the easiest.  I set the hour back using the three buttons on the watch.  The only annoyance is that I have to cycle +23 hours, as one can not decrement the hour directly.  It's not that annoying, and one knows it's going to work. For the Debian (Linux) laptop, I change the /etc/localtime symlink to point to location in /usr/share/zoneinfo/*/*, such as /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Vancouver.  This is fine when there is a well-known city to select.  It sometimes involves research and experimentation to choose one with the correct (current) offset.  Once the symlink c...
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Apple's Time Zone Catastrophe

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In " apple conflates time zone and time offset in the middle of MacOS ", we learned about conceptual muddle around time zones and offsets in MacOS's settings. Since then, I have set the Time Zone to St John's Newfoundland.  In the process, I learned just how primitive Apple's "MacOS" software is. I unchecked "Set time zone automatically using your current location".  I clicked in "Closest city" and started typing.  I was going for St John's.  After a few letters, there were no matches in the interactive matching.  I hit return anyway, and got the following: As if to validate its claim that an extension process had "exited", the depicted pane remained completely empty after I dismissed the "dialog" "box". I turned off and on again the settings window, and researched the topic.  Apparently you have to type it exactly to match what it's expecting, or it doesn't match and crashes.  In this case. ...
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apple conflates time zone and time offset in the middle of MacOS

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Following on from " difference between timezone and offset ", Apple makes this mistake right in the middle of MacOS: No, dipshits, "British Summer Time" is not a time zone.  It is an offset, of plus one.  The time zone is London or what-have-you.  They are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.
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printing wraparound labels with a pt7600

A bit like  https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2025/03/printing-cable-labels-with-pt7600.html , but printing just one wraparound label per id. Using the labeller's cutter, you would have to engage in the whole printing process, and cut when it says.  Doing it this way, you can quickly cut with scissors, either as a batch, or as you need them.  * prepare labeller: insert 9mm black on white tape, power on, ensure barcode PROTOCOL is set to CODE128  * press Code then Z to enter settings, and select CUT 2 using up and down, and hit return  * clear text with code, backspace, enter  * press "Bar Code" (confirm again it says CODE128)  * enter first id in sequence (you are managing ranges / sequences of ids elsewhere), for example "wibble1234", press return  * press Code -> Label Type  * it says Copies 1.  Press 2  * press right arrow and it goes to NUMBER OFF  * press down for 99, or enter however many you want (we don't expect it to...
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changing linux timezone

Easy way to change system timezone is to change where the /etc/localtime symlink points to, eg:     # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/St_Johns /etc/localtime 
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