Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

In better news, I found a reasonably portable way for a shellscript to read a single (one-byte) character without waiting for the Enter key:

readkey() {
stty -icanon -echo
dd bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null
stty icanon echo
}
variable=$( readkey )

For the curious:
Framework: x11-toolkits/xforms
OS: FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p8
cc: clang version 13.0.0

All I want is something a tiny bit more flexible than Xdialog.

There's nothing like finding a really lightweight, straightforward, and easy C GUI toolkit, and the example hello-world program straight up fails to compile because the linker says every single function is an undefined symbol.

A coder's job shouldn't be to move fast and break things.

A coder's job should be to move purposefully and fix things.

Trifecta of outage trifectas.

In the last week, my city was among the municipalities hit by three separate outages of Internet, mobile data, and voice services.

One was caused by equipment failure, one was caused by idiot construction workers digging up a fiber cable, and one was caused by copper thieves too stupid to realize fiber conduits don't have copper.

I am not a happy computer fairy.

SpaceX needs its license suspended or revoked.

The only way they're getting anyone to Mars is by blowing up Earth. Even then, their ignorance-fueled design decisions will probably result in the landing vehicle performing an "unscheduled lithobraking maneuver."

Futurism, "Debris Rains Down on Protected Wildlife After Starship Explosion": https://futurism.com/wildlife-starship-explosion

San Antonio Express-News, "Lingle: SpaceX launch elevates environmental risks at Boca Chica": https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/article/lingle-spacex-launch-elevates-environmental-17911357.php

Phrases of the week:

1. "Rapid Unscheduled Excavation" of the space launch structure.

2. "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly" of the space launch vehicle.

Elon is:

* a sociopath who cares less about the public than a Superman villain,
* an arrogant dick who cares less about the environment than a Captain Planet villain, and
* a rank idiot who knows less rocket science than a typical KSP player,

and I'll never understand why anyone thinks he's any kind of good.

Of course, it didn't work.

The thing is, it never worked, & the non-DSL ISP they switched to me from never bothered to troubleshoot past the router's Internet port or otherwise make sure their customer could actually use the Internet service they were paying for.

I did, & I now have another happy customer. But this network mess today drained me.